Page 44 of Unforeseen Affairs
“It has been so long. It feels as if I have always been zis way,madame,” Mr. Bass said, his eyes vacant and unfocused. “How you say…les cendres aux cendres, la poussière à la poussière.”
An appreciative titter ran through the group.
Finally, Sir Colin glanced sidelong at her.
Charlotte very subtly shook her head, pressing her lips together. There was nothing to be done with this trick except endure the butchering of the language. Her stepmother, whohad meticulously taught her excellent pronunciation, would be appalled. Unfortunately, though, what Mr. Bass was claiming to be doing here could be neither proven nor disproven.
“How did you, er, perish?” asked a round, middle-aged man with massive side-whiskers and a walrus-like mustache from across the table.
“A halberd. Between ze shoulders.”
Mrs. Kitson gasped. Several others murmured in low, wondering tones.
Atrocious,Charlotte silently admonished.
“Were you a soldier?”
Charlotte’s head snapped to glare at Sir Colin in the dark. He gave her a sheepish grin and a slight shrug before amending his question.
“Or, perhaps, an officer?”
“Oui.”
A hush fell over the group. No one made a sound.
All that nervous reticence and he decided to dive in with this? Encouraging Mr. Bass? Charlotte jabbed her knee into Sir Colin’s leg. It felt firmer than she expected.
He jumped.
“Sir Colin?” the gruff voice of Mr. Trenwith asked from somewhere in the shadows behind them. “Are you quite alright? Do you require assistance?”
“Er, no, no. Just surprised, is all.”
“So you perished in a war,” said the bespectacled young woman sitting to Charlotte’s left, so eagerly that her words ran together. “Which war? Was your country at war?”
“Always,” Mr. Bass said, still maintaining his mesmerized affect.
Charlotte wanted to yawn. While the previous spirit circle at the Gearings’ had been farcical, at least Mr. Bass had made an effort to be more entertaining thanthis. There he’d done apassable job of describing an entrancing, yet believable vision, almost like one that Mrs. Stone might have. But now it seemed he was intent on impressing his esteemed repeat guest, and had reined himself in, choosing to be less fantastical while claiming to commune with a military figure.
She had to move things along, to force Mr. Bass into making more of a spectacle.
“Spirit, what is your name?” she piped up, doing her best to appear enthralled.
“Onfroi,” Mr. Bass intoned.
“Onfroi? Onfroi… what? What is your family’s name?”
“De Compans.”
A gentleman with a sorrowful look and a beard that failed to hide his lack of a chin spoke up next. “What was it like, when—”
Charlotte cut him off.
“Pourquoi êtes-vous venu sur ce monde, monsieur?”
The chinless man scoffed loudly, but then there was silence. Charlotte waited. Of course, she did not expect to catch Mr. Bass out just now; she only meant to begin putting him off his stroke.
After several seconds, the spirit finally replied, its accent thicker and far more offensive than before to anyone with a passing knowledge of the language.
