The Spare

v2.0

July 2006

ACCUSED!

Olivia's hand flew through the air. Sebastian caught her wrist, stopping her palm inches from his cheek. "You have no right," she said. "No right at all to level such an accusation."

"On the contrary. I have every right. Did you know, Miss Willow, that the very day before he died, my brother instructed his solicitor to begin an action for divorce?"

"I don't believe it." But something nagged at her. The harder she tried to think what, the more her head hurt. Something. Something important, and it refused to come to her. He lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. His eyes burned into hers. Her scar felt like a white-hot knot.

"I do not countenance liars," he said. "And that includes old maids who pretend virtue they do not possess."

His fingers tightened around her chin. "Did you kill my brother?"

"No."

"How do you know?"

She opened her mouth to speak but all that came out was a sob. The light hurt her eyes. Too bright where the sun came in, too dark in the shadows shifting behind Sebastian. "I couldn't have," she managed. "I couldn't."

^
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Pennhyll Castle, Cumbria, January 3, 1812

Captain Sebastian Alexander, late of His Majesty's Royal Navy, glared at his valet's reflection with eyes reputed to have frozen boiling water on the spot. To no avail. McNaught continued mixing another noxious remedy guaranteed to taste like poison. Sebastian turned on his chair and found the motion did not pain him as much as he expected. He ignored McNaught and his potion. "I am not mad, James," he said to the man beside him. A hound the color of a thunderhead raised its muzzle and sniffed the air. He stroked the dog's head.

"You are an Alexander." James did not look away from his collection of essays by Montaigne. "You are too practical for madness. Besides, you aren't old enough to fear your mind in danger of infirmity."

"I saw a sailor go mad once, and he was not yet twenty." At rest, Sebastian's face marked him as a young man, barely thirty, a handsome man with blue eyes and hair just shy of black. Certainly, unquestionably, his eyes were blue. As bitterly cold as ice at dawn. From across a room, his eyes pierced with a rapier's thrust to the heart.

James gave him a look. "I'll warrant his madness was not from age."

"The ocean broke his mind. We were becalmed seven weeks on water smooth as glass."

"Your mind is sound, of that I am convinced."

"I'm not to be back at sea for weeks yet. What am I to do with myself until then?" He shuddered. The hound at his side rose, and Sebastian rested a hand on its sleek shoulder. "If I don't get another ship right away, I might be here even longer."

"Stop complaining. Brave naval captains such as yourself are always at the head of the list for ships."

"Jesus." He rubbed his face with both hands, disliking the way his mind whirled all out of order. "I am ancient, James."

"Hardly."

"In my soul. Weary to the very core and adrift. Becalmed. I lack purpose." He drew a breath, felt pain blossom at the peak of inhalation, and then slowly exhaled. "I want occupation, and I am too exhausted to find one."

"You are in the very prime of life, Sebastian," James said in a very deliberate and annoyed manner. The idea of Sebastian Alexander succumbing to weakness was ludicrous.

Sebastian eased back against his chair. "Listen to me." He made a face of self-disgust. "Complaining like an old woman. A man makes of his life what he can. He doesn't sit about bemoaning his fate. I'll have my ship if I have to get down on my knees and beg for it."

James sat straighter. "You are Tiern-Cope. The world comes begging to you, not the other way 'round." He gestured, a wave that took in everything. "Forget the sea. Pennhyll is your purpose. Your position in life is now your occupation. You oughtn't go back at all. Your duty lies here."

Sebastian sighed. "I never wanted this."

"I daresay a gentleman doesn't want half the duties that fall to him, but that does not absolve him of responsibility."

"Of that, I am painfully aware."

"Sebastian, you are not old, and you are certainly not mad."

"Not mad." He laughed softly. "Last night, I saw—" He pressed his lips together, then continued because he feared silence would break his mind the way a glassy sea broke that young sailor. "I dreamed a man stood at the foot of my bed."

James closed his book on an index finger. "What an appalling lack of imagination."

"I thought it was Andrew."

"Was it?"

Andrew and his countess were both gone and their killer not brought to justice. By the time the black-bordered letter caught up with him, his brother was nine months dead, on the very heels, it seemed, of the death of their father. And then Sebastian'd been wounded and given leave to recuperate and put his affairs and estate in order. Six weeks of his leave had passed in a fog of pain. Nothing had been the same since he came to Pennhyll. Nothing. "Andrew is dead."

