Page 66 of Mesmerized

“It looks pretty clear to me,” Rafe replied. “This Sir Raymond fellow was one mean son of—excuse me, ma’am—one mean person, and he sold out his own men and gave his castle up to his enemy in order to trap the man and get rid of his wife and her lover. I’m thinking he had more reason to hate his wife than just her not bearing an heir. And since his wife and this knight were killed like that, their spirits remain here, haunting the place. That’s who you’ve been seeing, right? There’s your reason. Violent deaths—that’s always what sets the ghosts walking in the Tidewater.”

“The Tidewater?” Olivia asked, confused.

“In Virginia, ma’am. That’s where I come from. The houses may not be as old as those around here, but there are plenty of spirits flitting around them—lonely wives who pace the riverbank, watching for the boat carrying their husband that never came in, people wrongly hanged who still slip in and out among the oak trees where they met their end, girls in white who glide down the staircase at the stroke of midnight...that sort of thing.”

“But those are stories,” Olivia protested.

“Yes, ma’am, and good ones, too,” Rafe replied, giving her a lazy grin.

“Rafe always used to keep everyone entertained with his tales,” Stephen explained. “But we are talking about reality here, Rafe.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Olivia stated flatly.

“I don’t guess it really matters whether you believe in them or not. The problem is, you’ve seen them,” Rafe said.

“He has a point, my dear,” Great-uncle Bellard put in quietly. “You know, Livvy, one needs to keep an open mind, even about such things. You have seen the evidence with your own eyes. I have not, but I know that you are not a hysterical girl, nor one inclined to jump to conclusions. When you tell me the kind of things you have witnessed, I have to consider the possibility that they are real.”

“I don’t want to consider it,” Olivia replied honestly. “It’s too—”

“Horrifying?” Stephen suggested.

“Yes,” Olivia agreed. “I have spent the last few years proving that all the spirits I’ve witnessed were fakes.”

“But this does not make your previous work wrong,” Bellard pointed out. “Those were still frauds, just as your Madame Valenskaya is a fraud. But your lady and her knight—I think they are an entirely different matter.”

“Then you believe Sir Raymond was a warlock? That he summoned the devil and all that?”

Her great-uncle shrugged. “Well, as to that, I’m not sure. As I said, the source is suspect. It may have been nothing but rumors. Still, I imagine there probably were people who engaged in the black arts, calling up the devil and all.” His dark eyes twinkled merrily as he added, “That is not to say that the devil came when they called, of course.”

“It seems as though people in the past were terribly quick to label anyone who was different a witch,” Olivia argued. “Whenever they didn’t understand something, they decided it was sorcery.” She paused, remembering the feeling of evil that had hit her like a wall as she stepped into the secret room.

Stephen, as if knowing what she was thinking, said, “Remember when you touched the casket, how you saw Sir Raymond and sensed such a great evil that it made you faint?”

Olivia nodded. “Yes. And in the secret room, as well.” She looked up at the others with a perplexed expression. “But that is scarcely objective proof of anything.”

“Sometimes you have to rely on your instincts,” Rafe said. “You don’t have to think to breathe. You don’t stand there and debate it if a big ol’ bear comes out of the woods at you. You just light out of there. Sometimes you know something without thinking.”

“What I wonder,” Great-uncle Bellard said, “is whether anyone has ever seen these people before? Are these people the ghosts of legend here?”

“No. Not that I’ve heard,” Stephen replied. “I didn’t even know who they were until we started looking into the history of the place. The most famous occupants were the family that was beheaded by Henry VIII. One would think that, if there were any ghosts here, it would be theirs.”

“Certainly that is what Madame Valenskaya has focused on,” Olivia added.

“Then Lady Alys and the knight have appeared only at the present, and solely to the two of you,” Bellard mused. “That is intriguing, as well.”

“Why? What does it mean?” Olivia asked.

“I don’t know. This is certainly not my field,” her great-uncle said. “But it would seem obvious that there must be some connection.”

“If we admit that there are ghosts,” Olivia put in.

“No,” Stephen said thoughtfully. “I don’t think we have to say that. Whatever these dreams and visions are, they have definitely occurred. I think we can safely agree on that.”

“Yes.”

“And you and I have been the only ones who have been recipients of them. Ergo, whatever they are-ghosts, tricks, some bizarre phenomena that we have never even heard of—they are still connected to the two of us.”

“That is true.”