“It’s just... I’m sorry, but I’m sore afraid to go up alone right now,” Dot whispered reluctantly, with a certain despair. She clasped her hands. “Sore afraid” was something she’d heard in a story and had probably been dying to say aloud.
Then Delilah had it. “You’re worried about something?”
Dot nodded wretchedly. “I’m afraid to tell you, because you won’t believe me.”
“We’re always interested in what you have to say, Dot,” Angelique said. Mostly truthfully.
Dot glanced around the room at the encouraging expressions, and pulled in a deep breath. “Last night... as I came in from the donkey race...” She swallowed. “I think I heard a ghost.”
Nearly everyone in the room was riveted now. This was better thanThe Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.
But wary, meaning-saturated glances surreptitiously ricocheted between the people in the room who were fairly certain they knew what Dot had actually heard.
Delilah cleared her throat. “Dot,” she said gently. “We’ve had this conversation. About the wind and drafts. And the fact that we have no ghosts.”
“That you know of,” Lucien muttered wickedly.
“That’s why I didn’t want to tell you!” Shewrung her hands. “I knew you would say that, but I’m not a looby, Ipromise, and I swear to you on our chandelier that it wasn’t the wind. The wind can’t make a sound like Ohhhhh...Ohhhhh...Ahhh Ahhhh AaaaAAAUUGGGGGHSimon!”
Her raspy cry of ecstatic anguish seemed to echo endlessly in the ensuing silence.
No one was prepared. In the aftermath, everyone looked around to discover they were all variously covering their heads with their hands or gripping the arms of their chairs as if a hurricane had blown through the room.
Eyes were unanimously bulging.
Except for Mrs. Cuthbert’s.
Alexandra noticed that Mrs. Cuthbert’s eyes had rolled back in her head and her chair was teetering.
“Smelling salts! We need smelling salts!” Alexandra sprang up just as Captain Hardy and Mr. Delacorte leaped forward. They caught Mrs. Cuthbert just as she toppled out.
Her swoon had a soft landing on the carpet, cradled by men.
“I think Dot may have solved our problem,” Delilah whispered to Angelique just before she leaped from her chair.
“The Dawsons, or killing Mrs. Cuthbert?” Angelique replied on a whisper.
They hastened to her side with smelling salts.
Alexandra patted her wrists gently. “Mrs. Cuthbert? You’re all right. You’re safe.”
Mrs. Cuthbert gazed up from the carpet at theworried faces ringing her. Two of them, belonging to the Dawsons, were scarlet.
“You are either the strangest kind people I’ve ever met, or the kindest strange people I’ve ever met,” Mrs. Cuthbert finally said to them all, woozily.
“I’ll get the sherry,” Delilah murmured.
“And glasses, too?” Angelique asked her. “For all of us, I think.”
“I’m going to drink mine straight from the bottle,” Delilah said, only half jesting, as she swept from the room.
After a few moments of tender fussing by the crowd, Mrs. Cuthbert sat up, and seemed to be genuinely enjoying the attention.
“Prudence, dear, I’m so sorry you had a fright.” Mrs. Pariseau’s knees cracked when she crouched next to her old friend.
“Do you see?” Dot felt vindicated. “I’m not the only one afraid of ghosts. Mrs. Cuthbert is, too!”
Alexandra recalled again what Magnus had said about Mrs. Cuthbert, and it struck her forcibly now as profoundly, matter-of-factly insightful, compassionate, and frank:Frightened creatures use whatever defenses they have at their disposal. Her throat went thick as she freshly understood where and just exactly how he’d learned that, and how he’d understood her little episode of throwing things.