Definitely the kind of thing someone was going to notice missing pretty damn quickly.
Tamsyn caught herself pulling her lower lip between her teeth, but no, that was the kind of thing Tamsyn Bligh did, not Anna Ripley, so she schooled her face into an expression she’d seen plenty of rich people wear over the years, one where you somehow looked both bored and hungry at the same time.
“Sweetheart, don’t,” David said, even as Sir Madoc pulled that handkerchief out of his pocket again and began mopping his brow despite the chill in the air.
“What other explanation is there?” Carys asked, ignoring the crowd. “We haven’t had a ghost here in over fifty years. Now, right before I get married, we’ve g-got cold spots and . . . and paintings flying off of walls, and bloody chandeliers crashing down out of nowhere?” She shook her head, emeralds in her ears winking. “It’s Declan, Da, I know it is.”
“Your first fiancé? Well, even if it is, he’s dead, my darling,” David replied, his jaw a little tight even as he tried to smile down at Carys.
Tamsyn didn’t like it, that little tic in the muscle of his jaw, the way his fingers were curling around Carys’s arm, and Bowen must not have, either, because the hand still holding Tamsyn’s clenched a little harder, and when she looked over at him, there was practically a storm cloud gathering over his head.
“Not loving David’s energy,” Tamsyn whispered to him, and Bowen made a sound nearly like a growl in reply before muttering something in Welsh.
Tamsyn didn’t speak the language, but she did speak Bowen, and there was no doubt that whatever he had just called David was the kind of insult men used to fight duels over.
Lips still trembling, Carys wrapped her shawl back around herself, covering up Y Seren, and Sir Madoc gave her another one of those awkward pats before turning to the crowd and saying, “Apologies all, apologies, but a bit of drama always livens up a wedding, yes? Why don’t we head on in to supper now, I’m sure we could all use some good food and some even better wine, yes, yes, just the thing, fix us all right up, come along, Carys, fy ngeneth i.”
“What did he just call her?” Tamsyn asked Bowen as the group began picking its way around the shattered glass on the floor and heading toward the formal dining room.
“My girl,” Bowen replied, and Tamsyn had to work very hard to remind herself that he was just translating something an old man had said to his daughter, so there was exactly zero reason for her to be so turned on by those two words in Bowen’s deep voice and lilting accent.
Zero. None.
And yet.
Ohhhh, and yet.
The group moved down another dimly lit hallway to a set of double doors opened to reveal a massive dining room. Huge portraits of glowering aristocrats covered the walls, and a row of candelabras marched down a long table, the candlelight playing on the pewter and china place settings. White and red flowers in tall vases filled the room with a smell that reminded Tamsyn unpleasantly of funerals, and as they all began to take their seats, she was glad to see there were no place cards beside the plates. That meant she wouldn’t be stuck making small talk with Baron Already Way Too Drunk or Lord Looks Like He Has Wandering Hands. She could sit next to Bowen instead, and sitting next to him at a candlelit table while a winter storm raged outside made the thought of a ghostly spirit drifting around somewhere upstairs . . . Okay, look, even a hot man and a cozy setting straight out of a good Gothic novel couldn’t make her feel better about the ghost, but it didn’t hurt.
As a footman in slightly threadbare livery began pouring rich red wine into their glasses, Tamsyn leaned in closer to Bowen and whispered, “So do you think Carys is right? Is the ghost this dead fiancé of hers?”
She’d expected Bowen to do his normal grunting thing, but when she looked up at him, a muscle was flexing in his jaw and his fingers were curled tightly around the stem of his glass. “No,” he said, his voice so tight she thought that bow tie of his might be strangling him.
Surprised, Tamsyn sat back, blinking. “How can you be so sure about that?” she asked, but before he could respond, the woman to her right said, “You’re supposed to be talking to me, dear.”
Tamsyn turned from Bowen to see a wizened old lady absolutely creaking under the weight of all the jewels she was wearing and frowning at her through a tiny pair of spectacles held just in front of her eyes.
“Oh,” Tamsyn replied, startled. “Do we . . . do we know each other?”
