The Highland Dragon's Lady (3 page)

Houseguests aside, Whitehill was much the same as it had always been, at least if “always” meant “on any given month over the last two years.” Oh, there were changes—a new portrait in the hall, a temperamental hunter in the stables, red roses in the garden rather than pink ones, and crisp pink paper in the drawing room where the ladies were having tea—but nothing particularly stood out to Reggie.

If the house had been home, she might have felt the differences more. Emotionally, home for her was still instinctively the upper floors of a London town house, crammed with toys and schoolbooks. Practically, it was the flat she and Jane shared on Percy Street, with the composer upstairs playing his piano day and night. Whitehill was her parents’ home.

Thinking as much made Reggie’s insides twitch with guilt. She looked hastily over the tea table at her mother and focused once more on the conversation.

“…such arguments with the under-gardeners as you wouldn’t believe. He’s not a local man, you understand, and they’re all from the village. Clashing philosophies, one might say.”

“Flowers can inspire
such
violence,” said Mrs. Osbourne.

“If you make a joke about the Wars of the Roses,” said Miss Browne, eyeing her employer over horn-rimmed glasses and trying not to smile, “I’ll give notice on the spot.”

The two of them made quite the pair: Mrs. Osbourne, tall and statuesque, looked like one of the lesser-known Roman goddesses. Even before noon, she wore green and silver silk—it did go well with her gray-streaked auburn hair—and enough rings that the mere act of reaching for a scone was apt to blind onlookers, even on a rainy day like this. In contrast, her assistant was a fair-haired elfin creature in blue muslin and a modest string of pearls.

Ten years earlier, Reggie would have been happy to follow either of them around and try to ape their looks. She wasn’t sure she
still
didn’t want to, but the whole affair would be far less dignified at twenty-six than at sixteen.

“Tyrannical creature,” said Mrs. Osbourne, beaming at Miss Browne. “And dreadfully overeducated. I’ll have you know I was thinking of my friend Diana—she had an argument over lilies with her husband once. Pushed him into a river.”

“How dreadful!” Miss Heselton, sister to the local vicar, gasped with artfully wide eyes.

Reggie suppressed a strong impulse to overturn the teapot into her lap. In the day and a half that she’d known the Heselton woman, the aforementioned had gasped in shock at various types of dreadfulness at least once an hour, simpered regularly on the quarter hour, and had tried three times to make inspiring speeches about the natural purity of the countryside, particularly in relation to how late Reggie had slept in and the number of cigarettes the footmen smoked.

Granted, Miss Heselton went about her various exhortations very picturesquely. Like Browne, she was short, slender, and fair, and gave the general impression of having stepped out of an advertisement for soap. Colin had been accurate enough about her physical appeal.

What was
he
doing now? Reggie hadn’t seen him at breakfast—part of the reason she’d contrived to sleep late, though that had never been difficult for her—and the men had taken themselves off early in the day. Pater was sitting with Mr. Heselton, talking spirits and broken ankles, which meant Edmund and Colin were probably shooting or drinking, or both.

Colin hadn’t seemed the sort to go and blab to a girl’s brother about a stolen kiss or two—and Edmund, thank the Lord, wasn’t the sort of brother to come over all medieval if he did hear. All the same, Reggie wondered if Colin had asked about her, if he’d been thinking about her.

It had been a rather splendid kiss.

She shifted in her seat, schooled her face into a calm expression, and sent her thoughts along less provocative lines. Hopefully her mother hadn’t been looking.

“Depends on the lilies, I’d say,” Reggie drawled, settling for her third most disreputable impulse. “And probably on the husband too.”

Miss Heselton’s blue eyes and rosebud mouth formed three O’s of shocked reproof. “You can’t mean that,” she said, “not really.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Reggie, despite her mother’s glare.

“I just don’t see how any woman could be so awful!” said Miss Heselton.

“Neither did Cecil,” said Mrs. Osbourne. “He’d been about to go shooting. The whole incident quite ruined his tweeds, not to mention his gun.”

“
You’re
awful,” said Miss Browne, shaking her head. “That was a stream, not a river—”

“Life is very rarely as interesting if one’s completely honest about it,” said Mrs. Osbourne, and she stirred her tea.

“It’s still a horrible display of temper,” said Miss Heselton.

“Oh, quite,” said Mrs. Osbourne. “Diana always
was
a bit of a volcano. There was a time—” She broke off, clicking her tongue. “But I shouldn’t carry away the conversation. Mrs. Talbot-Jones, you were discussing your own difficulties over the local blossoms, weren’t you?”

