The Unseen Guest Page 15

  Penelope felt so cheerful she began to lift her knees higher, as if marching, hup, hup, hup. “The admiral ought to be satisfied now as well. I fear his interest in the widow is more mercenary than romantic, but even between the two of them, things might turn out better than they look on the surface.” As you see, her optimism was already running away with her. This is what comes of getting a proper sleep and a hot breakfast after surviving a difficult adventure in the wilderness. “But that is their business, not mine. What matters is that now he will be fully occupied with his ostrich-racing business and forget all those unsettling things he said about the children.”

  Best of all, now that they were home, Penelope could resume teaching properly, with all the necessary equipment close at hand. Cave geology! Extinct flightless birds! The relative speeds of land animals! She had so many ideas for lessons she could scarcely wait to get back to the nursery and begin. “And if the children are less than eager to resume their studies, it is no matter,” she told herself, as she hup, hup, hupped down the hallway. “For today I must write Simon a letter describing our adventures, and that will take some time, for so very much has happened. Wait until I tell him about the surprisingly cozy cave! And the mysteriously appearing sandwiches! And Mama Woof, and the others. Luckily, it has all ended happily. Tra la!”

  That was when she found herself outside the parlor in which Admiral Faucet, Lady Constance, and the Widow Ashton were taking coffee. The admiral’s voice boomed like cannon fire.

  “The brain of an ostrich is tiny. No bigger than the brain of a squirrel. It has room for three ideas: running, eating, and laying eggs. Notice running comes first. They’re all legs! You can ask the governess; she’s lurking in the doorway there. She had a wild ride on the back of one—didn’t you, governess?”

  “I was not lurking, but merely passing by on my way back from the library.” Penelope hefted the stack of books in her arms as evidence and managed a small curtsy to the ladies. “Good afternoon. And an ostrich is not all legs. There is a comfortable layer of feathers on top.”

  The admiral waved away her comment. “Feathered or not, the ostrich is nature’s perfect racing machine. The meat is awfully tasty, too.”

  The heavy stack of books in Penelope’s arms slipped to the floor. “I beg your pardon, Admiral. When you say tasty, surely you do not mean…?”

  “When I say tasty, I mean tasty! Yum, yum! Delicious cooked on an open flame, with a nice onion sauce. No sense keeping an athlete in harness once she’s past her prime. I’ll race the birds and breed the champions, of course, to improve the stock. And then to Faucet’s Ostrich Premium Steakhouse they go. I’ll introduce the savory tenderness of ostrich meat to English society. Imagine how much people will pay to eat a juicy grilled slab of last year’s derby champion! I can sell stakes in the steaks while they’re still racing. Stakes in the steaks, har har!”

  Lady Constance sipped her coffee and tittered politely, although she showed no other sign of having been listening; in fact she seemed half asleep. The Widow Ashton wore yet another gloomy yet fashionable head covering from her extensive wardrobe of mourning caps; the veil covered her face so that her reaction could not be seen.

  Penelope hastily gathered up her books. She thought of the dreaded figure of Mr. Alpo, from the Giddy-Yap, Rainbow! tales, who disposed of unwanted ponies by taking them to the slaughterhouse. Bertha was nowhere near as cute as a pony. But what did cuteness have to do with it? Surely they had not saved her from the taxidermic fate Lord Fredrick planned for her, only to have her end her days as the chef’s special at an ostrich steakhouse? Make no mistake: Penelope had eaten her share of tasty meat dishes, but the thought of eating a Bertha burger, after all they had been through together, made her feel like…like…

  “Like a cannibal,” she thought, staring down at the slim book on the top of the pile. An Encounter with the Man-Eating Savages of Ahwoo-Ahwoo, as Told by the Cabin Boy and Sole Survivor of a Gruesomely Failed Seafaring Expedition Through Parts Unknown: Absolutely Not to Be Read by Children Under Any Circumstances, and That Means You, it was called.

  “And those wolf children wards that your son took in. They’re another stroke of genius! My genius, of course, not his. Picture it: the Wolf Derby of Ashton Place. Real racing wolves, ridden by half-human, half-cub jockeys. It will be a sensation.”

