Old Lover's Ghost by Joan Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

aside to Charity, “He is our cousin. John gave him the living.”
    As there was nothing else to be done at the moment, Lewis offered to take Miss Wainwright on a tour of the grounds. She was sorry she had accepted when she noticed that Merton looked a little disappointed.
    Her spirits were restored when Merton called after them, “You might take Miss Wainwright to the stable to pick out a mount, Lewis.” He turned to Charity. “I took the liberty of sending a footman off to London for your riding habit early this morning, ma’am. With luck he should be back by this evening.” He had remembered! The speed of his action suggested he was very eager for that ride.
    The walk with Lewis was about what she expected. He knew virtually nothing about the architecture and the gardens of the house. When she dallied in the rose garden, he flicked a bloom and said, “Those are roses, I believe. Yes, that’s it. I’ve been pricked by a thorn. Curst things. I cannot imagine why Mama wants a gardenful of thorns.”
    Her questions about the landscaping of the park were met with a similar lack of knowledge or interest. There was said to be a Judas tree planted to mark the execution of Charles I, but Lewis had no notion of which tree it might be.
    “Someone called Reptile, or Repton, or some such thing did the place up years ago. I daresay he chopped it down. He made a mess of the place. Put in that little stream you see there and clumped the trees in threes. I shall show you where I fish for trout.” Lewis the poet would have shown her a more interesting tour, but he had decided poetry was dull stuff after all when compared to hunting for ghosts in a dandy satin-lined cape.
    About the only area they were both interested in was the stable. Merton did indeed keep an excellent one. There were twenty stalls occupied, counting Mr. Wainwright’s team. Well-muscled brown and black flanks gleamed in the sunlight. A pair of grooms tended the horses, brushing them and leading one pair out for exercise. Charity tentatively chose a bay mare called Charmer for her mount. When they espied the vicar’s gig driving through the park, they decided to return to the house to oversee the patching up of the holes in the clothes-presses and the wall between.
     

Chapter Five
     
    “About as much fun as watching grass grow” was Lewis’s opinion of watching the estate carpenter putty up the holes in the clothespresses and the wall between them. “Let us see what your papa is up to instead.”
    They found Wainwright in the library poring over yellowed and sere documents pertaining to the history of Keefer Hall.
    “Have you found any more ghosts, sir?” Lewis asked.
    “An interesting account of the ravens,” Wainwright replied. “I had heard of them before, of course. It is said they have been here since the execution of Charles I.”
    “Really? That long!” Lewis exclaimed. “I had no idea ravens were such long livers.”
    “Not the same birds, Lord Winton, but six ravens.”
    “Ah, hatched right there on the roof, no doubt.”
    Mr. Wainwright did not like to have his dramatic soliloquies interrupted by the audience. He lowered his black brows and continued. “Birds are frequently harbingers of luck, either ill or good. At Longleat it is said the family will die out if the swans that nest on the lakes of Longleat ever leave.”
    “Yes, I have heard that old canard—er, legend— forever.” Lewis nodded.
    “At Radley Hall, where I was doing my research last year—perhaps you read my extract? No? I have a copy in my room if you would like to have a glance at it. At Radley Hall the swans fly around the house to foretell a death. There are black swans at Radley. There was a theory that unwonted activity of black birds foretold death. The ravens here at Keefer Hall throw that theory askew. What I have found in this account of Sir Nicholas Dechastelaine, your great-uncle—”
    “You never want to believe anything Uncle Nick said. Drunk or