A door slammed in the hallway. Cecilia whirled around, her breath stopping as a third screamrent the air.
Dear God, it sounded as if someone were being murdered.
Her lungs heaving like a bellows, she snatched up a shawl and flew out her bedchamber door. At the other end of the hallway she could see Lord Darlington, Lord Haslemere, Amy, Duncan, Mrs. Briggs, and Mrs. Honeywell crowded around Miss Honeywell’s door. There was no sign of Miss Honeywell, but Cecilia could hear a desperate wail echoing from insideher bedchamber.
“Fanny! Open this door at once!” Mrs. Honeywell was beside herself. She rattled the latch until the door shuddered in its frame, her shrieks drowning out her daughter’s howls. Her face was so red she looked as if she were one scream away from aconvulsive fit.
Cecilia flew down the hallway, her shawl streaming out behind her, and came to a stumbling halt beside Amy in front of Miss Honeywell’s door. “What’s happened?”
Amy gave her a stricken look. “I-I’ve no idea. Mayhap Miss Honeywell had a nightmare?”
“Stand aside, Mrs. Honeywell.” Lord Darlington’s face was pale, but he was utterly calm as he eased Mrs. Honeywell away from the door. “Some assistance, if you would, Haslemere,” he added, gesturing toward the locked bedchamber door.
He and Lord Haslemere made quick work of it, slamming their shoulders against the door until the latch on the other side gave way, andit burst open.
“What the devil?” Lord Haslemere froze on the threshold, his eyes widening, and Cecilia and the others crowded around the door, peeking around him.
Miss Honeywell was in her bed, her eyes squeezed closed, tears streaming down her cheeks, and one deafening shriek after another issuing from her gaping mouth. She was so overwrought, she seemed not to notice a crowd had gathered in her doorway.
Mrs. Honeywell pushed forward, flew across the room, and seized her daughter by the shoulders. “Fanny? Fanny! For pity’s sake, child, what’s happened?”
Mrs. Honeywell was obliged to shake her daughter until at last Fanny opened her eyes and choked out through breathless sobs, “I-I heard a noise outside, as if someone were moaning. I rose from my bed, and I s-saw…there was a woman, standing under my window!”
“A woman? My dear, it was likely just one of Lord Darlington’s servants.”
Cecilia and Amy glanced at each other. There was no reason a servant should be wandering around the grounds in thedead of night.
“No, Mama!” Miss Honeywell clutched her mother’s arm, her knuckles white. “It wasn’t a servant! S-she was aghost!”
A collective gasp rose fromthe bystanders.
Mrs. Honeywell jerked free, anger replacing the panic on her face. “Goodness, Fanny, all this fuss over a nightmare? Why, you nearly reduced the castle to rubble with your screeching.”
“It was no nightmare, Mama! She was dressed in a flowing white gown, and her face…” Miss Honeywell shuddered. “No living, breathing being, no woman of flesh and blood could have such deathly white skin. She looked as if she’d just crept from her grave, and she was staring up at me, and she…she raised her hand and pointed her finger at me! It was a threat, Mama! She wants me gone from this castle.”
Another gasp arose from the servants crowding the doorway, and Amy slapped a hand over her mouth. Lord Darlington strode to the window, jerked the drapes open and peered down into the grounds below. “There’s noone there now.”
Mrs. Honeywell threw her hands up in the air. Servant, nightmare, or ghost, she was having none of it. “How could an apparition threaten you, you silly girl? It was certainly a nightmare. If she were truly there, then wherehas she gone?”
Miss Honeywell cast a wild look at the window, the coverlet clutched to her chest. “Oh, I don’t know! I ran back to my bed, and…and pulled the pillowover my head!”
Amy let out a terrified squeak. Lord Darlington turned at the sound to find all of them standing in the doorway, witnessing the lurid scene, and his face darkened. “Return to your beds at once. As you can see, Miss Honeywell is perfectly safe now.”
Lord Haslemere remained where he was, his arms crossed over his chest, but the servants shuffled out and began to make their way back to their bedchambers. Cecilia followed along after them, but she took care to be the last one out the door. She left it open a crack, and lingered in the hallway to listen, with her eye pressed againstthe narrow gap.
“Safe!” Miss Honeywell rose to her knees in the middle of the bed and pointed one shaking finger at Lord Darlington. “You wicked, wicked man!”
Mrs. Honeywell gasped. “Fanny! How dare you address Lord Darlington in such a way? Beg his pardon at once!”
But Miss Honeywell, who was well beyond rational thought by this point, didn’t beg Lord Darlington’s pardon. “Darlington Castle is haunted, just as everyone in London says it is! The late Lady Darlington roams the grounds, seeking her revenge on you for her death. You reallyarethe Murderous Marquess!”
“Murderer or not, he’s still a marquess!” Mrs. Honeywell cried.
“I don’t care if he’s aduke! I’m leaving Darlington Castle tomorrow morning, Mama. I want to go home.”
“Leaving! But you’re to be married at the end of the week!”
“What, and get murdered, and end up haunting a dreary castle for the rest of my days? No, Mama.I won’t do it!”
