A Loving Spirit (14 page)

Lady Lettice smiled down at him fondly and patted the top of his head. "Angelo, my chuck, you think far too much about food. Ghosts cannot even eat here on earth!"

"Angelo can
remember
eating," he mumbled. "We
could
eat in the sitting room of the afterlife."

"Well, we are here now, and it is impossible to eat in our present form. Now, Louisa, Sir Belvedere," Lady Lettice said decisively, dropping her fan and turning to face them. "It appears I have arrived just in time. Things at Royce Castle seem to be getting completely unruly. Let us go up to my chamber, which I hope has been aired and cleaned properly, and you may tell me all about what has been going on here." Then her voice changed from its usual strident tones to a soft purr. "Especially about that handsome gentleman with the long, dark hair..."

* * *

Phillip locked the door to the library behind him and hurried over to the table, where the butler left various decanters and glasses every evening. Usually he did not touch them at all, but tonight was a marked exception. He poured himself a generous measure of brandy and gulped it down as if it was water. Then he poured out another one.

What was happening to him? Here, in his very home, the place he regarded as a haven from the insanity of the outside world! Now it seemed that that very hysteria, the wildness of the so-called Romantics, had reached between the stones of Royce Castle and grabbed onto him.

Clutching at his brandy, he sat down in the chair behind the desk and looked about at the library. It all seemed the same; the same neat rows of books, the same dark furniture, the same painting over the fireplace. His notes and volumes were all in tidy little piles on the desk. But he felt dazed, disturbed. Completely out of sorts.

These were feelings he disliked intensely. He liked to know his purpose, his place in the world. He liked his household to be in order, to know what he could expect from every day.

That was gone now, vanished in that blast of blue-green light. If he was to be honest with himself, he would have to admit that it had been gone before that, since the day Cassandra Richards stepped past his threshold. She was making him doubt things he had always believed—things such as logic, order, rationality. She had made unfamiliar feelings rise up inside him—desires for picnics, wild rides, and myths and stories.

And now he had actually engaged in some sort of mass hysteria in the tunnel. The fact that they
all
believed they saw a ghost had infected his own mind and made him believe it, as well.

That had to be all there was to it.

He could not have actually seen some supernatural being. He shook his head stubbornly. That could not be.

He took another sip of the brandy and reflected that soon he would have his peaceful, scholarly life back again. After the blasted masked ball, Cassie and her aunt and her strange friend would surely return to Bath, leaving him to get on with his work.

Through the warm brandy haze, he wondered why that thought did not comfort him as it should. In fact, it did not comfort him at all.

* * *

"Handsome but stupid, I see," Lady Lettice commented, watching him from atop the rolling ladder next to Louisa. "Some of the best men are, of course. Sir Francis Drake, for one, was really very thick. But one does hope for more from someone who is meant to be a scholar. Now, if you had known Sir Phillip Sidney..."

"Yes, yes," Louisa interrupted impatiently. She had forgotten how Lady Lettice tended to go on and on about all the famous people she had once known. "But what do you think of my idea, Lady Lettice?"

"Of matching up this man with your Miss Richards from Jamaica?" Lady Lettice tapped at her chin thoughtfully with her feather fan. One thing she had always been rather fond of was making matches; Louisa knew that very well. She thought perhaps it was to compensate for having never been married herself. And now Louisa hoped to engage her in this mission.

"The free spirit and the stuffy scholar," Lady Lettice went on. "I think it has great potential, my dear Louisa. Very amusing potential, indeed. Now, all we have to do is come up with a plan."

Louisa grinned. "Oh, yes. Sir Belvedere and I have been thinking on that..."

Chapter 16

"Oh, how marvelous!" Lady Royce cried. She had been reading the morning post over breakfast, and now held up a sheet of parchment with a pleased exclamation.

"What is it, Melinda?" asked Chat, picking a piece of toast out of the rack.

"My dear friend Lady Paige, the one Miss Richards met on her excursion into the village, is having a small supper tonight to bid farewell to her nephew, who is returning to Town. We are all invited." Lady Royce refolded the invitation carefully and smiled. "This
is
splendid, is it not? I have not been out to dine in ever so long."

"Will there be many people there?" Chat asked. "Is it very formal?"

"Oh, no, not at all. Lady Paige's dining room is not big enough for a large party. I am certain Viscount and Viscountess Rockley will be there, and Mrs. Sattler and her daughter, and perhaps the Lewishams."

"It sounds delightful. Does it not, girls?" Chat said, and glanced down the table to where Cassie and Antoinette sat quietly.

Antoinette, whose dark eyes were heavy with weariness after the exertions of the night before, nodded and murmured her assent.

Cassie looked over at Phillip, who just continued eating his sausages and said nothing. He just barely nodded in his mother's direction. He, too, seemed weary, with dark circles beneath his eyes. Cassie had wondered all night and morning what his reaction might be to the night's occurrences.

Now she knew. He was not taking it at all well.

He had greeted them politely when he entered the breakfast room, but had said barely a word since. He had scarcely even glanced at Cassie.

Perhaps he was just tired, as they all were, she tried to reassure herself. But she still wished he would at least smile at her and talk with her as they had that night in the library. They could discuss what had happened in the tunnels, try to figure out what it all meant.

