Colin paused mid-stir, casting me a glance of unameliorated amusement. "Ghosts?"
"You know, ghastly specters, headless horsemen, that sort of thing."
"Right. I'm afraid we're rather short on those at the moment, but if you would like to go next door, I hear Don well Abbey has a few phantom monks to let."
"I didn't realize they were for hire."
"After Henry VIII confiscated the abbeys, they had to find some way to earn their keep. There's always a stately home in need of a specter or two."
"Who are Don well Abbey's ghosts? I take it that there's more to them than just being monks."
Colin gave the contents of the pot a final gush and turned off the heat. "It's the usual story. Renegade monk breaks his vows, runs off with the lissome daughter of the local squire — plate, please."
I handed over a blue-and-white-patterned plate.
"Enter monk, pursued by squire?" I suggested, paraphrasing one of my favorite Shakespeare stage directions.
"Close, but not quite." Colin debonairly dislodged a large clump of goo from the serving spoon onto the plate. It looked a bit like dog food.
I handed him the second plate. "The local squire didn't much care for his daughter, but he did scent an opportunity to turn a profit. With proper paternal outrage, he stormed over to the monastery — more?"
A laden serving spoon hovered in the air like a phantom hand at a seance. "No, thank you."
"The squire rushed over to the monastery and demanded a strip of land that ran between the abbey and his estate as repayment for loss of his daughter. The monks were not pleased. No one knows quite what happened that night, but the story has it that the monks caught up with the pair in a large field, not far from the abbey."
"What happened then?" I'm a sucker for a good ghost story.
"No one knows for sure," said Colin mysteriously, or as mysteriously as one can while waving a large ladle. "By morning, all that was left was the crumpled hood of a habit, lying discarded on the grass. Of the squire's daughter, there was no trace. But legend has it that he still looks for her on stormy nights, and you can see him, drifting endlessly through the grounds of Donwell Abbey, forever searching for his lost love."
Little prickles ran down my arms, picturing the deserted heath, the pale rays of the moon illuminating their terrified faces… A large blob of something brown appeared in front of my nose.
"Beans on toast?" said Colin prosaically.
It is next to impossible to maintain a ghoulish aura in the presence of beans and toast. It's more effective than waving garlic in front of a vampire.
The ghosts receded into the dusky darkness behind the window while we partook of beans and toast in the well-lit kitchen. Colin assured me it was his one culinary accomplishment.
"If that's a ploy to get me to leave, it's not going to work. Now that I've actually seen the archives, a steady diet of ashes couldn't drive me away."
"Hmm. Point taken. What about a ghastly apparition, all in white, hovering over your bed?"
"Too late. You already told me you don't have any ghosts."
Colin grinned a rakish grin that had an odd effect on the inside of my stomach — at least, I assume it was the grin, and not his culinary efforts.
"Who said I was talking about a ghost?"
Before I had quite puzzled out the ramifications of that statement, the door inched coyly open, and a feminine voice trilled, "Colin… Colin, are you home?"
Colin froze like a fox within sight of the hunt. Catching my eye, he made anxious shushing motions.
"Colin…" The door continued its inexorable swing inward, and a blond braid swung around the edge, closely followed by its owner, a tall girl in tight tan pants and a closely fitted jacket. Catching sight of her quarry, she stepped jauntily into the kitchen, booted heels clicking on the flagstones of the floor, riding helmet swinging from one hand.
"Colin! I thought I'd find you here. When I saw your car in the drive… Oh."
She had caught sight of me, sitting on the other side of the table. The riding helmet stopped mid-swing, and her jaw dropped. The expression didn't do much for her, bringing to mind portraits of some of the more heavy-jawed Hapsburgs. Or Red Riding Hood's wolf. Her teeth were very large, and very white.
"Hello," I said into the silence that followed.
The girl ignored me, her pale eyes fixing on Colin. "I didn't realize you had company."
"There was no reason why you should," said Colin blandly. He set down his fork on the edge of his plate. "Good evening, Joan."
With her mouth back in place, this time pursed in annoyance, the woman was not, I have to admit, entirely unattractive. Her mouth might have been a little thin and her nose a little on the pug side, but the overall effect of high cheekbones, endless legs, and sun-streaked blond hair against perfectly browned skin could have graced a Ralph Lauren advertisement. I was willing to bet that she was one of those annoying people who tan, not burn.
Her eyes, I noticed, were a little on the narrow side and a very pale blue. I don't usually notice people's eye color, but these particular eyes were still fixed on me in a decidedly inimical way.
"You haven't introduced me to your… friend." She looked like she was chewing on the ashes I had volunteered to eat.
"Eloise, this is Joan Plowden-Plugge; Joan, this is Eloise Kelly," provided Colin, lounging back in his chair.
"Hi!" I said brightly.
Joan continued to eye me with the sort of hostility better reserved for large insects that have invaded one's bed.
"Are you a friend of Serena's?" she asked, in the deadly tones of one knowingly asking a losing question.
"Well…" I had once held Colin's sister's head over a toilet bowl while she was violently ill, but I wasn't sure if that quite qualified as making us friends. "Not exactly," I hedged.
Joan looked daggers at me. I looked appealingly at Colin, but he was busy looking at no one in particular, while cultivating a facade of amused indifference. Some help he was. Obviously, I was going to have to take care of this little misapprehension on my own, or, as Shakespeare so eloquently put it, risk a predestinate scratched face.
"I'm a historian," I explained helpfully.
Joan looked at me as though I had just volunteered to introduce her to the Mad Hatter.
Okay, maybe it wasn't the most illuminating statement I could have made. I tried again. "Colin has been very generously allowing me the use of his archives," I clarified.
Joan's face cleared.
"Oh. You study dead people."
Clearly, she was of the Pammy school of history, where Genghis Khan hobnobbed with Louis XIV on Bosworth Field — all wearing hoopskirts. After all, if they weren't in the tabloids last week, it was all olden days, anyway. If it meant that she wasn't going to come after me with her riding crop, I really didn't care if she thought Attila the Hun had been one of the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles.
"You could put it that way. Right now, the dead people I'm studying happen to be related to Colin, so he was kind enough to give me the run of his library."
Libraries were evidently not a subject of abiding fascination to Miss Plowden-Plugge. With a swish of her braid, she dismissed me as an impediment of minimal importance, and returned to Colin. Given her position relative to the table, there was no way she could entirely cut me out of the conversation unless she were to stomp around the side of the table and stand between me and Colin, but she did her best, angling her body to maximize Colin frontage and minimize my presence. In profile, her nose appeared decidedly pug.
She rested her right hand against the table and leaned towards Colin. "How is darling Serena?"
Colin lazily tilted his head in my direction. "How would you say she is, Eloise?"
"You've seen her more recently than I have," I replied in bewilderment.