  The widow’s veil puffed at intervals as she spoke, like a tiny black lace curtain caught in a gusty breeze. “It sounds rather dangerous, dear. Are you sure the children will enjoy it?”

  “I wouldn’t call them children, dearest. You should have seen them as I saw them, out in nature. Wild beasts, they are. Savage, drooling, clawing things. Barking and howling at every turn. They’re the ones who are dangerous. But the fiercer, the better. It’ll sell more tickets that way.” The admiral leaned forward in his chair. “Speaking of tickets, we’ll need massive amounts of publicity to get started. Posters, handbills, advertisements in all the newspapers. I’ll build the finest racetracks in England for the ostriches and the wolf children, with a POE and a PIE installed at each one…. All the restaurant equipment will be imported from France…. I’ll need snappy uniforms designed for the staff….”

  The admiral’s voice droned on until it was like the buzzing of those pesky gnats that had given Penelope no peace in the forest. But this time she could not simply swat the truth away. How could she have failed to see it? They might have postponed Bertha’s fate, but they had not altered it. And in helping Bertha, the children had caught the admiral’s eye, and now they, too, had become part of his cold-blooded moneymaking schemes. “He must be stopped,” she thought, feeling desperate. “But how?”

  “It all sounds very promising, of course.” The veil billowed and danced in front of the widow’s mouth. “But racetracks, restaurants…there are so many things to build. How much of my money do you think you will need?”

  “Not your money, darling. Our money.” The admiral reached over and took her hand, and his voice turned sweet and gooey as pancake syrup. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned being a brave and famous explorer, it’s this: Life is short, and full of peril. We are not children, Hortense. Let us grab what happiness we can, while we can.” At this, the admiral lumbered out of his armchair and got down on one knee. “Answer me now, Hortense. Will you consent to be my bride?”

  “A wedding!” Lady Constance snapped out of her daze and clapped her hands. “How marvelous! I will need many new dresses for all the parties we will have! Say yes, Mother Ashton, and I will summon my dressmaker at once.”

  The Widow Ashton lifted her head and pushed back her veil. “Fawsy, dear, your devotion moves me, truly it does. And no one knows better than I do that life is full of peril, tragic loss, unforeseen catastrophe, gruesome ends, and the like. My head tells me I ought to give you the answer you seek, and yet…my heart sings a different song….” Her long, tragic sigh was like the final wheezing note played on the last accordion in all the world, moments before accordions became extinct. “If I could only know what my dear dead Edward would want me to do! But no one can speak to those who have passed Beyond the Veil.”

  Once more Penelope dropped her books, for the solution had just hit her like a thunderbolt. “The Veil” she cried, unable to conceal her excitement. “The Veil!”

  “I think it should be an enormous veil!” Lady Constance exclaimed. “Miles of tulle, everywhere! Pish posh on all those who say second weddings should be quiet affairs. I vote for a lavish dress, a veil and train, and as many parties as we can fit in. Try not to be so clumsy, Miss Lumley; that is the second time you have dropped your books. I try never to carry books myself, as they are much too weighty to be lifted in a ladylike fashion. So many words!”

  The widow stood. “I shall have to make up my own mind, it seems. Give me an hour, Fawsy dear. I need to spend time in quiet contemplation, as the good Sisters of Perpetual Sobbing taught me to do when my heart was troubled. You shall hear my answer upon my return.”


  The admiral leaped to his feet and kissed both her hands. “There is only one answer possible, dear. You could not dare refuse me—for to do so would be to break my heart,” he added, with a warning glance at Penelope. “One hour, no more. In the meantime, I will arrange for champagne to be served, so that we might toast our engagement at once.”

  “How well I know the pain of a broken heart,” the widow murmured, extricating her hands from the admiral’s. She nodded a good-bye and left the room.

  There was a satisfied spring in the admiral’s step as he bounded off to arrange the toast. Penelope wrapped her arms securely around the books and readied herself to follow. “I must speak to the widow at once,” she thought. “But I will wait a count of three, so it does not appear I am chasing after her, and then I will excuse myself…one…two…three—”

  “Put down those silly books, if you please, Miss Lumley, and fetch some paper and ink.” The possibility of some new clothes had woken Lady Constance up handily. “I need to send a letter to my dressmaker, at once, and I am much too excited to hold a pen. A wedding! Think of all the parties we must have! Oh, how I love parties. Life is so dull and boring, tedious and uninteresting without them!”

