It took him less than a minute to find the dark figure lurking by the corner of his house. A shadow so immobile, so silent, that had Godric not long ago memorized the monotone lines of his home by moonlight, he would have never seen him.
Godric stilled. He could flush the watcher, challenge him, and run him off. Or he could wait and see who had such interest in Saint House. His left shoulder throbbed, but he made himself breathe, deep and even, for he had a feeling this might be a long vigil.
As it turned out, it was three hours. Three hours of standing still, leaning against the doorway. Three hours of wishing he were asleep in his own bed. But at the end of those three hours he knew who was keeping watch over his house.
As the first gray-pink light began to dawn in the east, Captain James Trevillion stepped from the shadows. Without a backward glance to the house he’d guarded all night, he walked calmly away.
Godric waited until he could no longer hear the dragoon officer’s footfalls—and then he waited five minutes more.
Only then did he creep to the back of his house and into his study. Godric doffed his costume slowly, weariness and pain making him clumsy. His sword belt slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. He stood staring at it. His hasty subterfuge the night Megs had stabbed him must not have fooled the dragoon captain entirely. Trevillion suspected he was in truth the Ghost. Why else keep vigil all night but to catch him as he returned from his wanderings? Godric had the feeling the man wouldn’t care overmuch for rank should he obtain clear proof that a member of the aristocracy were the Ghost. The captain was dogged, a man who appeared to have no life outside of the chase. A corner of Godric’s mouth kicked up in sardonic amusement. Perhaps his nemesis was only truly alive when he was hunting.
If so, they had more in common than the dragoon would ever suspect. Godric had long ago made peace with the knowledge that what small part of himself had survived Clara’s passing dwelt behind the mask.
He heaved a sigh. The captain must be dealt with, the lassie snatchers and Mistress Cook found, and Megs kept safe even against her will.
All this he must do, but right now he needed sleep.
Godric put away the accouterments of the Ghost and donned his nightshirt and banyan before leaving his study. As he climbed the stairs to his bedroom, he remembered once again Megs’s question: Why was he still the Ghost of St. Giles? and the answer he’d not spoken:
It was the only way he had left to know he yet breathed.
Chapter Nine
Despair grinned, showing needle-sharp yellow teeth against his deep red skin. “The souls of those caught between Heaven and Hell drown endlessly in the waters below, waiting for time to run out and their release. Rejoice that your beloved’s soul is not condemned to these waters, for those who are trapped here are suicides.” Faith shivered at the imp’s words and watched as a soul in the black water opened its mouth wide as if to scream. No sound issued forth from the void. …
—From The Legend of the Hellequin
Megs stood late the next morning in the garden of Saint House, staring hard at the gnarled old fruit tree. It looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen it a couple of days ago.
Dead.
Higgins wanted permission to cut it down, but Megs couldn’t find it in her heart to do so. Ugly and gnarled as the tree was, it seemed a lonely thing out here in the garden by itself. Silly, of course, to give human feelings to a tree, but there it was. Megs pitied the old, twisted tree.
“That tree is dead,” came a dark voice from behind her.
She turned, trying to still the fluttering in her breast. Godric stood on the garden path, clad in his habitual somber suit—gray this morning. He regarded her with clear, crystal eyes, searching it seemed for something in her face.
Megs smiled. “That’s what my gardener, Higgins, said as well.”
“I can have it cut down for you.”
“He also offered.”
He looked at her oddly. “You won’t have it cut down, though, will you?”
She wrinkled her nose and placed a hand protectively on the rough bark. “No.”