Mesmerized (18 page)

“Olivia! Belinda!” There was the thundering sound of feet on the stairs, and suddenly a glow coming down another corridor toward theirs.

Belinda let out another shriek, this time of joy, and began to cry. “Stephen!”

They ran toward the light, and at that moment Stephen came hurrying around the corner, lantern held high in his hand. He saw them and set the lantern down with a thud, then ran the next few steps. Belinda jumped into his arms. Olivia, running with her, remembered belatedly that while Stephen’s sister had a perfect right to throw herself into his arms, it was not appropriate for her to do so.

Stephen, however, shifted Belinda into his left arm and with his right reached out and pulled Olivia to him. For a long moment the three of them stood that way, locked in an embrace of relief and joy. Olivia thought she felt the brush of Stephen’s lips against her hair.

“Miss Olivia!” Tom Quick’s voice came from the opposite direction, and Olivia turned her head to see him sprinting toward them, his lantern swinging with every step. “I nearly dropped me light, I did, when I ’eard you call. I couldn’t picture wot ’ad ’appened to you.”

“Tom!” In her happiness, Olivia turned and gave him a quick hug, too. “I am so glad to see you.”

“We didn’t know wot was goin’ on, did we, guv’nor?” Tom went on, addressing Lord St. Leger, a grin splitting his face.

“I had no idea,” he admitted. “Mother was having hysterics and saying a ghost had gotten you. It took me ages to calm her down.”

He picked up the lantern, and they started walking back toward the main wing as they talked. His arm was still around Belinda, but Olivia had recovered her self-possession enough to stay at a discreet distance from him. Tom Quick strode off in front to light the way, turning back now and again to interject a comment as they explained how they had searched all through the house and had even combed the gardens before deciding to try the unused wing of the house.

“One of the maids said she thought she’d seen you two running up the back stairs to the servants’ floor, so we went up there. When we came upon an open door into the old wing, I realized that you must have gone in there.”

“It was awful!” Belinda told him. “It’s hopelessly confusing, and then it started to get dark, and by that time the crying was gone. Just vanished, and we were lost. We tried to get out the back door to the outside, but it was locked.”

“Crying? Who was crying? What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t Lady St. Leger tell you?” Olivia asked.

“Nothing very useful. She said you had gone running after some ghost or other, and Madame Valenskaya kept nattering on about ‘lost souls’ and ‘lonely spirits.’ All I could think was that you had caught someone pulling a trick and were chasing him. I was afraid he might have hurt you. So I got Tom and some servants, and we started looking for you.”

“We heard someone crying,” Belinda explained. “But there was nobody in the hall or anywhere around. It sounded as if it were right there in the room. It gave me goose bumps, I’ll tell you. But Olivia said it was coming from the fireplace, and then she went tearing out of the room—”

“Of course!” Stephen exclaimed. “Mother said that you were sitting in the rose sitting room.”

“Yes, we were,” Olivia replied, looking puzzled.

By this time they had reached a set of double doors. Stephen opened one of them, and they found themselves once again in the main part of the house.

“We were so close!” Belinda cried.

“Yes. If we had started on the ground floor instead of the top, we’d have found you pretty quickly.”

They walked along the long gallery toward the front stairs. Olivia, her mind still on Stephen’s earlier comment, asked, “What did you mean by ‘of course’?”

“What? Oh. Just that you can hear things by the nursery fireplace that are said in the sitting room below. Roderick and I used to sit there and listen to Mother gossip with her friends. You have to take up
a couple of the tiles there. They come off easily. No doubt the sound works the other way, too.”

“I knew it!” Olivia exclaimed triumphantly. “I knew someone was up there, pretending.”

“Why did I not know about that?” Belinda asked indignantly. “No one ever told me you could spy on people from the nursery.”

“Roderick and I were too much older than you. We were grown by the time you would have been interested in that knowledge. We only found out one day when we were trying to find a hiding place for some ‘treasure’ or other, and we realized that one of the tiles was loose. It came right off. No hiding place behind it, but we heard two of the maids talking in the sitting room below us.”

