Knowing there was little he could say that would cheer Irma up, he spent the next few minutes simply sitting beside her in silence, that silence only broken when Irma would release somewhat dramatic sighs, until she sat forward.
“Looks like Drusilla and Wilhelmine escaped from the ghost,” Irma said with a nod toward the castle.
Rhenick glanced to the castle and discovered Drusilla marching down the front steps, Wilhelmine on her right side, Seraphina on her left, and ... he squinted when he realized Drusilla was carrying something.
Something that was white and looked to be as large as a woman.
Irma drew in a sharp breath. “Good heavens. Drusilla’s captured the ghost, but ... how could she have even done that? Or better yet—why is she heading our way with it?”
Before Rhenick could do more than open his mouth, Irma was on her feet and charging down the drive, her widow’s weeds billowing behind her.
“Mother, stop!” Drusilla called. “It’s not what you think.”
It took Irma a good few yards before she finally stopped, turned around, then took a few hesitant steps toward Drusilla, who took that moment to toss whatever it was she was holding to the ground before she gestured Rhenick forward. “Look what we found on one of the turrets.”
“What is that?”
“Someone’s attempt at making everyone believe Aunt Ottilie is haunting the castle.” She nodded to what seemed to be a rag doll, although a life-size one that was draped in a shimmery cloth. “That was hanging on the turret, and not only was it hanging, but someone devised a pulley system that attaches one turret to the other. It’s obvious that the culprit went to all that bother as a way to convince people that this castle is, indeed, haunted.”
“Are you saying I was scared half to death because of a prank?” Irma demanded as she marched up to join them, peering at the heap of white fabric. “That looks exactly like what the ghost that visited me was covered in.”
“I’m sure it was cut out of the same bolt of fabric, but I don’tbelieve any of this ghost business is a prank, Mother,” Drusilla said. “It’s more of a sign that someone is truly determined to run everyone off this property, but I have news for whoever that is—I’m not going anywhere, no matter how many ghosts they may throw my way.”
Twenty-Two
During the week that had passed since Drusilla had found the facsimile of a ghost and decided on the spot to accept the Whittenbeckers’ offer of assistance to get the academy up and running, she’d come to realize a few things.
For one—she was possessed of a bit of a temper, something she’d never considered before the whole fiasco she’d endured with Elbert, but a temper that was directly responsible for her now steadfast determination to maintain ownership of the castle.
Secondly—while Wilhelmine had implied that the reason she and Rhenick were offering up the services of Whittenbecker and Company Construction at no cost was to assure that the Whittenbecker sisters received a more-than-adequate education when it came to all matters of proprieties, that wasn’t exactly true. Instead, and after inadvertently overhearing a conversation Rhenick had been having with his mother while he’d been finishing up what had turned out to be a delicious lunch the day of the ghost debacle, it seemed as if Rhenick believed that if the academy could be opened quickly and filled with the daughters of wealthy Chicago families, the danger from overzealous developers would diminish quite substantially.
He’d then gone on to tell Wilhelmine that Chicago developers made more than half their income from members of the newly rich set, which suggested they’d be remarkably hesitant to be responsible for Drusilla’s academy failing, especially when the newly rich had been longing for just such an academy for years.
Given that Rhenick hadn’t broached the matter of a marriage between them again, and Wilhelmine had made a point of telling her that the last thing Whittenbecker and Company needed was more business, as they had their hands full with the contracts they already had, Drusilla had come to the realization that she might have been wrong about Rhenick and that he wasn’t a cad after all but simply a gentleman possessed of an unexpectedly kind nature.
He also seemed to be a considerate man, because he’d made a point to stop by Aunt Ottilie’s bank to get the direction of William Baumgartner, and while the bank manager wouldn’t turn over William’s address to Rhenick, he had agreed to send William a message, asking him to contact Drusilla at his earliest convenience.
“Not that I want to alarm you, Drusilla, but if you’re confronted with danger at some point in time, you’re not going to have over a minute to consider exactly where you should aim that pistol in your hands because ... you’ll be dead by then.”
All thoughts of how Rhenick was not turning out to be a cad disappeared in a trice as Drusilla turned her head and settled her attention on Seraphina, who was sitting on a tree stump in a meadow that was well-removed from the vicinity of the castle—a meadow Seraphina had decided would be sufficient to use as a training ground for all the weapons she’d uncovered so far.
“Forgive me, Seraphina. You’re quite right, and of course I realize I can’t dither before every shot,” Drusilla admitted. “It’s just that I’ve not hit the target once this morning, and I wouldlike to return to my other tasks after being able to say I at least improved my shooting abilities somewhat today.”
“You just need to get the target in your sights and pull the trigger. You’re overthinking it.” Seraphina considered the target in question before she nodded. “Let’s try something new. I’ll count to three, and once I reach three, you shoot. Ready? One ... two ... three.”
Refusing to give in to the urge to study the target as she’d been doing during the three days she’d been practicing, Drusilla set her sights on the tree she’d been trying to hit and squeezed the trigger, a bit of a yelp escaping her as a boom immediately rang out and she stumbled a good foot backward from the recoil.
“Did I hit it?” she asked after she found her balance, glancing back to Seraphina, who was now peering through a pair of opera glasses she’d found in a room Aunt Ottilie had been storing gowns and accessories in, some of the fashions dating back at least forty years.
Seraphina lowered the glasses. “I’m afraid not. And here I thought your progress would improve after Rhenick left us to see if his niece and nephew had arrived yet. I was apparently wrong about that.”
“Why would you think my progress would improve without Rhenick being here? He’s the one who showed me how to properly hold my pistol because you were doing the same with Annaliese.”
“He distracts you.”
“He does not.”
“He also makes you nervous,” Seraphina added, not bothering to argue her first point. “That nervousness is why I thought, mistakenly so, that your aim would improve without him around.”
