Moonlight Madness

by

A lost soul in WIP Wednesday

In my story for the next Bluestocking Belles anthology, my hero meets my heroine in unexpected circumstances.

Barney had been staring into the library fire, trying to come to terms with his own death. Perhaps it would have been easier if he could remember it, but he had a blank space in his memory, between riding toward Farrington Grange and finding himself at the house party.

He heard someone enter the room, but he hadn’t bothered to react. After all, whoever it was wouldn’t see him.

The newcomer was the lady who had been playing pall mall with Feltonworthy. He had heard others in the party call her Miss Williamson. He had watched her playing charades partnered with that idiot Melville. They had mimed climbing up, and then climbing down again carrying something between them. After that, first Melville and then Miss Williamson fell down. Barney had guessed “Jack and Jill.” What else could it be?

Had he made it to the house party alive, he would have won the game. Did today’s experiences sum up the rest of his existence? Watching other people living while unable to communicate with anyone? Alone? Always alone?

His shudder was violent, and Miss Williamson turned around just as suddenly. And stared at him. Barney stood. “Can you see me?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”

Disappointingly, she did not respond. But she did raise her lamp to shine the light on the chair where he sat, and she did narrow her eyes in thought.

She cast a quick glance around the library and then focused on him again. At least, he thought she was looking at him, and in the next moment, she confirmed it. “Are you a ghost?” she asked. “Why are you here? Can I help you?”

No scream. No fluster. Three sensible questions. Why didn’t Barney meet ladies like that when he was alive? Clever and composed, as well as pretty.

“I think I must be,” he told her. “I don’t know why I am here or why no one else can see or hear me. Could you tell my parents and my sister? I’ve tried to talk to them, but you are the first person I’ve met that I’ve been able to talk to.”

Miss Williamson shook her head. “I am sorry,” she said. “I can see that you are talking, but I cannot hear a word you say.”

Barney was, as he could confirm by looking down at his own arms and legs, composed of something that resembled mist, but apparently that mist included a heart and guts, or the ghost equivalent, for his heart fell and his guts churned. Now what?

It transpired that Miss Williamson was equal to the challenge.

“I shall ask you some questions, sir, if you wish. Nod for ‘yes’ and shake your head for ‘no’.”

Excellent thinking. Barney nodded like a mad marionette, exaggerating his movements so there would be no possibility of confusion.

She had a rather adorable crease between her eyebrows when she was thinking, and a way of pursing her lips that set Barney thinking about kissing. Which reminded him he was dead, and presumably wouldn’t be kissing anyone ever again.

Unless he met a nice lady ghost. He supposed a single day, however long it seemed, was not evidence there were no other people stuck in spirit form wandering around the world.

“Have you been dead for long?” Miss Williamson asked.

Barney shook his head. His family and his friend looked no older than they had been when he last saw them, and they were at the house party where he was meant to meet them. A couple of days might have passed since his last living memory, but not more than that, surely?

“Did you die in Farrington Grange?” asked his pretty questioner.

He started to shake his head again, but had to pause. Though he thought he had been thrown from his horse, he wasn’t certain the fall had killed him. If he had died recently, and in this house, his parents would know and would be in mourning. Certainly, his mother would not be sitting in her finery calmly playing piquet with her friends.

On the other hand, he had no idea how much time had passed. Perhaps he had been dead for a year, and his family had already put off mourning? He put his hands out to the sides, holding them up and open, and gave an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders.

by

Is he a ghost? on WIP Wednesday

This is a snippet from Moonlight Becomes You, my story for the next Bluestocking Belles collection. Is he a ghost? He doesn’t know himself! (I do, though.)

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As far as Barnabus Radcliffe could ascertain, he was a ghost. He remembered being on his way to meet his parents and sister at a house party. Feltonworthy was going to be there, too, and he hadn’t seen Feltonworthy since the poor fellow became earl.

Was Barney thrown from his horse? He seemed to remember flying through the air, but the memory is faint and fractured. Certainly he didn’t remember dying.

But it must be true, for the next thing he remembered was seeing Feltonworthy playing pall mall with a lady he didn’t know. He called out, but no sound came out of his mouth. Feltonworthy continued taking his stroke, and the ball sailed straight toward Barney. And then through him, as if he wasn’t there.

Furthermore, when Feltonworthy followed the ball, and Barney tried to stand in his way, Feltonworthy walked right through him.

He did it again a while later, when he was leaving the pall mall course.

Yes. Barney must be a ghost.

He followed Feltonworthy into the house. He recognized where he was, now. The house belonged to the Farrington-Smythes, and it was to their house party he had been heading when whatever-it-was happened to him.

So his parents must be here, too. Surely they would be able to see him. And his sister! His sister was, as she was fond of telling people, sensitive. Even if his parents were blind to his existence, Amelia would be able to tell he was here. Wouldn’t she?

Being a ghost had the advantage that he could walk through doors and even walls, checking each room. It had the disadvantage that nobody knew he was there. Not his good friend Feltonworthy. Not his father. Not his sister. Not even his mother, whom he found playing piquet with Mrs. Farrington-Smythe.

He couldn’t make himself seen or heard. He couldn’t move any objects. He couldn’t chill the air, or do anything else that apparently alerted people to the presence of a ghost. What a complete have those ghost stories turned out to be!

Perhaps this was the afterlife. Looking in on the family who did not know he was dead, and seeing them carry on without him. But that couldn’t be the fate of everyone, for surely the place would be full of ghosts, if everyone just drifted around all the time? And he had not seen any other ghosts since he suddenly found himself in Farrington-Smythe’s shrubbery.

Was he being punished for his sins? He hadn’t been a bad man. Or, at least, he didn’t think he had been that bad. He had cut up a few larks, of course, but he hadn’t broken any of the Ten Commandments.

Unless you counted the one about adultery, although Mrs. Moffat had assured him she was a widow, so surely God would give him a pass on that one? Since his close encounter with Mr. Moffat when he was nineteen, he had been far more careful.

Wasn’t there also one about keeping Sunday’s holy? He couldn’t remember how it went, but he supposed he should have attended services more often, or at all, in fact. He sent up a hasty prayer promising to mend his ways if this turned out to be some kind of a weird dream. He really didn’t want to be dead. And he especially didn’t want to be dead if it turned out he would be spending eternity all by himself. While he was a man who liked his own company, one could have too much of a good thing.