Languish

  “Lord Jasper?” I blinked. He was a wealthy, titled widower, and, more important, he was patient and kind. But he was rather old.

  The horse reared without warning, as if a bee had suddenly got caught under the saddle. The stableboy was too far away to be of any help. Lord Jasper clutched at the reins, his face ashen. I wasn’t entirely certain he could survive such a fall, never mind the possibility of being trampled. I broke into a run.

  Colin was already ahead of me. “I’ll leave the ghosts to you,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “If you leave the horses to me.”

  “Be careful!” I yelled, still trying to catch up.

  Colin darted into the fray, powerful horse legs slamming down beside him. It happened so fast, my breath strangled in my throat. Lord Jasper began to slide out of the saddle. Colin managed to shove him back up, even as he grabbed for the reins.

  The horse snapped its teeth, grazing Colin’s shoulder. He’d have a wicked bruise by morning, but he didn’t flinch. He only leaned into the horse instead of away, pulling down on the reins. He murmured in Gaelic, his voice soothing and husky.

  The horses rolled his eye, snorting. His breath fogged, as if the temperature had dropped dramatically. Colin didn’t budge, and his soft lullaby words didn’t transform into curses, even when the horse cracked his jaw into Colin’s already mauled shoulder. He pawed the ground, as if his hooves were in pain. That’s when I noticed the horseshoes.

  They were covered in ice.

  I glanced around wildly, half expecting more ghostly hands to be reaching out of the ground. The cobblestones were slick with half-frozen water, but other than that, I still couldn’t see what the horse saw. As Colin continued to calm him, I dumped the salt out of my pockets, scattering it under the horse’s twitching legs. Powerful muscles rippled under his bristling hide.

  By the time the stableboy, two of his companions, and the stable master himself reached us, the horse had stopped rearing. The stable master was nearly the same gray shade as Lord Jasper as he helped the earl out of the saddle. “My lord!” He glowered at Colin. “What are you about, spooking the horses, boy?”

  I opened my mouth on a hot retort even as Colin’s expression turned to unreadable stone.

  “The boy saved my life, Jensen,” Lord Jasper said mildly.

  Jensen blinked. “My lord?”

  “Colin!” I stared at him as the stable master sputtered apologies. I knew my eyes must be wide as teacups because I couldn’t stop seeing how close the horse had come to trampling Colin.

  “I was a street sweeper before your mother took me in, mind,” he said calmly though his chest heaved with rough breaths. “I know my way around horses.”

  “But your shoulder …”

  He shrugged, wincing slightly. “He just glanced it.”

  Lord Jasper gingerly stepped forward as the horse was led away. He stopped, wincing. “I’m too old for this kind of excitement,” he said with a dry smile. I dashed ahead and fumbled to release his cane from the ties at the front of his saddle. He leaned weakly on it when I returned and handed it to him. Colin slipped his arm under the earl’s shoulder to assist him and I hovered on his other side, ready to catch him if he crumpled. The ice in the laneway trickled into water, soaking into my boots.

  No one else noticed.

  “Violet.”

  Blast.

  I was caught. Lord Jasper had recovered and during the night he’d remembered that I’d been sneaking back into the manor wearing boys’ clothes. I’d be sent back home to London even though I no longer had a home there. Colin would follow me even though he hated town. I’d only been at Rosefield a few weeks, and I’d already ruined everything.

  “You know you don’t have to use the servant stairs.”

  Relief was so sudden and palpable it swayed me like a hot tropical wind. I clutched the banister. Truth be told, I hadn’t even noticed I’d used the servant stairs. When I’d first arrived with my mother, back when Lord Jasper still thought her a credible medium able to contact the dead, I’d been so careful to use the main staircase and never remind anyone that we weren’t gentry. I was painfully aware of what we could and could not do. I’d memorized ladies’ etiquette manuals until I wanted to scream. Mother was certain that if I added milk and sugar to my tea in the wrong order I’d bring ruin to the family. But apparently she could drink as much sherry as she liked, so long as it was concealed in her dainty teacup. I had to stop thinking about my beautiful and broken mother. I was well rid of her and I probably ought to feel guilty for not missing her.

