distract her and she appreciated it. She also appreciated how gently he pushed his fingers into her to extract the large pearl from her vagina.
“Not yet,” she said. “Let’s have one last night of sanity before we both go mad in the morning.”
“I always wanted to go mad,” he said. “Now I have an excuse.”
He rolled onto his back and brought her with him. Regan lay her head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her.
The winds died down. The storm passed. Regan slept like the dead.
Regan woke early and saw the bedroom for the first time in daylight. A teenage boy’s room. Massive Union Jack hanging down the wall. Concert posters. A rugby ball on a shelf. A polo mallet tucked into a corner. She knew he was only staying here while Wingthorn underwent renovations, that of course the room still held all his old things, but it served as a bitter reminder of their age difference. She was a woman of thirty, already widowed, and if he hadn’t been joining the army soon, he’d still be at university. His life was beginning. Hers felt almost over.
He was too young to commit himself to a woman who was certain to face a brutal fate sooner rather than later, just as she’d been too young to marry Sir Jack. She couldn’t do to Arthur what she’d done to herself.
But she didn’t have to tell him that.
She kissed his cheek and his eyes fluttered open. In wordless agreement, they got out of bed. Arthur put on his jeans, nothing else. She found her knickers and he gave her one of his t-shirts to wear—clean, soft, grey, comforting.
They went down, down, down to the sitting room where the book still lay open on the floor face down in front of the cold fireplace.
Arthur picked up the book and showed her the page it was open to—a painting of a pretty young girl holding a dove against her chest, a dove with a broken wing.
The Wounded Dove by the Jewish Victorian-era painter Rebecca Solomon.
Regan stared at it, then knew they couldn’t deny it any longer.
“So this is it,” Regan said. “We both believe and accept that the ghost of a dead lord is trying to tell us something, and we’re willing to listen. Yes?”
Arthur nodded. “Yes.”
So it had happened. They’d both gone mad.
10
The Haunted Wood
They’d planned to meet in her penthouse at The Pearl around eight that evening. At five ’til, Regan sat on the chaise in the sitting room to wait for Arthur. Upstairs in her bedroom hung the possibly haunted portrait of Lord Malcolm, which was why she waited in the sitting room, not wanting to be alone with it.
A knock on the door. She went to it at once, certain it was Arthur. She opened the door to find a waiter in a white jacket, carrying wine in a bucket.
“Lord Godwick ordered wine,” the young man said.
“Wonderful,” Regan said, “bring it in.”
He carried in the bottle and two glasses from the hotel kitchen with little faux pearl charms on the stems. The waiter set the glasses on the fireplace mantel and uncorked the bottle.
“Interesting artwork,” the waiter said.
Hanging above the fireplace was a print reproduction of an oil painting—an uncanny scene of a woman running through a dark forest, a vague ghostly figure behind her, imprisoned in a tree but escaping it, seemingly following her.
“A Lizzie Siddal print,” she said. “She was Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s muse, working class but very beautiful. She could have been a painter in her own right if she hadn’t…ah, well. Rossetti rather took over her life.”
The waiter nodded. “Such a shame.”
“Rossetti once gave the poor woman pneumonia by making her lie in a bath of cold water for hours while he painted her. They married eventually, but she died very young. Only thirty-three. Painter, poet…she was terribly talented. And then snuffed out like a candle. I think that’s supposed to be Death in her painting. That’s what’s haunting her.”
The young man gazed on the painting and she saw he had darkly intelligent eyes.
“No,” he said, “it’s not Death. It’s her. That ghost looks like a shadow of her. She’s haunting herself.”
Regan moved closer to the print, studied it carefully. The ghost did somewhat resemble the running woman.
He smiled and met her eyes. “But what do I know? I’m only here to pour the wine.” He offered her a glass. “Enjoy, Lady Ferry,” he said with an elegant bow then made his way to the