Page 77 of The Forgotten Boy

“I’m … Clarissa, I’m so glad for you.” And she was, honestly. She was also honestly worried about what that meant for the school and her job.

Clever enough to read Diana’s reaction, Clarissa said, “I’ve no doubt your job is entirely secure, if you want it. I’ve offered the post of headmaster to Joshua Murray. He’s accepted.”

Diana swung her attention back to the lawn. As if he could hear them, or guess what they were saying, Joshua paused in his play with the boys and raised a hand in acknowledgment. Diana didn’t have to see his eyes to know what she would find in them: desire and amusement and love, wrapped all together in the man she had agreed just yesterday to marry.

“May I ask you a question, Diana?”

“Of course.” She braced herself, for talking with Clarissa was a bit like being at sea—one never knew where the next wave was coming from, or how hard it would hit.

“All of those tricks played on you last autumn—the knocking and the breaking things and the scratches on your neck—”

Joshua must have told her about that, for Diana never had.

“—who do you think was responsible?”

“That’s very nicely phrased,” Diana said. “It could cover almost any answer among the living or the dead.”

“I’ll admit I cannot reconcile those actions with the stories of the ghost boy who just wanted someone to hide with him.”

“No,” Diana said. “I don’t think it was him. I think …” She wondered how best to explain. “You once had the same experience I did, in the medieval solar, right? That feeling of being overtaken by someone else’s panic? It was a woman, I’m quite sure, a woman who was afraid for her son. I can’t imagine why she should have disliked me so much or considered me a threat, but I’m fairly sure she was the one trying to drive me out of Havencross. I just can’t figure out why.”

Clarissa looked at her oddly. “If you remember your experience in the solar, then you remember counting the horsemen and looking for a banner to identify them.”

“Warwick,” Diana said. “Which alone tells you something, because I wouldn’t have had the least idea who Warwick was or what his banner looked like before then.”

“The bear and ragged staff,” Clarissa said, her expression far away. “The kingmaker, the Earl of Warwick. Quite clearly, from the terror we were both seized by, an enemy to that ghostly lady. And just today I finally realized why her enmity transferred to you.”

Diana arched an eyebrow. “You have my attention.”

When Clarissa smiled, she looked like the carefree schoolgirl she had never been. “Don’t you remember me asking you, the day we met, if you had relations in the North? Warwick is a title, not a name.”

The answer was just out of Diana’s reach, she must know what the kingmaker’s name had been …

With unaccustomed humor, Clarissa finished. “The Earl of Warwick’s name was Richard Neville.”

Diana blinked. And blinked again. And slowly said, “Are you telling me I made an enemy of a ghost because my last name is Neville? Because whoever-she-was thought me a threat?” But even as she spoke she remembered the night the tricks had stopped for good. It was the night she’d gone into the tunnel after Austin—but before that, she’d found her bedroom destroyed and had broken down, begging to be left alone until at least she’d saved the boys she could.

Was that what had stopped the ghostly lady? The realization that Diana was not a threat to the boys?

She shook her head. This was much too esoteric for her. She would keep to the world of observable symptoms, diagnosable problems, the lovely man she was going to marry, and the complicated woman next to her who had somehow become her friend.

“Miss Somersby, Miss Neville, look!” Austin Willis pointed the camera at the two of them, and Diana smiled at the future.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

NED MURRAY

MARCH 1490

The horseman reined in on the bank of the river and stared across at the gray stone house. His cousin, Graham, who’d jumped at the chance to escape Carlisle for a day of riding and drinking outdoors, grunted.

“We’ll nae be crossing that today,” Graham said.

There had been a bridge here, once. No longer. But he didn’t need to cross the river to examine the house at closer range. All he had to do was shut his eyes and he could see the house as he remembered it: the grandest, strongest house in the North, the encircling wall tall and thick, the double gate swinging open into a forecourt busy with grooms and maids and men-at-arms, the indoors walled with tapestries and fresh rushes underfoot, the solar on the third floor, from where all the surrounding countryside could be seen. From where, if she were watching, the lady of the house could see him now.

Graham had whistled the dog after him and took his horse to explore farther upstream. Ned remained mounted, remembering.

When he’d realized that he would be in Carlisle twenty years to the day after he’d fled, he knew he had to return. Finally. He’d been back and forth across the border dozens of times in his adulthood without any desire to look upon his home. He knew it was abandoned. He knew it was held by the crown “in the interest of a proven heir to the previous owner, Lady Ismay Deacon.” But he had been taught to distrust crowns, especially the English one that changed hands like hot coals.

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