Whispers at Midnight Read online

  Sarah Fairfax had promised Elizabeth a tempting sum to stay on just a little longer. But at her death, Sarah had left only a score of debts and now Elizabeth was as disillusioned as Amanda to find herself penniless and alone in the world. Poor creature, she had expected the bonanza Sarah promised to see her through her waning years. But the money had simply been all gone.

  Amanda paid the driver from the few coins in her purse, then climbed the slippery stone steps that led to the entrance. She wasn’t expected in Williamsburg for some months yet, and to her knowledge there was only Aunt Elise’s old housekeeper staying at Wicklow. But as she glanced up quickly, she thought she saw a shadow pass one of the three round windows set high above the doors.

  Amanda had the peculiar feeling someone had been watching from that window and waiting for her carriage. Yet when she stopped and peered up she saw only three blackened rounds of glass laced over with ornate iron grillwork. There was no moving shadow.

  Forgetting Elizabeth for a moment, Amanda pounded a tarnished brass knocker on the heavy-timbered door. As she waited for a response, Wicklow commanded her full attention. How strange that such a house could look as if it had thoughts and feelings of its own. Wicklow tonight had a sad, blank look as if it were in mourning. The woeful appearance disturbed Elizabeth.

  Amanda, getting no answer to her knocking, stepped down several steps until she could see the entire front of the house once more. It was true Wicklow was foreboding, especially now as the brick, wet from a day’s rain, shone blood-red in the moonlight. The brass-covered onion domes atop the twin towers had aged to an odious green. Water dripped from them in slow, twisting streams. The towers seemed to spiral so high they menaced the heavy gray clouds that rolled wildly above the roof line.

  Below the towers a dense growth of ivy clung to the front walls and had taken over too much of the house. The thick mat of vines threatened to ensnare the front door, and one would not be able to go in or out without feeling the touch of trailing green tendrils.

  Elizabeth, beside her, had begun to shiver and was eyeing the front door nervously. Amanda gave her a reassuring smile and started back up the stone steps, her thoughts again on Jubal Wicklow, who had built the house fifty years ago. He had taken great liberties in combining architectural styles. The result was a miscreant mix of Irish manor house and Byzantine castle that had resulted in a monstrous structure unequaled in its oddities.

  “Stop the carriage, Amanda!” Elizabeth, her face frantic, waved to the driver, who at the same moment cracked his whip over the team’s heads and pulled away from the house. “We can find an inn at Williamsburg.” She shivered and turned her back on the high red walls of Wicklow.

  “Too late, Elizabeth, the carriage is gone.” Amanda could hear the horses’ hooves splashing through puddles and the laboring wheels cutting a path through a layer of mud in the narrow lane that led to the town road. As the carriage disappeared, it seemed to draw the faint moonlight with it and soon she and Elizabeth were standing in a great gulf of blackness that pressed down on them like the murky, secret depths of the ocean.

  “Oh, my soul,” Elizabeth’s mournful voice whined out in the darkness as she twisted the brass knobs on the door. “We’re locked out.” Why hadn’t she left Amanda in Williamsburg instead of coming to this awful place? The girl wasn’t her responsibility anymore, not since Sarah Fairfax had died and left them both nearly destitute. Still, she had not been able to face traveling to the colonies alone and had felt it her duty to see Amanda settled in her new home before she went on to her sister in Philadelphia.

  Elizabeth shivered more violently beneath her shawl. Amanda deserved more than the handful of debts Sarah Fairfax had left her. Poor, poor Sarah, Elizabeth thought, sealing her eyes shut tight as she huddled close to Amanda. If only she had possessed one-tenth the common sense of little Amanda, she’d have been a wealthy woman instead of one who only gave the illusion of wealth.

  Still, Elizabeth reasoned, illusion had been Sarah Fairfax’s greatness and she had needed nothing more. It had been Sarah’s way to draw strength and support from those around her, like she had from Amanda. Sarah’s demands for attention and devotion had all but denied Amanda any existence of her own. Elizabeth wrung her hands. What was to become of Amanda now, when all she had in the world was this ugly monster called Wicklow House?