But it was all too clear that he did not want to talk with her about anything right now, least of all what had happened. He appeared intent on denying it.

Cassie turned her attention back to her plate, listening as Lady Royce planned what she would wear to the supper party. Later, when Phillip was not so tired, she would seek him out and talk to him.

They had so many things to discuss.

* * *

"Hm. I do see what Louisa means," Lady Lettice muttered as she watched the scene in the breakfast room. Rather than perch on one of the cornices, as Louisa and Sir Belvedere liked to do, she peered out from one of the portraits. It was much more dignified in a farthingale. "He is a terribly stubborn man. He does not believe in us, even though he saw us with his own eyes, and he blames the poor girl for making him see the truth he will not acknowledge. She certainly has a streak of stubbornness, as well." She peered at them closer. "Yes, indeed, this will be a challenge. Much more so than when I matched up Lettice Knollys and Robert Dudley."

Angelo tugged at her skirts. "Angelo wants some of those sausages! They smell so wonderful."

"Hush, Angelo! I told you yesterday, ghosts cannot eat. You do not really feel hungry, you just think you do," she said distractedly.

"No! Angelo is
really
hungry."

Lady Lettice did not answer; she was too busy listening to the humans' conversation. "They are going to a supper tonight. An excellent opportunity. There are far too many of them for just one carriage; we shall have to see that Lord Royce and Miss Richards are alone in one."

"Angelo does not think a well-bred girl would be alone in a carriage with a man," he said thoughtfully. "Look at what happened to Katherine Throckmorton."

"Then we shall just have to see to it that they are
made
to be alone," Lady Lettice answered impatiently. She took hold of Angelo's hand and floated off. "Now we must find Louisa and Sir Belvedere. They are probably lazing the morning away, playing chess in that East Tower, when there is work to be done!"

"And maybe we will run into Jean-Pierre on the way," Angelo said slyly. His dark eyes flashed with a usually hidden intelligence.

Lady Lettice reached out with her free hand and cuffed him soundly on the head. "Never mention that name to me again! Jean-Pierre is—was a toad. And he is not a ghost, anyway. He has moved on. We shall never see him here."

But her mind whispered doubtfully,
Will you indeed?

* * *

"What will you wear to Lady Paige's supper, Cassie?" Antoinette said, riffling through the contents of Cassie's wardrobe.

"I don't know," Cassie murmured indifferently, turning over a page of the poetry book she was ostensibly reading. In truth, she had not even read a single word in fully half an hour. "What are you going to wear?"

"Probably that yellow gown your aunt bought for me in Bath. I would not want to go frightening all the guests in my robes!" Antoinette laughed. "They will be frightened enough of me as it is!"

Cassie also laughed and put aside her book. "Well, I do not care what I wear. You choose something for me."

"What about this one?" Antoinette pulled out a sapphire-blue silk. "You loved it when you ordered it from the modiste, and you haven't worn it yet."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps? Don't you want to look pretty for Lord Royce?" Antoinette held the gown up to herself, even though it was a foot too short, and danced about the room. "Oh, Lord Royce, you are
so
handsome," she cooed in a strange, high-pitched Jamaican accent. "Won't you please, please dance with me?"

Cassie tossed a cushion at her, laughing helplessly. "Antoinette, stop! There won't
be
any dancing tonight. It is just supper and maybe some cards."

"But you will still want to look nice, no? So you should wear this." Antoinette laid the gown out on the bed and smoothed the shimmering folds.

Cassie sighed. "I do not think Lord Royce would notice me if I showed up in my chemise."

"Oh, I do think he would notice
that."
Antoinette came and sat down at the end of the chaise where Cassie lay. Cassie slid her feet back to make room for her. "What is the matter, Cassie? Did you and Lord Royce quarrel?"

"Of course not. You cannot quarrel with a person when they won't speak to you. He was so very quiet at breakfast and would not even look at me. Then, when I went to the library to talk to him, the door was locked. The butler said he had orders that no one was to go in today." Cassie felt her chin wobble and clenched her teeth together. "Probably especially me."

"Oh, Cassie dear," Antoinette replied. "Lord Royce has had a shock. He has spent so many years denying the existence of the supernatural, and last night he came face-to-face with it. Of course he does not feel well. He is probably still denying the whole thing. We have seen this many times, remember?"

Cassie nodded. She remembered some of the people they had known in Jamaica, people who had been there for a long time and had seen much. They lived in fear of voodoo rituals and slave revolts.

"At least that fear is not as dangerous here as it was there," Antoinette finished.

"Yes. But what should I do about Lord Royce? If I could just talk to him..."

"Give him time. He will come around, probably sooner than you would think. After all, he is falling in love with you. He will listen to you."

Cassie stared at her friend, shocked. "In—in love with me? Of course he is not! He can barely be civil with me."

"A sure sign that he is in love, then." Antoinette smiled and stood up to cross the room to the door of her own chamber. "We should be getting changed. We have to leave for Lady Paige's house in an hour."

* * *

Almost an hour later, they all stood about in the drive, waiting for the carriages to be brought around. Cassie shivered in her cloak as a chill wind swept across her, and she looked over to where Lord Royce—she could no longer think of him as Phillip—stood, slightly apart from the others.

He did not look angry or upset at all. Merely distantly polite and distracted, as if he was thinking of something else and did not see them.