Seduction Becomes Her (15 page)

What the hell was going on? Charles wondered. The room
was
freezing, and he was aware of a feeling of danger, the hair on the back of his neck rising. Daphne’s eyes met his, the expression in them making him instantly cross the room to stand beside her.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

Daphne tried to smile, but her lips wouldn’t work and she shook her head.

Anne sent Daphne a searching look and conscious of the cold, the odd dimming of the candles, said slowly, “I grew up hearing stories about this house, and it has long been rumored that parts of Beaumont Place are haunted. Some of the bedrooms…even this room, once Sir Wesley’s study. There have been…sightings…things happening for which there is no explanation.”

“Now that’s enough!” snapped Miss Ketty, thoroughly outraged. “I’ve held my tongue, but enough is enough. Ghosts! What flummery! There is no such thing as a ghost, and I’ll not have Miss April subjected to any more of this nonsense. She’ll have nightmares for a week.” She snorted. “Sir Wesley sounds quite a nasty fellow and not at all the sort of person I’d like to meet, nor I doubt, that any of us would like to have as a relative. He sounds a perfect scoundrel and deserved whatever fate befell him.” Miss Ketty surged to her feet and shaking a finger at Daphne, said, “And as for you, Miss Daphne, look at you—you’re shaking and white as a sheet. You mark my words, after tonight, you won’t sleep a wink, either.”

Charles glanced down at Daphne, his frown increasing when he saw that she was, indeed, shivering and that the color of her skin was pale as new fallen snow. His hand closed round her shoulder, and he asked, “Are you ill, my dear? May I get something? A brandy to warm you?”

Daphne shook her head, her gaze suddenly transfixed. “Look,” she whispered, pointing a trembling finger at the fireplace.

As one, the inhabitants of the room stared in the direction of her pointing finger. Where once a cheerful fire burned, there were now only smoldering coals, and a cloud of thick, oily black smoke billowed out of the chimney, spilling into the room. It was a terrifying sight, the smoke moving with a will of its own, shaping and dissolving and then reshaping itself into a vaguely human form. Its attention seemed focused where Daphne and Mrs. Darby sat on the sofa, half formed hands reaching out from the main bulging mass as if it would snatch up one of them.

The effect on the observers was dramatic. With a curse, Charles swept Daphne up from the sofa, shoving her behind him, his big body braced to fight what writhed on the hearth. Mrs. Kettle shrieked and stumbled out of her chair and ran toward the door. April shrank back against the sofa, her eyes huge and terrified. Adrian leaped to his feet, exclaiming, “By Jove! What the devil is
that?”

As more of it spilled into the room, the sense of an old evil and death hit Daphne like the force of a blow, and she sagged against the sofa, fighting the nausea and terror flooding through her. Charles spared her a glance, but she shook her head, indicating she was not hurt.

Charles’s gaze moved to Mrs. Darby. Mrs. Darby appeared unmoved, but the paleness of her face gave her away. She is as frightened as the rest of us, Charles thought grimly.

Mrs. Darby sat there motionless, staring at the ominous, smoky form, at the clawlike fingers that flailed in the air. A small golden object appeared in her hand, and rising to her feet, she confronted the seething, amorphous mass. Holding the object in front of her, she said weakly, “Get thee gone, spirit. There is nothing for you here.”

At her words or from the power of whatever she held in her hand, the thing, for there was no other word for it, contracted. Mrs. Darby took another step toward it, the golden object held before her like a shield, and her voice gaining strength, she ordered, “By all that you once held holy, I command you to leave this room.”

There was a tense second, and then an odd sighing sound whispered through the air, and as simply as that, the smoke vanished up the chimney. Feeling as if she had been released from some terrible spell, Daphne forced herself to move out from behind Charles. To her profound relief, the fire was once again dancing red and yellow in the fireplace; the room was bright with the light from the many candles; the bone-chilling cold was gone.

Daphne sank down onto the sofa, more shaken than she realized. April and Adrian recovered instantly and thinking it a clever lark, were unfazed by the incident, April saying, “Oh, Mrs. Darby, that was simply wonderful! I have never seen anything as good, not even in London.”

