She pictured him as he likely was now, sitting in front of the fire in his shirtsleeves, staring fiercely at the pages of his book, lost in an adventure. It suddenly made her restlessly sad that she couldn’t just sit beside him and talk to him of idle things, because she thought they both might enjoy it. But she also felt they both had forfeited the right to do that. She suspected she was, as Agnes of Newgate had said, safer where she was: behind a door, and not anywhere near the bare, bronzed skin of his arms.
Chapter Nine
Angelique laughed. “Look at us! We’re like a cuckoo clock this morning.”
Angelique was right: the four of them—Delilah and Tristan and Angelique and Lucien—had popped from their rooms at almost precisely the same moment, indeed like a cuckoo on a clock. They were up even earlier than the maids this morning, in part because Lucien and Tristan needed to inspect a new warehouse the Triton Group, their shipping partnership, hoped to lease.
While everyone was still singing about the pianoforte last night, Lucien and Tristan and Mr. Delacorte had lingered over papers and numbers regarding the Triton Group in the smoking room. Their wives had already been asleep by the time they’d gone up to their bedrooms.
“This will be the first time I’ve beaten Delacorte to breakfast, I reckon,” Captain Hardy said.
They had all taken a few steps down the hall when Delilah stopped and laid her hand on Tristan’s arm to stop him, too. “Do you all hear that? It sounds like... someone weeping.”
They paused to listen.
The sound was faint but unmistakable... and chilling: a low, mournful keen that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
The little hairs lifted on Delilah’s arms.
Angelique swallowed. “Surely it’s the wind. Though I thought we did manage to find and repair all the drafts after the last storm.”
“Maybe we’ve just never been up early enough to hear the ghosts before.” Lucien was whispering for some reason.
“Shhh.” Angelique squeezed his arm.
The sound seemed to increase in volume as they moved down the hall.
...ohhhhh...
It had acquired a distinct note of anguish.
“Christ,” Lucien breathed. Unnerved now.
“Where is itcomingfrom?” Angelique’s head tipped back toward the ceiling, as if this was the province of ghosts.
Captain Hardy gestured them forward, as if they were a landing party confronting a hostile army. As a group, they tentatively descended a few stairs.
Then stopped again to listen.
Seconds later they heard:
...oohhhh... OHHHHH...
Much louder now. And... hoarser.
“It’s definitely someone in pain,” Captain Hardy said grimly. “And it’s a woman. I think she’s saying ‘no’?”
“Tristan!” Delilah gasped.
Tristan and Lucien swiftly produced pistolsfrom somewhere on their persons—neither Delilah nor Angelique asked questions anymore—just as a hoarse scream froze the blood in their veins.
... Ahhh Ahhhh AaaaAAAUUGGGGGHSimon!
En masse, they hurtled down the stairs.
The echoes of that scream were dying behind the door of Corporal Dawson’s room.
“Oh God oh God oh God,” Delilah fervently prayed.