“Every other guest is meant to speak to the person to their right first. After enough time has passed, our host will turn the table, and then you may speak to the man at your left.”
The woman peered harder through her glasses, holding them closer to her face as she studied Bowen, who was currently glaring at a tureen of soup.
“I must say, though, I don’t blame you for wanting to talk to a specimen like that over an old bat like me.”
The woman gave a sharp laugh, causing several of the other diners to look over.
“Oh, eat your soup,” the woman said with a wave of a jeweled hand. When everyone turned back to their meals, the woman once again leaned in close to Tamsyn and whispered, “They’re all terrified of me. That’s the one benefit to being old. Well, old and rich enough to buy and sell them all a thousand times over.”
She gave another one of those cackles, and from his place at the head of the table, Sir Madoc called out, “Mother, you know how sound carries in this room.”
“I do!” she cheerfully called back. “That’s how I once caught your father shagging one of the maids in here back in . . . oh, ’63 was it? Undoubtedly why his heart went out just a few years later. Well, that and my poisons.”
She laughed again, and Sir Madoc went a red that was nearly purple, while Carys gave a faint “Granny, please.”
The old woman only shrugged and then said to Tamsyn, “The part about the poisons was in jest, my dear, don’t be alarmed.”
Tamsyn had been giving her wineglass a closer look, but now she just smiled and said, “Good to know, Lady . . . I’m sorry, I’m not sure how to address you.”
“Oh, it’s a beastly name,” the woman said, waving one hand as she took up her soupspoon with the other. “I was born Lady Angharad Carys Catrin Carew, then when I married Madoc’s useless father, I became Lady Meredith, but now that I myself am a useless widow, I am the Dowager Lady Meredith, or sometimes Angharad, Lady Meredith. It’s all a bit of a mouthful, really, so I usually ask people to call me Annie.” She turned to Tamsyn with a bright smile. “You’re welcome to. For one, you’re American, so best to keep this all simple, and for another, it will greatly upset my son to hear guests calling me ‘Annie’ all weekend, and that brings its own degree of joy, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
Well, there was no doubt where Sir Madoc got the talking gene from, but Tamsyn found she liked Annie here a lot more.
Plus—and to be fair, this did make Tamsyn feel like kind of an asshole—she might have valuable information about Y Seren.
“It’s a lovely place, Tywyll House,” Tamsyn said before taking her first sip of soup. It was cool and tasted like it had possibly been prepared next to a cucumber by a chef who had once heard of salt, but she made herself swallow anyway.
“Oh, it’s ghastly,” Annie said, still cheerful. “Whole west wing is crumbling to dust, there are bats in the turret, and just last week, our gardener dug up two skeletons in my rosebushes. I’d always said there was something wrong with that patch of earth, but no one bothered to listen.”
The flavorless soup somehow went even more bland in Tamsyn’s mouth before she managed to ask, “And do you think . . . do you think that might be why there’s . . . well, the chandelier and the noises and all that?”
“The ghost?” Annie asked, then shook her head, teardrop diamonds in her ears swinging like pendulums. “Oh, no, I think our Carys has the right of that. It’s that dead fiancé of hers, Declan McKenzie. Tywyll has had all kinds of ghosts over the years. I cannot tell you how many times I had to tell our Headless Lady to either put her ridiculous head back onto her ridiculous body or accept that never the twain shall meet again, because roaming around while holding it out in front of her like a plum pudding was a bit silly. That seemed to do the trick, and we didn’t see her again. Now the Blue Boy, he was a little nicer, but we all could’ve done without the nasty vomiting business. How can one even vomit when one is noncorporeal?”
She shook her head, while Tamsyn accepted that she was never going to eat another bite of this soup. Pushing her bowl away, she asked Annie, “But this one seems different?”
“Hmm,” Annie agreed. “Very different. All this moaning and knocking things over, very unlike the others. Ruder, if you ask me. And that fiancé of hers was Scottish, so.”
She gave Tamsyn a significant look, but since Tamsyn had no idea what being Scottish had to do with any of this, she just smiled and nodded before asking, “And he died . . . recently?”
