“Why would he want to do that?” asked Catherine.
“Oh, Catherine,” said Jessica woefully. “He told me this afternoon. There’s something wrong with his heart. He is dying.”
“What?”
Jessica began to sob and Catherine put her arm around her.
“He went to see a specialist yesterday,” Jessica said through her sobs. “He said his heart is failing and there’s nothing they can do. He’ll want us to marry while he is still fit enough.”
“Jessica, love, you don’t want to be nursing an invalid. You had enough of that with your mother.”
Jessica pulled away from her, her eyes flashing angrily.
“I love him,” she said. “If I have to nurse him, I will. And I shan’t mind, either. He really is ill; Mother was just putting it on.”
“But she died, Jess,” said Catherine. “So she must have been ill.”
Jessica’s eyes searched hers; she had nothing to say to that.
“Anyway,” she said at last. “I didn’t care about Mother. I love Simon and I don’t mind what I have to do for him.”
“I’m sorry,” said Catherine. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“What other way is there?”
No other way, obviously, thought Catherine. She’d had a vision of her friend spending the rest of her days nursing a man too weak to even earn a living, much less support a wife and family. She had spoken before giving the words any thought and now she had offended her best friend.
“I was just thinking of you,” she said. “I’m sorry. It was a tactless thing to say.”
“All right,” said Jessica begrudgingly, then she turned away. “I need to get back. I’ve got the dress to finish and Father will be wanting his tea.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Farewell Letter
The new week began and Jessica’s father was busy on the farm. She managed to find some time in the morning to finish the wedding gown and she tried it on, looked at her reflection in the full length mirror in her bedroom.
A little tremor went through her heart and down to her stomach. She felt so happy, so content and didn’t regret one bit what she had done with Simon on Sunday. He had explained that he had to be careful with his heart and he might not be in any fit state for anything by the time the wedding night arrived.
Jessica understood that, understood his reasons for wanting to show her now how much he loved her. And now, as she looked at the beautiful dress, she couldn’t wait to see his face in church when he saw her in it.
They might not have a long life together, but they would have a happy one. She would make sure of that; she would look after him, try to take some of the workload away from him and onto her own shoulders. A lot of what he did for the Earl was book work and she could do that. All she needed was for him to show her how. She was a clever girl, always had been quick to pick things up once they were explained to her.
There was just one thing spoiling her happiness, well apart from Simon being ill, anyway. But that couldn’t be helped and she would savour every moment they had together. The thing that really spoilt it was her father. Jack had been going to work later and later and coming home earlier, taking liberties.
“What difference does it make?” he said when she questioned him. “His Lordship isn’t going to turn me out, is he? In fact, I’ve been thinking I might as well give it up and stay home. With my girl being his bride soon, he won’t expect me to carry on as normal, will he?”
“Dad, please, it’s not …”
“Now don’t you start that,” he interrupted her. “I’m only surprised he hasn’t already mentioned it. I mean, it doesn’t look good, does it? And he hasn’t asked me for your hand either. I find that a bit strange.”
She had never thought of that before; it was strange. Simon hadn’t asked her father either. She didn’t need his permission, but still, it was just good manners. He must have had his reasons and it was a good thing he hadn’t asked. Lord knew what would happen if Simon came to ask her father if he could marry her, when he had got it into his head that she was marrying a lot further up the ladder.
“I don’t need your permission, Dad,” she said. “I’m over twenty one.”
“Maybe you don’t, but it’s still civil, isn’t it? I suppose he thinks because I’m just one of his tenants, he would have to lower himself to ask.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she muttered.
“Well, ask him, will you?” Jack said.
“What?”
“You ask him why he hasn’t asked my permission to marry my daughter. You ask him or I might just go up to the Castle and ask him myself.”
Oh, my God! thought Jessica. Now what am I going to do?
Jessica thought about this conversation as she slipped off the white satin gown and wrapped it carefully in white muslin before putting her drab work dress back on. They had settled on the date for the wedding, her and Simon, just as they planned, and it was to be in just three weeks time. That gave them enough time to have the banns read in church and Simon was going to see the vicar that very day.
