Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (3 page)

A few moments later a darkly handsome man strode into the room, and both women felt that visceral thrill experienced when in the presence of a truly compelling man, one of those few who seem to live in a more vivid sense than others. He was the kind of man for whom women sat straighter and unconsciously primped, and both ladies wished they were wearing more fashionable garb, and were several years younger.

Truffle doddered in after him and wheezed, “Lord Anthony, Marquess of Darkefell, miladies.” He bowed and exited.

“Good afternoon,” Lady Everingham said, from her chair, past the age where she would rise for any man or woman short of King George or Queen Charlotte.

“Good afternoon, Lady Everingham,” he said, crossing the room and taking her hand, kissing the air a judicious inch above the back of it.

“This is my daughter,” the viscountess said, waving her hand, “the Countess of Harecross.”

Barbara stared at the young man avidly. Very handsome! The kind of compelling younger fellow some of her friends sought out for their
affaires d’amour
, not that she would ever consider such a thing, despite her estrangement from the earl. But it did one no harm to gaze at a handsome face, she thought, as he bent low over her hand.

“To what do we owe the honor of this visit?” her mother said, quavery voice stronger now, with her interest piqued.

He directed his remarks to the younger woman. “I believe I am acquainted with your daughter, Lady Harecross; Lady Anne Addison?”

Barbara flapped her mouth for a moment. “Yes! Yes, of course. She was north, in Yorkshire, visiting her little friend … what is the child’s name? Mother,” she gabbled, “that newly married one, sister to Anne’s late fiancé? What
is
her name?” She was flustered, and that had not happened for many a day.

“Lydia Moore she was, now Lady John Bestwick.” Lady Everingham raised her glass and peered at the marquess. “Of course! You are Lydia’s brother-in-law, the current marquess. Involved in some havey-cavey nonsense sometime ago.”

His handsome face hardened to the tensile strength of granite.

Barbara hastened to soften the other woman’s bluntness. “What my mother means, is, you were the innocent object of unkind gossip, Lord Darkefell.”

His unexpected grin was devastatingly flawless, as he said, “Is there
kind
gossip, my lady? And if there is, does anyone listen to it? I am in Bath looking for a residence to rent for the summer for my brother and sister-in-law. They are to be the recipients of a happy surprise in seven months or so, and she’s nervous, it being her first such arrival. Lady Anne was so kind as to suggest a doctor here, Dr. Haggerty, your own physician, I believe, ma’am?” he asked the countess.

“Dr. Haggarty … of course! He was most helpful with my
accouchements
.”

The viscountess asked Lord Darkefell to stay for tea, and he proved to be the most charming and interesting guest they had had for many a day. They would dine out on this conversation for weeks to come, for both women swiftly remembered all the tales told of the marquess; there was mystery there, and tragedy. His estate was cursed, some said, and Darkefell was an elusive guest, though sought after. How intriguing!

But he had not come to charm
them
, Barbara thought, as she poured him tea and slipped something stronger into it. Several times he had, in a roundaboutation way, asked after Anne. Was Lady Anne in Bath? No. Then more conversation. Was Lady Anne at home in Kent? No. More conversation. Was Lady Anne expected any time soon in Bath? No, for she disliked Bath intensely. She was coming to visit her mother and grandmother in two months’ time, but she would not arrive a moment before she had to.

He appeared frustrated, his jawline jutting and harsh.

The elderly viscountess slyly asked, finally, when it seemed that they had exhausted every other bit of news or gossip, “So, Darkefell, do you wish us to
tell
you where my adventurous granddaughter is right now, or do you wish to go another round of questions first?”

He grinned, a lopsided and charming expression that brought a sparkle to his brown eyes. “Ah, questions; it was the very theme of my brief friendship with Lady Anne, ending with a particularly interesting one for which I have never received an answer. I would be grateful, ma’am, if you would tell me where she is. I feel sure she would like to hear how Lydia is doing, for she left in … a bit of a hurry.”

The mother and daughter exchanged significant looks at his pause.

“My granddaughter is in Cornwall,” the viscountess said, her lorgnette raised as she openly eyed him. “We last heard she was staying at the home of her friend, Miss Penelope St. James, in a village called … er, St. Wyllow, I believe. West of St. Ives on the north coast of the county. Miss St. James has an impecunious brother who has oft pursued my granddaughter.”

