Charles Latham, wastrel younger son of the Earl of Clitheroe, returns home drunk from the theatre to find his father gruesomely dead. He suspects murder. But when the Latham ghosts turn nasty, and Charles finds himself falling in love with the priest brought in to calm them, he has to unearth the skeleton in the family closet before it ends up killing them all.

EXCERPT

He ducked his head as if to evade a blow. “If a sense one cannot be rid of qualifies as a power, then they may be right. Certainly, when I came here to live with my guardian it was the Latham ghosts I met first. The white lady. The burning boy. The voice in the walls. The charioteer. They are old, most of them. The charioteer, indeed, is pre-Roman, much faded. I don’t think he will last much longer " another generation, another hundred years. I don’t know. But I do know this, they are newly angry, and a house full of angry ghosts is not a healthy place for the living.”

He looked up to gauge Charles’ reaction, and seemed not too much dismayed by the numbed, disbelieving stare.

“I have no idea where to start.” Charles sat on the edge of the pond and watched the glide of tarnished silver fish beneath water lily pads bearded with algae. “Can any of that be true?”
“I realize as a papist my word may not be worth a great deal.”

Facing one another as they sat by the water side, it took only Charles edging forward an inch before their knees touched. At the little press of cuff and stocking Jasper raised his eyebrows. He had, it seemed, an almost inexhaustible fund of small, cynical smiles " this one had a softness to it that undercut its insult. “I’m not sure you know your own mind, Mr. Latham. There’s no wonder you can’t begin to fathom mine.”