Wizard's Daughter (Sherbrooke Brides 10)

A creaky old voice sang out,

A crooked root is what I see.

Not the rose you pretend to be.

A black-hearted witch with an ugly nose

Set big and lumpy on a rotten rose.

"I am not a crooked root or a rotten rose, you cursed dead moron! I am a rose! Lumpy? I have a beautiful nose! What do you know, you're only a bloody ghost with a big mouth. You're not even here, just your voice, and let me tell you, your thymes aren't at all clever. Ugly nose indeed! Show yourself, I'll show you a lumpy nose!"

Captain Jared, smart ghost that he was, kept quiet.

"You never liked me, never accepted me. It wasn't my fault that mewling bitch died. She was a weakling, a drain on your son, an encumbrance. I didn't kill her, your son didn't kill her. She simply died from all the meanness inside of her.

"Your son loved me, he married me, and I gave him an heir—I gave him three heirs—yet my heirs still wait in the wings for that miserable Nicholas to drop dead. You always turned your nose up when I came here and for no reason. I hate you, do you hear?"

A soft rhythmic sound came from the corner, like a boot lightly tapping its toe against the floor.

Nicholas took Rosalind's hand and they left the library to a silent ghost and his furious stepmother.

They heard her shout through the closed door, "I am not crooked! It is you who were crooked your entire blighted life, pretending to be a wizard. Tell me what is going on here, you old sinner, tell me now, else I'll never leave! Why did my precious Richard have that wretched vision?"

Silence, then a deep pitiful sigh, and a depressed singsong voice:

She'll leave if I talk

She'll stay if I don't

She'll haunt me forever

Unless I'm more clever.

Prithee, just look at me now

Shrieked at endlessly by a lumpy-nosed cow.

"More clever than I? You're a dolt, to have you as a father-in-law fair to burned me to the core, but I survived. A cow? I'm a cow? You should thank me, for I was the one who sent you that little brat who cursed me with those black eyes of his as he slunk behind furniture so I couldn't see him, but I heard him chanting curses, death curses. I told his father how he spewed hatred at me and at him, that I feared for my newly born son's life, how he bragged that he would kill you, kill all of us. Nicholas was always a spawn of the Devil, I told his father, had thick bad blood in his veins, and he be­lieved me. A man should believe his wife, curse you.

"At least now you're dead, save for something malignant that has managed to stick its snout out of the ether. And just what is this prithee business? Another of your affectations, no doubt. No one has spoken that word for hundreds of years. Ah, but you must always be

the poseur, even dead. I believe I'll have you dug up out of your grave and burn your wretched skeleton. That'll see you gone, now won't it?"

Nicholas and Rosalind had to lean close to the library door when Captain Jared sang softly, that ancient voice echoing eerily,

The knife rises high And brings the end near. The knife starts to fall

And you choke on the fear. The prince must win Evil must die

Pay attention, madam, for the end draws nigh.

The prince will win? What prince? The end was nigh? Captain Jared sounded very serious about that. Rosalind supposed nigh meant tonight. They heard Miranda shriek and throw a hassock toward the fireplace.

Nicholas whispered against her temple, "Do you think he's hiding up the chimney?"

Rosalind shuddered. "If she was thinking aright, she would realize it isn't the old earl, that it is someone else. And all those things she told your father... It's evil what she did, Nicholas—claiming a little boy chanted curses, making threats."

Nicholas shrugged. "Whatever she said or did, when I think about the past, I am vastly relieved I was forced to leave England, forced to face what I was at my core, forced to make my own way. Had I remained, raised as a pampered earl's son, would I have become like Richard perhaps? Or like Lancelot?"