“Not blossoms precisely,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones. “Trees. Simpson decided that the big hawthorn on the north lawn had to come out last year. Quite right, of course: it had flowered very prettily in May, but the leaves were getting horribly blighted.”

She spoke like a general reviewing a battle, and Reggie grinned around her muffin. Mater, in a pale pink tea gown with her silver hair curling gently around her face, looked and acted every bit the gentle, fluttery matron, but get her in old clothing and out into the garden, and she could be a holy terror.

“What was the difficulty?” Miss Browne asked.

“A sentimental attachment, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones, making a swift and dismissive gesture. “I didn’t inquire too closely. It doesn’t do, in cases like these. Simpson’s planned a row of maples, and the effect will be stunning come autumn. In a year, everyone will have forgotten the old tree ever was there.”

Mrs. Osbourne’s coppery eyebrows drew together, and she tapped a tapered fingernail against her lips. Whatever destination her train of thought might have had, it was never reached—Miss Heselton spoke instead.

“For my part,” she said, “I’m always overjoyed simply to be around trees of any sort. You must feel similarly, Miss Talbot-Jones, especially after having to spend so much time in London.”

“I was raised there,” said Reggie, wondering if Miss Heselton had put extra emphasis on that
having
or if it was just her general irritation with the woman manufacturing it, “and the city does have parks. Known for them, in fact.”

“Parks!” Miss Heselton tossed her golden curls. “Cultivated, manicured little places. They bear no comparison to the real heart of nature, the wild
soul
of the countryside.”

“Do you mean like the garden of a country house?” Reggie asked. Under the table, Mater proved that her matronly appearance didn’t prevent a swift kick to the ankle of an erring daughter. “But there’s certainly more room out here, and a few more wild places,” she added, both honestly and by way of avoiding further damage. She was going to bruise, she knew. Wasn’t a woman in her sixties supposed to be physically feeble? “Makes a nice change. Once in a while.”

“I find that it does one good to get a regular change of scene,” said Miss Browne.

“And I’m glad of it,” said Mrs. Osbourne, “or I’d lead a lonely and disorganized sort of existence. I’m surprised not to have met
you
before, Miss Talbot-Jones, if you’re in London most of the year. I try to go there regularly. I have the honor to have one or two other patrons in polite society, after all.”

Any other time, in any other company, Reggie would have been able to answer easily enough. Mrs. Osbourne’s tone had no archness to it, no suggestion of knowing more than had been discussed already or meaning more than light conversation. At a stranger’s table, she would have laughed and responded quickly.

Here and now, she felt her mother very carefully not looking at her and not saying anything. Words stuck in her throat. Once more she was eighteen, standing on a balcony and facing a ring of hostile and curious eyes.

Damn Edmund and his denseness about women. Damn Pater and his inclination to push potential brides at his son, as if Grandfather had been descended from kings rather than making his fortune in cod. Damn Miss Heselton for being so willing to be pushed. And damn herself, too, for being so easily worked on.

She could have been in London now. She could have been many places, full of many people who’d never met her before she’d turned twenty.

Reggie cleared her throat. “Big city,” she said, roughly at first. Then she managed a smile. “And I’ve not had much time for parties. I’m always haring off on some ridiculous notion or other. Just ask my maid.”

“Ridiculous notions like séances, perhaps?” Miss Browne asked, smiling.

“How could I miss it? Spirits called from the other side, right in my own drawing room. Perhaps we should put down paper before tonight’s adventure—I’m not sure what ectoplasm will do to the carpets.”

Laughter rippled around the table. In its wake, Reggie reached for her teacup and held it like an anchor.

Just how one went about explaining magic to the uninitiated had varied considerably over the course of Colin’s life. He’d spoken variously of alchemy and natural philosophy, of conversations with angels and bargains with spirits. His explanations usually had some measure of truth. He could count on one hand the number of humans who, over two hundred years, had heard the entire story from him. Advances in science and mysticism had meant that he’d told more and more of the truth over time, though, and that those he did tell were often better prepared to hear it.

Taking those changes in philosophy and science into account, Colin had decided to let Edmund tell the elder Talbot-Joneses about the wasps. Breaking the news about phantom murderous insects was really the sort of conversation a young man should have with his own parents.

Therefore, when Colin took Mrs. Talbot-Jones’s arm to go in to dinner, he wasn’t surprised to see her looking pensive, though she tried to hide it with a smile. He
was
surprised that she was still smiling and hosting dinner parties, but only a bit. In his experience, one could never tell with mortals. They tended to fling themselves onto ships and climb up the sides of volcanoes without any occult assistance at all.