A dark expression that flicked across the marquess’s handsome face told the mother and daughter more than an hour of idle chat. Soon after, Lord Darkefell excused himself, and left.

The countess and viscountess immediately conferred.

“From viscount to earl to marquess in three generations; we do exceedingly well, Barbara,” the elderly woman said, her voice grating with excitement.

“So handsome! And a marquess!” Lady Harecross said, clapping her hands together. She leaped to her feet and swept about the room in an excess of high spirits. She whirled and faced the older woman. “It could not have passed your notice, Mama, what he said about a particular question to which she had not given an answer. Could he have proposed marriage already, after such a short acquaintance?” She shook her head. “No, I’ll not believe my daughter so foolish as to reject a man of such caliber. Vast estates, wealthy … what can Anne have been thinking, to leave Yorkshire when she had such a man on her hook? And what, oh
what
, can he see in my wayward daughter?”

“You have always undervalued Anne’s charms,” Lady Everingham stated, her voice gruff. “She is intelligent, and some men like that, as I tried to tell you in her come-out year. But you wouldn’t listen to me! You
would
go about things the way you caught Harecross, with fluff and flattery, simpering and stupidity.
You
would have been content if she had married Sir Reginald, a mere baronet! How fortunate he died.”

It was an old argument, and one in which Barbara would not engage. “Well, perhaps the best thing she did was leave Yorkshire,” Lady Barbara said, one finger on her chin. “For see how it has caused Darkefell to scurry south, he who will hardly be seen in London, even at parliamentary season! He refuses all invitations but those he cannot evade.”

“Anne has intrigued him.”

“But Mama, we must get Lolly!” Barbara said to her mother, her tone urgent. “It didn’t matter that Anne was living with that sly, insinuating young woman and her raffish brother, while she was meeting no one of importance, but for Darkefell to find her thus? If he truly has offered for her, we have him hooked. I’ll not let my daughter throw away such an opportunity. We must dispatch Lolly immediately! There must be no whiff of impropriety surrounding Anne.”

As little as they agreed in other areas, the mother and daughter were united on that. They summoned Truffle, and had him send the potboy out to rooms in a poorer part of Bath, to one Miss Louisa Eleanor Broomhall. That woman, existing on the fringe of society as she did, gathering crumbs from the tables of the prosperous, never let a moment lapse between an invitation and her acquiescence; she hurried to the stately town home of the Viscountess Everingham.

“What do you wish, my dear cousins?” she asked, sighing contentedly as she licked the last smear of cream cake off her fingers and dusted crumbs from her ancient dress, the best she had, now twenty years out of fashion. She washed the cake down with liberal gulps of splendid strong tea, a luxury she had not been able to afford in months.

“Louisa, Anne is in need of your services,” the elderly viscountess said. She was one of the few who would not call the woman Lolly, saying it was an infantile reminder of Anne’s childhood; the young Lady Anne could not say “Cousin Louisa Eleanor,” and so affectionately named her Lolly. “Now listen closely because you must leave this afternoon on the post for Cornwall. This is your task.”

That afternoon, Miss Lolly Broomhall, with her modest luggage, cheerfully set off on the post carriage to St. Wyllow, Cornwall, and her favorite second cousin, Lady Anne Addison, a
darling
girl upon whom she had doted since the young lady was born. Her orders were, first, to try to get Anne to return to Bath so a proper courtship between her and the Marquess of Darkefell could be conducted under the watchful eyes of her mama and grandmama. But if that did not seem possible, then she was to stick like glue to Anne, so no hint of impropriety would accompany what must surely be a foregone conclusion with such a man as the marquess. If he had truly made up his mind to wed Anne, then they would make sure he got his wish. It would be an engagement worthy of a wedding at St. George, Hanover Square, London.

The countess and viscountess had begun to plan the wedding even before Lolly left them, for a successful conclusion was sure to follow. Lord Darkefell had as good as revealed his intentions to them, and such a bold gentleman must achieve success in whatever endeavor he set himself to accomplish.

Two

“St. James, you are intolerably dull today,” Anne complained, the next afternoon, as she and Pam walked with the captain along the high street in St. Wyllow, where they had by arrangement met him. Both were on his arm, his sister on his right, Anne on his left. “I was particularly sure you, who are interested in all manner of oddities, would be entertained by my story, and wish to help me understand what I saw.”