  Lord Jasper looked up at me patiently from the second-floor hallway.

  I smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Lord Jasper.” The irony was, I was beginning to feel comfortable and safe in the manor house and so I’d taken to the servant stairs out of habit. Until my mother had set herself up as a spirit medium, the servant stairs and servant entrance had been our domain in any house, never mind one so grand as Rosefield.

  “And Mrs. Harris told me that you’re giving yourself headaches trying to read by moonlight.” I had no idea how she knew I spent most nights contorted on the window seat trying to read novels by the faint light coming through the glass. “For heaven’s sake, child, use as many candles as you’d like. And I’ll have a maid bring up another oil lamp for your bedroom.”

  “Thank you, your lordship.” Candles were expensive. The last time I’d read too long and burned the family candle down to a nub, my mother had pinched my arm in anger until I bruised. Back then, she’d taken care to make marks only where no one would see them. It was like carrying thunderstorms under my dress, indigo blue and then fading to green, the way the sky does before a particularly violent windstorm. This time, I was the one who pinched my own arm to stop the spiral of memories.

  “I’ve left some new books in the library, for your studies,” he continued. “How are you recovering?”

  I rubbed my brow. “I went to the cemetery,” I said in a rush, hoping he wouldn’t think I’d been stealing the silver and fencing it in my disguise as a boy. I’d done it before, when Colin and I were too hungry to think straight, but I’d eat the pages of my favorite novel before I stole from Lord Jasper. “Everything got cold.”

  He nodded. “Interesting. Graveyards are usually peculiarly empty of spirit activity.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, descending the rest of the steps. “I’d think it would be the opposite. I’d heard stories about a haunting.”

  “Ah, yes, the Lonely Lord.”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  “I’m not surprised. Cemeteries are for the living. Spirits tend to get stuck where they died, not where they are buried. Though they do sometimes return when asked. Young girls have been petitioning the Lonely Lord for luck with their sweethearts for years now. “

  “Why, if he’s still lingering alone?”

  “Who knows how these folk customs start? One assumes he wishes to reunite lovers as he himself was not reunited.”

  I frowned. “I thought I saw ice on your horse’s hooves,” I said. “Has anyone ever died in the laneway?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” he replied. He leaned on his silver, swan-headed cane, white eyebrows beetling. “What else did you see?”

  “Nothing,” I admitted. “I suppose it could have been a trick of the light,” I allowed, though I didn’t believe it for one moment. “I only get flashes.”

  “Are they painful?”

  I nodded.

  “Then don’t push yourself,” he advised. “You could do yourself harm. Let the spirits come to you as they will.”

  “But … you could be in danger.”

  He patted my arm with a smile. “I’m an old man, Violet. The most danger I’m in is from Mrs. Harris if she thinks I’m not resting enough.” He lowered his voice. “Her temper is rather frightful.” He patted my hand again. “Go on and read those books,” he added. “I’ve business to take care of today, but we’ll start training you up as soon as may be.”
>
  Despite Lord Jasper’s warning, right after he left, I couldn’t help crossing over to the window that overlooked the stables. It wasn’t that I felt the need to break the rules for the sake of breaking them, the way Colin sometimes did, it was only that I had no intention of letting any harm come to Lord Jasper. I couldn’t wait around for the spirits to decide they wanted to make sense, or for my symbolic third eye to heal. I needed information now.

  I stared as hard as I could out the window at the lane-way where the horse had spooked. I could see the marks in the ground from the hooves. I breathed deeply, focusing every ounce of my attention. I willed something to happen, until sweat gathered under my hair.

  “Spirits,” I whispered, my breath fogging the glass. “Show yourselves.”

  I wiped the window clean with the heel of my hand. A bunny darted across the gravel, scurrying into the patch of wild mint on the edge of the kitchen gardens.

  Not precisely what I’d had in mind.

  I kept at it until my eyelids cramped and pain stabbed into my brow, radiating over my scalp and down the back of my neck. A cold draft brushed my arms, but I couldn’t be sure if it was simply day cooling into night or something more.

