Chapter Forty-Three

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

DIANA MARCH 1919

Spring came early to Northumberland that year. Although Joshua told her not to trust it—"It's a false spring; there will be snow before Easter"—Diana found the sunshine and temperate breeze a gift after the long winter weeks.

In the end, Havencross School had lost three boys and the gardener to influenza. Watching it sweep across the world, Diana knew it might have been worse. She still woke once or twice a week from nightmares of too many patients and not enough help—but on the other hand, her nightmares about being buried alive had stopped. She knew now how grief would ebb and flow, and ever so slowly the tide would go out as life moved on.

On this Saturday afternoon, Diana sat on the steps with a book in her lap and watched a tumble of boys—some playing cricket, some croquet, and a few of the younger ones engaged in a boisterous game of tag. Austin and Jasper Willis took turns with the camera their mother had given them for Christmas, taking photographs that would be mostly blurry, Diana thought, if their subjects didn't learn how to stand still.

Joshua was at the far end of the lawn, bowling to the cricket players. He'd had the slowest recovery from the flu, but the pallor of illness had at last faded and he was beginning to gain back the weight he'd lost.

Clarissa sat next to her on the steps, arms folded and resting on her knees. She was dressed, like Diana, in a rather informal skirt and blouse. Ever since that night on the moor, Clarissa had softened and warmed. At first Diana had been certain she would be fired for the things she'd said and the way she'd said them, but only once had the matter been referred to. On the day the last patient left the makeshift infirmary and they began restoring the dining hall to its proper use, Clarissa had approached Diana and said abruptly, "I will never forget what you did for me the night I almost killed Austin. Thank you."

Although she had softened, Clarissa had not entirely lost her abrupt manner. Sitting next to Diana now, she said bluntly, "I have news for you."

"Oh, yes?" Diana was only half-listening; most of her attention was on Joshua, whose cricket game had been disrupted by the tag-playing boys. He darted among them with an ease that still surprised her.

"I'm leaving Havencross in June," Clarissa announced.

Diana jerked her head around. "You are?"

"I'm joining my family in London, and taking up a place at Oxford's Somerville College in the autumn."

"I'm … Clarissa, I'm so glad for you." And she was, honestly. She was also honestly worried about what that meant for the school and her job.

Clever enough to read Diana's reaction, Clarissa said, "I've no doubt your job is entirely secure, if you want it. I've offered the post of headmaster to Joshua Murray. He's accepted."

Diana swung her attention back to the lawn. As if he could hear them, or guess what they were saying, Joshua paused in his play with the boys and raised a hand in acknowledgment. Diana didn't have to see his eyes to know what she would find in them: desire and amusement and love, wrapped all together in the man she had agreed just yesterday to marry.

"May I ask you a question, Diana?"

"Of course." She braced herself, for talking with Clarissa was a bit like being at sea—one never knew where the next wave was coming from, or how hard it would hit.

"All of those tricks played on you last autumn—the knocking and the breaking things and the scratches on your neck—"

Joshua must have told her about that, for Diana never had.

"—who do you think was responsible?"

"That's very nicely phrased," Diana said. "It could cover almost any answer among the living or the dead."

"I'll admit I cannot reconcile those actions with the stories of the ghost boy who just wanted someone to hide with him."

"No," Diana said. "I don't think it was him. I think …" She wondered how best to explain. "You once had the same experience I did, in the medieval solar, right? That feeling of being overtaken by someone else's panic? It was a woman, I'm quite sure, a woman who was afraid for her son. I can't imagine why she should have disliked me so much or considered me a threat, but I'm fairly sure she was the one trying to drive me out of Havencross. I just can't figure out why."

Clarissa looked at her oddly. "If you remember your experience in the solar, then you remember counting the horsemen and looking for a banner to identify them."

"Warwick," Diana said. "Which alone tells you something, because I wouldn't have had the least idea who Warwick was or what his banner looked like before then."

"The bear and ragged staff," Clarissa said, her expression far away. "The kingmaker, the Earl of Warwick. Quite clearly, from the terror we were both seized by, an enemy to that ghostly lady. And just today I finally realized why her enmity transferred to you."

Diana arched an eyebrow. "You have my attention."

When Clarissa smiled, she looked like the carefree schoolgirl she had never been. "Don't you remember me asking you, the day we met, if you had relations in the North? Warwick is a title, not a name."

The answer was just out of Diana's reach, she must know what the kingmaker's name had been …

With unaccustomed humor, Clarissa finished. "The Earl of Warwick's name was Richard Neville."

Diana blinked. And blinked again. And slowly said, "Are you telling me I made an enemy of a ghost because my last name is Neville? Because whoever-she-was thought me a threat?" But even as she spoke she remembered the night the tricks had stopped for good. It was the night she'd gone into the tunnel after Austin—but before that, she'd found her bedroom destroyed and had broken down, begging to be left alone until at least she'd saved the boys she could.

Was that what had stopped the ghostly lady? The realization that Diana was not a threat to the boys?

She shook her head. This was much too esoteric for her. She would keep to the world of observable symptoms, diagnosable problems, the lovely man she was going to marry, and the complicated woman next to her who had somehow become her friend.

"Miss Somersby, Miss Neville, look!" Austin Willis pointed the camera at the two of them, and Diana smiled at the future.