But occasionally they forgot about her.
She learnt that the licence of what was called the Beau Ton horrified the County Dowagers.
Like Nanny she could understand that, after the dangers and privations of war, Ivan would want to enjoy himself.
But equally it seemed heart breaking that he should be caught up with a woman who could be as wicked as Lucy depicted her.
Sedela was sensible enough to know that servants always exaggerated and they also, like their ‘betters’, enjoyed a titbit of gossip.
Yet she was quite certain that Lucy would not have written of such behaviour to Nanny, of all people, unless she believed that what she was saying was the truth.
It was also right for Nanny to know what to expect in the future.
‘Could what Lucy feared really be possible?’ Sedela asked herself.
Could Lady Esther Hasting really change the smooth running traditional manner in which everything at Windle Court was organised?
Every department was headed by servants who had been there for years and years.
They seemed to her to perform their duties with a perfection that it would be difficult to find fault with.
She knew only too well that, if the older servants thought that they were being taken to task unreasonably, there would be deep resentment and the whole structure might collapse.
Her father and mother’s household was conducted on a smaller scale in the same manner.
Sedela understood how the older servants thought of themselves as one of the family.
“We do this” and “we do that,” they said to outsiders and they identified themselves with their employers.
They spoke of Windle Court as ‘our house’ because it was their home.
‘Surely Ivan must be aware of this?’ Sedela asked silently.
Nanny was still wiping her eyes and Sedela then suggested,
“If there is any question of your not being happy here, Nanny, you know your room is waiting for you at Four Gables.”
She smiled and added,
“I have always thought that it was unfair that Ivan should have you simply because he was born before me!”
Nanny gave a watery little laugh.
“I know there will be no question of my havin’ to go to the Alms House,” she said. “It’s Master Ivan I’m worryin’ about. He was such a lovely baby and many’s the time he’s put his arm round my neck after I’ve heard his prayers and said, ‘I love you, Nanny! Promise you’ll never leave me!’”
This story brought on another burst of tears and then Nanny blew her nose resolutely and said,
“There’s nothin’ we can do about it, so we’ll just have to wait and see, as the sayin’ goes.”
This was something that Sedela had often heard Nanny say in the past.
“If only I could talk to Ivan,” she replied rather helplessly. “Has no one heard when he is coming home?”
“He’s comin’ back tomorrow for two nights,” Nanny replied.
Sedela started.
“Tomorrow? But nobody knows that!”
“I understand he told Mr. Mason he was not to tell anyone local. Master Ivan’s only comin’ to attend the hunt meetin’ because he wants to take over the foxhounds.”
“Papa intends to go to that meeting,” Sedela said, “but I am sure Sir Trevor Smithson will not wish to give up his position as Master.”
“If his Lordship’s made up his mind,” Nanny replied, “it be a brave man who would oppose him!”
“So Ivan is coming here tomorrow night,” Sedela murmured.
“There won’t be a chance of your seein’ him, dearie,” Nanny said. “He’s arrivin’ in time for a late dinner and made it quite clear he wishes to dine alone. He’s goin’ to the meeting in the mornin’ and tryin’ out some new horses in the afternoon.”
She paused before she went on,
“Then he’s havin’ dinner with the Lord Lieutenant and leavin’ for London after breakfast on Thursday.”
Nanny paused because she was breathless and then added in a sad tone,
“I doubt with all that planned that I’ll even set eyes on him!”
“It does seem unlikely,” Sedela said, “and I suppose – if I did say anything to him he would not listen.”
“Now don’t you go stickin’ your nose in where it’s not wanted,” Nanny insisted firmly. “You knows as well as I do I shouldn’t be tellin’ you these things and Lucy would certainly get the sack if her Ladyship was to know she’d written one word about it to anybody, let alone me, as is livin’ in Windle Court.”
Sedela knew that this was true.
At the same time every instinct in her body told her that she must do something.
If it was humanly possible she must prevent Ivan from making a disastrous marriage.
She had not seen him for nearly eight years, but everyone at Four Gables from her father downwards talked about him incessantly.
And he had always been in her thoughts and in fact a part of her life.
When she first heard that he was coming home, she felt as excited about it as if he had been the brother she had never had.
‘We are part of a family,’ she had told herself often.
In fact her great-grandfather had married a Windle and the old Marquis had shown her the name once on the long Family Tree that went back to the eleventh century.
‘I have the same blood in my veins as Ivan,’ she thought now, ‘and somehow I have to save him!’
She knew, however, that it would be a mistake to tell Nanny.
Instead she kissed her and said,
“All you have to do, Nanny, is to pray that somehow God will look after Ivan now as he did when he was fighting.”
