Winifred, the healer who mothered them all, bustled down the stairs. “To the hall,” she cried merrily. “He’s headed this way.”
“I am not needed, am I? I should draw up diagrams for the Langstroth boxes so the carpenter knows what to do.” Iona knew the flaw in that argument, but she hoped there were enough people vying for the earl’s interest that she wouldn’t be missed.
“You cannot expect any of us to explain why you need new hives,” Winifred said in exasperation, finding the flaw immediately. “Now come along or we’ll spend the evening listening to Grace prose on about the lost art of spinning.”
“Her woolens really are works of art,” Iona protested, falling in beside the castle’s queen bee. The older woman was much the same height as she but considerably heavier. If Iona sat behind her, she might blend into her shadow. . .
Except Winifred took the chair in front of the fireplace, near the gas sconces so she was illuminated from all sides. Iona searched for a distant corner where the light didn’t reach. She wasn’t much of one for needlework, but she could jot the day’s notes while the others talked. More light would be nice, but her need for invisibility reigned over neat handwriting.
“The spirts are restless,” Simone announced in puzzlement, sweeping in behind them in a swish of summery fabrics and transparent shawls more suited to a hot July day. “Has something stirred them?”
After the isolation of Craigmore, Iona appreciated the various personalities populating Wystan. It wasn’t the same as her sister’s company, of course, but it kept her from being too lonely. They didn’t require that she do anything except listen, which she’d learned to do in long summers at her mother’s knee.
Even after all these years, she missed her mother fiercely.
Some of the older women were already gathered in their favorite seats. Iona didn’t usually try to disappear with this group, but if the earl meant to grace them with his presence—
She carried a small chair to a corner near the dark windows, behind a hanging basket of ferns.
The huge hall they used as a drawing room was large enough to hold a village, so the ladies didn’t precisely fill it with numbers so much as presence. Their lively chatter dispelled the gloom. Iona could sense their joy and anticipation and smiled at their eagerness. Sometimes, rural solitude could be tedious. Iona was well accustomed to it.
“Where is Lady Alice?” Winifred called sharply.
“She was not feeling well and has gone to bed,” one of the younger women replied.
After the debacle in the duke’s library, Iona could see that Lady Alice might find seeing the earl a trifle awkward. Still, she was glad the desperate lady had taken up the offer of Wystan’s shelter. The Malcolm women had no difficulty embracing Alice and her scandalous condition. They were already preparing a nursery for an event almost seven months in the future.
An almost visible sigh whispered around the room as his lordship entered.
In a sea of feminine perfumes and rustling skirts, Lord Ives forged an imposing masculine presence. He wasn’t a bulky man like his agent, but elegantly muscled, filling out the shoulders of his coat to perfection. He was still wearing old tweed and leather, but his collar was stark white against his sun-browned features, and his cravat was correct in all ways.
Iona studied him for the infamous Ives traits, but his dark eyes appeared more midnight blue than black. His nose was sharp and long but fitted well with stark cheekbones and square jaw. His hair was certainly Ives black with a hint of curl. He wore it off his collar in back, but a swathe fell across his high forehead. Trimmed sideburns softened the harshness of his jaw.
He was formidably masculine. Iona ducked her head when his gaze swept the room.
“Aunt Winifred.” Gerard acknowledged his aunt on her throne. “You are looking delightful, as always.”
He greeted distant cousins and was introduced to newcomers who made their presence known in the dimly-lit chamber. None of the people introduced appeared to be the beekeeper.
“The wool this spring was very fine.”
He thought the speaker, Grace, might be related to the wife of one of his uncles. The Ives side of his family had a distressing habit of marrying into the multitudinous Malcolms, probably due to proximity.
To make reparations for his earlier ill behavior, he complimented her on the beauty of the woven blanket in his chamber. He praised the cheese made by another of the ladies and inquired about the herb garden tended by a different aunt. The women didn’t hesitate to mention improvements that should be made or ideas for new projects of interest.
They were good women, he knew. They fed and clothed the poor with their efforts and employed a village with their projects. They did everything his wife might be expected to do—except share his bed, of course. He didn’t dare dip his wick in Wystan or the preacher would be at the door the next day.
He had just discovered the slight feminine shadow in a distant corner of the hall when an unearthly moan echoed from above.
One of his widowed cousins murmured “Oh, dear,” and turned to Winifred. “We had best see to Lady Alice.”
Lady Alice? Gerard suffered a moment of pure panic at the thought of the deceitful widow talking to his female relations. Alice was here? In his home? Why?
And what the hell was that keening—a banshee?
Winifred was already on her feet and out the door. The herbalist cousin followed, along with the widow who apparently translated spectral howls.
“Have a seat, Ives,” another aunt suggested tartly. “You needn’t hover. Tell us what you’ve been frivoling your time on.”
“I’d rather know what the commotion is about.” He should have put the medallion back in his pocket. He’d like a spirit’s opinion of his haunted household.
The wails had ceased as soon as the haunt had their attention.
“We call the
