Chapter 4
“I have decided it is time.”
“Ahhh!”
When the ghost popped out of the wall beside her head, making such a dramatic announcement, Wynda had been totally engrossed her new project, half-listening to Robena’s soft lute music across the room.
So she did what any scholar interrupted in the middle of his or her work would do; she reflexively heaved an inkwell at the Gray Lady’s head and screamed.
Perfectly reasonable response.
Scowling, she pressed her palm against her heaving chest while the ghost finished floating through the stone wall and sent an amused glance over her shoulder at the ink-splatters.
“Did ye think that would help, dear?”
“Ye startled me,” Wynda accused, her breathing slowing. “I was in the middle of something.”
Humming, the Gray Lady leaned over the desk, her ephemeral body in no way blocking Wynda’s view of her sketches and pieces of metal. “This is no’ my book.”
“My book,” mumbled Wynda. “And no’, ‘tisnae. I’m making a new brace.”
“Timothy, darling, come see what our Wynda is making.”
Before Wynda could object, the ghost of the knight appeared behind the Gray Lady, and said, “Let me see!”
Since his head was cradled in his palms—which then lifted said head over the lady’s shoulder so he could better peer down at the desk—it was an entirely disconcerting experience indeed.
“Fascinating,” said Sir Timothy’s head. “Has the Mad Monk seen this? I suspect—“
An echo of booming laughter swept through the room and Wynda began to shake her head. “Nay, nay, there’s nae need to—Shite!”
This last was muttered as she felt the spectre of the good-natured monk pass through her, and she jumped to her feet so fast and backed away that her stool went flying.
“Look!” she declared, slamming her fists to her hips. “Ye cannae do that!”
Timothy didn’t need to turn his body to look at her, merely rotate the head in his hands. “If ye’d take us someplace, we’d have a bit more excitement—“
“What do you mean, take ye someplace? Ye’re haunting an entire bloody castle.”
The Mad Monk laughed. Of course.
“Just pick up a few stones from the castle and place them in other houses,” explained the headless knight for the hundredth time. “Then we can haunt those houses too.”
Wynda leveled a finger at the man’s nose, which was down around nipple height. “Ye think I want to subject anyone else to yer presence? ‘Tis bad enough to have to see Fergus thundering across the Great Hall, or the twins creeping about, and they—ye—died here! How’d ye think some poor crofter would feel about ye popping in?”
“Fook the crofters.” The knight managed to roll his eyes to the back of his head, which wasn’t just an expression of speech. “I want to haunt the whore house.”
The Mad Monk laughed uproariously, while managing—with a waggle of his brows and a particularly sharp gesture with his tankard—to convey the fact he wouldn’t mind haunting the tavern.
With a sigh, Wynda pinched the bridge of her nose. “Nay. Emphatically. Unequivocally. Indubitably. Nay.”
“It would force us to leave ye alone,” Sir Timothy pointed out.
“I’ll consider it,” she capitulated.
It was only then that she realized the lute music had stopped.
With a wince, she slowly turned to see Robena upon her bench, her instrument resting forgotten in her lap, her eyes wide and mouth open as she stared at Wynda.