“Don’t worry,” she assured him, returning the empty tumbler to the counter. “I don’t drink spirits. It’s just been a mite stressful today, one could say.”
“Hear, hear,” mumbled the priest.
Then her ghostly pursuer filtered in through the far wall.
“I know you can see me, so don’t play otherwise,” were his first words. He rubbed a hand from his ginger beard to his bald head. “Just tell my sister I won’t be coming home, and I promise to go away.”
“I want you to go awaynow,” Susan hissed between clenched teeth.
The barman recoiled in alarm from his task of wiping the counter beneath her glass.
“Begging your pardon, miss,” he stammered. “It’s just that there was a bit of brandy heading straight for the edge, and as I hadn’t wanted it to muss your dress, I thought to myself, ‘I ought to clean that spot, is what I ought to do,’ but now I can see as I was overstepping myself and I surely wouldn’t want—”
“No,” she gritted out, torn between glaring at the ghost for causing this mess and patting the guilt-stricken barman in assurance. “Not you,” she added lamely, but as the other living patrons were still keeping a fair distance, this explanation only earned wrinkles of confusion in Sully’s brow.
“I told you, miss.” The bearded ghost floated up to the stool next to Susan. “Just tell my sister I won’t be coming home, and I’ll leave this earth forever.” A flash of doubt wrinkled his brow. “I think. I’m actually not rightly sure as to why I’m still here now, but we might as well make the most of it, wouldn’t you say?”
She wouldn’t say, actually. Not a bloody word. Not with the barman casting odd glances at her over his shoulders as he tidied up the far end of the bar.
The ghost materialized in the counter in front of her. “Come now, lass, don’t be like that. Tell her I’m dead, and I’ll be gone. How hard could it be?”
As it happened, Susan didn’t want to think about the thousands of things that could go horribly wrong with that scenario. On the other glove, the ghost would obviously keep haunting her until she agreed to his scheme with some level of realism, so—
“What did you say your name was?” she murmured at last, pretending to be interested.
“Most call me Red,” he replied promptly, at the same time the barman answered with a wary, “Sully, miss. Same as it was a moment ago.”
Argh. Perhaps she should drink herself into unconsciousness, after all.
“Sully, darling.” Susan leaned forward with what she hoped was a convincing no-really-I’m-utterly-sane expression. “How about pouring another—”
The tavern door burst open and a dozen fishermen spilled inside, bringing with them a fair bit of the sea and the rancid stench of raw fish.
“Another what, miss?”
“Another round for everyone, she said!” called out one of the drunks in the back.
“Hear, hear,” said the priest.
The fishermen cheered, and in seconds had crowded her from the counter so they could toss back the round of whiskeys she hadn’t meant to order.
Susan leaned against the closest wall and closed her eyes. This was all that ghost—Red’s—fault. She had to get rid of him.
“If you weren’t dead, I’d kill you,” she muttered.
“Ain’t dead yet,” came a jolly, fishy slur.
A sticky glass pressed into one of her hands, no doubt ruining her silk gloves. Uneven footsteps shuffled back toward the mix of fishermen. With misgivings, Susan opened her eyes.
The barman hadn’t forgotten to include her illegal French brandy in the round of drinks. She tried to cast him a polite smile, but her face rebelled. It wasnother plan to buy so many drinks that she’d need a year’s allowance to settle the tab... particularly when her parents had given no sign of sending her so much as a farthing. An insurgence of more fishermen backed her into a far corner of the tavern.
“Well?” Red demanded, hovering above the teeming bodies.
Susan leaned her aching head backward until it settled against the wood-planked corner, and tried to approach the situation logically. “Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning.”
“N-no,” he stammered. If it were possible for a ghost to blanch, that was precisely what he was doing. “I can’t be speaking of things such as those. Suicide talk, that is.”
She was about to argue the point—him already being dead—but thought better of it. She was proud to be one of the most successful busybodies in all of England, but if there were something so dangerous to know that even ghosts trembled to speak the words... well, she had enough trouble at the moment. She’d have to make do with gossip about the living.
