Old Lover's Ghost by Joan Smith

Author:Joan Smith [Smith, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1994-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Despite his lame ankle, Merton was already at the breakfast table the next morning when Charity came downstairs. He and Lewis sat together, harmony restored after Lewis’s prank. She was happy to see that Merton was not the kind of man who bore a grudge. He reached for the walking stick propped by his chair in a token effort of rising to greet her. Charity just smiled her sympathy and motioned him to remain seated. The smudges beneath his dark eyes told her he had not slept much.

“Good morning, Merton,” she said. “You are not looking your usual hardy self. I hope the ankle did not give you too bad a night?”

“Good morning, Charity. I slept well enough once I got to bed—at three o’clock. The singing nun was extremely active in my chamber, according to Mr. Wainwright. But she did not leave it. That was Lewis’s little prank. It seems we had another haunting as well.”

“No!”

“Oh, yes. Or at least Mama is convinced it was a ghost.”

“But you nailed the attic window above her room shut and blocked the holes in the clothespresses.”

“I fancy this ghost came directly from Miss Monteith’s room.”

“It was a white pigeon,” Lewis said, looking up from his plate of gammon and eggs.

Merton swallowed his annoyance at having his story plundered, but continued. “I heard Mama’s shouts of terror as I was finally preparing for bed. I hobbled down the hallway to see what was amiss. When I opened the door, a bird flew into my face. It gave me the shock of my life, I can tell you. No wonder Mama was shrieking. She says it was the soul of Meg, come to haunt her. It is a vicious stunt to terrorize her,” he finished grimly.

“Could the bird have gotten in by an open window during the day and been awakened during the night?” she asked.

“That hardly seems likely. Pigeons are not insomniacs after all. Why should it sleep peacefully while she was in her room and awaken at two-thirty in the morning?”

“Could have drugged it,” Lewis suggested. “Fed it a mouthful of laudanum.”

Charity nodded. “Papa has felt from the first that Miss Monteith should be let go.”

“Easier said than done, unfortunately,” Merton replied. “Mama has become attached to her. Something else occurs to me as well. This latest ‘haunting’ happened just after Mama spoke to Penley about giving that five thousand to the charity fund. She had not definitely decided to do it.”

“My five thousand,” Lewis muttered.

“You are suggesting some connivance between St. John and Miss Monteith?” Charity asked.

“Not necessarily. My thinking is that Miss Monteith is after the money for herself. She wishes to convince Mama to give the money to her, not the fund. She is Meg’s sister after all, her closest living relative. A sort of posthumous bequest.”

“Did your mama mention this possibility?”

“No, she was too upset to talk rationally. Miss Monteith gave her a paregoric draft. And suggested that Mama would like to move to another room—now that we have made her own chamber ghost-proof.

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