Her husband’s answer was a soft snore. He was fast asleep.
Oh, well. She was quite used to plotting these things without him. Men were dear creatures, but the vast majority of them didn’t seem to have much of an imagination.
After conceiving her strategy, she dozed until the voices and giggles died down, signaling all were abed. Joseph had rolled over, leaving her free to slip out of bed without disturbing him. Tying a wrapper over her night rail, she padded across the chamber in her bare feet, her toes curling at the chill in the stone floor.
The house was amazingly quiet. Rose’s room was right beyond hers, so Chrystabel tiptoed to the door and tapped her fingernails against it—rat-a-tat-tat. Then she moved to the door of the room she’d assigned to Kit and did the same thing.
Nothing. Rose was a heavy sleeper, and Kit must be, too. She tapped on both their doors again, then a third time. Finally, the sound of a latch sent her scurrying back to her room. Suppressing a giddy giggle, she pulled the door shut behind her—but not quite all the way.
Her ear pressed to the slit of an opening, she heard someone pad into the corridor and knock loudly on another door.
“Rowan!” came a harsh whisper. Then louder, “Rowan, open up!”
It was Jewel’s voice, not Rose’s. Chrystabel sighed as she listened.
Another door opened. “What?” Rowan demanded rather ungraciously.
“I heard a noise.”
“What kind of noise?” he asked through a yawn.
“I’m not sure. Maybe a ghost.”
That idea was greeted by a snort. “There are no ghosts at Trentingham.”
“I heard something, Rowan! Listen, will you?”
A long spell passed where there was no sound. Of course, Chrystabel wasn’t tapping on doors.
“It was nothing,” Rowan said at last. “Go back to bed.”
“I’m afraid of ghosts. I cannot sleep. Will you stay with me?”
“I cannot visit your chamber in the middle of the night. That wouldn’t be proper.” Even at the tender age of ten, Rowan knew that.
Good boy, his mother thought.
“What if I hear it again?”
The boy’s sigh would have done a grown man justice. “Are you hungry?”
Jewel seemed to consider that question a moment. “I suppose I am.”
“Maybe it was your stomach rumbling. Let’s go downstairs and find something to eat.”
Chrystabel waited until their footfalls had proceeded down the staircase before easing open her door. It seemed neither Rose nor Kit had awakened even with Rowan and Jewel talking outside their rooms. Something louder than those benign little taps would be necessary.
She scratched her fingernails down the front of Rose’s door, a nice, satisfying scrape as she raked down the carved linenfold design. After repeating the motion, she moved to Kit’s door and did it twice more.
Hearing a latch again, she darted back into her room.
“Just take a look, Rand! There must be something there. I cannot sleep with these noises!” It was Lily this time, Chrystabel realized with more than a little frustration. “Do you see anything?”
“Nothing. Would you like to come and look for yourself?”
“No,” Lily said. “But those sounds cannot come from nowhere.”
“Houses settle. You told me there have been no ghosts at Trentingham in the past, and there’s no reason to believe one would suddenly arrive now. Hang it, now that you’ve wakened me, I’m hungry. Shall we go downstairs and find something to eat?”
For a brand-new son-in-law, Rand certainly felt at home here, Chrystabel thought wryly. While she waited for them to start downstairs, she looked around her chamber for something that would make more noise.
Her silver comb ought to do it. She snatched it up and peeked out her door. All was clear.
Drawn sideways across the wooden linenfold grooves, the comb made quite a racket. It wasn’t long at all before the click of another latch sent her to safety behind her own door.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she heard Ford say.
She barely stifled a groan.
A long minute or two passed while she listened to footsteps pacing up and down the corridor. Ford, the scientific one, was a much more thorough ghost-hunter than either of his brothers-in-law. “All’s clear,” she finally heard him tell Violet. “I swear it. You hungry? Let’s go downstairs and find something to eat.”
Slumped against the door, Chrystabel pictured her oldest daughter slipping from her childhood bed and into a wrapper. Joseph snored peacefully behind her, and Rose apparently still slept in her room. Vexing girl must take after her father.
By the time Violet and Ford clattered down the steps—being none too quiet about it—Chrystabel had decided drastic measures were in order. Leaving the comb behind, she ventured once more into the corridor.
She paused by Rose’s door, then pushed down on the latch and opened it a smidgen. “Whooooooooo,” she called inside, a breathy, piercing whistle.
The fourth child of five, Chrystabel had long ago mastered the art of impersonating an eerie apparition. How better to get back at her older sisters than by scaring them silly? It was a far more lasting retribution than pinching or hair-pulling.
“Whooooooooo,” she called twice more for good measure, then hurried to Kit’s room.
“Whooooooooo. Whooooooooo.” She’d drawn breath for another exhalation when footsteps sounded in Rose’s room down the corridor.
She barely made it back into her own chamber before her daughter’s door slammed open. “What was that? Who’s there?”
Unlike her sisters, Rose didn’t sound scared. Her voice wasn’t tentative and frightened. Aggravated would better describe it.
Rose’s footfalls paced the corridor up and halfway back before Chrystabel heard another door opening. Kit’s, thank goodness. It had to be—his was the only occupied room left.
“What on earth is going on out here?” he said. “I thought I heard a ghost.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Rose said peevishly.
“Obviously,” Kit drawled, “you have never torn down an old building.”
“Obviously,” Rose returned, “you have a lively imagination.”
Kit only laughed. Lightning strike her down, Chrystabel thought, if these two weren’t perfect for each other.
No lightning bolts came down the chimney.
“Are you hungry?”