They reached the great hall and saw Lady St. Leger, Lady Pamela, and Madame Valenskaya and her party all standing at the bottom of the stairs. Lady St. Leger was wringing her hands, and Madame Valenskaya was patting her arm soothingly, when Irina Valenskaya looked up and saw Olivia’s group.

“Mother! Lady St. Leger! Look!” Irina cried, pointing.

Lady St. Leger turned, saw them and began to cry, hurrying toward them with her arms outstretched. “Belinda! Sweetheart! Are you all right? I thought something horrible had happened to you. And Lady Olivia! Thank goodness you’re here.”

“Heavens!” Lady Pamela advanced toward them more slowly, her eyebrows raised sardonically. “You
are both covered in dust. Where in the world have you been?”

For the first time Olivia thought of what she must look like, and her heart sank. She was, as Pamela had pointed out, covered in dust. It was on her skirts and hands; she could see that now, in the light. Worse, no doubt it was on her hair and face, as well. She remembered the cobweb that had settled over them and how she had scrubbed at her hair and face, trying to rid herself of it. She must look a fright, her hair all mussed and coated with dust and cobwebs, her face streaked. It was doubly mortifying to look so in front of the poised and beautiful Pamela.

Olivia curled her hands into fists, refusing to give Pamela the satisfaction of letting her hands fly to her unruly hair, as they wanted to. “We have been in the other wing of the house,” she said with a calm she was proud of. “I’m afraid it is rather dusty.”

“But, my dear, why ever did you want to go in there?” Lady St. Leger asked.

“We were chasing the crying, Mama,” Belinda said, adding, “did you know that sound travels between your sitting room and the nursery?”

“What?” Lady St. Leger looked confused. “I don’t understand. How could you ‘chase the crying’? It was some poor lost soul. It wasn’t something you could chase.”

“It was a person, my lady,” Olivia said with all the gentleness she could muster. “Not a lost soul. A person who went into the nursery and cried by the
fireplace, where the sound would come down into your sitting room.”

Lady St. Leger stared at her. “But, my dear, why would anyone do such a thing?”

“To convince us, perhaps, that there are lost souls here.”

Lady St. Leger gasped. “Lady Olivia! You must be overwrought. It is quite understandable, of course, what with the ordeal you and Belinda have been through, but you can’t have thought—you are implying that—”

“Yes, my lady. I can see no other possibility.”

“Disbelievers…” Howard Babington spoke up, sighing and giving a sorrowful shake of his head. “They will concoct any preposterous story to keep from admitting what is right in front of their eyes.”

“Yes. Someone was in the room with us, crying,” Lady St. Leger said. “We all heard it. You yourself checked the hall. It couldn’t have come from the nursery. It is too far away.”

“You have only to take up a tile at the fireplace—” Stephen began.

“Did you see someone doing this?” Babington asked innocently.

“No. They had left the room. They started the crying again and led us away, into the unused wing of the house.”

“That’s right, Mama,” Belinda interjected. “We followed it until we were lost, and then it just stopped.”

“But, darling, if you didn’t see anyone, how can you know that it was a person?” Lady St. Leger asked her daughter reasonably. “And Madame Valenskaya was right there in the room with us. She couldn’t possibly have done such a thing. You must see that you are being very unfair to her.”

“Her daughter and Mr. Babington were not with us,” Olivia pointed out.

“But they are right here. They have been with me for some time.”

“Sometimes the spirits can be unkind,” Mr. Babington said with the air of one imparting a sad truth. “When they are caught here, unable to reach the other world where they belong, they can be bitter. They will play tricks, frighten people, lead one astray.”

“Yes.” Madame Valenskaya nodded her head sagely. “Is true. I haff seen it. Ferry sad.”