“M’sister’s right. We’ve seen several magical shows, but never anything the equal of that,” Adrian said admiringly. “How did you do it? Especially that illusion with the smoke? It was quite the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Why, for one moment there, I thought it would reach out and grab either you or Daphne right up. Capital! Most entertaining.”

“Entertaining? I have never heard such utter nonsense in my life!” said Miss Kettle angrily. “It was horrible, and I did not find it the least entertaining.” She sent Mrs. Darby a look of pure dislike. “It was shameful! I was terrified, and poor Miss April, why something like this could send her to bed for a week.” When Adrian burst out laughing, Miss Kettle shook a finger at him. “There is nothing amusing, young man, about frightening people that way.” Gathering her tattered dignity about her, she said, “I am not staying in this room a moment longer to be subjected to any more nasty tricks of that sort.” She bent a stern glance on April. “And neither are you, miss. It is past your bedtime. Come along.”

April protested, but Miss Kettle would not be deterred, and for reasons of her own, Daphne supported her old nurse. “Ketty is right, April,” she said quietly. “It is past your bedtime.”

When April would have argued, Adrian stood up and said, “Come along, brat. Miss Ketty is right, the hour is late.” Suppressing a yawn, he added, “I’ll even go with you.” Turning back to the others, he bid them good night, and ushering a complaining April in front of him, Miss Kettle marching right beside her, the three of them left the room.

Quiet fell once the doors shut behind them, the pop and crackle of the fire, the low moaning of the wind the only sounds in the room. Charles picked up his snifter and helped himself to another brandy. He sipped it reflectively for several seconds, his gaze on the fireplace.

Daphne poured herself and Mrs. Darby a fresh cup of hot tea.

“That was quite a performance,” Charles said eventually. “April is right. I have never seen the like, not even in London. Your talents are wasted here in Cornwall.”

Mrs. Darby set down her cup of tea. Her eyes fixed on Charles, she said, “That was no performance.”

“I agree,” said Charles coolly. “I wondered if you were going to try to claim credit for it.”

“Credit?” Daphne asked with a shudder. “Why would anyone wish to claim credit for such a horrible thing.”

Charles glanced at her, his expression unreadable. “You’re very lucky, I think, that your brother and sister and Miss Ketty believe what they saw was nothing more than a splendid piece of theatrics. But I wonder…did you know what would happen? Is that why you wanted Mrs. Darby here tonight?”

Daphne shook her head. Wearily, she said, “No. I had no notion that anything so, so…spectacular would occur.” She looked up at Charles, exclaiming, “You cannot believe that I would have allowed Adrian and April to remain if I’d suspected that anything out of the ordinary would have happened!”

Charles said nothing, his gaze after a long moment moving from Daphne’s strained features to Mrs. Darby’s face. “Did you expect it?”

Mrs. Darby took a deep breath. “I didn’t expect it…but I came prepared for it.” She looked over at the fireplace almost as if she feared the return of that threatening mass. “I grew up in this house along with my brother, Goodson, and Mrs. Hutton, although she wasn’t Hutton in those days, she was just pretty little Betty Brown, and there were always stories about certain rooms being…different. It was only natural—Beaumont Place is an old, old house, and people have been born and died within its walls for centuries.” She swallowed. “There have been good men and women who lived here…and bad men and women. And from time to time, those bad men and women have done wicked, unspeakable things. Many believe that wickedness lingers in some places, as if the very walls, stones, and timbers are indelibly soaked with the ugliness and horrors that have taken place within the confines of the house.” She looked uneasily around the room. “I spoke the truth when I said that this room was once Sir Wesley’s office. My great grandmother and my grandmother both had the Sight, and neither one of them would ever step foot in this room after dark and never alone, even during daylight.” She glanced at Daphne. “The story Mrs. Hutton told you about the young lady from London in Sir Huxley’s time is only one of many about haunted rooms in this house.”

“Well, nobody told me,” said Charles. Pulling up a chair, he sat down. Stretching his long legs out in front of him, he eyed Mrs. Darby. “Suppose you tell it to me, and don’t leave anything out.”

Mrs. Darby complied, and when she was finished speaking, Charles looked at Daphne. “Was that why you called upon her? To have her verify the story?”

Daphne shrugged, not ready to confess to the far less dramatic apparition in her bedroom. “I told you. I simply wanted to learn more about my ancestors.”