  “I have a key, Elizabeth, but it seemed best to knock first.” Elise had given her the key in London not long before she died. As Elizabeth watched, she twisted it in the lock and swung the heavy door open, surprised that it opened soundlessly.

  Amanda entered, then looked quickly back, thinking Elizabeth had called her name. But when she asked, Elizabeth shook her head negatively and Amanda was left wondering if her mind had taken a flight of fancy. She had the peculiar feeling that she had been expected after all, and yet it was apparent from the dust covers over the furnishings and from those which protected the chandeliers that no one was there.

  A faint glimmer of light flickered from a single candle that burned in the cavernous front hall. Amanda took several more steps.

  “No one is here,” Elizabeth said fearfully, hesitating on the threshold.

  “No. And I did not expect anyone. Though I am sure old Gussie is in her rooms over the kitchen. She has stayed on, I understand, since the house was closed.” Amanda bustled about lighting more candles until the great hall was flooded with a golden glow of light. “Aunt Elise told me about her. She keeps the place.” Amanda seized Elizabeth by the arm and drew her inside, shutting and locking the door behind her. “No doubt she’s sleeping. We won’t give her a fright by waking her in the middle of the night. We’ll go right upstairs and get you to bed.”

  Elizabeth put her hands to her heart and shook piteously.

  “I won’t close my eyes with that thing in the house,” she moaned, and stood transfixed to the floor, her eyes directed to a huge wooden figure that rose fifteen feet from the slate floor and ruled the space between the double staircases. But for its size, it looked horribly real, the face dark and the large glass eyes angrily reflecting the candlelight, the mouth set in a dour line.

  “The Turkish King,” Amanda said, admiring the grim-faced statue with its painted robes of saffron and red and the bright painted-on jewels of the turban. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “It’s hideous. This house is hideous.” Elizabeth’s weary eyes roamed the great hall with its dark polished teakwood walls and filigreed enamel panels in jewel colors. Black urns, filled with peacock feathers fanned out to show their glorious colors, sat in rows against the walls. Stairs of black slate seemed to float in a graceful curve to the second floor. Rails, braced over more of the filigreed panels, were lacquered in bright scarlet. The hall had a sort of mystic beauty, Elizabeth admitted, but it reminded her of a pagan temple. She imagined she could feel evil seeping from every cranny and corner of the strange house.

  Trembling, Elizabeth half-expected to see a swarm of turbaned priests step out of the shadows to sacrifice the two of them to the wooden idol that glowered menacingly at them.

  Elizabeth’s voice wavered. “Amanda, you can’t live here. Remember what the man on the ship said. The place has ghosts. He said there was a curse and that something dreadful has happened to everyone who owned this house.”

  “That was only a lot of talk, Elizabeth,” Amanda said gently. “You can’t believe in curses. There is always a sensible explanation for everything. Ghosts are generally the result of someone playing a prank or of a too-stimulated imagination,” she said.

  Amanda felt a touch of weariness and sighed. How could two people look at the same things and feel so differently about them? The very things about Wicklow that bothered Elizabeth gave Amanda a sense of exhilaration. She should never have let Elizabeth listen to the talk on the ship. The poor old dear was really afraid.

  Every old house had its legends, and naturally Wicklow had more than its share because it was so different. The stories of the ghost of Juba
l Wicklow, who had been killed in a duel, were to be expected, as were the tales of strange whispers said to float unexpectedly through the dark halls. But like most such stories, the tales had no basis.

  The only odd occurrences Amanda had seen when she stayed at Wicklow House those few months in her childhood had been the bullyragging by one of Aunt Elise’s two sons to give her a fright. Ryne Sullivan moaning and prancing about wrapped in a bed linen was the only ghost she suspected of having haunted Wicklow’s halls. Aunt Elise had taken him to task about that chicanery, saying he was much too old for such a deed.

  Still, Amanda was surprised the house actually frightened Elizabeth. She found its strangeness intriguing and stimulating. The Turkish King with its garish, bright colors delighted her as much as it had eleven years ago when she had seen it as a child of twelve.

  Reverently Amanda strolled to the foot of the statue. She looked up at the figure, dusty, dirty, and with cobwebs raddled across its chest and arms. The statue had cast a sort of spell over her when she was a child and she could feel the same bewitching attraction coming over her now as she stood in childlike awe at its feet.

