A Man Of Many Talents (16 page)

“See this notation?” he said.

“Y-yes,” she answered, and Christian was pleased to see she was not as unaffected as she might pretend.

“ ‘Blocked off after the tragedy,’ ” she read aloud. “What tragedy?” she asked, turning her head. She was so near that he could feel the brush of her breath.

“I was hoping you might tell me,” Christian said. And t
hat wasn’t all I was hoping…

She broke away yet again, her gaze sliding from him even as she stepped back, and Christian was hard-pressed not to groan in disappointment.

“What kind of tragedy would cause you to b
lock off part
of a building?” she asked.

Christian glanced down at the printed words, trying to find an answer in the accompanying text, and then it suddenly leapt out at him. “That’s it!” he cried. Slamming shut the book, he strode toward the fretwork, staring up at it in excitement.
“
That’s how it was done!”

“What? How what was done?” Miss Parkinson asked, sounding a little alarmed at his enthusiasm.

Christian brandished the volume, but couldn’t even attempt to appear studious. “They walled up the way to the minstrel’s gallery!”

“What is the minstrel’s gallery?” Miss Parkinson asked, her brows furrowing.

Christian pointed. “The fretwork hides a balcony where musicians once played for the lord of the hall. And I’m betting that’s how our ghost managed to float through thin air!”

As Christian watched comprehension dawn on his hostess’s lovely features, he had to fight an urge to spin her around in celebration of his discovery.

“If it is walled off, how did anyone except Sir Boundefort himself find a way up there?”

“That is what we have to determine. But I have a feeling that once we open up the minstrel’s gallery, Sir Boundefort’s haunting days will be over.”

Snatching up a lantern, Christian headed behind the heavily carved wood, his hostess close at his heels. He held the light high, but as he suspected, its glow did not illuminate the upper reaches of the wall, where the gallery must lie, hidden in shadow. The space was simply too dark and narrow.

Thankfully, the door that led to the cellars still stood open, and Christian stepped inside. He had never really examined the room thoroughly, having been intent upon finding the cellars at the time. Bad lapse, that, he scolded himself. He was really going to have to pay more attention to detail if he expected to rout this troublesome specter.

Now he did so, walking the perimeter slowly, holding the lantern high, then swinging it low, inspecting one wall and then the other, peeking behind objects but moving nothing as yet, gauging the size of the space and the placement of the walls. Beside him, his companion kept blissfully quiet, and he was again reminded that despite all her annoying habits, when it came right down to it, Miss Parkinson could be counted upon to behave in just the right manner—unlike any other female he knew.

They had nearly gone round the entire room when Christian paused at a telltale sign at his feet. He knelt to examine scratches in the tiles, as if something heavy had been moved, then glanced up to see an ugly old painted coffer that might once have held medicines or stored herbs angled before him. Straightening, he pushed the monstrosity away from the wall, and there it was: an opening, dark and ragged.

Christian lifted a hand to one rough edge. Obviously,
someone had cut through the plaster that blocked the way, perhaps with the very same tools that lay in the cellars. Lifting the lantern high, he stepped through the hole to find a set of stairs curving upward. De
spite his excitement at the dis
covery, he made his way carefully, lest he meet some pitfall, either accidental or intentioned by the specter or its minions.

The swish of skirts behind him told him that Miss Parkinson followed, game as ever. Of course, there was no point in telling her to wait behind, and that knowledge, instead of irritating him, filled him with a kind of exhilaration as they marched onward together into the thick of adventure—or as close as one could come to it in rural Devon.

The steps opened onto a narrow balcony along the wall behind the fretwork. Without the lantern, it would have been black as pitch, and even with the light, the space was thick with shadow. Christian didn’t know what the flooring was like, so he reached a hand out to his companion.

“Careful here. Watch your step,” he warned. When the old wood held their weight, he released her and search
ed the space, hoping to find…
he had no idea what. But though he swung the lantern high and low, there was nothing to be seen except the clean-swept planks and the dark expanse of carved wood a few feet ahead of them. Although Christian ran a hand along the surface of the stone wall, he could discover no signs of any other egress, and his initial sense of triumph began to fade as he realized that the proof he had expected to uncover wasn’t here.

The mystery of the specter remained.

A
bigail watched the
play of light upon the old plaster and wood as the lantern swung this way and that and tried to look for some sign of Sir Boundefort. But her attention kept straying to the flesh-and-blood man at her side, more real and far more compelling than any ghost. Indeed, it seemed to her as though Lord Moreland was even more handsome in the near darkness than he was in the broad light of day, a
truly spectacular feat, considering that his visage always was breathtaking.

Right now he was frowning, his brows drawn together in a rare display of displeasure, but it did nothing to detract from his appeal. In truth, Abigail was seized by a sudden urge to smooth that brow with her own hand, a most disturbing impulse. Deliberately, she looked away and tried to catalogue all his failings.

After all, hadn’t he just unleashed some miscreant upon the household without even consulting her? But his explanation was so reasonable, she could hardly fault him. Still, he might have shared his thoughts with her. She owned Sibel Hall, and after long years of standing by powerless, she wanted to be apprised of everything. Now that she finally had a measure of control over her life, she was loath to relinquish even a bit of it.

“Come!” Abigail barely had time to draw a startled breath before her hand was seized in a firm grip, the object of her musings pulling her after him like so much flotsam. Her irritation at this type of manhandling was overwhelmed, much to her dismay, by the delicious heat of his fingers holding hers, a sensation that should not, by any means, be quite so delightful.

