For the past five months, Clarence had tried very hard to ignore the fact that his new place of employ, Knighton House in Leicester, held a plethora of ghosts. He’d studiously ignored them, which he knew was the only way to ensure they didn’t shift from being insubstantial wispy shadows into something…more… undeniable.
Far too human.
If he were to remain a footman in the home of Mr and Mrs Donisthrope, then he must keep his feet planted firmly in the humdrum of real life; lonely as that life had turned out to be.
"Stop that now." Clarence’s fingers gripped his razor; soapy froth and flecks of cut hair dripped from the blade and into the washbasin.
He knew it best to ignore the ghosts, but this particular spectre was among the most persistent he’d ever known; showing up every morning for the past week in the foxing glass of the mirror that hung over the simple chest of rosewood drawers in his tiny bedroom.
Clarence glared at the grey blur outline; vaguely reminiscent of the human form, perhaps wearing a top hat, he’d decided, with the way the head was too tall for the length of the body. This spirit was not only persistent but bold, and frightfully clever. Yesterday, they had stuck a dim finger into the shaving cream and smeared a message across the glass.
Good day.
Clarence had nearly choked on his own spittle. In a lifetime of being able to notice the dead, he’d not known one of them to be capable of such things. But then, perhaps he’d just refused to see it. As a child, he could play at having imaginary friends, and not a word was said. But as an adult, staring at things no one else could see was frowned upon.
He shifted his bare feet against the thin rug; the workday was beginning, and it would do no good to be late again. Life may be dull and lonely, but at least it came with a full belly and a bed to sleep in.
Clarence watched the smear of shaving foam move over the glass; his wretched little heart beating at a trot. He’d forgotten the muscle could do such a thing. Yet this week, with this tenacious ghost, it had run a marathon every time the spirit arrived.
Good day…how are…
"I’m…I’m…" For some unknown reason, he couldn’t bring himself to lie. He bit his tongue instead. In truth, he was so lonely in this bustling household, he sometimes wished he were the dark blur lurking at people’s shoulders. ‘Get on with you, I can’t be late.’
Clarence stuck his free fingertips into the scuttle mug on the dresser and flicked warm water at the unfinished greeting. “I can’t be losing another job on account of you lot. Leave me alone.”
Inwardly, he wanted nothing less. He was alone too often. But the faint sense of calm that came over him every time this spirit appeared disturbed him.
Clarence had not been disturbed by ghosts for fifteen of the twenty years he’d lived and breathed. Not since the day he’d run, screaming, hurling himself at his mother and gripping her skirts as she mopped the floor of their tiny cottage; the kitchen stuffy from the stove burning high to roast the chicken she’d spent most of the morning plucking.
“Get off my clean floor, you silly ruffian. What’s gotten into you?” She’d set her mop aside with a huff; a good-natured huff that didn’t frighten him at all. Clarence knew, even at five years old, he was the apple of his mother’s eye.
“Ghost, Mumma. Scared ghost.”
She lifted him in her arms; her scent of sweat, rosemary and lavender: a working woman’s perfume. He remembered how serious she’d been, how it didn’t suit her at all. Her mouth was made for smiling, and her eyes for twinkling, but she’d been grim with concern. “Ghost? What did you see, my love? Make sure you tell mummy everything, now.”
He’d blurted it out. A shadow…no, more than that…a shadow with a hint of ringlets around the washed out face, and a skirt that played at faint knees, and a height not much more than his childish self.
“Wants to play…” He’d sniffed, rubbing at his eyes with dirty fingers.
His mother had gently pulled his hands from his face. “Well now, that sounds like fun. Why do you seem so frightened, Clarence? They have not been unkind have they?”
“No. But where is her face, Mumma? No hands neither…how can ghosts play?”
“Once you see them properly, with your true sight, you’ll see they are just like you and me. And you’ll be able to play any game you want.” She’d brushed back the strands of his fire-red hair, and planted a wet kiss to his forehead. Her lips had been warm against his skin as she’d whispered, “Mumma sees them too, my sweet little man. Don’t be afraid, for these poor souls are far more frightened than you will ever be. They need friends like us. The ones who know how to see them.”
Since that moment in his mother’s arms, relishing their shared secret, Clarence had never been afraid again. But he had very often been annoyed.
When the unseen discover they are seen, they cling like Beggar’s Buttons to the sheep in a field. But as long as he didn’t pay the spectres too much attention—didn’t allow his true sight to open—the ghosts stayed as they were; shadows that lingered, usually silent and unobtrusive.