  “I’m not giving up,” I announced. “I know you’re there. And I will see you.”

  The next morning, I got exactly what I asked for.

  Proving the old adage that one really ought to be careful what one asks for.

  The ghost appeared as suddenly as summer lightning. One moment I was stepping out into the hall on my way to breakfast and the next a spirit slammed into view right in front of me. If he’d been corporeal, we’d have broken each other’s noses. As it was, I flailed in surprise, hit the wall, and fell in a heap.

  He was gone nearly as quickly as he’d appeared, but not before I’d had a chance to take note of his torn coat and the vicious bruises on his arms, shoulders, and neck. His hair was matted with blood. He looked to be about Colin’s age, with angry black eyes. He was handsome, even with the small scar by his lip.

  The door beside me opened, revealing Tabitha’s perfect blond curls and a pristine white dress with green ribbons. “Violet, honestly.” She sighed, stepping over me. “Do try and show a little decorum. Society will think Lord Jasper has taken in a savage.”

  “He has,” I muttered. Tabitha narrowed her eyes at me, perfectly catching the slight. I might have helped solve her twin sister’s murder but Tabitha was still Tabitha: spoiled, bored, and complicated. Also, Lord Jasper’s other ward.

  Clearly the man was more courageous than a dockside rat by taking us on.

  That, or insane.

  It occurred to me that he wouldn’t thank me for comparing him to a rat. But honestly, I’d once seen a rat scurry down a plank of a ship, dance right over the toes of a rat catcher, and disappear under the voluminous skirts of a fishwife. Lord Jasper had that kind of disregard for his own safety and reputation.

  I sat up, my tailbone giving a twinge of protest at the movement. A dull ache throbbed in my temples. Tabitha watched me stumble as I got caught in my own petticoats. I wasn’t used to so many lace trims and tiny ribbons; they’d caught on the metal grommets of my left boot. It took a moment to extricate myself from my own undergarments.

  Being a spirit medium who spoke to the dead was so glamorous.

  I couldn’t help but think of the last time such a thing had happened, when my friend Elizabeth had begged me to loosen her stays and we’d been caught by the earl’s son she’d fancied.

  “If you’re quite done with whatever it is you’re doing.” Tabitha rolled her eyes.

  I missed Elizabeth. Her mother wouldn’t let her visit Rosefield, not while I was in residence. I surreptitiously searched for more spirits waiting to leap out at me from behind the marble statues guarding the top of the staircase.

  I found much more than spirits bleeding into the rug. I stumbled to a halt.

  Tabitha crashed into me. “Now what?”

  I yanked her back into the miniature jungle of ferns and ficus trees on the landing.

  “Why are you mauling me?” she asked.

  I put a finger to my lips and nodded to the bottom of the stairs. Lord Jasper had his arms around a woman. He nuzzled her neck and she giggled. Her hair was white, her hands blue veined and fragile, but she was giggling like a schoolgirl.

  “Colin was right,” I murmured, pushing a branch out of my way. “Lord Jasper really was out courting.”

  “That is disgusting,” Tabitha whispered. “He’s a peer of the realm. Not to mention positively ancient.”

  “I think it’s sweet.”

  “You would.” She snorted. “Come on,” she added, grabbing my hand as Lord Jasper and his companion crossed the foyer. The front door closed behind them.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Tabitha, trying to wriggle free. She was surprisingly strong for a girl who did nothing but drink tea and wait for the newest issue of La Belle Monde. She peered through the window, watching the visiting carriage rumble down the lane.

  “To shop for ribbons in the village,” she replied when the carriage turned left, toward the village. She announced it with a kind of military fervor which made me nervous. Her tone suggested rifles, musket balls, swords, and other sharp, deadly things.

  I dug my heels into the carpet. “But I don’t want to go to the shops.”

  “Don’t be naive, Violet,” she said. I found that rather ironic coming from the sheltered daughter of an aristocrat. “We need to follow that woman.”

  As it turned out, following an old woman through a sleepy Wiltshire village was as boring as it sounded.

  “I don’t know who she is,” Tabitha finally burst out, an hour later. “And I know all of the good families for miles around.”

