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only a suggestion of a form, shimmering in the lamplight. Then the spirit solidified further, so that if she hadn’t been peering directly at him, it might have seemed as if he were a being of flesh and blood. Standing there in his wide white collar and the red velvet Italian coat he always wore, the only thing about him that would have drawn undue attention was the anachronism of his fashion.
    “I don’t know,” he said, mischief still twinkling in his eyes. “William could use a bit of scandal. And it’s true, you know, that modesty retires after six o’clock.”
    For a long moment she gazed at the specter, at the ghost of the poet. Then she smiled. “Now that you mention it, I do have something new. Something with a bodice that . . . plunges a bit more.”
    The ghost uttered a high, childish giggle. “There’s my girl. Oh, yes, we’ll make a bohemian of you yet.”
    Tamara smiled even more broadly. Brazen, she crossed to the bed and laid the dress out neatly. “I can’t wear this chemise, however,” she said, fingering the neckline on the undergarment. It was too high for the bodice she had in mind.
    Without bothering to acknowledge that she wasn’t alone in the room, she drew the chemise over her head and tossed it on the bed beside the matching drawers. Entirely nude, she paraded back to the chest on the far side of the room and withdrew a fresh white chemise and the drawers to match it. The specter watched her all the while. He had been a scoundrel in life, she knew, his appetites as decadent as one could imagine. Yet in death he had become her friend and confidant, and though he had neither flesh nor blood, he was the only man to have seen her unclothed since her childhood.
    A sad state of affairs, that.
    Tamara pulled on the white chemise.
    “Oh, that’s much better,” he said. “It’s practically indecent.”
    She smiled, basking in his approval.
    As she stepped into her drawers, there came a soft knock on the bedroom door. Tamara frowned and glanced at the ghost. She had dismissed Martha for the evening and the butler, Farris, would not have entered her sitting room without first knocking on that outer door.
    It could only be William.
    “Yes?” she called.
    “Tamara? It’s me. Can I come in?”
    “You’ll have to come back later!” the ghost replied. “She’s not entirely dressed. Wouldn’t want to offend your tender sensibilities.”
    Tamara held a hand to her mouth and laughed softly.
    “Is that Byron in there?” William barked from the sitting room. “Tamara, really!”
    “Oh, just a moment, William! I swear, you have the patience of a princess.”
    “And the sense of decorum,” Byron muttered.
    Tamara could not help laughing aloud at that.
    “Now, see here!” William shouted.
    She could imagine her brother’s bluster as he protested helplessly. With a sigh, Tamara took a robe from its hook and slipped it on. She glanced at the ghost of Lord Byron, who gazed at her curiously from beneath those dark curls.
    “I’m certain I know what this is all about,” she whispered.
    “I’ll leave you to it, then,” the poet said, and he began to fade away once more, his body becoming ever more transparent, seeming to flicker with the lamplight until at last he was gone.
    Tamara firmly tied the sash of her robe and pulled open the door that led to her sitting room. Her brother was already dressed for the dinner party, looking smart in a dark jacket, with a red-and-gray-patterned waistcoat beneath. He stood by the window and gazed out at the night, trying as best he could to make it seem as if he hadn’t been shouting at the closed door to her bedroom only moments ago.
    “William,” she said.
    He took a long breath, then turned to face her. His expression was serious, but the gravity of it did not reach his eyes, which held a certain sadness. That was ever the way he slipped past her defenses. Much as they might argue, it was his eyes that always gave away the truth of what he was