Mischief

Bantam Books by Amanda Quick
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A
FFAIR

D
ANGEROUS

D
ECEPTION

D
ESIRE

I T
HEE
W
ED

M
ISCHIEF

M
ISTRESS

M
YSTIQUE

R
AVISHED

R
ECKLESS

R
ENDEZVOUS

S
CANDAL

S
EDUCTION

S
LIGHTLY
S
HADY

S
URRENDER

W
ICKED
W
IDOW

W
ITH
T
HIS
R
ING

D
ON
’
T
L
OOK
B
ACK

L
ATE FOR THE
W
EDDING

The weak flame of the candle made little impact on the flood of darkness that filled the interior of the deserted mansion. It seemed to Matthias Marshall, Earl of Colchester, that the vast house had absorbed the very essence of the night. It had the aura of a tomb, a place where only ghosts would willingly reside.

The folds of Matthias’s long, black greatcoat swirled around his mud-spattered boots as he climbed the stairs. He held the candle higher to light his path. No one had greeted him at the door when he had arrived a few minutes earlier, so he had let himself into the cavernous hall. It was clear now that there were no servants about, not even a maid or a footman. He had been obliged to take care of his horse himself, because no groom had come forth from the stables.

At the top of the stairs he paused to glance down over the railing into the ocean of night that filled the front hall. The candle could not begin to penetrate the waves of darkness that ebbed and flowed there.

Matthias walked down the gloom-filled corridor to
the first chamber on the left. He stopped in front of it and twisted the old knob. The door gave a groan of despair as it opened. He held the candle aloft and surveyed the bedchamber.

It resembled nothing so much as the interior of a mausoleum.

In the center of the chamber was an ancient stone sarcophagus. Matthias glanced at the inscriptions and carvings that adorned it. Roman, he thought. Quite ordinary.

He crossed the chamber to where the coffin stood beneath gauzy black hangings. The lid had been removed. The candlelight revealed the black velvet cushions that lined the inside of the sarcophagus.

Matthias put the candle on a table. He stripped off his riding gloves and dropped them beside the taper, then sat down on the edge of the coffin and removed his boots.

When he was ready, he wrapped himself in the folds of his greatcoat and settled onto the black cushions inside the sarcophagus.

It was nearly dawn, but Matthias knew that the heavy drapes that covered the windows would prevent the rays of the rising sun from invading the dark chamber.

Some might have had difficulty finding sleep in such sepulchral surroundings. Matthias knew that he would have no problem. He was accustomed to the company of ghosts.

Just before he closed his eyes he asked himself again why he had bothered to respond to the summons that had been issued by the mysterious Imogen Waterstone. But he knew the answer to that question. Long ago he had given his oath. His word was his bond.

Matthias always kept his promises. Doing so was the only way he could be certain that he would not become a ghost himself.

Matthias was rudely awakened by a woman’s bloodcurdling scream.

A second female voice, this one as crisp as the green apples of ancient Zamar, interrupted the horrified cry.

“For heaven’s sake, Bess,” the apple-tart voice admonished. “Must you screech at the sight of every cobweb? It is extremely irritating. I am trying to accomplish a great deal this morning and I can hardly do so if you shriek at every turn.”

Matthias opened his eyes, stretched, and sat up slowly in the sarcophagus. He glanced at the open door of the bedchamber just in time to see a young maid crumple to the floor in a deep swoon. The weak sunlight that seeped down the hall behind her told Matthias that it was late morning. He raked his fingers through his hair and then tested the stubble of his beard. He was not surprised that he’d scared the maid into a faint.

“Bess?” Crisp, fresh apples again. Light footsteps in the hall. “Bess, what on earth is wrong with you?”

Matthias rested one arm on the edge of the stone
coffin and watched with interest as a second figure appeared in the doorway. She did not see him at first. Her full attention was focused on the fallen maid.

There was no mistaking the fact that the second female was a lady. The long apron that she wore over her serviceable gray bombazine gown could not disguise the elegant line of her spine or the high, gently rounded curve of her breasts. The determined set of her shoulders bespoke an innate pride and a purposeful air that had been bred into her very bones.

Matthias contemplated the lady in growing fascination as she hovered above her maid. He swept a critical eye over her, cataloguing the various parts of her form much as he would assess the carving of a Zamarian statue.

She had made a valiant attempt to confine a voluminous mass of tawny brown hair beneath a practical little white cap. Several tendrils had escaped imprisonment, however, and bounced around her fine-boned face. That face was turned partially away from Matthias’s view, but he could make out high cheekbones, long lashes, and a distinctive, arrogant nose.

A strong, striking face, he concluded. It conveyed the essence of the forceful spirit that obviously animated it.

The lady was no young chit fresh out of the schoolroom, but on the other hand, she was not nearly so ancient as himself. Then again, few people were. In truth he was thirty-four, but he felt centuries older. He estimated that Imogen was five and twenty.

He watched as she dropped a leather-bound journal onto the carpet and knelt impatiently beside her maid. There was no sign of a wedding ring on her hand. For some reason that fact pleased him. He suspected that the apple-tart voice and the commanding manner had had a great deal to do with her apparent status as a spinster.

It was a matter of taste, of course. Most of Matthias’s male acquaintances preferred honey and chocolate. He, however, had always favored something with a bit of a bite when it came to after-dinner delicacies.

“Bess, that is quite enough. Open your eyes at once, do you hear me?” Imogen produced a vinaigrette and waved it briskly under the maid’s nose. “I really cannot have you screaming and swooning every time you open a door in this house. I warned you that my uncle was a very odd man and that we were quite likely to come across some rather strange items when we inventoried his collection of sepulchral antiquities.”

Bess moaned and rolled her head on the carpet. She did not open her eyes. “I seen it, ma’am. I swear it on me mother’s grave.”

“What did you see, Bess?”

“A ghost. Or maybe it were a vampire. I’m not sure which.”

“Nonsense,” Imogen said.

“What was that earsplitting noise?” another woman called from the top of the stairs. “Is something amiss down there, Imogen?”

“Bess has fainted, Aunt Horatia. It is really too much.”

“Bess? Not like her.” More footsteps in the hallway announced the impending arrival of the woman who had been addressed as Aunt Horatia. “Bess is a sturdy girl. Not at all prone to fainting spells.”

“If she has not fainted, she is doing an excellent imitation of a lady suffering an attack of the vapors.”

Bess’s lashes fluttered. “Oh, Miss Imogen, it was dreadful. A body in a stone coffin.
It moved
.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bess.”

“But I seen it.” Bess groaned again, raised her head, and glanced anxiously past Imogen into the shadows of the bedchamber.

Matthias winced as she caught sight of him and screamed again. Bess flopped back down onto the carpet with all the grace of a beached fish.

The third woman arrived in the hall outside the doorway. She was dressed in the same practical fashion as Imogen, a plain gown, apron, and cap. She was an inch or two
shorter than her companion and considerably broader about the waist and hips. Her graying hair was pinned beneath her cap. She studied Bess through a pair of spectacles. “What on earth is upsetting the girl?”

“I have no notion.” Imogen busied herself with the vinaigrette. “Bess has an imagination that is easily overheated.”

“I warned you about the dangers of teaching her to read.”

“I know you did, Aunt Horatia, but I cannot bear to see a sound mind go uneducated.”

“You’re just like your parents.” Horatia shook her head. “Well, she’s not going to be of much use if she continues to start at every unusual sight in this house. My brother’s collection of funereal oddities is enough to give anyone a fit of the vapors.”