paying for all of it. I don’t know, but that knife with its curved blade was
sharp. It glittered when she raised it over her head.”
“A curved blade?” John said, and grew very still.
“Yes. It wasn’t silver, either. It looked like burnished gold. Why?”
He cursed under his breath, then said, “Just a moment.” And he was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
I sat down on the edge of a delicate winged chair, George thankfully content to
remain settled in my lap. I stroked his ears while I sat there, saying nothing,
just looking into the cold fireplace.
Lawrence and Amelia came into the room. “Andy,” Lawrence said, and came to where
I sat. He kneeled beside me and took my hand. “You are in a new house. So much
happened today, frightening things, unexpected things, things that could easily
give the most phlegmatic of individuals violent nightmares. My God, you even
fell and hit your head. Who knows what that blow to the head could produce in
the dark of the night?”
I smiled at him. Everything he said was quite true. “I did not make it up. I did
not dream it. It all happened just as I told you.”
Amelia said, “Andy, nothing like this has ever happened before here at Devbridge
Manor. Has it, Uncle Lawrence?”
He shook his head. “There have been stories, of course, of spirits in this
bedchamber, of strange noises, and shadows that should not have been here, but
none of us have ever seen anything unusual. It has always been servants’ tales,
nothing more.”
“No,” Thomas said slowly. “That is not quite true. I remember I was in here once,
not long after Caroline died, and I was just sitting there, in front of the fire,
reading, and I must have fallen asleep. Something touched my cheek, and it felt
warm and yet somehow like a touch of ice at the same time. When I opened my eyes,
I saw her, but just for an instant, and then she was gone, simply vanished.”
I stared at him. I didn’t want to believe him. It sounded like a fanciful boy’s
imagination at work. But then, what was I? I was a girl with a very vivid
imagination.
But I hadn’t dreamed it, I hadn’t.
I looked up when John came back into the room. George raised his head and wuffed.
I began patting him again, slowly, slowly.
“My knife is in its place, the cabinet locked.”
I stared at him.
“I collect knives,” he said to me. “One of my most valuable is a royal Moorish
ceremonial knife, more than three hundred years old. It has a sharp curved blade,
a fine silk red tassel attached to its handle. There are two large rubies set in
the handle. Most importantly, its blade is gold, not silver. It is there, safely
locked beneath its glass cover.”
“I want to see the knife,” I said, then rose and walked toward the door before
my husband could hem and haw and demand to know if I was as mad as his second
wife.
John perforce had to come with me since I had no idea where he kept his knife
collection. It was in his bedchamber, of course.
He lit more candles. All of us trailed after him, even Amelia, who was yawning
and saying that it was just too much for my mind, that it was a strange dream
that any of us could have had, given all that had happened today, this my first
full day at Devbridge Manor.
I said nothing, just marched after John. I nearly swallowed my tongue when I saw
that knife lying there on a bed of crimson velvet. I did take a quick step back.
“That’s the knife the old woman was holding,” I said. “I remember the tassel now.
It swayed and fell back when she raised the knife. And the two big rubies, one
at each end of the handle. All I remember is bright flashes of red.”
I turned to look at all of them. “How could the knife have gotten back here so
quickly?”
“It couldn’t have,” Lawrence said matter-of-factly. “You must have seen it