Sally really was quite pretty. Although they both possessed the same lanky frame, Sally didn't have the glossy photo-shoot perfection of her older sister; Sally's hair was an indeterminate brown to her sister's determined blond (and just how much of that difference came out of a bottle was open to speculation), long and curly where Joan's was sleek and straight, her brow wider and her features broader. All the same, there was something much more attractive about Sally's frank, open face. She possessed that timeless girl-next-door quality that endears itself to women as well as men.
Of course, I reminded myself, she was the girl next door. Quite literally. I concentrated on keeping track of where we were, and regretted not having packed breadcrumbs in my purse. By the time it struck me that miniature Certs might fulfill the same function (and be less likely to fail prey to woodland creatures than the comestibles in the story), we had already come to a halt by a side door.
It must have once been, like the narrow back hallways, part of the servants' domain in the Upstairs, Downstairs days. Now, the back entrance was cluttered with muddy boots, old raincoats, and various other odds and ends, including a broken tennis racket and some very dirty garden gloves. Colin glanced out the door at the midnight black sky. It couldn't have been much past eight, but sunset comes early in November; it had been full dark since five.
"Torch?"
"On the shelf." Sally pointed to a large gray flashlight banded in maroon, the sort with a bulb the size of a fried egg, and a wide flat handle. This one looked like it might have once been white, but years of dust and grimy handprints had taken their toll.
"Is it far?" I asked belatedly, gathering my borrowed pashmina around my shoulders. The air from the open door bit through the thin material of Serena's dress, and made me wish I'd thought to put on stockings. I was beginning to wonder what I was getting myself into. I hadn't seen any sign of ruins as we'd driven up to the house earlier that evening, and while my enthusiasm for crumbling structures is extreme, it waned a bit in conjunction with thin fabrics, impractical heels, and the prospect of tripping over things in the dark. And, trust me, if there was something to trip over, I would find it.
Sally looked to Colin.
Colin shrugged.
"Not very," he said, in that uninformative male way that could mean anything from just down the block to somewhere in the Outer Hebrides, reachable only by snowbound mountain passes.
To do him justice, he might have been about to elaborate, but any further description was cut short by a click of heels, and a voice calling, "Sally?"
"Maybe if we ignore her?" I suggested.
"Oh, the innocence of youth," murmured Colin. I whacked him on the arm with a stray corner of pashmina. When had I developed these tendencies towards casual violence? First a glow stick, then a pashmina… Of course, there was a perfectly good explanation, but I didn't like it, so I ignored it.
Joan's voice was not as easily ignored. And it was getting closer.
"Sally!"
"Oh, bother," said Sally, throwing back her shoulders in a resigned way. "I wonder what it is now? You go on without me."
"Are you sure?"
Sally flapped her hand in dismissal. "Colin knows the way. I'll be along as soon as I can get away. Coming, Joan!"
"It's just us, then," said Colin, switching on the torch. A ghostly circle of yellow light appeared on the ground about a yard ahead, highlighting dead blades of grass with eerie precision.
"And the ghost," I pointed out.
"As a chaperone," Colin replied, shutting the door behind us, "he is not very substantial. Shall we?"
Did he feel the need for a chaperone? I decided not to enquire further; it might sound too much like flirting, and if he were already lamenting the lack of a chaperone, the last thing I wanted to do was give him the impression I was flinging myself at him.
To give him his due, he was really being more than decent to an unwanted houseguest. I had twisted his arm for an invitation, and he would have been well within his rights to leave me alone in the library. He hadn't had to make me dinner or join me for a walk or take me along to the party with him. When it came down to it, he was behaving exceptionally well, and I… well, let's just say that I wasn't all that proud of my own performance thus far.
So I let the chaperonage comment pass, and said simply, "Let's."
The thin beam of light wavered in front of us, a narrow link to warmth and light and civilization. I thought briefly, longingly, of the drinks table. But how often does one get to follow a ghost to his lair? Wrapping my borrowed pashmina more tightly around me, I stumbled along beside Colin towards the lonely cloister of the Phantom Monk.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Phantom (n.): an agent of unusual stealth and skill; the most deadly kind
Ghosts did not have feet. It took Henrietta the space of a moment to realize that what she was seeing was not, in fact, a ghastly apparition from the spirit world, but, instead, a human with skullduggery on the mind. Despite Miles's and Richard's protestations to the contrary, there was not a phantom monk. If there were one, she rather doubted it would jaunt over from Donwell Abbey to visit the neighbors, and it would most definitely not step on twigs.
If Miles was reprising his famous appearance as the Phantom Monk of Donwell Abbey…
Henrietta levered herself off her bench and stalked towards the house, her dark blue twill traveling dress blending well with the shadows.
By the time she had made it out of the protective covering of the rose arbor, common sense had returned. It couldn't be Miles. One could make oneself seem larger, but seldom smaller, and the figure she had seen poised outside the drawing room doors had definitely been smaller and slighter than Miles.
And if it wasn't Miles… oh dear.
In her indignation over Miles, Henrietta had nearly managed to forget that they were under the surveillance of the French Ministry of
Police. It would have been much less worrisome if the hooded figure had been Miles.
Hideous images of deadly French operatives rose to taunt her, and with them, a certain indignation that the French would have the gall, the unmitigated gall, to follow them here to Selwick Hall, where they had always been safe and peaceful. It was one thing to go hunting spies; it was quite another for those spies to invade one's home. Henrietta set her chin in a stubborn expression that boded ill to Napoleon's secret police. The spy's temerity in following her here did have one advantage, though. It made him easier to catch.
Henrietta slowed her steps, making sure to stay to the shadows. She crept softly up the shallow flight of stairs up to the veranda, balancing on the very toes of her kid half-boots. Her choice of footwear had been quite sensible for a long journey, but less so for hunting Phantom Monks. The heels had an unnerving tendency to click against the stone of the veranda. Henrietta would have stopped to take them off, but the Phantom Monk had already had far too much of a head start. So she tiptoed as best she could, turning the handle of the French doors with painstaking slowness, grateful for the Axminster carpet that covered the floor of the Long Drawing Room and muffled her steps.
Henrietta paused for a moment in the middle of the Long Drawing Room, which, true to its name, ran three-quarters of the length of the back of the house. Despite its size, it was sparsely furnished, with groupings of little, light chairs and tables that could be pushed easily to the sides of the room for an impromptu dance. Henrietta's gloom-accustomed eyes surveyed the room, and found no shapes there that ought not to be. The drapes lay flat against the walls, and the low, backless settees with their scrolled ends were too flimsy to hide anyone larger than a well-fed midget. The cloaked figure had certainly not been midget-sized.