“Now why, I wonder,” Charles said slowly, “don’t I believe you?”

Daphne’s chin lifted. “Are you calling me a liar? Having Mrs. Darby relate some of the stories, true or not, seemed a harmless way to have a more, er, rounded picture of the past. Certainly, Adrian and April are far more likely to listen to, er, lively tales about their ancestors than to pore over the crabbed handwriting of some long dead relative. Not everything can be learned from dry, dusty family records, you know.”

“And you thought having a particularly unpleasant ghost conjured up would be helpful?” asked Charles incredulously.

“Is that what you saw?” Daphne demanded, her hands clenched into fists in her lap. “A ghost?”

Charles hesitated. He’d never believed, not even for a moment, that Mrs. Darby had been a clever charlatan and that she had merely dazzled them with the skills of a master magician. From the first, he’d known right down to his bones that something else was at work, known that Mrs. Darby had been as taken by surprise by what had appeared on the hearth of the fireplace as the rest of them. But did he believe that he’d come face to face with a ghost tonight? Had that obscene shape really been a ghost? Or had it all been a figment of his imagination? He knew that wasn’t true because they’d all seen it, even if Miss Kettle and the youngsters believed it to be an excellent trick. One thing was certain—they’d all seen something tonight that had momentarily scared the hell out of them, myself included, Charles decided sourly. But had it been a ghost? He thought back over the events, the dimming of the candles, the icy cold, the sensation of facing something wicked, that damned shifting shape in front of the fireplace. He sighed. If he hadn’t seen a ghost, then he had seen the next best thing.

His eyes met Daphne’s. “Yes, I do think I saw a ghost tonight, or at the very least, I was in the presence of evil.”

Daphne sank back against the sofa. “I feared I was going mad,” she said in a low voice. Her eyes locked painfully on his, she asked, “And the cold? Did you feel that, too?”

Charles nodded. “And the candles failed. I noticed that also.”

He glanced at Mrs. Darby. “You said that you didn’t expect it, but that you were prepared for it. What did you mean?”

“I didn’t plan for what happened to happen,” Mrs. Darby said earnestly. “You must believe me. I had no particular stories in mind to tell you when I arrived this afternoon, and I didn’t know until I was shown into it that we would be in Sir Wesley’s old study. Once we were all situated in the room, though, it seemed fitting that I should tell you the story of Sir Wesley.” She looked across at the fire. “I can’t even say that I felt any impending danger—I don’t have the Sight like my grandmother and great grandmother, but their feelings about this room made a lasting impression on me.” Reluctantly, she admitted, “But perhaps, I did have some sense of warning because when I joined Goodson and the others for dinner, I asked him to lend me the charm he’d inherited from our great grandfather and that he always carried with him.” She smiled faintly. “He claimed that it protected him from the spirits. Goodson was furious. Not only that I wanted the charm, but also that I was going to tell the legend of Sir Wesley.” She sighed. “My brother so dislikes anything that reflects badly on the family. He would prefer to forget that some of the people who have lived in this house have done terrible things.” She made a face. “If I wanted to tell you stories about all the ‘good’ Beaumonts, he would have no objections. He would even tell a few himself.”

“But he did lend you this charm?” Charles persisted.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Darby said cheerfully. “He didn’t want to, but Mrs. Hutton convinced him that there could be no harm in it, and if by chance, an old ghostie came to call, well, wouldn’t it be better if I had protection?”

“And it was that charm that you held up to the, um, ghost?” asked Daphne.

“It’s not a charm precisely,” Mrs. Darby said. “It’s a gold crucifix.”

“May I see it?” asked Charles.

Mrs. Darby produced the crucifix and handed it to him.

Holding it securely between his fingers, Charles studied the intricately fashioned crucifix, thinking that it was rather small to have wielded such power.

“Do you know its history?”

Mrs. Darby nodded. “As you know, the Goodson family has always served the Beaumont family. One of our ancestors was given that crucifix by the Beaumont he served.” She swallowed and stared at the light glinting off the golden crucifix in Charles’s hand. “It is said to have been blessed by the Pope himself.”

Daphne’s hand flew to her throat. “Was it…did it belong to…?”

“Until he gave it to my relative on his deathbed,” Mrs. Darby said softly, “it belonged to Sir Wesley.”