“I did not ride,” he said. “I walked toward the cliffs. The sea air is better than a lullaby, you know.”
“Thank you,” she said when they came to a stop outside her room and he set a hand on the doorknob.
He reached out his free hand and with the forefinger lifted back one side of her cloak. Her eyes lowered tohis chin when she knew he had seen her nightgown.He let the cloak fall back into place again.
“Foolish Dinah,” he said. “Were you not afraid?”
“Only when I was outside and you were no longer there,” she said. “Nervous more than afraid.”
“You must not leave your room at night again,” he said, “or wander during the daytime. Promise me?”
She lifted her eyes to his again. “I am sorry, Edgar,” she said. “Truly. Don’t scold me. There is no need. And I am not a child.”
He smiled slightly and looked more like the daytime Edgar again despite the darkness. He set one fingerbeneath her chin. “Believe it or not,” he said, “I hadnoticed that.” And he lowered his head and kissed hervery lightly on the lips, lingering there for a few moments before lifting his head.
She swallowed again.
“Foolish Dinah,” he said, and he opened the door and gestured for her to step inside. “You have been inall sorts of danger since you left this room. Goodnight.”
“Good night,” she said, turning to look at him as he closed the door, leaving her alone inside her room.
She touched her lips. He had kissed her quite differently from those other three gentlemen. All of them had set their arms about her and drawn her againstthem. Edgar had touched her only beneath the chinand on the lips. And yet she had felt those other kissesonly on her lips. She had felt Edgar’s on her lips andin her toes and in every cell of her body between thosetwo extremities.
A gentle, cousinly kiss for a rather troublesome young step-cousin, she thought in some disgust, kicking off her half boots and unbuttoning her cloak to letit drop in a heap on the floor before diving rather inelegantly into the promised warmth of her bed.
She wondered what he had done with his hat when he had ridden briefly out of the stables.
Dinah dismissed Judy when Mrs. Knole arrived to accompany her downstairs to breakfast the followingmorning. She smiled.
“I have not met you before, Mrs. Knole,” she said, ‘‘but I have heard a great deal about you. From bothLord and Lady Asquith and my mother.”
“Have you, madam?” the housekeeper said, looking quite unsurprised and quite unimpressed. She was a tall woman and wore a plain black dress that accentuated her thinness and her erect bearing. She woreher dark, silvering hair in a severe bun at the back ofher head. Her nose was long and sharp, her eyes halfsunk into her head. She looked rather like a cadaver,Dinah decided.
“Apparently,” Dinah said, “you are the authority on the ghosts of Malvern.”
“I find them interesting, madam,” Mrs. Knole said, “and real. To most people they are an amusement, acuriosity.” Her look bent on Dinah was faintly reproving.
“Tell me about the ghost who inhabits this room,” Dinah said.
“Alas, there is no ghost in this room,” Mrs. Knole said. “At least, there has not been for a long time. Ihave been assigning the room to guests for ten yearsor more and have never had a complaint.”
“Oh,” Dinah said, disappointed. “I thought there was. A rather sad ghost. But perhaps I am wrong. Thefeeling is very faint.”
Mrs. Knole looked at her more sharply. “A sad ghost?” she said. “She was, madam, being unable tomake up her mind to seize happiness for herself. Doyou have the feeling, then? And is she still here? Imust confess to having lost the sense of her many years ago.”
Dinah bit her lip and then smiled. ‘‘There are indeed not many of us, are there?” she said. ‘‘And everyone else thinks us mildly insane. But I have always been able to sense the world of spirits just beyond ourown, though I have never actually been inside ahaunted house before. It is wonderful. I wondered yesterday when I first went into the library why the monkstays at one side of it. But then Lord Asquith explainedthat the rest of the library is a more recent addition.”
Mrs. Knole thawed visibly. “Aye, madam,” shesaid, “this is a house I have never wanted to leave.”
“Tell me about the sad lady,” Dinah said.
“She was the ward of one of the masters here,” Mrs. Knole said. “In the time of the great trouble,madam. In love with Charles Neville, the baron’s son,she was, and he with her, but he went away to fighton the wrong side—or wrong according to his father,anyway.”
“The dark rider,” Dinah said, her eyes widening as she remembered the portrait in the gallery.
“He came for her secretly, madam,” Mrs. Knole said, “or so it is said. Several times. He rode up beneath her window, calling to her, begging her to goaway with him. Away across the sea where they couldbe safe and happy together.”
“But she never went?” Dinah asked.
