Eighteen

“What?” I said, thinking I must have misheard him.

“Papa’s alive. But he was dead, and now he scares me.”

Was this some strange manifestation of a child’s grief, I wondered? “What do you mean, Charles?”

The boy shivered. “I mean, I saw him. His ghost.”

I sought an explanation. “You were sleeping-”

“It was not a dream!” he insisted, with a familiar obstinacy.

I hesitated, then asked, “Charles, have you been speaking to the Banes?” The odious family was here-the dowager, Henry, William, and Fa

They had arrived, clearly, not so much for the funeral as for the reading of the will, and to say they were angry with its terms is to vastly understate the matter. Had William not intervened, the dowager, it seemed, would have been carried off on the spot by an apoplexy. “It is of no use, Mama,” he said. “You should have known how it would be.”

The dowager continued to bemoan her faithless nephew’s lack of consideration for his own family, but not quite so intensely. Nevertheless, there was enough ill-concealed venom among the Banes to recall to me my first encounter with them, and I made sure Charles was never left alone with them.

“No,” Charles said now. “I don’t like them.”

“You are a wise young man.”

“Then why don’t you believe me?”

“Did I say I did not believe you? Kindly refrain from making assumptions.”

“What are those?”

“Er-don’t believe you know something until you’re sure you do know it.”

He frowned as he puzzled this out, but he had stopped crying.

“Do you know, Charles-the more I think about this, the more I’m sure there is nothing to be frightened of here. Your father loved you very much, and would never harm you.”

“Yes,” he said, slowly. “And I have a great many things I should like to say to him, that I have been thinking of these past few days. But one can’t help but be frightened of ghosts, even good ghosts.”

“No one can blame you for feeling frightened. I’m glad you came to me. I promise I will protect you, Charles. Your father asked that of me, and I gave him my word that I would.”

He sat quietly with me for a time, lost in his own thoughts. He was past the age when he wanted to be carried or held, which gave me some idea of how terrified he was now. I was sure he had merely dreamed of Lucien, but I knew he did not believe this to be the case.

“Do you think he was trying to tell me something?” Charles asked.

“Perhaps he was,” I said.

“What?”

I reached for a packet of fragile papers lying on the small table next to us. “Let’s see if we can guess. When I was fighting in the Peninsula, and your father and I were far away from one another, he wrote these letters to me. Would you like me to read them to you?”

He nodded, and I chose one of the letters Lucien had written about him. He was pleased and laughed at Lucien’s comical descriptions of him as an infant, then asked me to read another. So we continued, until he suddenly said, “I smell smoke.”

“You have been listening to your Aunt Sophia.”

But before he could protest, I heard the shouts of the servants, and cries of “Fire!”

“We must help them put it out!” Charles said, jumping up from the chair.

I knew the same impulse, but what came quickly to mind were a series of drills that Lucien had insisted upon. I had always had the role of finding Charles in whatever room he might be in, and taking him to safety. I used to argue with Lucien, saying that a man with a pronounced limp was hardly the most suitable person to be saving his heir, but he remained stubborn on this point. Remembering my vow of hardly more than an hour before, I grabbed Charles’s hand before he was out of reach. “Your lordship,” I said sternly, using the form of address which he knew to be a command to be on his best behavior. “You must not run toward the fire. You must allow me to keep you safe-just as we practiced. Come now.”

I saw the briefest mulish cast to his face before he relented, and allowed me to lead him out of the library. Fibbens, his face blackened with soot, was rushing down the stairs. “Oh, thank goodness!” he cried in relief. “Forgive me, Captain-we feared the young master had returned to bed! His chambers are on fire!”

“My room!” the young master wailed.

“He will tell you more when we are all safely outside,” I said, more shaken by Fibbens’s a

“Everyone accounted for, sir. The fire has not spread beyond the young master’s chambers. If you do not mind, I’d like to assure the others that his lordship is safe-”

“Yes, of course.”

“Thank you, sir. Those who are not attempting to put out the fire should be downstairs shortly.”

At the front steps, it occurred to me that we were without cloaks, and Charles was without shoes. A fault in our drills, which had taken place in summertime. There had been little snowfall of late, but it was cold. I placed my coat around Charles’s small shoulders-much to his delight-and lifted him into my arms.

Soon the Banes began to join us on the front drive. Aunt Sophia was wrapped in what I recognized to be William’s many-caped driving coat. She’d not had time to put on her wig, and looked a positive fright. Fa

“And look! Your new coat from Weston-ruined!”

The expensive coat of blue superfine was indeed smudged. “Unlike some others I could name,” he sneered, looking reproachfully at Henry, “I attempted to make sure the old pile didn’t burn down around my family’s ears!”

Henry waved a vague hand of disinterest and stared toward the building. Smoke had stopped billowing from the window of Charles’s room. I prayed that meant the fire was under control.

“Here, Fa

But Fa

William rolled his eyes.

“I do not know why I allowed you to talk me into staying at this accursed place!” his mother said to him.

“I talked you into it! That’s a loud one!”

“Do not use that horrid cant with me, my young man! I won’t have it!”

I realized that Charles was providing an interested audience to this by-play. Still holding him, I walked a bit apart from them.

Bogsley and Fibbens appeared, bearing cloaks and blankets. Fibbens attended the Banes, while the elderly butler approached us.

“Bogsley, please tell me what has happened!” Charles said.

“I am pleased to say, your lordship, that the fire is out, and little damage done. Your dear father had made preparations, you know, and the staff responded in a way that would make him proud, if I do say so myself.”

“The next time I see him, I shall tell him how well you did,” Charles said.

Bogsley, that most self-controlled of all God’s creatures, did not blink an eye, but I heard the slightest catch in his voice as he answered, “Thank you, your lordship. I pray that will not be for some time yet.”

“One never knows,” Charles said.

Worried over the effect these words seemed to have on the butler, I quickly said, “You’ve given us good tidings indeed, Bogsley. I trust none of the staff took any hurt?”