Page 22 of Two Blessings For His Duchess
Nathaniel offered a small nod. “I will endeavor to be less irritable from this moment on. In fact, I shall make an effort to stay out of your way as much as possible so that we do not find ourselves constantly at odds. It appears you and I cannot speak for more than a single minute without finding something to argue about.”
At that, a genuine smile finally broke across Euphemia’s face, and she lowered her head, a faint blush warming her cheeks. She remained quiet for a brief moment, considering his words, before she looked back up.
“Very well. So long as you agree that I am permitted to interact with your daughters, I will stay.”
“Agreed,” Nathaniel murmured.
As the tension completely drained from the air, a sudden, sharp awareness settled over him. He realized just how closely they were standing, close enough to catch the faint scent of orange blossoms clinging to her hair. He quickly took another step back, clearing his throat as he reestablished a distance.
“I shall leave you to continue with your day, then,” Nathaniel said. “I am certain you have a great deal of managing and catching up to do within the estate. I will be in my study if I am required.”
With a final, polite nod, he turned and walked away. As he entered the sanctuary of his study and shut the door behind him, he let out a long, slow breath.
For the first time in weeks, the tight knot of anger in his chest had completely unraveled. He had spent so much energy bracing himself for a battle, trying with everything in him to maintain absolute control, yet the resolution they had just reached felt vastly better than any victory.
For once, they hadn’t fought. They had actually come to an understanding, and as he sat down at his desk and pulled his ledgers toward him, Nathaniel noted with strange satisfaction just how good it felt to finally agree on something.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Creeeeak.
The sound pulled her from sleep before her mind could make sense of it.
A slow, drawn-out creak... the kind that came from a door being pushed open by someone who was either trying very hard to be quiet, or trying very hard not to be. Euphemia’s eyes snapped open. She lay entirely paralyzed beneath her heavy quilts, her heart hammering frantically against her ribs as she stared at the door of her bedchamber. Sure enough, the door had swung open just an inch, and a faint, flickering light was bleeding through the gap, casting long, dancing shadows across her ceiling.
She shut her eyes tightly.
Everything is fine, Effie. Don’t overthink this.
She was in a large house, and large houses had staff… and staff sometimes moved through corridors at odd hours for perfectly reasonable reasons. She was a rational woman. She was not going to panic.
But then again, the house was too vast, with far too many empty corridors, for it not to be haunted. It was simply a mathematical impossibility for a place this old and grand to be free of spirits. Because the thing was Greymoor was old. Extremely old. Mrs. Gable had said so herself, three hundred years at minimum, possibly more, and three hundred years was a significant amount of time for a place to accumulate…things.Unresolved things. Unhappy things.
It was well documented, she had read enough to know that houses which had stood long enough, and witnessed enough grief, did not always let it go quietly. The energy of generations had to go somewhere.
But what did I do to anger it?
Was the house itself rejecting her presence? Had the phantom come to punish her for her shortcomings? Her brain reminded her that it was now past midnight. She had read about that. The hours between twelve and three were not, historically, considered the safe ones. There was a reason every account she had ever come across placed these things firmly in the small hours and not, say, at eleven in the morning over breakfast.
The door creaked open an inch further, a long, agonizing whine of old hinges, and beneath it she could swear she heard the faint deliberate scuffle of footsteps.
The Cock Lane Ghost?
Euphemia sighed and shut her eyes even tighter. She wished she had not just thought of the Cock Lane Ghost. That particular case had begun with nothing more than a scratching sound in the night in a perfectly ordinary London house, and it had terrified half the city for the better part of a year before anyone had worked out what it actually was. A perfectly ordinary house. In London. Which was not three hundred years old, was not called Greymoor and did not have corridors that seemed specifically designed to be unsettling.
Just sleep, Effie. It would go away.
She told herself firmly that there were no such things as spirits.
Her eyes shot open as her brain pointed out that this was exactly the sort of thing a person said right before they encountered one.
What if the spirit knew she was failing at her role? What if it was angry that she still couldn’t remember the names of half the footmen, or that she was struggling so thoroughly to do her best to blend into this strict, intimidating family?
‘I am trying my best,’she thought fiercely, a sudden burst of panicked adrenaline replacing her terror. She would not bedriven out of her own home by a specter without a fight. If she had to battle an ancient Duchess-hating phantom to prove she belonged here, she would do it.
Steeling her courage, Euphemia flung back the covers and swung her legs out of bed. She grabbed the nearest weapon available, a heavy silver candlestick from her nightstand, and turned toward the door.
The breath caught in her throat. Standing just a few feet inside the threshold of her room, illuminated from below by the ghostly glow of a small lantern, was a small, pale figure.