“You saw a ghost, my dearest Anne,” Captain Marcus St. James said, bowing to an acquaintance across the street. “But that only shows that a lady such as yourself should not be out in the night air damaging her lungs in such a dreadful way. I’m sure those prevention men are fully occupied without worrying about a gently bred lady becoming mired in difficulties.”

She examined her military friend, Pamela’s handsome older brother, from under the brim of her straw bonnet. He was a captain in the Light Dragoons, and wore his uniform well; his boots gleamed, no dust smudged his beautifully cut crimson coat, and his white breeches were spotless. Fairer than his sister, his hair was flawlessly powdered and coiffed, and Anne knew he scrimped in other areas to purchase the best in creams, powders and pomades. He was the perfect military dandy.

And on this occasion, mindlessly obtuse. “But the Barbary pirate specter, St. James,” she said, impatiently, tugging his arm. “What was it? I’m a skeptic, and do not believe in ghosts, nor spirits of any kind. Therefore this was an illusion, a mere parlor magician’s trick, but how? I want to know.”

“Did you see the Turk in London two years ago?” he asked, nodding to another acquaintance while a group of young ladies clustered in front of the millinery shop watched him, and giggled together. He eyed them and winked, sending the giddiest girls into fits of gleeful chatter.

Anne rolled her eyes and shook her head over another of St. James’s continual non sequiturs. “What in heaven’s name—or who, I suppose—is the Turk?”

“It is an automaton that plays chess, and wins every game! I would give a year’s wages to figure out how that works!” He smiled down at her, his mobile mouth twisted in a self-mocking smile. “I am not one who can look at a trick and tell how it was done.” His blue eyes were bright with mockery.

Anne squinted at him, wondering if he was laughing at her, or merely being truthful, as Pamela tripped lightly away from her brother to the shop windows.

“My dear,” Pamela said, tapping Anne’s free arm, “do you think I should buy that new bonnet I have been admiring, or wait for the new shipment from London?” They paused before the diamond-paned window of the milliner’s shop, where the wares were temptingly displayed for distaff shoppers to ponder. The group of chattering girls had moved on.

“I would advise waiting,” Anne replied, dropping St. James’s arm. She did not want to draw out the afternoon with an endless discussion over fashion. As much as she appreciated fine clothes, fans and frippery, there was too much else to think of that moment.

“But I do think it would so suit my green sarcenet,” she said, pointing to the chip straw bonnet. It was adorned with died plumes of an olive tint and gold silk ribbon. “You know I plan to wear that this afternoon at the officers’ luncheon to welcome the new regiment colonel, Sir Henry Withington.”

“Buy it, then,” Anne said, impatiently, and turned back to Marcus. “St. James, if it is not a real ghost—and my skepticism is firm—then there must be some apparatus to raise and lower the jokester, and fireworks are involved, for the smoke and explosions were meant to conceal his disappearance, I feel sure. Is it something to do with the smugglers? Is it to aid them, or halt them?”

“Pam,” St. James said, eyeing his sister with a significant look, “talk to her!”

Anne puzzled, looked from the captain to her friend.

“You have no interest in shopping, Anne,” Pamela said, with a pout. “What good is having my best friend staying with me, if she shows no interest in normal affairs?”

“Ah, there is Carleton,” St. James said, gesturing toward another red-coated officer on the opposite side of the narrow street. “I must ask him about …” The rest of his comment was lost in a mumble as he sprinted across the cobbled road, halting for a dray carrying a load of barrels, then joining his fellow officer.

“What is wrong with him?” Anne asked Pamela, watching the two talking. A freshening breeze tumbled up the steep street, and she raised one hand to hold her bonnet, watching a gull circle and wheel in the sky above them. In the manner of many seaside villages, St. Wyllow’s high street descended from the highland toward the sea, where walks along the shingle were considered gentle enough even for a lady. Anne had walked the shore many times in the last two weeks, though only so far as the bathing machines, which were not in commission this early in the Season. Pam had not answered, and Anne glanced over at her. “Am I annoying you both?” she asked, with a trace of acerbity that she could not restrain.