Midnight in Austenland
Page 37

What a coincidence, she thought. There’s some animal out there howling just after we read about a howling ghost.
She heard it again.
“What is that?” Miss Gardenside was on her feet.
Colonel Andrews rushed to the window, looking around madly. “Why, I believe there is something in the garden!”
“I can’t see a blawsted thing,” Miss Charming said, peering beside him.
Colonel Andrews turned off the electric lamps and blew out some candles, dimming the room. “There. In the shrubs.”
Miss Charming gasped. Charlotte hurried to the window along with the others.
The sky was a watery black, evening stars and a low moon breathing a little color into pale shapes: the fountain, the gray-stoned drive, and the figure moving in the garden. Double take—yes, Charlotte did see someone out there, not plodding along like a creature with two feet, but, well … floating. Flitting in a mournful way. She could not see a face, only white robes and a headdress.
“It’s Mary Francis,” Miss Gardenside whispered.
Colonel Andrews opened the window, and a high, raspy wail came in on the cool night air.
“Perhaps she wishes to communicate,” said the colonel.
The figure stopped and its eyeless face turned toward the window, a pointed finger raised.
Charlotte startled away from the window. She had felt as if Mary Francis were pointing directly at her.
“Let’s chase her,” said Miss Gardenside, hastening out of the room.
“Wait!” said Colonel Andrews.
Off they both ran. Miss Charming and Charlotte hesitated before joining the chase.
Miss Gardenside, followed closely by Colonel Andrews, was cruising over the gravel drive and toward the garden. The ghost was still sliding along, though there was nothing haunting about its gestures now. In fact, they reflected the very human emotion of panic.
“Caution!” the colonel was yelling. “Not so hasty, Miss Gardenside. The spirit could be dangerous.”
“We’re not afraid of you!” Miss Gardenside shouted.
The ghost bent down to pick something up and then moved as if fleeing for its life—that is, if it weren’t already dead. The flowing headdress caught on a bush and the ghost tore it free.
“Wait!” shouted Miss Gardenside. “What are the secrets of death? Who really killed those nuns? What’s heaven like?”
Near the stables, the ghost disappeared.
“Where’d it go?” Miss Gardenside asked, out of breath.
“Dissolved … back into the ether … from whence all spirits come,” Colonel Andrews said, resting his hands on his knees while he slurped in air.
Charlotte and Miss Charming had reached the spot where the ghost had first appeared.
“Come look,” said Charlotte. “There are marks in the ground. See there? Long indentations, almost as if something with wheels rolled back and forth.”
A skateboard, Charlotte guessed silently. Our ghost was out here gleaming the cube.
“I did not know ghosts had invented the wheel,” Eddie said, ambling up from the house with Mr. Mallery. “They seem so Stone Age, wouldn’t you say?”
“ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” quoted Mr. Mallery.
Eddie pretended to look concerned. “Mallery, it is I, Edmund Grey. I say, Andrews, there Mallery goes calling me ‘Horatio’ again. Perhaps he would benefit from a brace of brandy. Or is that the problem?”
“What can these marks mean, Colonel?” asked Charlotte, as he and Miss Gardenside joined them.
Colonel Andrews lifted his hands. “Generally speaking, people do not chase after spirits. Generally speaking, people stay safe in drawing rooms and observe them from a distance and make frightened noises and might, for example, hide behind draperies and beg brave gentlemen to protect them from the frights of the night. Generally speaking.”
“Sorry,” said Miss Gardenside.
“Indeed, Miss Gardenside,” Eddie said, posing with one foot up on a bench. “If you had not run so boldly into the night, seeking adventure and questioning a phantasm from beyond the grave, I should have stood between you and the window whilst you quaked with fear. I should have said, Fear not, gentle maiden! And I should have closed the casement with nary the slightest tremble in my hand. Then I should have served you biscuits and let you win at whist even if I had been dealt the cards of a god!”
“You are, indeed, the best of men,” Miss Gardenside said, taking his arm.
“Aha! And I did not have to feed you that line. How spontaneous and sincere it sounded sprouting from your own lips.”
“It was sincere,” she said.
He put his hand over hers. “And you, Miss Gardenside, are the bravest and best of your sex.”
They smiled. And wow, their fondness for each other seemed real. Charlotte looked away. Miss Charming was beside Colonel Andrews, patting his back in a consoling way while making goo-goo faces to get him to smile. Mr. Mallery stood aside, hands in his jacket pockets. He was probably looking at her, though she couldn’t tell for certain in the darkness. Did Miss Gardenside ever observe Charlotte and Mallery and think, Wow, their affection seems so genuine!
The night was as warm as a breath on the cheek, and the couples took arms and strode through the garden, calling out for the ghost to attend them and grant them wishes.
“Yoo-hoo!” shouted Miss Charming. “Come back and make me the prettiest lassie at the ball!”
“I am not certain this particular specter was of the fairy godmother variety,” said Eddie.
“Well, you never know unless you try,” she said.
“By Hamlet’s father,” said Colonel Andrews with mock shock. “The wish has already been granted. You are stunning!”
Mr. Mallery was humming some tune under his breath.
“You seem content this evening,” Charlotte said.
“You know, I think I am.”
“You thrive out here where ghosts wander?”
“That is an intriguing place to inhabit.” He placed his hand atop hers, where it rested on his arm. His hand was cold. “Or perhaps I am just content to be with you.”
She sighed. And decided it was okay to let her heart flit and flutter around, and for her breath to get caught in her chest like the ghost’s flowing headdress on a shrub. It was okay to fall in love inside books and stories, and where was she if not inside a story? And wasn’t this why she’d come, after all? She felt certain she would be able to withdraw herself intact when the time came. She felt certain she was not in too much danger.