The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla A Pink Carnation Novel (29 page)

Across the room, he could see Sally looking at them expectantly. Sally, who had told him that it was his duty to comfort his sister. She might be a little outspoken at times, perhaps even a little imperious—all right, very imperious—but there wasn’t a mean-spirited bone in her body. Her meddling was all kindly meant.

She certainly didn’t deserve to be stabbed in the back by the very woman she had sent him to help.

Sharply, Lucien said, “Perhaps a little change is just what Hullingden needs. As you say, we’ve allowed the spirits of the past too much sway.”

“As you like.” Setting her needlework aside, Clarissa rose from her seat. “Then I suppose I shouldn’t tell your Miss Fitzhugh that Aunt Winifred put her in the Haunted Chamber?”

Chapter Eighteen

Sally’s room looked like it hadn’t been slept in since the last time Queen Elizabeth had paid a formal call.

The bed was of the baronial variety, with vast carved posts, and hangings that could be drawn shut to keep out drafts, mice, and the odd ghost. The casement windows, with their leaded glass, appeared to have been designed to keep out the light and let in the draft. They rattled ominously as the wind rose, straining against the catches that held them fast and causing the candles in their tall stands to gutter.

It was all very atmospheric and entirely inconvenient.

When Lady Henry had delivered Sally to her room, she had told her, in smug tones, that she hoped Sally wouldn’t mind being in the Haunted Chamber. The implication being, of course, that she would run howling off into the night and never darken their casements again. Sally didn’t believe in spooks, and even if she had, she doubted any spook would have the poor sense to haunt a chamber known as the Haunted Chamber. It showed a distinct lack of initiative. She was, Sally was quite sure, more in danger of being pickled from the smoke blowing back down the chimney than of being visited by midnight specters.

If she were staying, one of the first things she would do would be to order the chimneys rebuilt. There was no reason for them to smoke the way they did. Some larger flues, more modern chimney pots—really, this room could be quite cozy without a haze of smoke.

And then there was that dining room. It was foolish for the family to have to choke through cold soup for the sake of dining in baronial state when they were
en famille
. There were a dozen small chambers that didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular, all of them closer to the kitchens. One might easily be turned into a family dining room while the kitchens were being reconsidered.

Even she couldn’t redesign the kitchens without having seen them, but she’d wager that they were of the subterranean, late-medieval variety, with huge fireplaces designed for roasting whatever the lord of the manor happened to haul in over his saddle. A nice modern kitchen, that was what was needed, connected to the house by a covered gallery so that the food didn’t turn to ice in winter. And think of all the work it would make for local masons!

If she were staying. Which she wasn’t.

Sally retrieved her hairbrush and plied it so vigorously that her hair crackled. This faux betrothal was proving more complicated than she had expected. She knew she shouldn’t be making these sorts of plans; it wasn’t her place. But every word Lady Henry had said just made Sally itch to whip Hullingden Castle into shape, to turn it into the kind of home it could be—the kind of home Lucien needed.

There had been no mistaking the pride and affection in his voice as he had shown her around the gardens. Sally set down her brush with a
thunk
. The duke belonged here, even if Lady Henry didn’t think so.

Even if his own family treated him like an unwanted guest.

It was no wonder Lucien had run away. His uncle treated him with an anxious affection of the sort designed to make a healthy male twitchy; his aunt accorded him the heavy-handed courtesy owed an uninvited visitor. As for his sister—Sally had been inclined to be sympathetic at first, but she was coming to believe that what Clarissa Caldicott needed was a good dose of salts.

She wasn’t the one who had found her parents’ bodies.

Really, had no one thought of Lucien in all this? Had no one taken the time to inquire after his feelings, to make him feel welcome in his own home? The very thought of it made Sally’s blood boil. They all treated him like an inconvenience, and the worst of it was that he, poor man, just sat back and let them do it. Vampire, ha! The man was too good-natured for his own good. He let them all run roughshod over him, and apologized to them for doing it.

Someone, Sally decided grimly, needed to do something.