Her voice deepened as she went on,
“He has come home safely and we cannot allow him to be hurt or injured by a woman who, from all Lucy says, is as dangerous as one of Bonaparte’s cannons.”
“You’re right, Miss Sedela, that’s the truth!” Nanny said. “And a dangerous woman can do more harm to a man than any bullet!”
Sedela walked towards the door.
“Enjoy the cheese, Nanny,” she said, “and don’t keep it too long.”
“I’ll not do that,” Nanny replied, “and thank you dearie, for thinkin’ of me.”
Sedela closed the nursery door.
Once outside she did not go downstairs immediately as she was thinking.
‘There must be something I can do,’ she told herself.
She walked to a window in the corridor and stood looking out over the garden.
The green lawn stretched away to a shrubbery of rhododendrons and lilac bushes. Behind that there were young fir trees that had been planted on rising ground.
They formed a protection for the house against the North winds of winter and the thunderstorms of summer.
When Sedela looked at Windle Court from the other side, she saw it silhouetted against the green trees.
Sedela had often thought that it was like a jewel in a velvet box and now she knew that nothing must spoil or destroy it.
This was something that she had to prevent at all costs.
‘He is in danger – please, God – Ivan is in danger,’ she prayed. ‘Save him – you must save him.’
It was then, almost as if it was an answer from Heaven, she remembered Lady Constance.
Lady Constance had lived at the time of Oliver Cromwell and she was the daughter of the sixth Earl of Windlesham.
Judging by her portrait that hung in the Picture Gallery, she was very beautiful.
She fell in love with a Royalist, who had a price on his head and he was being hunted by the Cromwellian troops.
He loved Lady Constance as much as she loved him.
He sent her a message saying he could no longer go on without seeing her and he would come to Windle Court within the next three days.
No one ever knew whether he was betrayed by a servant or it was just plain bad luck.
Lady Constance waited day and night praying that he would somehow reach her and yet the legend said that she had a presentiment of disaster.
She was weeping long before news came that the man she loved so much had been captured.
The Cromwellian soldiers took him prisoner and hanged him on a gibbet.
It was a sad story that had been related to generation after generation of Windle children.
As the years passed, the family found that whenever there was danger or a death impending Lady Constance would appear. She would move throughout the house weeping copiously and wringing her hands.
Each succeeding generation saw her before some disaster came – illness, death and sometimes a broken heart.
It was because there had been no sign of Lady Constance that Sedela had been sure that Ivan would return safely from the War.
She had said this once to her father.
“You can hardly believe that old wives’ tale!” the General growled.
“But I do believe it,” Sedela insisted.
The old Marquis died while Ivan was fighting in Spain under Wellington.
Hanson the butler, Mrs. Benson, the cook, and Nanny all swore that they had seen the shadowy figure of Lady Constance gliding through the Great Hall and none of those people, Sedela knew well, would have lied deliberately.
Now as she thought of Lady Constance, she knew that she had the answer as to how she could warn Ivan.
She could do it without his believing that an outsider was interfering in his private life.
She was sure that he would resent that. It would also be difficult for her to explain how, living in the depths of Hertfordshire, she could know what was going on in London.
Whatever happened, she must not involve Nanny.
‘Lady Constance must tell him,’ she thought, ‘and I must somehow impersonate her.’
All those who had seen the ghost described her as thin from endless anxiety and she also had long fair hair that fell down to her waist.
Why her hair should be loose instead of neatly arranged had worried Sedela as a child.
Then she learnt that the news of her Royalist lover’s death had come to her at night.
She must therefore, Sedela reasoned, have run downstairs in her nightgown to see the messenger and her long hair had fallen over her shoulders.
At one time, because she was so interested in the story, she had read through the various reports of those who had seen Lady Constance.
They were all filed neatly in the library.
Some, which were written extremely badly with the spelling even worse, were really quite amusing.
“Her hair were a-shinin’ like a star,” one woman wrote.
Another swore that her “feet did not touch the ground and she moved like a bird flighting over the lake”.
‘Her hair was glittering like a star!’ Sedela mused to herself now.
Instead of going downstairs she went up to a higher floor.
During the War these upper rooms had been closed and the maidservants who had slept in them previously were now in the top floor of the East wing.
There were two large rooms in the attics and, as in all large houses, in them was stored everything that was no longer needed but was too good to throw away.
There was Dresden china that was chipped, chairs with a leg or its back broken, but they were made of walnut or mahogany and had once been part of a fine set.
There were several chests of drawers and, at the far end, a number of wardrobes.
These contained clothes that had been used in the past for Nativity plays given at Christmas time.
There were fancy dresses for the parties that had taken place when Ivan was young.
It was to these wardrobes that Sedela made her way.
She was looking for something that she could remember quite clearly.
She pulled open the drawers beneath the wardrobes and after quite a long search she found what she was seeking.
