Passions of the Ghost by Sara Mackenzie

with several women gowned in long dresses and pointed hats with veils.
    “Make way for King Edward and Lord de Mortimer!”
    “Oh my God,” Amy breathed.
    Rey was wearing tight dark trousers and a deep red tunic over a white shirt. He looked very handsome, and very imperious, as if he was perfectly at home in the situation. But then, if he really was who he said he was, he would be, wouldn’t he?
    As he passed by, he met her gaze, and there was a gleam in his eyes. His lips twitched. He was enjoying himself, and he certainly fit the part. Her gaze sharpened. “Who’s that woman beside him in the Lady of Shallot getup?”
    “Terri Kirkby,” Jez said, finally showing some interest. “I’d heard she was coming. They say she’s the next Keira Knightley.”
    Amy pretended to yawn. “A blond teenager as thin as a stick. Why am I not surprised?”
    “Your claws are showing, little sister.”
    They found a place to sit, close enough to the fire to feel its warmth but not be roasted. The meal was a triumph of simple food cooked well: salmon and turkey and beef, and bowls of winter vegetables, as well as chestnut soup, sweet and savory tarts, and, to top it off, a huge Christmas pudding, which was ceremoniously flamed.
    “Christmas pudding, as we know it, isn’t medieval, of course,” said a plump woman across the table, who had introduced herself as Miriam Ure, “but it’s so delicious, perhaps we can forgive them for that.”
    “I don’t know if I can forgive them,” Amy whimpered, feeling her stomach expanding. “I haven’t eaten this much in years.”
    “Of course, Yuletide was a time of the year when there was little fresh fare,” the woman went on expansively, tossing back a lock of her blond wig—she’d explained she was here as Lady Godiva, with clothes. “They would have used wild herbs, mushrooms, anything growing in the woods, and foods already in storage, like apples, from the previous growing season. With the weather likely to be cold and bleak outside, everyone wanted the opportunity to eat and be merry.”
    “ They certainly look merry,” Jez said, nodding to the table on the raised dais, where Coster and Rey were seated with pretty Terri Kirkby. “Don’t you think, Amy?”
    She ignored him.
    He leaned closer, so as not to be overheard. “Here’s your chance to get rid of him. I know that having saved him, you feel obligated to keep him, but now he’s made new friends…?”
    Miriam Ure broke in loudly. “Do you know that Reynald de Mortimer, the real one, that is, was very fair of coloring—both hair and eyes? That was why they called him the Ghost. And also, I think, because he had been in many situations where he might have died but somehow survived. When he was a youngster his father’s enemies planted a serving girl in the de Mortimer stronghold to kill the boy. She seduced him, or tried to, then produced a dagger. He survived, but it had its effect. He never allowed a woman to get that close to him again.”
    That horrible scar! Amy stared at her with wide eyes. “She tried to…to cut his throat?”
    “Yes,” Miriam smiled. “You’ve heard the story, then? It was a close thing, evidently. One can’t blame him for not wanting anything to do with women afterwards, although he’d have to marry, eventually. Every great man needs an heir, and Reynald was a very great man, with a vast amount of wealth.”
    “Good lord,” Amy murmured feebly. The scar, she’d seen it, and it looked real. It was real.
    One of the traditional buxom serving wenches arrived to pour more mead and ale, but she declined, and asked instead for coffee. She was then treated to a ten-minute lecture by Miriam on the origins of coffee and its introduction into England.
    In the middle of it, she felt a wave of depression coming on. It seemed a strange moment to feel depressed, during a medieval feast with plenty of food and merriment, and with Jez at her side. She should be making the most of it,