Chapter Four

B y nightfall, the sleeplessness of the previous evening, in addition to the travel weariness she had suffered, had Philippa's eyes closing as she sat in the chair next to Elizabeth's bed. The girl was already asleep, but she hadn't had the heart to leave her.

Through the day, she had played and laughed. She'd been inquisitive during lessons, although she'd still been somewhat shy and reticent in asking those questions unprompted. But when night had fallen, she'd become a different child. Not simply quiet, but frozen. Fearful. And that was why Philippa had agreed to sit with her until she fell asleep. Of course, in doing so, she had not factored in the possibility that she might be too tired to get up afterwards.

Just for a minute , she told herself. She would close her eyes just for a minute.

That was her last memory before she awakened hours later. Her back ached, her neck was stiff, and she was near frozen. In fact, she could see her breath puffing in front of her, like little bits of white smoke drifting away from her face. The room was frigid. Terribly so. Unreasonably so. The windows were all closed, and what should have been a cheery blaze crackled in the fireplace.

It was then that Philippa heard the noise. It was a strange sort of shuffling in the darkness. Despite the flickering flames, there were recesses in the room, behind furniture and deep in corners, where light did not penetrate.

Another sound. This one was not a shuffle, but a very distinct footstep. "Who is there?" Philippa demanded.

On the bed, Elizabeth stirred, turning over, but did not awaken.

More footfalls and then, from the corridor, the sound of a door opening and closing.

Philippa did not hesitate. She rose quickly and exited the room, making directly for the corridor. What she saw as she emerged from the nursery was enough to make her blood run cold.

At the end of the corridor stood the dark and shadowy figure of a woman. Her face was indiscernible beneath a heavy veil. She was garbed entirely in black. Had it not been for the moonlight pouring through the window, she would have been invisible—camouflaged entirely. Lurking, waiting, watching. Unseen.

"Who are you, and what is your business here?" Philippa snapped the questions at her. As if she had the authority to do so.

The woman did not answer. Instead, she simply took two steps to her left and vanished into the wall.

Running full tilt down the corridor, Philippa realized that it wasn't a wall the woman had vanished into, but another corridor. This one was shorter. There were no doors along the wall, but there was one at the end of the hall with a thin sliver of light visible beneath it.

Philippa raced toward the door, determined to catch the woman in the act. What act it was, she could not say. But there had been something surreptitious in the woman's movements, skulking and almost predatory. Reaching the room at the end of the hall, she turned the handle, and the door swung inward. But it wasn't a woman in black who awaited her on the other side of that door. It was her employer—Mr. Devon Falconer—sitting up in his bed, shirtless.

"Miss Thomas, can I assume that there is a reason you have barged into my bedchamber unannounced in the wee hours of the morning?"

Philippa tried to answer. She opened her mouth to offer some excuse for her behavior when in fact there was none. But no sound emerged, and the room around her grew dim until blackness surrounded her.

*

Devon watched from his bed, trapped by the fact that he was entirely nude, as she sank to the floor. Deciding that it was better to offend her sensibilities than to let her languish on the floor while possibly suffering some sort of medical crisis, he shoved the covers back and reached for the banyan that was draped across the foot of the bed.

Crouching beside her, he checked her pulse and found it strong and steady if a bit fast. Her face was unaccountably pale, and the deep shadows beneath her eyes were still present, if not quite as pronounced.

"Miss Thomas?" he said, gently shaking her.

She moaned slightly but did not stir.

Biting back a curse, Devon did the only thing that he could do in that moment. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. It was far better for her than lying in a cramped position on the cold stone floor. Once she was deposited there, he went to the washbasin and poured cool water over a clean cloth. Bringing that back to the bed, he bathed her forehead with it.

At last, her eyelids fluttered and then flew open. She was wide-eyed with panic.

"Where is she?"

Devon shook his head. "I presume that Elizabeth is still in her room. As you should be, also."

"No. Not Elizabeth. The woman. I heard her when I was sitting with Elizabeth, and then I saw her in the corridor. I followed her, and when I turned the corner, this was the only possible avenue of escape!"

She sounded so terribly distressed. No. Frightened. She sounded frightened. As gently as possible, he explained, "Miss Thomas, the only woman who has entered this room tonight is you."

"That cannot be," she said, shaking her head. "I saw her. I know she was there!"

"What did she look like?" He hoped that perhaps it had been a servant roaming the halls who had fled rather than be caught out doing things that would cost them their employment.

"She wore a black dress and a black bonnet with a veil. I couldn't see her face, but she was close to my own height and, I cannot be certain, but I believe she was fair in coloring."

A cold chill snaked down his spine. Her description brought only one person to mind, a person who had recently resided within the wall of Peregrin Hall... and that person was dead. "Miss Thomas, if this is some sort of macabre joke or a display of twisted humor—"

"Would an attempted prank of this sort result in me fainting dead away? I saw her. I saw her!"

"I cannot countenance this. It defies everything in me that is rational and sane!"

"Who is she?" Miss Thomas implored. "If this person is terrorizing Elizabeth, I need to know her identity."

"The person in question is not here for Elizabeth, Miss Thomas. She is here for me. It would seem that Miss Regina Hawley has not left Peregrine Hall, after all."

"But you said she was dead," Miss Thomas protested.

"I said she had drowned, Miss Thomas. Perhaps I should have been more clear. We did not recover her body."

"How can you be certain then?"

"The river was in such a state that she could not possibly have survived it." Devon walked over to a large wardrobe in the corner. Opening the door, he retrieved a box that contained the black veiled hat recovered from the water that day. It was still streaked with mud.

He didn't need to ask if it was the same one Miss Thomas had seen. Her gasp was telling enough. At the very least, she believed it to be the same one. He'd never put much stock in tales of the supernatural. Even then, he was forced to admit that there had been instances since Miss Hawley's death when he'd begun to wonder if perhaps he hadn't formed that opinion in haste.

She rose from the bed and walked toward him, taking the hat from his hands as she examined it carefully. "Is it possible that it was an accident?"

Devon was tempted to lie. Tempted to deny the whole terrible mess of it. But he could not. "No. She left a note before... I had thought what Miss Hawley felt for me was a harmless infatuation that would go away in time. But she made advances, and I... well, I simply did not see her in that light. Nor was I even tempted by her. I tried to be gentle in my rejection of her, but I fear nothing I said after my refusal would have been received in such a manner. After that, her behavior with Elizabeth took a turn. She would put ideas in her mind about how wonderful it would be if she could be her Mama instead of just her governess. I spoke to her about it, rather harshly, I think."

"Suicide? She committed suicide because you didn't fancy her? Because you scolded her for manipulating a child in her charge?"

Miss Hawley's behavior during the months he'd been in residence had grown increasingly more erratic. In truth, he'd been on the verge of dismissing her before it had all gone to hell and back. "I think Miss Hawley was a very troubled young woman. What she did was not because of me but because of everything else in her life. The interaction between us was simply the final straw."