She coughed as another gust of smoke blew back down into the room.

Starting with the chimneys.

Shaking back her hair, she pulled her dressing gown around her shoulders, and went to peer ineffectually around the fire screen. The wind was whistling back down the chimney, producing more smoke than heat. There must have been a bird caught in the flue. Sally could hear a rustling and scrabbling that seemed to echo from behind the stones.

A bird? Or mice? Sally wrinkled her nose. She really wasn’t the least bit fond of mice. Ghosts were one thing; rodents quite another. Ghosts didn’t chew one’s pillow and leave nasty droppings in one’s shoes.

The scrabbling was louder now. It sounded almost like . . . footsteps. Sally lifted the poker, edging closer to the fireplace. If that was a mouse, it had awfully large feet. And was wearing boots.

Nursery rhymes to the contrary, mice, in Sally’s experience, did not generally go shod.

The tapestry hanging to the right of the fireplace undulated in the draft, a draft that seemed to come from nowhere. The candles guttered and sputtered as the sound of the wind whistling down the chimney resolved itself into a low moan, a moan that sounded like someone, in a rasping voice, calling, “Sally . . . Sally . . .”

Oh, for heaven’s sake! This was absurd. Thoroughly annoyed with herself, Sally marched forward and yanked the tapestry aside. It gave easily on its gold bar, revealing a wall of solid stone.

Or was it? On one side of the tapestry, the window embrasure was a good three feet deep, deep enough for a wide window seat. On the other, the fireplace stretched back. That left a considerable space unaccounted for.

Feeling rather foolish, Sally poked tentatively at the stone. The wall creaked. She poked again, harder. When that didn’t work, she shoved.

With a low groan, the wall swung forward, revealing an alcove liberally festooned with cobwebs.

There was, mercifully, no skeleton in chains. That, Sally decided, feeling more than a little giddy, would have been a bit much. But there was the burned end of an old torch set into a bracket and a flight of stone stairs that spiraled down into regions unknown.

Tightening the sash of her dressing down, Sally wedged the door open with the handle of her hairbrush, caught up a candle, and stuck a spare in her sash, just in case she needed an extra. The stairs were of stone, hollowed at the center from long use. One of the staircases of the original castle? Sally wouldn’t have been surprised. She picked her way carefully around the central shaft, debris crunching beneath her slippers.

Her lips tightened. The sound of it was rather like the scratching and scrabbling she had heard from the chimney.

Had she been put in that chamber because it was haunted, or because it could conveniently be made to appear so?

The stairs branched off in multiple directions, a warren of passageways. But there was light coming from one side and one side only. Sally rather regretted not having had the forethought to appropriate one of Miss Gwen’s sword parasols. Oh, well; if she didn’t have a weapon, at least she had her dignity. She regarded the ruffles on her sleeves. Her dressing gown was of rich blue velvet, edged with ruffles of Valenciennes lace. It was quite fetching. It was not very intimidating.

She would just have to make up for her attire with the force of her personality.

Whoever it was hadn’t even bothered to close the secret door all the way behind her. (Sally had her suspicions as to the identity of the malefactor. Haunted Chamber, indeed!) Ahead, she could see the back of a heavy tapestry much like the one in her room.

Gathering her skirts and her dignity around her, Sally swept the fabric aside, announcing, “I know what you’re doing!”

The duke was seated in a broad chair before the fire, a book in his hand. He had divested himself of his evening attire, and wore, instead, a dressing gown in an exotic pattern on crimson silk. The firelight danced off his dark hair and eyes and shimmered against the liquid in the glass by his side.

He blinked, frowned, and blinked again. He closed his book over his finger. “Going to bed?” he asked mildly.

Lucien’s betrothed came to an abrupt stop in the center of the floor, leaving the tapestry flapping behind her. She was dressed for bed, in a dressing gown of rich blue velvet, with a cascade of lace at the sleeves, her fair hair falling around her shoulders and halfway down her back. Loose, it was perfectly straight, with no hint of the curls she affected for fashion’s sake.