  LADY CONSTANCE KEPT PENELOPE IMPRISONED in the parlor for precisely three quarters of an hour as she dictated a series of letters to her dressmaker, hatmaker, shoemaker, and glovemaker. By this time the young governess was chomping at the bit, as is often said about racehorses. In other words, she was so desperate to leave and go in search of the Widow Ashton that she felt ready to burst out of her skin, and the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the corner was only making things worse.

  “It is like something out of Edgar Allan Poe,” she thought with gritted teeth. “Tick-tock, tick-tock, says the clock—time is running out, and yet I am trapped here, while the widow is who knows where. It is enough to drive one mad! I must”—tick-tock—“I must”—tick-tock—“I must speak to her before she gives the admiral her answer!”

  “Next we shall write to my favorite maker of petticoats, in Paris. You might want to take a moment to refill your inkpot, Miss Lumley, for I have a great deal to say on the subject of petticoats.”

  “Aaah!” Penelope cried in despair.

  Lady Constance frowned. “Pardon me, Miss Lumley. Are you suffering from indigestion? If so, please keep your discomfort to yourself.”

  “Apologies, my lady, but I saw—a mouse!” Penelope pointed at Lady Constance’s feet. “A wee mousie! Scampering there—yes, right underneath your chair!”

  “Eek! More rodents! What has become of this house?” Lady Constance climbed on top of the end table and began squealing like a piggy; as you will recall, it was the second time that week.

  “Never fear, Lady Constance. I shall get help,” Penelope declared, as she ran to the door of the parlor. Lady Constance was now fully occupied with her squealing, and Penelope uttered a silent prayer of thanks as she finally made her escape, although she had to leave her pile of books behind.

  “Never mind. I shall return for the books later, and Lady Constance is unlikely to bother with them in any case. Now: the race to find the widow begins. Full speed ahead! But where can she have gone?” She knew the Widow Ashton would be in quiet contemplation somewhere, for she had said so herself. And it had to be somewhere close by, for the widow had sworn she would give her answer in precisely an hour, which was not enough time to go far.

  “Where would a person go for an hour of quiet contemplation?” Penelope ran to the most likely spots she could think of, but the widow was not in the chapel, or the gardens, or even hidden in a low branch of the enormous plane tree that stood about a hundred yards from the drive. (Penelope knew that the widow was unlikely to be up a tree, but it was where she herself might go if she wanted to think quietly for a bit, and therefore she felt it was worth a look.)

  She ran back to the house and nearly collapsed in the foyer, where the entry clock provided unwelcome news. “Tick-tock…tick-tock—five minutes left!” Penelope thought, panting with exertion. “I know I shall find her in the last place I look, but what place ought that to be? Tick-tock—last place—tick-tock—last place—where would be the last place I would look?” Penelope spun in circles. “What did the Widow Ashton say? ‘If only Edward could speak.’ Edward Ashton! Eureka!”

  She sprinted down the main hall, bounded up one flight of stairs and down another (two at a time), and then galloped down another long hall, until she arrived, red faced and winded, at the door of Lord Fredrick Ashton’s study. How Penelope hated this room, with its display of dead animals and smell of stale cigar smoke! The glass eyes of Lord Fredrick’s taxidermy collection stared at her accusingly: the bear, the moose, the stags, the foxes, the many varieties of birds, and, of course, the elk. Their lifeless gazes seemed to follow her everywhere she moved.

  But there among them, glassy-eyed with tears, perhaps, but still very much alive, was the Widow Ashton. She sat on a footstool with folded hands before the oversized portrait of her late husband, Lord Edward Ashton, which hung in a row with all the other ancestral portraits that lined the wall. The widow was bareheaded; her veiled mourning cap had been removed and was now perched on the corner of Lord Fredrick’s elephant’s-foot umbrella stand.

