“Oh yes, do let’s. We might see your white lady. Was she very beautiful?”
“I believe so.” He had to admit the woman had an ethereal beauty, although the bright-eyed girl before him was far more attractive. He did not particularly wish to meet the lady again. He walked the dog along the path. As they moved farther into the trees, Benny, who had been obliging to date, pulled hard against the lead. Distracted by the possibility of meeting the woman again, the lead slipped through Harry’s fingers as the dog bolted, disappearing into the bushes.
“Benny!” Harry took off after him. He’d never be forgiven if anything happened to his father’s dog. Harry had become fond of the little animal himself.
Sharp barking came from a bank of rhododendrons.
“Benny! Here, boy! I’ll give you some of my breakfast bacon,” he yelled.
Cecily laughed. “He’s in those bushes.”
The shrubs shook wildly, then the dog emerged and ran over to them with something in his mouth.
“What has he got there?”
Harry grabbed the trailing lead. He bent down to ease the scrap from the dog’s jaws. Benny growled, unwilling to give it up.
When he opened his mouth, Harry took hold of the shredded piece of white net, but it dissolved into white dust in his gloved fingers.
Harry fought a shiver and dusted his hands. “Nothing but an old rag.”
Cecily’s wide eyes searched his. “Was that what it was?”
“Seems so.” Harry realized Benny had found the piece of net in the precise spot where he first saw the woman. He cast an anxious eye around, but the park was empty. “We should go back, or you’ll be missed at breakfast.”
She turned and kept pace with him. “Did the woman speak to you?”
“She seemed lost and upset. She asked me to help her. I gathered she wanted me to take her home, but she disappeared before I could offer.”
“Where does she live? Did she say?”
He decided it was useless to hide anything from Cecily. “She pointed up there.” In the sunlight, they had a perfect view of the formidable high stone walls of the castle and its tower.
She frowned. “That’s the castle. Surely she can’t have meant there?”
“Perhaps she intended to visit her father,” he said. “He might be employed there as caretaker.”
“Have you ever gone up to see the ruins?”
“We all did when boys. Hoping to find a specter lurking about. We didn’t, of course.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts?”
He shook his head. “Do you?”
“Oh yes. I am sure some poor souls linger here on earth.”
While he considered hers to be a romantic view of the hereafter, he had found the place distinctly eerie. A memory made him shiver. When he and his friends descended the winding stone stairs to the dungeon, the atmosphere changed, grew colder, and shadows shifted, as if something menacing lurked nearby. It had unnerved them, and they didn’t go all the way down. “I didn’t enjoy it very much.”
“I’d love to see the ruins. But Mother is very much against it. She believes it’s ghoulish to go disturbing the dead.”
“I wonder if you would love it. The castle has a grim history.”
“Do you think there are ghosts? What happened there?”
“I’m not entirely sure. Some lost souls, and heaven knows what else. All castles have a bloodthirsty past, don’t they?”
“It’s Saturday. We could visit it this afternoon?”