Old Lover's Ghost Read Free Page A

unaware of the fact, I might add it is sheep I breed, not oxen.”
    “What is the difference? They are all smelly quadrupeds.”
    “One does not shear oxen.”
    Lewis was happy enough once he reached the outdoors. So long as he could perform his duties astride his mount, he had no real complaints. Even a poet needed a sound mind in a sound body. How was a fellow to keep a sound body if he was forever bent over a book? He took his gun with him, to hunt a few rabbits before dinner.
    Lady Merton sat on alone, worrying. She knew John did not take her fears seriously, but they were genuine fears. Her past was enough to frighten anyone. And now her nemesis had come back to haunt her. She should never have done what she did to Meg. The vicar said this was her chance to undo her sins before she had to meet her maker. That was the way to look at it, as an opportunity to rectify the past.
     

Chapter Two
     
    The Wainwrights arrived in Eastleigh late in the afternoon, with plenty of time to make a reconnaissance trip to view the exterior of Keefer Hall. It was all that a ghost hunter could wish. In the distance a Gothic heap rose against a dull gray sky. Mr. Wainwright gazed contentedly at pointed windows, finials, gargoyles, and a steeply canted roof.
    “There are the ravens,” he said, pointing to six bumps on the roof line. “At Longleat the departure of the swans will foretell the end of the family line. Here at Keefer Hall there is a legend that the ravens circle the house to foretell good luck.”
    The birds sat immobile as statues for as long as Charity looked at them. The surrounding park featured dank yews and dripping elms that cast long shadows on the grass. She feared the chimneys in such an old house would smoke; the rooms would be dark and dreary, and the inhabitants would discuss nothing but ghosts and gout.
    “I shouldn’t be surprised if they have an oubliette, complete with skeletons and clanking chains,” she said.
    “Such appurtenances are not necessary to a haunting,” her papa replied. “Though they do add a certain atmosphere, of course. We shall return to Eastleigh, have a stroll around the town to stretch our limbs, then hire a room to change into evening-wear. After dinner we shall return to Keefer Hall.”
    At the inn after their stroll, Charity washed away the dust of travel and changed into her blue silk evening gown, trimmed with Belgian lace around the skirt and bodice. She would have preferred a lighter color in spring. The blue was not the blue of a summer sky, but a deep Wedgwood blue that matched her eyes. Papa liked her to look somber, to add to the atmosphere. She had put her foot down at wearing black, however. She was neither a witch nor a widow, after all.
    Mr. Wainwright was rigged out in his ghost-hunting outfit of black evening clothes, satin-lined cape, and silver-headed ebony walking stick. He cut quite a dash when the black carriage, pulled by four jet-black horses, thundered up to the door of Keefer Hall.
    Lewis, who darted out to greet them, was immensely impressed. Now here was a gentleman with a sense of style! Wainwright brought a whiff of brimstone with him, with that swirling cape and those slashes of black eyebrow. The daughter was not the clumsy, snorting sort of female he had feared either. Quite pretty, actually, and a little older, just as he liked. She was in her early twenties, he judged, by no means hagged—and with a dandy figure. Wouldn’t the fellows at Cambridge stare to hear he was intimate with an older lady!
    “Welcome to Keefer Hall!” he said, ushering them in.
    Wainwright introduced himself and his daughter. “Lady Merton is expecting me, I think,” he said.
    “We are all waiting for you. If you would like to remove your cape ...”
    “I shall keep it, thank you. Ghosts bring a chilly air with them.”
    “Ah!” Lewis grinned his approval of this bit of arcane lore. “Come into the saloon and have a glass of something wet before we begin