So, when Mrs. Talbot-Jones said, “I hear you and Edmund had some excitement this afternoon,” as if they’d gotten lost riding, Colin smiled in response.

Across the room, his hand on Miss Heselton’s elbow, Edmund shot him a look:
Talk
some
sense
into
the
woman, will
you?

Colin, who had never been inclined to talk sense into anyone, put forth the best effort that he thought his friendship with Edmund merited. “I thought you might find it more alarming,” he said. “I’d half expected us all to be catching the next train and you to be selling the place.”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones, and she patted his arm in a disconcertingly maternal fashion. “It’s like I told Edmund: you mustn’t take on over these things. It was
very
sweet of you to intervene, but the wasps would have disappeared before they could really hurt you. Everything uncanny does.”

“Edmund hadn’t told me that,” said Colin, not sure that she was entirely correct—the wasps hadn’t looked about to disappear any time in the near future—and less sure how he felt about being called
sweet
.

“He didn’t know himself, poor dear. He’s been away a great deal, and the showier…manifestations, Mrs. Osbourne calls them?…have only been going on for the last year. Before that, it was only what you might expect, spots of cold and crying in the night. Every old house has
that
sort of thing, I hear.”

“Aye,” said Colin, “but in mine it was generally to do with my sister.”

Judith would have hit him for that, and it
wasn’t
strictly true—their undeclared wars in childhood had been more likely to result in howls of outrage than fits of sobbing—but Judith wasn’t there and the comment made Mrs. Talbot-Jones laugh, so Colin felt no guilt.

“No wonder you and Edmund get on so well,” she said, finding her place at the foot of the table. “Commonality of experience, I shouldn’t wonder—and on that subject, may I introduce my daughter? Regina, this is the Honorable Mr. MacAlasdair.”

Colin’s first thought, when he looked at the woman next to him, was something incoherent about masks and butterflies and buried treasure. Met—well-met, he would say—by moonlight on a balcony, in a stable boy’s clothing and with braided hair, Reggie Talbot-Jones had struck him as a pretty girl, more so because of her obvious daring and the unconventional way she spoke.

Now she stood a few feet from him, glowing in peach satin and gold net, slim arms emerging from fashionably puffed sleeves, panels of gold flowing up over her hips to wrap around her waist. Gold combs gleamed in her dark hair, which had been gathered into a soft knot. She wore it low, but still showed plenty of both her graceful neck and the gold and amber necklace encircling it. The central stone, a large amber oval, rested just above her breasts.

“Miss Talbot-Jones,” he said and met her eyes for a long moment when he smiled. “A pleasure.”

“Mr. MacAlasdair.” Some slight tension, though Colin couldn’t have named its source, went out of her at his greeting, and the smile she gave him in return was the free, warm grin of the girl on the balcony. “I’ve heard quite a lot about
you
.”

“And I you,” said Colin. “I feel as if we know each other already.”

“I was telling Mr. MacAlasdair,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones, seating herself and watching her guests follow her lead, “about some of the earlier incidents here. At first, you know, I didn’t believe that there was anything to them.”

“And now you’re certain that there was?” asked Mr. Heselton from across the table. He was a short, sandy-haired man with wire-rimmed glasses, a gentle face, and an unimposing manner, but his eyes were sharp and clear when he spoke. “That there’s no natural explanation? A draft, perhaps, or the wind across a chimney?”

“If drafts and chimneys can produce a human face and form,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones, “it’ll be as marvelous as any ghost.”

“Optical illusion, then,” said the vicar. “The reflection of one of the maids, perhaps—distorted, as such things often are. The refractive properties of light are very strange, you know. We’re only just now beginning to discover the possibilities.”

“I saw the kinetoscope pictures last winter,” said Reggie, her eyes lighting. “They really do move like everyone says. I would’ve thought I was really at a fight, except for the colors and the sound. It’s amazing. You
could
make a person seem to walk about with that sort of thing, I’d think,” she added, returning half reluctantly to the subject at hand, “but why would anyone want to?”

Mr. Heselton shrugged. “An angry servant, perhaps?”

“If one of our servants had the money to buy that sort of device,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones, “I can’t imagine what he’d be angry about. Besides, there were other incidents. But I shan’t describe them at dinner.”

That, her tone said, was the final word.

“You’ll be the skeptic among us, then?” Colin asked the vicar. “It’s a bit of a surprise, considering your profession.”

