Nicholas took Rosalind's hand and they left the library to a silent ghost and his furious stepmother.
They heard her shout through the closed door, "I am not crooked! It is you who were crooked your entire blighted life, pretending to be a wizard. Tell me what is going on here, you old sinner, tell me now, else I'll never leave! Why did my precious Richard have that wretched vision?"
Silence, then a deep pitiful sigh, and a depressed singsong voice:
She'll leave if I talk
She'll stay if I don't
She'll haunt me forever
Unless I'm more clever.
Prithee, just look at me now
Shrieked at endlessly by a lumpy-nosed cow.
"More clever than I? You're a dolt, to have you as a father-in-law fair to burned me to the core, but I survived. A cow? I'm a cow? You should thank me, for I was the one who sent you that little brat who cursed me with those black eyes of his as he slunk behind furniture so I couldn't see him, but I heard him chanting curses, death curses. I told his father how he spewed hatred at me and at him, that I feared for my newly born son's life, how he bragged that he would kill you, kill all of us. Nicholas was always a spawn of the Devil, I told his father, had thick bad blood in his veins, and he believed me. A man should believe his wife, curse you.
"At least now you're dead, save for something malignant that has managed to stick its snout out of the ether. And just what is this prithee business? Another of your affectations, no doubt. No one has spoken that word for hundreds of years. Ah, but you must always be the poseur, even dead. I believe I'll have you dug up out of your grave and burn your wretched skeleton. That'll see you gone, now won't it?"
Nicholas and Rosalind had to lean close to the library door when Captain Jared sang softly, that ancient voice echoing eerily,
The knife rises high And brings the end near. The knife starts to fall
And you choke on the fear. The prince must win Evil must die
Pay attention, madam, for the end draws nigh.
The prince will win? What prince? The end was nigh? Captain Jared sounded very serious about that. Rosalind supposed nigh meant tonight. They heard Miranda shriek and throw a hassock toward the fireplace.
Nicholas whispered against her temple, "Do you think he's hiding up the chimney?"
Rosalind shuddered. "If she was thinking aright, she would realize it isn't the old earl, that it is someone else. And all those things she told your father… It's evil what she did, Nicholas-claiming a little boy chanted curses, making threats."
Nicholas shrugged. "Whatever she said or did, when I think about the past, I am vastly relieved I was forced to leave England, forced to face what I was at my core, forced to make my own way. Had I remained, raised as a pampered earl's son, would I have become like Richard perhaps? Or like Lancelot?"
"You would have become exactly what you are only you would not speak Chinese and have Lee Po about to correct Marigold's English. I begin to believe she makes mistakes on purpose to gain his attention."
He couldn't help himself, he laughed, kissed her, said against her temple, "Captain Jared certainly has the old girl going, doesn't he?"
The day seemed interminable, so many hours to be got through until the sun set and it could be considered night. Nicholas and Rosalind did indeed visit tenants, happy to welcome the new countess, happy to see Nicholas now their roofs didn't leak, there was hay in the sheds for their animals, and grain grew in the fields.
They spoke to three more women who were willing to sing with a ghost and work at Wyverly Chase, and they managed to get through a tense dinner with Nicholas's three half brothers and his battle axe stepmother.
Nicholas asked Richard as he sipped on a lovely Bordeaux, "You had this vision only once?"
"That's right. It was real. It was the truth. But I see you still have her with you. You are a fool, Nicholas, a right fool." Richard shrugged. "Why should I care? After she flings your heart into the bushes, I will be the Earl of Mountjoy."
Miranda hissed.
Richard turned to her. "What makes you dislike that image, Mother?"
Miranda waved her fork at her son. "A vision simply shouldn't happen to a fine, normal, wickedly handsome young man like yourself. It happens only to crazy old men like your grandfather, whose blasted ghost sang out a 'prithee' to me."
"I rather like his songs," Aubrey said as he chewed on Cook's ham. "I wonder if he will allow me to sing with him."
Miranda hissed again.
"All of you are bloody mad," Lancelot said and threw a slice of bread across the dining room. "I want to leave. There is no reason to stay in the same house with a murderess. And Nicholas amuses himself at our expense. He will doubtless try to kill us, or set his wife to do it."
Rosalind was beginning to think that dispatching the lot of them wasn't a bad idea.
"Not if his precious wife stabs him first," Aubrey said, and Rosalind saw him grinning behind a spoonful of vegetable marrow soup. "What with all that violent red hair, I imagine she has a formidable temper, is that true, Nicholas?"
"He wouldn't have the nerve to strike her," Lancelot said, his mouth full, "now that he knows she'll cut his heart out. As for that heathen servant of his, I swear the fellow is cursing me whenever I chance to see him. He looks foreign. I don't like him."
Nicholas said, "It's true, Lancelot, that Lee Po knows many meaty curses, some of them designed to tangle up your innards so you choke on your own guts. I'd keep my distance from him." Nicholas paused a moment, looked around the table. "You know, perhaps Lancelot is right, all of you should return to London. Perhaps after dinner. Or after an early breakfast in the morning. Thank you, Richard, for delivering your vision message."
Richard came right out of his chair. "No!" Nicholas lounged back in his earl's chair, arched an eyebrow. "No? Why ever not?"
"I cannot," Richard said, his voice, his very posture intense. His hands were splayed on the table, his knuckles white. There was something desperate about him, Nicholas realized, but what was it?
45
Dinner dragged on with no explanation from Richard. Nicholas and Rosalind finally left his family to tea and whist. Lancelot was in a vile mood, throwing down his cards as if each one were a weapon. Aubrey baited him, said he was pretty as any girl he'd ever seen, which Nicholas thought wasn't far from the truth. Aubrey's smile never faded, his good humor seemed inexhaustible. On the other hand, Aubrey spent most of his time at Oxford. He didn't have to live with this bunch.
As for Richard, he brooded, one booted leg swinging over the arm of his chair. Nicholas didn't think he was brooding over his luck at cards. "Why, he wondered yet again, was Richard so anxious? If Rosalind did stab him, as Richard claimed he'd seen in the vision, then why wasn't he raising a brandy glass?
It was a relief to leave the four of them behind the closed drawing room door.
"I wonder where Captain Jared is this fine night?" Rosalind said as they walked into the earl's bedchamber.
"He kept quiet and I can't say I blame him," Nicholas said.
They drew on cloaks over their clothes. "It might be quite cold in the Pale," Rosalind said as she tied the black velvet tips together.
Rosalind made certain there was always a good three feet between them even though they held hands. She didn't want to fall into the Pale with the both of them naked.
Nicholas said, "I feel bloody ridiculous, lying in bed, waiting. Waiting for what? How the devil will we get to the Pale? I have no flying carpet."