  Holding a candle close, she rubbed a hand over the brass plate shaped like a scroll and bolted to the base. The engraved words were written in Persian. Hadn’t she known what they meant once? She remembered standing in the same spot with Aunt Elise and learning the words to a rhyme which somehow had slipped her memory over the years.

  Amanda remembered, too, more tales of treasure and dead men that the boys, Gardner and Ryne, had told her. Aunt Elise’s sons were still strong in her memory. Gardner with his red hair and gentle ways; Ryne, dark-haired and fiery, a trickster who had delighted in tormenting a mere girl. She had followed them both about mercilessly, demanding to be included in all their activities. They would be men now. How would they feel about her inheriting the house that had been their boyhood home?

  Amanda smiled, feeling as if she were passing through a mirror to the times when Aunt Elise would find her at the foot of the statue sitting with her arms and legs folded in the same manner as those of the king. Aunt Elise had said then she believed Amanda loved Wicklow more than anyone else, even her own sons. Perhaps that was why she had willed the house to Amanda rather than to Gardner or Ryne. It had been most unexpected, especially since Elise Sullivan had not been her real aunt, merely a close friend of her mother’s.

  Her thoughts wandered nostalgically back through the days of that summer. Her mother had done a tour in the colonies, and while she traveled the larger cities, Amanda remained at Wicklow. She remembered walking along the riverbank with Elise and the times she had ridden Ryne’s spotted pony. Elise’s dressmaker had sewn new gowns for her; one of them, of a peach-colored dimity, had been an exact copy of a gown of Elise’s.

  Aunt Elise had spent long hours teaching her the game of chess that summer. She remembered the set, an unusual one, the Eastern monarchs and their forces, white of gleaming ivory, the black of shiny ebony. Good against evil, it had seemed to her childish mind, and had insisted on always having the white pieces. She had never forgotten those pleasant hours devoted solely to her, nor had she forgotten what Elise had told her.

  “I love my sons but I have always wished for a daughter,” she said. “And you, my darling, have helped fill that void for me. I shall always consider you my daughter, even though you are Sarah’s.”

  Across the ivory-and-gold board it had been easy to form a bond with Aunt Elise and to imagine that kindly woman, so interested in a young girl, as her mother. After that time, she had corresponded with Elise often, and seen her twice when she was in Europe. The attachment to Elise, begun early in her life, had lasted through time and separation, and now, even death.

  Elizabeth moaned from behind her and Amanda turned to smile at the old woman, a look of fondness lighting her eyes. There was a movement from high above as she beckoned Elizabeth toward the stairs. A small black shadow appeared and quickly retreated behind the turbaned head of the king. A screeching voice issued piercingly from that point. Amanda gave a gasp as she felt a sharp stirring of alarm.

  “Stay away! Stay away!” the shrill voice warned.

  Elizabeth screamed and collapsed against the wall.

  “Who’s there?” Amanda demanded, scrambling around as the voice shattered the silence once more. She felt the prickling of her skin and at the same time the shaking loose of a deep memory from her childhood. She knew the voice, but could he still be alive?

  “King of light, chase the night. King of light, chase the night.” A fluttering sounded as the small shadow lifted from the shoulder of the Turkish King and swooped across the hall to rest on the banister halfway up the stairs. Amanda could see the green-feathered creature with its malevolent black eyes quite clearly.

  Her anxiety subsided and she laughed breathlessly. “Why, it is Ezra! And still alive.” Turning to Elizabeth, she added, “It’s only a parrot, a pet. Nothing to be afraid of. He’s been here for ages,” she went on in a light, lively voice. “I remember Aunt Elise saying parrots can live almost a century. Why, Elizabeth,”—Amanda’s eyes swept up to the bird—”Ezra belonged to Jubal Wicklow. Imagine that.”

  Apparently certain the two women meant him no harm, the parrot lifted his wings and showed a splash of gold from underneath as he flapped them noisily for a moment before flying back to his resting place on the statue’s shoulder. The shadow at the window, Amanda thought, as Ezra clacked his beak against the wood. It had been the bird watching.