Far from being offended, or concealing it well if he was, Heselton smiled. “I only believe in one man coming back from death,” he said, “and I believe that God’s laws are comprehensible.”

“Are you sure ghosts aren’t following them?” Reggie asked. “We’re discovering new laws every day, and new ways to apply them: moving pictures and electrons that whiz through the air. I hear men will even be flying before too long,” she added, smiling a shade too innocently.

“Do you?” Colin asked.

“Well, who wouldn’t? There’s a Prussian making gliders right now, and an Australian who got twenty feet up using kites.” She looked up through her thick, dark lashes at Colin. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you yourself were in the air someday soon.”

“One never knows,” said Colin, carefully casual. He took a sip of wine to hide his smile.

Turning back to Heselton, Reggie spread her hands. “So,” she said, “perhaps there are perfectly simple laws to explain ghosts. We just haven’t found them yet. Do you think that’s possible?”

“If I didn’t,” said Heselton, “I wouldn’t have imposed myself on your home.”

“Imposition, nothing,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones. “You know Philip and I are always glad to have you, supernatural excursions or no.”

“You’re very kind. But I am prepared to change my mind if I see anything that merits as much. I simply think we should exhaust all logical explanations before bringing the restless dead into the picture.”

“Your ankle doesn’t weigh in the matter, I take it?” Colin asked. He was beginning to like the man. Heselton reminded him a little of an astronomer he’d met in Italy once, a priest named Boskovic. He’d found that religious men could go either way, and was generally happy when, as now, they weren’t accusing him of having the Adversary in his direct ancestry.

Of course, Heselton didn’t know the truth about Colin. There was always the chance that his good nature would reverse itself in that case. Colin didn’t plan to test the principle.

“With all respect to our hosts and their housekeeping,” said Heselton, making a deferential gesture toward Mrs. Talbot-Jones, “stairs have been known to give way for entirely natural reasons. Particularly the stairs in older houses.”

“And it
is
old,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones. “The main building dates from Elizabeth’s reign, or so our agent assured me. I really should have had the stairs redone before, but one wants to preserve some sense of history.”

“One wants hot water more,” said Reggie, shaking her head. She glanced down the table to where Edmund was sitting between Miss Browne and Miss Heselton—no doubt some parental machinations were behind that—and at least keeping up his end of the conversation, whatever his actual feelings in the matter. Turning back, she caught Colin’s eye and shrugged. She couldn’t help the situation, nor could she help looking.

Instead, she focused on him. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. MacAlasdair? Or do you just like asking questions?”

“Yes,” said Colin. He waited a few seconds, just long enough for Reggie to think he would really be so succinct, and then shrugged. “I believe in a great many things, on principle. In any particular case, I can’t be sure. Here? A swarm of insects is fairly convincing.”

“A
what
?” Reggie asked. Mr. Heselton leaned forward, and farther down the table, conversation stopped.

Thus, Colin ended up telling the story of the wasps, eliding his magic away as “a trick of magnetism.” Depending on who one believed, it might well have been. He’d read a few books that claimed everything was. Osbourne and Browne seemed familiar enough with the concept too, though surprised to hear of such practical application.

The others were silent and still as they listened, uneasy. For the first time that evening, the haunting seemed like a potential menace rather than a joke. Even if the wasps had been as ultimately harmless as Mrs. Talbot-Jones had said, they were still a tangible and unsettling indication of a hostile force. For Mr. Heselton, they were a challenge to his beliefs; for the Talbot-Joneses, a sign of the challenge they’d taken up.

Dinner only broke the mood a little. Footmen took away soup and brought turbot; candlelight and gaslight shone off silver plates and gold jewelry. In appearance the party could have been any other vaguely fashionable country dinner. The conversation moved on, touching on decoration, politics, and cricket. There was tension in everyone’s way of moving, though, and it ran as an undertone to the light chatter. More than eating, they were waiting—preparing, if they could.

Colin had never seen humans like this. It reminded him of the stories Stephen, Judith, and his father had told, the ones about war and the moments before battle. It was rather fascinating.

He listened to them talk, trying to assure each other with every casual word:
You
see? We can talk about inconsequential things. We don’t have to think about what happens later. Everything is going to be all
right.

Mortals spent a lot of time reassuring each other, he thought, and on very limited grounds. All the same, everything probably
would
be all right. Séances generally ended peacefully enough, even in the most haunted of houses. They’d scare each other and then go home.

Meanwhile, he could chop logic with a vicar and a pretty girl. Even with the wasps, coming to Whitehill still felt like a good decision.