  “My lady!” Penelope still struggled to catch her breath, but she had much to say and little time in which to say it. “Forgive me for intruding. I could not help overhearing your conversation with the admiral earlier, in the parlor. I had no wish to eavesdrop, believe me, but since I was there in the same room, it was impossible not to—in any case, I have something of great urgency to tell you.”

  The widow’s eyes never moved from the portrait. “I cannot speak to you now, Miss Lumley. I have a grave decision to make. It is not easy to know what to do.”

  “Yes, I know. It is regarding the admiral’s marriage proposal.”

  “Indeed. Now, please, leave me be. I have but a few moments left to think before my time is up. Then I must give my answer.”

  “That painting is of your husband, Edward,” Penelope blurted. “You wish to speak to him.”

  “I do,” the widow replied sadly. “Oh, how I do! But no one can speak to those who have passed to the Realm Beyond.”

  “I know someone who can!” Boldly, Penelope stepped between the widow and the portrait. “That is what I have come to tell you. There is a fortune-teller I met in London, a woman of spooky reputation. She has the power to see Beyond the Veil. If you so command, I will have her brought to Ashton Place.” Penelope thought of Madame Ionesco: her short stature, the poor condition of her teeth, her collection of voluminous scarves, and her excellent recipe for Gypsy cakes, of which the children had grown quite fond. Would she come, if summoned? Could she even be found?

  The Widow Ashton’s pale cheeks went two shades paler still. She stood up and clasped Penelope by the arm. “If she truly has the gift you describe…do you think she could contact my Edward? Could she help me discover his wishes?”

  Once more Penelope felt an icy shiver trickle along her spine. For when she and the children were in London, the semitoothless soothsayer had told Penelope some remarkable things—for example, that there was a curse upon the Incorrigible children. “Wolf babies,” she had called them, and had added a warning, too: “The hunt is on!”

  “If anyone can, she can,” replied Penelope, and that, she believed, was nothing but the truth.

  The widow closed her eyes for a moment. When she reopened them, she seemed filled with fresh purpose. She turned away from the portrait, picked up her mourning cap, and pinned it back on her head. With a gentle tug, she lowered the dark veil back over her face. “Please, send for your Gypsy, Miss Lumley. The admiral will have to wait a little longer for his answer, for I will decide nothing until she arrives—and until Edward has spoken.”

  Penelope nodded, scarcely able to hide her relief. Side by side, she and the widow turned and regarded the portrait of Edward Ashton. He wa
s a big man, with a cold and penetrating stare. “He had such beautiful eyes,” the widow murmured. “So dark and mysterious. How I loved to look into them.”

  “…do you think she could contact my Edward? Could she help me discover his wishes?”

  She turned her veiled gaze to Penelope. For a moment, Penelope could swear that Edward Ashton’s painted eyes were now fixed on her as well. “I have been sitting here for nearly an hour, asking Edward for a clue, a hint, a sign,” the Widow Ashton declared. “And it seems, Miss Lumley, that you are the answer he sent me.”

  THE INVISIBLE BEYOND! THE GREAT What’s to Come! The Ineffable Realm of Unknowables! Penelope was so excited she could barely keep from galloping; with great willpower she held herself to a fast trot. First she went back to the parlor, from which a strained, piggylike squealing sound continued to emanate at regular intervals. Lady Constance was atop the table with her hands covering both eyes, since (in her view) mice that could not be seen would therefore be less likely to exist. Two anxious servants armed with feather dusters were already on their third inspection of every nook and cranny of the room.

  However, as these were imaginary mice to begin with, getting rid of them was not nearly so complicated as all that. “All clear of mice,” Penelope loudly announced as she whizzed into the parlor, gathered up the library books that she had left there, and whizzed out again. Even with her arms full, she fairly flew up the stairs to the nursery. There Mrs. Clarke sat cross-legged on the floor with Alexander, who was teaching her to play chess. Cassiopeia was adding more lines to her Poe poem, while Beowulf helpfully drew page after page of spooky ravens to inspire her.

  “This rook’s a handsome fellow, isn’t he?” the housekeeper said as she moved the chess piece across the board. “A bit single-minded, though. He only goes in straight lines. That’s bound to get dull, boring, tedious, and uninteresting after a bit.”

  “Cinnamins,” Cassiopeia commented absently.