Free Lace for Milady by Joan Smith Page A

think it has settled down and am very happy, for we have checked everything from cellar to chimney and can’t see what should be causing it. We were half afraid of ghosts.”
    "You believe in ghosts?” he asked, in quite a polite voice.
    "Certainly not: It was a joke, though it was a very odd noise all the same.”
    "I could swear I heard voices when you were in the cellar,” Slack said.
    "Where did they come from? What part of the room?” Clavering asked as he arose and walked to the grate. It was Slack who kept speaking about voices. I wished she would let the matter drop, or he’d take us for a pair of nervous spinsters, but, no, she joined him and tried to decide from behind which stone the voices had come.
    “It seemed to be more on this side,” she said, pointing to the right-hand side. The fireplace is on the east wall, facing Clavering’s land, as I believe I mentioned earlier. The south wall faces the sea and is all windowed. In the corner between the fireplace and front wall there is a large, nicely carved parson’s bench with a high back. The room is panelled three-quarters of the way to the ceiling, and the bench blends in perfectly with it, being of the same wood and carved in the same manner, with a trefoil design repeated three times at the top of the arched panels, to fill in the point. I have often seen such a design in the pews of old Gothic churches.
    “The fireplace itself or the bench?” Clavering asked. I felt he was making a deal too much of her foolish imaginings, and perhaps he knew it, too, for Slack tells me I have acquired a revolting way of twitching my shoulders and pursing my lips at such times of displeasure. If this description is true, and I sincerely hope it is not, I say in my own defence it is a mannerism I picked up from herself. One I always considered the peculiar prerogative of old maids and had determined to avoid.
    “A bit in between,” she informed him, and walked to his side. Now I have told you Slack dislikes men, especially masculine men, whereas she occasionally takes a shine to a man-milliner like George, what Papa would have called a “skirter.” Yet another facet of her personality has not been shown. It is about to reveal itself now. I think she dislikes real men because she thinks they hate her, or are laughing at her, or some such thing. Only let them show a jot more than the minimum of politeness and she falls under their spell like the veriest schoolgirl with her Italian dancing master. I could see in her pleased glances at Clavering that if I didn’t watch her closely, she would begin touting him up to me as an excellent fellow.
    "This is nonsense,” I said firmly, and refused to leave my chair to join them in the search for the echo of an echo.
    They both ignored me. “Maybe more from the wall than the grate,” I heard Slack say next, and she began glancing along the panelled wall, as though the imaginary sound may have left a visible trace. And Clavering, who was certainly up to something, went right along with her foolishness, tapping panels and putting his ear to the wall for hollow sounds.
    “It was the metal in the chimney expanding with the heat,” I said.
    “The fire wasn’t lit the first time,” Slack reminded me. “Could it have come from the bench, I wonder,” she went on, enjoying very much showing me she had Clavering’s attention. Oh, yes, he would be a paragon before she went to bed that night. If he went much further, she’d be trying to tell me the swarthy old gypsy was handsome.
    “Maybe if we moved the bench away from the wall..." she said, already placing her hands on one end to assist the Duke of Clavering to move my furniture about, and likely discover a roll of dust and a ridge of grime behind it.
    “It doesn’t move. It’s built in,” he told her.
    I don’t know why it should have annoyed me so much that he knew things about my house I didn’t know myself. “Nonsense, of course it moves,” I heard myself say.