It was a box that contained sparkle and she remembered that Ivan’s mother had sprinkled it on her hair when she had been the fairy in a play. And Nanny had had terrible trouble in brushing it out of her hair.
At the time she had looked very fairylike in a dress that also glittered with tinsel and she had a magic wand with a shining star at the end of it.
Sedela picked up the box.
Then she searched in the cupboard for what she vaguely remembered as a long piece of sparkling silver cloth, which had been used on one occasion as a backdrop.
She found it and, carrying it under her arm, she went downstairs.
At the far end of the first floor there was the Master suite.
It was where Ivan would sleep tomorrow night.
She guessed that it had already been prepared for him and there would be no one about.
Swiftly she hurried down the passage.
Entering the bedroom she saw as she expected that the windows were open and the bed made up.
She saw that the only thing lacking was flowers and they would be brought in by the gardeners in the morning.
She crossed the room to the finely sculpted marble fireplace, which faced the huge four-poster bed with its carved and gilded posts.
The Windle Coat of Arms stood on top of the canopy and that too was carved and was not only gilded but also picked out in different colours.
It was a room that Sedela had always felt should be used by a Knight in armour.
And that, she thought, described Ivan perfectly.
Because it was a mistake to linger she quickly felt along the panelling at the side of the fireplace.
The secret passages in the house had been a joy to her ever since she was a child and the late Marquis had allowed her to play in them whenever she wished.
They were, of course, only in the oldest part of the house.
The architects of the last century had wisely left the old walls intact and they had not bricked up the Priest’s hole that had been used when Queen Elizabeth had started to persecute the Roman Catholics.
With the passages it had saved many lives, but not the life of the lover of Lady Constance.
The secret panel swung open.
Sedela stepped into it, pulled it to behind her and then paused to adjust her eyes to the darkness.
There was just a faint glimmer of light to guide her and she walked down the passage that was as familiar to her as those in her own home.
She reached the Priest’s hole and groped about for what she knew was there.
It was what she had always lit as a child and was a candle-lantern almost as old as the room itself.
It had a cross on the top of it and the taper inside it was half-worn.
She lit it thinking that she must remember to bring another one here tomorrow.
The light showed her the hard bed where the priest had slept and on one wall was the altar at which he had prayed and given Communion to the Catholics in the house.
Sedela put down what she was carrying on a small table.
It would be waiting for her tomorrow night.
She then blew out the candle and left.
She did not go back the way she had come, instead she went down a further passage to a lower floor.
She walked very carefully, aware that it would be easy to slip in the darkness.
She was familiar with every step and the walls on each side of her. She therefore found her way without pausing to the library on the ground floor.
She opened the door in the panelling and then peeped through just in case somebody might be on the other side of it.
The library was empty, so she stepped out from the fireplace and closed the panel behind her.
She listened for the tiny click as it went back into place.
There were few people left in the house who knew about the secret passages and anyway no one would suspect her of using them.
Without hurrying she walked from the library and along the passage that led first to the Great Hal
l.
Then she went through to the kitchen quarters from where she had entered Windle Court.
She did not stop to talk to anybody.
She was only thinking as she went towards the stables of what Lady Constance must say to the Marquis of Windlesham.
She had to convince him that he was courting trouble.
Sam was waiting to show her proudly the new horses from London.
As Sedela rode back to her home, she was not thinking but praying.
She was now praying with all her heart that she would be able to save Ivan.
Chapter Two
The Marquis of Windlesham arrived home late.
It was after nine o’clock before he brought his horses to a standstill outside the front door.
Hanson greeted him respectfully but with unconcealed pleasure.
As he drove over his own land, the Marquis had been thinking that he had been very remiss in not having come home before.
He had, however, been in constant demand. By the Prime Minister, the War Office and, most persistent of all, the Prince Regent himself.
It was well known that His Royal Highness liked to know about everything that was happening abroad and the Marquis had found himself spending hours at Carlton House just talking.
He was in fact most successful at entertaining the Prince Regent with his account of the Battle of Waterloo.
He also delighted His Royal Highness with the dramas that had occurred while the Army of Occupation was at Cambrai.
Because it was equivalent to a Royal Command he felt obliged to attend the evening parties at Carlton House.
And it was not surprising that he found relief and delight in the company of beautiful women.
The most beautiful of all was Lady Esther Hasting.
The Marquis would not have been human if, after the years of privation in the War, he had not been entranced by her.
He also enjoyed the flattery received from every woman he met.
It was only one step further to find himself holding a soft scented body in his arms.
The great beauties of London looked what they indeed were – ‘blue-blooded’. They had a dignity and a poise that was exceptional.
So he was somewhat surprised to find that they were very different in bed.
Warned by a Ghost Page 2