He responded with a muttered profanity and I smiled. No matter how much they brawled, the Templeton-Vane boys were the proverbial peas in a pod.
•••
A distinctly unpleasant interlude followed during which I stitched Stoker’s wound under his exacting instructions. He gave my handiwork a long, measured look before nodding his grudging approval. “Isuppose it will have to do, although it would have been a damned sight neater if I’d been able to wield the needle myself,” he grumbled.
I dressed the wound, none too gently, and settled myself into an armchair while he stirred the coals. He was silent a long moment as he watched the flames catch, then turned to me, his smile tinged with mischief. “You realize there is no possible way to explain my presence here should I be discovered,” he said, mocking my objection of the previous evening. “Whatever would they think?”
“I am beyond the opinions of provincials,” I retorted.
“I thought you liked the Romillys,” he replied, taking the second armchair and stretching his feet towards the fire now crackling merrily on the hearth.
“I do rather. But it is difficult to become friendly with people who are cohabiting with a ghost.”
He snorted. “Surely you do not believe that nonsense.”
“No,” I said, drawing out the syllable.
“I swear upon my mother’s moldering shroud, if you expect me to believe that there is an actual phantom lurking in the corridors of this castle, I will put you over my shoulder like a sack of wool and carry you away,” he warned.
“It isn’t that I think Rosamund is present,” I protested. “The trick with the music is the product of a nasty imagination—a human one, I have no doubt. But what if there is something beyond that, a presence from beyond prodding the living to do the bidding of the dead?”
His brows knitted together. “A scientist must consider every possible hypothesis,” he said seriously. “And after giving that idea very careful consideration, I can tell you that it is the rankest horseshit.”
“Language,” I murmured.
“Well, honestly, Veronica. You cannot seriously believe that.”
“I did not say I believed it,” I pointed out coolly. “I merely suggested it is a possibility.”
“It bloody well is not.”
“If all scientists were as stubborn as you, we would still be expecting ships to sail off the edge of the world and thinking the sun revolved around the earth.”
“I amnotstubborn—”
“Spoken with the obstinacy of a bull,” I said sweetly. “It is not your fault that you suffer from a lack of imagination.”
“A lack of imagination! To refuse to entertain the possibility of an actual ghost playing harpsichords and blowing out candles!”
“I did not mean those things,” I said, striving for patience. “Those were clearly tricks. Drafts can be manufactured with ventilators or candles can be tampered with. As for the music—”
He held up a hand. “It can only have been managed by a human hand. A clockwork mechanism is a damned likelier explanation than a phantom.”
I shook my head. “We searched the harpsichord from tip to toe and found nothing to suggest it had been meddled with. I think someone must have played it and fled through the hidden passage,” I finished. “Which means it could not have been anyone at the séance.”
“Or our miscreant might have left a music box in the passageway and been with us all along,” he countered. “Any of the guests or family might have done that.”
“Or some supernatural agency—” I began.
He snorted. “I still don’t believe it.”
“Of course you don’t. Neither do I. I simply think we ought to consider every possibility before settling on one. There must be an explanation we have not yet discovered. But we will.”
He tipped his head to give me a curious look. “Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Why must we penetrate the mystery here? Why do we care?”