Until this bothersome fellow appeared. The one insistent on making Clarence late for his duties in a household that only noticed him when there was an opportunity to berate.
This ghost, little more than a smear of rain-thick cloud, was persistent as a mouse after the cheese. The ethereal finger lifted again, adding more shaving cream to the mirror.
Hand…
“Are you listening to a word I say, man?” Clarence had decided it was a fellow. There was something about the largeness of his hands, at least the blur where hands should be, and the shape of the hips, the breadth of shoulders. And that top hat, of course. Did Clarence truly find such detail on a deadman so fetching? “Get on with you. I’m not interested in being your friend.”
He felt a right lying bastard to say it. But a spirit had cost him his last position down in London.
The well-to-do were eager to host seances and collect witch-bottles for their display cabinets, but they didn’t much like it when their houseboy was caught dancing around in the ballroom, laughing gaily and chatting away to people only he could see. Clarence had been lucky to only receive his marching orders, and not been strapped to a stretcher bound for the Fulbourn Asylum.
That was the day he swore to fix himself in the real world. To really try to act at least half as normal as those who lived around him. One day perhaps he’d go a step further than a quick fumble and suck with a coachman in the stables. But men in the real world, solid men with rough hands and leering faces, were so much more frightening than those who barely existed at all.
"Stop sticking your fingers in my mug," he snapped at the blur in the mirror.
The shadow’s shoulders shifted, and Clarence swore it was in the way of someone who was struck with laughter.
He set the razor to his chin, glaring. “I mean it…let me get ready.”
Another shift of shoulders, this time with an undeniable sigh. Clarence swore he saw a hint of a cloak, a gleam of a button, a glint of an eye.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Blast it.” Either he was deliriously tired, or his true sight was betraying him; opening even when he’d not consciously permitted. It had been a late night last night; the Donisthropes’ dinner guests lingered well after midnight. But Clarence had slept soundly, waking refreshed. “I’ll count to three and you’d best be gone.”
The cool brush of a spirit’s presence played at the back of his neck. The gooseflesh rose at his nape, but that vapourish sense of calm remained, even as his heart did a little leap.
“One…”
There came the faintest sound of laughter: soft and ethereal. A gentle pressure landed on Clarence’s shoulder.
How bold this fellow was; with his large hands and tall hat. But he was not rough. Clarence swallowed, relaxing the tight squeeze of his eyes, letting a faint sliver of light through his lids. Water ran cool from the razor, soaking the cuff of his nightshirt.
“Two.”
Laughter again, the type that was contagious, joyful; tickling Clarence’s ribs, urging him towards amusement.
He held onto the razor like a drowning man to a branch. The pressure at his shoulder became a squeeze; fingertips and the heel of a hand. Deliberate but terribly gentle. Everything about this encounter was that way. Which meant Clarence, so hungry for tenderness, was in a grand world of trouble.
“Three.” He blinked his eyes open.
The ghost had been busy, finishing the scrawl on the mirror.
Handsome.
Clarence gasped. But it was not the word that had him doing so. Not entirely. He blinked again, adjusting to the morning light that spilled into his cramped room; taking in the man who stood with him.
The message, embarrassingly misplaced, should more rightly apply to the soul who had written it. For the ghost was indeed handsome. Not pretty, but heavy-boned and dark of features. The tilt of his eyebrows might make it appear he were scowling, were it not for the perfect loveliness of his smile. This fellow, damn him, was just the type of rugged gentleman Clarence held in his thoughts in his most private moments. Admittedly, he did not imagine the dreadful mottled bruising at the ethereal man’s throat; likely a sign of how the poor chap had met his demise.
The pressure at Clarence’s shoulder moved down his back; the ghost’s faint fingers tracing his spine. Clarence forgot the bruising at once, sucking in his breath; the air cool and invigorating in his lungs. His heart set off at a race.
“Good day, Clarence.” Spoken in a whisper, one for Clarence’s peculiar ears only.
He lowered the razor, realising how much he shook.
“Good day to you…”
“Samuel.” The ghost smiled; lips thick and promising. “Thank you…for seeing me. I hoped you would. I have been lonely a long while.”
Words Clarence could have uttered a hundred times over in his own lifetime.
His cheeks were warm, his chest aching from the thumping of his heart.
The pressure at his back shifted. Samuel’s touch rose along Clarence’s spine, taking in the jut of his shoulder blade, the curve of his neck, and then finally brushing across his cheek.