  “Perhaps she’s not from a good family,” I pointed out. “Clearly, Lord Jasper isn’t overly bothered with that sort of thing.”

  “Everyone is bothered with that sort of thing,” she insisted sourly. “It’s only that some people prefer to pretend otherwise.” I rolled my eyes. “Tabitha, as enjoyable as it is to hide out in a carriage with you in this kind of mood, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish?”

  “You protect Lord Jasper your way, I’ll protect him my way. We need to find out more about this woman.”

  Unfortunately, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Lord Jasper needed protecting. His horse hadn’t been spooked by natural means and if Colin hadn’t been there, he might have been seriously injured. Even killed.

  “She could be taking advantage of him,” Tabitha continued.

  “Maybe,” I allowed. “But we’re not going to find out sitting here. For one thing we’re in one of Lord Jasper’s carriages, which is hardly stealthy of us,” I said drily. “And for another, we’ve been here so long the coachman just went into the pub.”

  “He’s got a sweetheart in there,” Colin said from the window on the other side of the carriage. Tabitha shrieked, spun around, and threw her bonnet at him. He watched it flutter harmlessly to the floor, pale pink ribbons drifting as if they were made of sugar. “What on earth are you two doing?”

  Tabitha glowered at him, embarrassed to have been caught unawares. “Shouldn’t you be gardening?”

  “You were right,” I said, as we both ignored her. I slid across the seat toward him.

  “Of course I was.” His blue eyes twinkled at me. He paused. “About what exactly?”

  “Lord Jasper is courting.”

  “Ah. And you’ve taken it into your heads to spy on him?”

  Tabitha sniffed. “We are just being cautious.”

  “And bored silly,” I added. “The woman’s bought fabric, pastries, and a new parasol. Hardly suspicious activity.” I glanced outside and groaned. “And now she’s going into the ribbon shop.”

  “Excellent.” Tabitha shoved me out of the carriage. “Go on.”

  I stumbled off the step and then turned to blink at her. “Go on, what?”

  “Go look at ribbons.
Someone in there is bound to use her name.”

  “Why don’t you go? You’re the one who loves ribbons.”

  “Violet, I’m a Wentworth,” she said, as if I had cabbage for brains. “My family’s ancestral seat has been in this village for centuries. Everyone knows who I am.” Especially since her uncle had just been deported for murder.

  “Now she’s worried about secrecy,” I muttered, leaving Colin leaning against the nearest lamppost, chuckling as I walked away.

  The ribbon shop was crowded, with lengths of silk, satin, and printed cotton dangling from the ceiling and spread out in flat open drawers. Bored girls with their mothers and bored mothers with their daughters browsed, elbow to elbow. I skirted a table of silk roses, edging closer to the woman with the white hair. She paused at the counter, where the harried shopgirl smiled politely, her cheeks red with the exertion of dashing back and forth between customers. “One moment, Lady Ashburnham,” she said.

  I couldn’t help but recognize that I should rightfully be in the shopgirl’s place, if it weren’t for Lord Jasper’s generosity. Though a country ribbon girl was a far cry from the seamstress assistants waiting for me in London, sewing under the light of the street gas lamps until their fingers bled to make fancy dresses for girls like Tabitha.

  Yet another reason I intended to be absolutely certain Lord Jasper was safe.

  I slipped beside Lady Ashburnham, reaching for a ribbon. I made sure to knock the basket of pins over, scattering them along the counter and down her dress. “I’m terribly sorry!” I exclaimed, picking her reticule off the floor with an apologetic smile. I handed it back to her without a blink and slipped into a gaggle of preening debutantes before she could reply.

  Outside, I picked up my pace. A familiar tingle of adrenaline prickled down to my fingertips. Colin pushed away from the lamppost, watching me carefully. I tugged at my collar, as if it needed adjusting. It was old signal between us, letting the other one know we’d found our mark. Usually, it meant I’d picked someone’s pocket for a coin or nicked bread out of the back window of a bakery when we were hungry. This time I had no idea what I’d actually stolen. It could be nothing more interesting than a shopping list.