She appeared to be nearly as surprised as he was, which didn’t seem quite fair, given the fact that she was the one who had come bursting out of the wall.

Unless . . . Lucien glanced at the decanter beside him. No. He realized he didn’t have a very hard head, but he was hardly going to be hallucinating on half a glass of claret.

And if he were to hallucinate, he decided, his hallucination would not have included the dressing gown.

His betrothed opened her mouth and then closed it again. “What are you doing here?” she asked suspiciously.

Lucien looked around him. “The last time I checked, this was my room. Which begs the question, what are you doing here?” The fabric of the dressing gown molded rather nicely to her legs. Lucien wasn’t gentleman enough to ignore that fact. “Not that I’m objecting, mind you.”

“I—” Sally frowned at him, looking this way and that, as though she suspected him of hiding malefactors in the corners. “You weren’t just scrabbling in the tunnels behind my room and making moaning noises?”

Lucien put his book aside. “I can say with some assurance that I was not.” He cocked a brow. “Moaning noises?”

Sally set her hands on her hips, scrutinizing his room. “It sounded like someone calling my name.”

The ducal chambers were located on an inner courtyard, shielded from the elements, but even here the wind whistled along the window frames. Hullingden had a multitude of nighttime noises. Lucien had half forgotten that in his time away. “Are you sure it wasn’t the wind?”

“Absolutely not. Or—mostly not.” Sally chewed on her lower lip. “I can tell the difference between my name and a breeze. Did you know that there was a secret stair behind my room?”

“It’s hardly that secret.” Lucien hadn’t thought about them for years, but the passages in the walls had been a boon to a small boy, perfect for evading bedtime, mushy peas, and other unpleasantness. He gave the paneling an affectionate pat. “The walls of Hullingden are riddled with passageways. Stairs, priests’ holes, subterranean tunnels—we have them all.”

“Well, it was secret to me.” Sally folded her arms across her chest, making the fabric of her dressing gown gape in interesting ways. Lucien caught a glimpse of the nightdress below, a fine linen not best suited to chilly castles in October. “Have you thought of affixing labels to these passages, for the edification of the unwary? Or do you prefer to surprise your guests with nocturnal visitations?”

“I,” Lucien pointed out, justifiably, “am not the one roaming the night.” He managed to drag his eyes away from her more obvious assets, and frowned. “Why do you have a candle stuck in your sash?”

Sally put a hand defensively to the wax at her waist. “I didn’t know how far the stair would go. I didn’t want to be caught in subterranean caverns without a candle.”

“That was very resourceful of you.” Lucien did his best to contain his grin, but he wasn’t entirely successful.

“I believe in being prepared for every eventuality,” said Sally grandly. She looked pointedly at Lucien. “Every foreseeable eventuality. I did
not
foresee that the stair would end in your bedchamber.”

“I’m crushed,” said Lucien cheerfully. “You were expecting an oubliette, perhaps? Or a subterranean chamber lined with corpses?”

His betrothed’s lashes flickered guiltily.

Lucien snorted with laughter. “I don’t have to ask what you’ve been reading.”

Sally tossed her hair back over one shoulder. “If you will line the walls with secret passageways . . . ,” she said sternly.

“I’ll make sure to add a skeleton or two, just for form,” Lucien promised. “Would you like some cobwebs as well?”

Sally flicked with distaste at a smudge on one sleeve. “Those you have,” she said, sounding distinctly disgruntled.

Lucien couldn’t resist. “If you will disappear down secret passageways . . .”

Sally gave him a look. Changing the subject, she gestured to something behind him. “Is that the Belliston coat of arms?”

Lucien glanced back over his shoulder, but all he saw was the ducal bed, raised on its own dais. It took him a moment to realize that she was referring to the massive representation of the Belliston coat of arms, carved in bas-relief on the bed frame and painted in gaudy red, blue, and gold. It loomed out from between the gathered bed curtains: the two halves of a broken sword forming a triangle beneath which one could see three stylized drops of blood.