“Hard luck,” Lorcan sympathized. Quietly. Genuinely.
Hardy stiffly nodded his acknowledgment.
“Do you travel with your husband, Mrs. St. Leger?” Mrs. Pariseau asked this.
She cast a worried look up at Lorcan. “I have traveled with him a little,” she said carefully.
“But it’s a difficult life for a woman, aye?” Lorcan said, smoothly metaphorically scooping her out of the path of the question. “And so when we miss each other...” He turned to her.
“We can look up at the night sky and know we’re both watching the same stars, and we don’t feel alone.” Daphne said this slowly.
It didn’t feel like a lie, somehow.
Lorcan smiled somewhat slowly, with some surprise, as if he was proud of her.
Daphne was surprised to feel touched that he’d tried to rescue her from the need to outright lie.
“Perhaps we ought to decide what we’d like to read this evening,” Angelique interjected. “Mrs. Pariseau is in favor of a few Greek myths. Dot would like to readThe Ghost in the Scullery. Shall we take a vote?”
“I find I’m in the mood for ghosts. Something about the reappearance of a past long buried, I suppose,” Lorcan said, and raised his hand.
Daphne raised her hand. “I want to know if they vanquish the ghosts.”
Lorcan looked at her curiously.
The ultimate vote count showed that the ghosts won the evening. Mrs. Pariseau shrugged good-naturedly. “I’ll read it, if you like.” She was very good at reading aloud. She glanced about the room. “Dot, where did you leave the book? It’s not in our usual place.”
Dot’s expression was suddenly stricken. “I’m afraid I... well, I left it in the scullery.”
“The scullery?” Angelique asked. “Why the scullery? Oh... wait, never mind. I think I know.”
Although she and Delilah knew the run of Dot’s thinking well enough by now to suspect she’d been in the midst of a daydream and had absently filed it there because the word “Scullery” appeared on it, the way she might have put flour in the bin labeled “flour.”
“Well, why don’t you go and fetch the book,Dot, and Mrs. Pariseau will read to us?” Delilah said before Dot could answer.
Dot’s eyes flared with alarm.
“It was only the wind, Dot,” Angelique said kindly but firmly.
“And weknowyou’re brave,” Delilah added encouragingly, as if saying it with conviction could make it true.
Chapter Eight
Dot supposed she had only herself to blame. She had advocated for readingThe Ghost in the Scullery, and now here she was on the way to the scullery, which at this time of night would be quiet, dark, and empty. Surely ghosts lay in wait for such opportunities to steal the souls of the unwary.
As she descended the stairs, she contemplated whether ghosts could also sense fear. Particularlyherfear—she was, after all the heroine of her own story. On the off chance that this was true, she decided to distract herself from her nerves by silently singing the cheerful song that opera singer Miss Mariana Wylde had made up on the spot in their sitting room some months ago.I’ve a stick up me bum and gray inmehair!So the chorus went. So infectious! So witty!
Down the stairs she went, singing it over and over, silently, the way one might whisper prayers. Slowly, at first. But her shadow was thrown ominously large against the wall by the candle she held, and the sound of her own feet began to unnerve her, so she decided to tiptoe, and to do it quickly.
It was right about then she realized she’d lefther shawl in the sitting room and she really wished for it. She felt chilled clear through.
She at last reached the bottom step. The kitchen was empty. Helga and the maids had finished their work there for the evening.
She was almost there!
Suddenly, from everywhere and nowhere, it seemed, a soft, low, keening sound froze her in her tracks.
Terror erased her thoughts for an instant.