"Well, yes, of course he is. But this is Pennhyll, after all."

Sebastian almost let the subject drop right there. Except he couldn't. The mood of his dream clung to him like the scent of smoke on a man who went too near a fire. "Andrew never had eyes like that." He remembered the impact of staring into those eyes as if it had really happened. Blue eyes. Alexander eyes. Instead of the affable gleam so typical of his brother, eyes of keen appraisal. "Like ice in the morning."

"Is that all he did? Stand at the foot of your bed?"

Sebastian stared at the blanket on his lap. He did not like feeling ridiculous, and he was uncomfortably aware of the absurdity of implying a dream was more than a dream. Jesus, he must be mad. "He spoke."

"And?"

"As if my life depended upon what he said." The hound rested his head on Sebastian's lap. With an absent fondness, his fingers stroked the gray dome of the dog's head. Even wounded, Sebastian held the promise of action, as if he might at any moment leap to his feet.

"And?"

"I could not hear him."

"Actually," James said, lowering his voice and leaning with one hand at the side of his mouth. "It's normal to have dreams. Lots of people have them. I had one myself last night. About a lusty widow who—"

"I saw him as clear and solid as I see you right now, and then he disappeared. I don't want that." Sebastian pushed away the glass proffered by his valet.

"Pennhyll, my dear Captain Alexander, is haunted—"

"Damn potions addle my brains."

"—however—"

McNaught's round cheeks drooped. "A new tonic, my Lord. Prepared—"

"Jesus! That smells like—" James's book snapped closed as Sebastian continued. "Awful."

James shook his head. "I doubt you saw Andrew last night."

"Hell."

McNaught stared at the glass in his hands. "Wouldn't be proper medicine if it didn't, my Lord."

A smile flickered on James's face. "You did not see Andrew, but the fourth Lord Tiern-Cope."

"Sod off. Not you, McNaught."

"The Black Earl, dead for more than four hundred years, appears to the Lords Tiern-Cope to warn of impending doom."

"I mean it, James."

James's flint-gray eyes widened in mock horror. "It's plain why he appeared to you, Sebastian." He waved a hand and came perilously close to knocking over McNaught's potion. "A fate worse than death itself awaits you."

"Bugger yourself."

"Not what I had in mind." James pretended to dodge a blow and McNaught, seeing his potion once more in danger of being dashed to the floor, clutched the glass to his chest. "My dear Captain," James said in a drawl that sent Sebastian to the very brink of irritation, "you are not mad. You saw the Black Earl last night—"

"I didn't."

"—because your bride, the future countess of Tiern-Cope, is here. At Pennhyll. Or, more precisely, there." He pointed at the window before them.

"Where?" In the glass-paned conservatory wall Sebastian saw his own image, though faintly, as if this, too, had been depleted by injury. His reflection showed a leaner man than he used to be, with a pale face below dark hair. Next to him in the reflection he saw James seated and holding a book on his lap. A third figure appeared in the glass, looming just behind. McNaught, of course, though for an instant Sebastian's heart jumped unpleasantly. Some trick of optics made his servant appear quite tall. Nearly as tall as Sebastian himself. McNaught, however, stood no higher than Napoleon and a full foot short of his employer's height. Quite the trick of light for his rotund little servant to seem twice his height and half his weight.

Sebastian stared hard at the shadowed orbits of his eyes. Penetrating the reflected trio of invalid, friend and servant, he looked through himself. Outside himself. Thick hedges the height of a man's thighs marked the nearest garden limits and beyond that, lawns and more gardens. Instead of gray reflection, he saw filtered sunlight on a winter's palette. A freshly swept flagstone path led upslope to a lawn twenty yards distant where, through the gap in the border, he could see people strolling or lounging on chairs. In the sizeable area of lawn cleared of snow, two women played tennis, watched by several men intent on the contestants.

James reopened his book. "You were sleeping when they got here." He shot a glance behind them. "McNaught, bless him, as much as told me it'd be my life if I disturbed your rest. Besides, I'm certain I mentioned she'd be here any day."

"Thirteen people." Sebastian shook his head dismally.

"Fourteen," James corrected. "Sixteen counting the two of us."

"You said a few." Sebastian didn't even try to keep the peevishness from his voice. "Only a few guests." What he wanted was the comfort of a ship under his feet and failing that, one night without dreams that felt more real than the stones of Pennhyll Castle.