Clarence shuddered; something flowered open inside him, deep beneath his ribs. Samuel stilled, watching him in the reflection.
“Are you frightened?” he whispered.
“Yes.” Clarence shook his head. “But not in the way you might think. I’m glad I’ve seen you, and I—”
A pounding at the door almost shot Clarence through the roof. Even Samuel startled, though his tall hat, a rich green velvet with black trim, did not shift an inch on his head.
“Come on Clarence!” Jennifer, a housemaid, called out, “you said you’d help me with drawing the curtains this morning. You’re late.”
“Coming, coming. I’ll meet you in the parlour in five minutes.”
“You sound odd. Have you got someone in there with you?”
Samuel lifted his dark brows and gave Clarence a wink.
“Of course not.” The lie rang out like the clang of a church bell.
Jennifer laughed. “No, I don’t suppose you would. Odd fellow, ain’t ya? Get on now.” Her footsteps were as deliberate as her slight as she continued on down the corridor.
“Shall I knock her tea into her lap later on?” Samuel enquired.
“No!” Clarence’s heart leapt for fresh reasons now. “She’d only find some way to blame me, and I can’t lose this job.”
Samuel drew in a deep, and useless, breath. He nodded. “Very well. No spilled tea. But do not ask me tomorrow if that frog she found in her bed was my doing.”
Clarence stared, wide-eyed, before he buckled with laughter; bone-shaking laughter that left a fellow breathless.
“You are mad,” he panted, clutching at his belly.
“And you are very fetching when you are so red-cheeked with happiness. I should like to make you so content again, and again.” Samuel smiled.
If Clarence had doubted there was a hint of seduction in his words, it could not be denied in that dangerous, beguiling smile. He looked away, wondering if this deadman—one whose fingers could reach into the mortal world and touch it—would actually be the death of him.
He decided he very much wanted to find out.
Clarence lifted his nightshirt, preparing to undress. He hesitated, giving the ghost a blushing glance. “Samuel…would you mind.” A thought struck him with appalling sharpness. “Oh my god, you haven’t been watching…when I…”
“I am a gentleman, Clarence. I would never do such a thing…unless you’d like me to?”
Clarence gulped down on his genuine answer and croaked a lie. “No, I would not.”
Footsteps sounded again in the hall as the serving household woke to the new day. Never had that humdrum life felt so distant. “Please, Samuel. I really have to go.”
But good God Almighty, he did not want to.
The ghost bowed magnanimously. “I understand.”
“And you understand I can’t react if I see you in the house, so please don’t follow me around.”
He’d never keep the heat from his cheeks, the tremble from his hands.
“Of course. You’ve been ignoring me, all of us, for a long time, and done very well at it. I will stay away.”
“Good, good.”
But it wasn’t good, not really. Clarence’s world was spinning; the light brighter, the air crisper, the day less of a burden. This ghost had jolted him to life. His blood sparked. It was ludicrous. It was divine.
“But I want to see you again,’ he blurted. “Don’t stay away…for too long…I’d like to know more about you. I’d like to talk with you.”
Samuel tilted his head; half a smile lifting his lips. Clarence’s blood caught fire.
“And I’d like nothing more than to listen to you, handsome Clarence. I will wait for you in the music room in the east wing. The piano there hasn’t been touched in years, no one will hear a sound you make.”
Clarence nodded, fighting to stifle the thought of all the sounds a man could make. “Until this evening, then.”
“Until this evening.” Samuel bowed his head, touching the rim of his hat. “I look forward to learning all about you.”
The blush raged on Clarence’s cheeks. “And you, Samuel.”
He knew ghosts could vanish in an instant; neither here nor there in the blink of an eye. But Samuel lingered, drifting out of existence, his gaze not leaving Clarence until he stepped into the wall, and vanished altogether.
The room lay empty and silent, but Clarence had never felt less alone. He threw off his nightshirt, casting it into a corner of the room.
With a great curving grin, and no small amount of wonder, he slid his hand to the place on his cheek where Samuel had touched him.
“Handsome Clarence.” He shook his head, feeling every inch the lunatic…and delighting in it. “The ghost is madder than I am.”
Clarence dressed quickly, heart racing faster than it ought, preparing for a day that might be the longest ever made. The evening seemed a lifetime away.
So much for staying grounded. He practically floated down the corridor.
Eyes wide open, soul singing, and never more ardently alive.