“What on earth are you doing now?” Abigail asked when she managed to catch her breath at the bottom of the narrow stairs. She snatched at her skirts with one hand while her companion helped her through the opening—a rather nasty, gaping hole, in her opinion. Once through, she watched while he pushed the cupboard back into place and tried not to mourn the loss of his touch.

“I’m tired of wasting my time hunting for missing records and plans. I’m going to take a look at the outside of the building myself and see if I can find any hides,” he said, striding down the passage toward the door to the old kitchens that now led outside.

“I assumed you had already searched for such things,”
Abigail said a bit peevishly. It seemed to her that the man had accomplished awfully little during his time here.

“Not the right way!” he answered over his shoulder in a getting-down-to-business tone that sent an unaccountable thrill through her. Abigail told herself she was simply pleased that he was finally doing
something.

That knowledge alone was enough to prompt her to return to her work and let him go about on his own. Mounds of paperwork awaited her in the study, and she had other pressing duties to tend to as well, including soothing Mercia’s ruffled feathers about the interloper from the village.

Even without all those responsibilities, Abigail knew she ought not spend time alone with Lord Moreland, unchaperoned. Indeed, since his arrival, she had done her best to avoid him. Yet somehow she continued following him down the corridor. Considering his tendency to become distracted, she reasoned that perhaps she ought to keep an eye on him, just in case he stumbled across more wine or something of that nature.

“And just what way is the
right
way?” Abigail asked as he led her outside. She was determined to concentrate on the matter at hand, but the change from the dank darkness to the fragrant breeze made her pause, and she drew in a deep breath. The air was fresh and clean, the old courtyard overgrown with plants that had once been neatly arranged. Abigail suddenly realized she had never even explored the grounds.

Once she had loved to walk and study nature, but years pent up inside with her godmother had dimmed that joy. Now it seemed that she was still tied to habit and duty and must work to recover that delight. Perhaps when she had her own little cottage, with its own small garden, she would be able to treasure such moments again, she thought wistfully.

“The right way, barring any written record, is to walk around the outside of the house looking for discrepancies, like unexplained stretches of blank wall. Or try to envision what the place would look like without one of the walls. The
chimneys are good indicators of the locations of interior walls,” Lord Moreland said.

Abigail tried to follow his directions, but her attention wandered instead to the man himself. His voice had altered subtly, and there was something about his stride, suddenly so purposeful, that engaged her. And the way he stared up at the house, with th
e discerning eye of an expert…
why, he was actually studying the building, she realized.

“The chimney stacks are usually in projections along the outside walls, and there’s probably an internal wall between one stack and the next. Staircases are most often located in projections too, and may be indicated by smaller or staggered windows. The current central stairway here, with its open area, is clearly a later addition,” he observed.

Abigail listened to his casually tossed words in growing astonishment. She could only gape as he pointed toward the side of the house not far from their recent exit. “You can tell the great hall is there because the house was originally built around this courtyard. In such arrangements, the hall is at the back, with the kitchens on one side and the family apartments on the other. Of course, that initial design has been added on to several times over the years, with disastrous results.

“And yet those additions are just the place for us to find surprises,” he noted, flashing a smile at Abigail that in itself was enough to make her heart race.

Turning to walk in another direction, he pointed at an outcropping. “The timber-and-plaster framing here makes it easy to add, subtract, or alter partitions without much reference to windows or chimney stacks. And even the original roof space will have taken repairs over the years, at which point false ceilings may have been inserted.

“When I searched the interior, I couldn’t find anything that looked like an attic chapel from the days when Catholics had to practice in secret. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t one, of course, but it makes it hard to find one without any plans. Then again, plans are most useful when the
floors and ceilings are consistent throughout the house, which is definitely not the case here.
And we can ignore the most modern
addition, since hides passed out of fashion in the early fifteenth century.”

Dumbstruck, Abigail stared at him in complete amazement. How could she have imagined that he had done nothing while he was here? Read nothing in his life? Knew nothing beyond the frivolous?

“Whoever else is looking for the supposed treasure, or whatever, obviously has discovered something. He’s been up in the minstrel gallery and down in the cellars, chipping away at the foundation.” Lord Moreland shook his head. “But he’s not very clever. Although stone walls can be thick enough to have spaces quarried out of them, and some medieval residents kept their valuables safe from fire and theft in such small spaces, I didn’t see any evidence of that sort of thing in the cellars.”

He paused, as if in thought, and Abigail feared she might swoon. Not only was he the most beautiful and virile of men, but she had been very wrong in dismissing his life as wasted. Obviously he wasn’t only a rake and a gambler, but possessed a mind worthy of admiration. And she was happy to admire
it
…

“No,” he muttered to himself. “If there are any hides, I’ll wager they’re in the additions, some location where it is difficult to account for all the space, either under the roof or around the chimneys or old staircases, especially a staircase near a chimney stack.” He turned to look at her, his face alight with an excitement that made Abigail shiver in response. “And I know just the place!”

Abigail was so enthralled that she could only stand there wide-eyed, and so she might have remained if he hadn’t plucked her from her place as he passed her, dragging her along with him again, back toward the open door. She didn’t even stop to wonder why she allowed such behavior after vowing never to be led about by anyone.

In truth, Abigail was too occupied with the feel of Lord
Moreland’s hand against her back as he hurried her forward. And if she did have one coherent thought, it was the abysmal observation that right now she would probably follow him anywhere.