“Lady Olivia,” Pamela drawled, “while I admire your desire to support Lord St. Leger’s views of Madame Valenskaya and her friends, I feel I must point out that they are strangers to this house. How could they have known this trick with the tile in the nursery? I had never heard of it. Did you know about it, Lady St. Leger? Belinda?” At their negative shakes of the head, she went on, raising her eyebrows. “You see? If even we did not know about it, having lived in this house for years, how could these relative strangers have guessed that they could do it?”

“Yes, of course. It would be impossible,” Lady St. Leger agreed, pleased. She patted Olivia on the arm,
giving her a sweet, understanding smile. “I am afraid you have been listening too much to my son’s doubts. Stephen has become much too cynical in the years he’s been away. But you can see that Madame Valenskaya and Miss Valenskaya and Mr. Babington could not have done such a thing. It was, I fear, as Mr. Babington mentioned—a restless spirit playing tricks on us.” She sighed, turning toward the medium. “We really must try to communicate with the spirits again, Madame. Clearly we must do something to try to help.”

“Yes, of course. As you wish,” the squat woman replied, her eyelids lowering over a gleam of triumph. “We try again.”

Even Lady St. Leger agreed that the séance must be put off until the next evening, as Olivia and Belinda had been through too much that day to participate. Olivia was a little surprised that Lady St. Leger wanted her at the séance at all. She was fairly certain, from a single malevolent glance Madame Valenskaya delivered to her, that the medium would have been more than happy to have her gone entirely.

However, she began to realize that Lady St. Leger was hoping to win her over to the side of the believers and that she felt sure another séance would do so. Lady St. Leger smiled benignly and patted Olivia’s hand the next morning after breakfast, assuring her that the séance would straighten everything out for them.

“You will see, dear,” she said, giving her a twinkling glance. “And then, perhaps, you will be able to persuade my cynical son.”

As for Lady St. Leger, her own faith in the medium appeared to be unshakable. When, that afternoon, Stephen showed Lady St. Leger and Olivia the loose tile in the nursery schoolroom and demonstrated that sound could indeed travel down to the sitting room below, she did for a moment look uncertain.

But then she shook her head and said, “No, Stephen, my love, how could Madame Valenskaya or her daughter or Mr. Babington have done any of that? It is too absurd. Madame Valenskaya is a dear friend. She has helped me so much the past few months. It would be most unkind of me to suspect her of playing such tricks. And, anyway, they are strangers to this house. They could not know about the nursery tile, and they certainly could not have led Belinda and Lady Olivia into getting lost in the old wing. Surely you must see that.”

“They could have explored the place,” Stephen said. “They have been here an ample amount of time, and it isn’t as if we keep watch on them all the time.”

“My dear! Of course not—what a thing to say.” She shook her head a little sadly. “You have set your mind against the possibility of the spirit world. You should be more tolerant, more open to new ideas.”

“Mother…”

She smiled, patted his hand and sailed out of the room. Stephen gazed after her in frustration.

“It
is
something of a sticking point,” Olivia admitted. “How could they have known of the loose tile? I feel sure they could have explored the old wing and set up that trick, although I’m not sure to what purpose. I mean, Belinda and I would have suffered nothing more than an uncomfortable night, and probably not even that. You would have been bound to search the whole house.”

He shrugged. “They gave you a scare. With some, it might have been enough to convince you that there were ghosts, or even make you decide to pack up and leave. They could not have known it would make you more determined to uncover their perfidy.”

There was an admiration in the tone of his voice that warmed Olivia, but she pulled herself back to the point at hand. “However, even if it’s possible they explored the house, it seems unlikely that they would have thought of prying up all the tiles around the fireplace in the nursery to see if they could be heard downstairs.”

“Perhaps Roderick’s ghost told them,” Stephen said wryly, then sighed. “I don’t know how they found out. Maybe they discovered them in the same way Roderick and I did—they could hear faint voices, and they investigated and realized the tiles came up.”

Olivia nodded slowly. “It wouldn’t be surprising if they were investigating the room above the sitting room your mother uses most to see if they could rig up some trick through the ceiling. And the nursery is
someplace people never go, so they wouldn’t fear being discovered.”