Valerie smiled. “Saxby, I am not now, nor ever have been, afraid of ghosts. Why, sometimes ghosts are far kinder than the living.”
He stared at her as if she had suddenly sprouted a full mustache. “Miss Wightman, please…”
“I cannot stop you from walking all of that way in the dark and the cold to fetch help,” she said decisively, “but Icandecide where I shall wait for your return. Forgive me, Saxby, but I would much rather be in a warm drawing room beside a roaring fire than trapped in what amounts to a box, jumping at every sound. No ghost will scare me as much as my own mind will, if I stay here by myself.”
The worried older man chewed his lip in consternation. Valerie could not help the twinge of guilt that wriggled in her stomach, knowing she had put him in a difficult position. He was charged with keeping her safe on her journey, yet he had no choice but to leave her. He did not want her to go to the estate, yet he lacked the authority to forbid her.
“Take the horses with you,” she suggested. “Stay in town for the night, so you can all rest and eat well, and then we shall reconvene here at first light. That way, you will not have to come anywhere near this ‘haunted’ castle.”
The driver seemed to consider the suggestion, while Valerie wrapped the stole around her neck and pulled her gloves to tighten the fit around her fingers.
“If you will excuse me, Saxby, I must begin walking before there is no longer any light to see by,” she said firmly. “I shall see you here tomorrow morning. I shall not be late.”
Before she could take more than a couple of steps, the driver lunged into the carriage, grabbed one of the lanterns off the wall, and hurried to put it in her hand.
“For your safety, Miss,” he said grimly.
“Why, then you should have handed me a pistol,” she teased, inwardly scolding herself for not remembering to pick up the lantern. Without it, she would almost certainly have lost her way.
Saxby’s weathered brow furrowed, adding a few more lines. “If I had one, I would.”
“Come now, you must know that a pistol is no use against a ghost.” She offered him a blithe smile, wished him and the horses a goodnight, and followed the road to where another, narrower track—barely wide enough for a curricle—splintered off.
She looked back momentarily to find Saxby watching, his lost hat recovered and held anxiously to his chest.
“Is it this way?” she shouted, hardly able to believe their luck, that they had come to a standstill so close to a duke’s castle.
The older man nodded in the light of the lantern that hung from the driver’s bench.
Satisfied that she would soon be in the civilized warmth of a drawing room, or whatever the castle equivalent might be, and that she might soon have a comfortable bed to sleep in, Valerie set off down the less trodden path, muttering “ghosts, indeed” as she went.
Some ten minutes later, breathing hard and doubting her decision completely, Valerie was about to give up and retrace her steps when she ran body-first into something hard.
A gasp of pain hissed from her mouth, though her manners prevented her from using the same coarse language that the driver had. She reached outward with shaky hands to feel what it was she had knocked into, the cold touch of metal kissing her skin. The texture wasn’t smooth but rough and powdery, the air tinged with the sharp scent of rust.
A gate…
Relief flooded her, all of her jittering nerves aiding her strength as she tugged on the bars she had bumped into.
With a jarring screech, like these gates had not been opened in an age, they stubbornly swung inward, so reluctant that Valerie ended up squeezing through the narrow gap she had made.
My pelisse will be ruined,she lamented, but that was the least of her worries.
She jumped as lightning lit up the evening sky, a vivid flash of white that silhouetted those eerie trees… and another shape, looming out of the darkness: the crenellated edges of two square towers, a torn flag flapping in the whistling wind. A castle, just as Saxby had said.
The moment she saw it, Valerie laughed away her unease.Well, I can certainly tell why there are so many stories about this place. EvenIalmost lost my nerve.
But the creepy mystique had been pulled aside now, the frightening disguise ripped away by that flash of light, the mask dropped. It was just a castle. In the daylight, she could imagine it all looked rather charming.
What if there is no one at home?
She shrugged away the thought and hurried down the oak-lined driveway, across a carriage circle of gravel, and up to the door. She rapped the brass knocker three times before stepping back and looking up. There did not seem to be any candles aglow, but in a castle so enormous, the duke could not possibly afford to illuminate all the rooms, all the time. Perhaps, the household preferred to spend their evenings in another wing, out of sight of the driveway.
Her hand reached for the knocker again, when the muffled sound of footsteps from inside stayed her impatience.
The door opened enough to allow a gray-haired head to poke out, dark eyes squinting at Valerie in bewilderment. “Yes?” he said, rather rudely.
“I am Miss Valerie Wightman,” she said brightly, despite his rudeness. “My carriage suffered some trouble on the road, and my driver has gone to town to seek assistance. As such, I am without a place to stay for the night; it would not be safe for meto stay in that carriage all alone, through the night. So, if it would not be too much bother, might you permit me a chamber in this fine castle until morning?”