  She noticed Elizabeth still leaning her weight against the wall and nodded.

  “Elizabeth, you’re tired.” She spoke gently, stepping beside the old woman. “Come upstairs to bed. You’ve a long trip before you tomorrow.”

  Elizabeth obeyed like a recalcitrant child. Amanda had to grasp her limp, trembling hand and lead her up the gracefully curving staircase. It seemed always to be like this, that she had to take charge and look after her elders, just as she had with her mother. Sarah Fairfax had been the most accomplished actress in London but she had needed pampering from everyone, including her daughter. Without Amanda’s efforts to keep her financial and personal affairs straight, Sarah would have suffered ruin years ago.

  But now Amanda had only herself to care for. Once Elizabeth was on her way, she would be quite alone, except for Wicklow. Despite how anyone else might view the house, Wicklow would never be a monstrosity to Amanda.

  She would not even let the gloomy darkness at the top of the stairs mislead her. Wicklow was a haven. The home she had always wanted, a place to settle and take root, a place to establish her own life. A place where she wouldn’t be simply Sarah Fairfax’s daughter. She needed Wicklow, and from the looks of the, place, all dust-laden and weary, it needed her too.

  ***

  “You won’t leave me alone, will you, Amanda?” Elizabeth, in her nightclothes, climbed into the four-poster bed hung with rich rose-silk curtains. She had grown calmer once inside the lovely bedroom that had belonged to Aunt Elise. Here there was none of the Eastern influence that disturbed Elizabeth. It was a lady’s room, done in rose satins and brocades with yards and yards of lace and ribbon trimmings on the bed curtains and draperies. A little cluttered perhaps, for Aunt Elise had been a collector like Jubal Wicklow.

  Amanda glanced around. The room wasn’t exactly as she remembered. There were new things and more things, but it was lovely nonetheless.

  A candle’s soft illumination lit the room: the pale rose-patterned wallpaper, the fat sofa with layers of embroidered cushions, an oil painting of Aunt Elise mounted in a heavy gilt frame, a row of delicate little china figures on the pink marble mantel, more peacock feathers in a vase by the door, the low dressing table with a wide silver-wrapped mirror. Once Amanda had pulled the remaining dustcovers from the furniture, Elizabeth looked around and acknowledged that the room was as elegant a bedroom as Sarah Fairfax had occupied in her rented town house in London.

  The rose scent Aunt Elise had wor
n still clung faintly in the air. Perhaps it always would, having over decades permeated the walls and the fabrics. But it was a comforting smell and made it seem as if at any moment Aunt Elise, with her white hair and clear blue eyes, might come sweeping into her old bedroom. How nice that would be, but how impossible, unless there really were ghosts.

  “I’ll leave a candle burning.” Amanda tucked the covers about Elizabeth’s shoulders and bade her good night. “I’m going to bathe and get to bed myself.”

  Wearily Elizabeth mumbled a reply. Before Amanda had closed the bedroom door, the old woman’s thin lashes floated down like tea leaves settling to the bottom of a cup and she was asleep. Amanda hurried away. She had found another habitable bedroom, a plain one at the far end of the hall. She couldn’t remember to whom it had belonged—it had been so long ago, and details of the house were fragmented memories from a young girl’s mind. But it didn’t really matter. The house had been closed for months and she could take her time about selecting a room that suited her after she had looked through the whole place. Tonight she was so tired that any bed would be wonderful, once she had bathed.

  Crossing the narrow bedroom, Amanda began quickly removing the blue serge traveling dress she wore. She was glad the bedclothes here were fresh and she wouldn’t have to remake the bed. The hem of her skirt was wet, and her petticoats, too, had absorbed enough water to require hours to dry.

  She slipped out of her chemise and carefully spread all her garments over a chair. She had brought only a small traveling bag upstairs. Her trunk still sat outside on the sheltered entry of the house, and she hadn’t the fortitude to try to bring it up herself. A blanket would serve well enough as a dressing gown until tomorrow, when she could unpack. She stripped one from the bed and wrapped herself in its soft, warm folds. Gathering up her bag, Amanda pattered barefoot to the bath.