The time was drawing close and her father still thought she was marrying the Earl of Harrisford and was going to live with him in Knight’s Castle and have lots of servants and money and fine gowns and carriages, expensive jewellery. And he would have a nice little cottage on the estate, close to the Castle, a much bigger cottage than the one he had now and all on its own. The Earl might even give him some rooms in the Castle itself; after all, there were enough to spare. He would never have to work again.
These were the things Jack Milligan believed were going to happen and he had told the whole village about it, even some of the newer houses down the hill knew about it. Jessica found that out on Saturday, when she went into the new part to visit one of the shops there. She only wanted to see the cobbler and see if he could make her some shoes in time for the wedding, and this woman stopped her and asked her if she was the girl who had ensnared His Lordship. How embarrassing! She didn’t know what to say, what sort of reply to give her. She just shook her head and escaped into the grocer’s shop.
Something had to be done and it had to be done quickly, but Jessica had no idea what. She would have to tell Simon about it, have to ask him what he thought she should do. But no, she couldn’t worry him about it, not when he was so ill. She would have to deal with it on her own, just as she should have at the beginning when she realised what her father had been doing.
She had some blackcurrent jam in the larder that she had made and she was making herself some bread and jam when there was a rapid knock at the door. She frowned, wondered who that could be. Catherine didn’t knock like that and she couldn’t think of anyone else who would come knocking at lunchtime.
It was one of the stable boys from the Castle and he was holding out a piece of folded paper.
“His Lordship sent this,” he said.
She thought it must be for her father and her heart sank. It was possible that His Lordship had heard about Jack’s bragging and wanted to call him to account over it. He might even give him the sack and then they’d lose the cottage as well.
“Do you know what it says?” she asked.
The boy shook his head.
“No, Miss,” he said. “I can’t read, otherwise I would have.”
He grinned cheekily, which made Jessica smile, but her fingers trembled as she took the note. She saw on it her own name, Miss Jessica Milligan, and now she worried that perhaps the Earl thought she had been spreading lies about the village.
She closed the door and went to sit at the table as she unfolded the paper and began to read. It wasn’t about the gossip; it was from Simon and it was dated yesterday evening.
My darling, it read. This evening I thought my life was over. I felt very ill and I could hardly move. I slept in the armchair as it was too much effort to get to bed. It seems I have come to the end much earlier than I expected and I do not want you to see me like this.
&nbs
p; I know you will say it doesn’t matter, that you will love me anyway, but please, allow me this last piece of dignity. I have always been a strong man, a man capable of handling most things. I do not want to end my life being nursed by a woman I had planned to look after myself.
I do thank you so much for this afternoon. It has meant the world to me to be able to know you like that before I die.
I love you, sweetheart, and I will go to my grave loving you. But I will not allow you to see me into that grave.
I have decided to go away, to die alone where no one can see me or pity me. I have asked Lord Harrisford to pass this letter on to you, as I do not want you to find it before I have gone and beg me to stay. I would not find the strength to refuse you.
Be happy, my darling.
Simon
She forgot her bread and jam, forgot that she had been hungry. Wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, she left the cottage and hurried the two hundred yards or so further up the hill to the Castle. Simon’s cottage was once the gatehouse, built in the seventeenth century by the same Earl who had erected the wall around the estate and put up wrought iron gates to keep out unwanted visitors. The present Earl no longer employed a gatekeeper, so he had given the cottage to his estate manager.
Jessica had never been inside but now as she approached the front door, she wondered for the first time why this could not have been a suitable place for Simon to tell her of his health problems. But, of course, someone might have seen her go in and that would have caused a scandal. He was, as always, thinking only of her.
Just why she had come here, she did not know. Perhaps she hoped he was still here, that she could catch him before he left and persuade him to stay, just as he predicted, just as he was trying to avoid. He didn’t want her to have to nurse him in his final days, didn’t want her to see him so ill. Thinking of her to the last.
She tried the door, but found it locked so she sank down on the little stone bench outside the front window and began to cry. What else could she do? Her heart was broken; she loved Simon, loved him more than anything in the world and she wanted to be there for him. But she had no idea where he had gone.
Sensing that she was no longer alone, she looked up, wiped her eyes and saw, standing before her, the Earl of Harrisford himself. She had never been this close to him before, despite having grown up on the estate, in the village, and having seen him on many occasions from a distance.
Briefly, she wondered what he would say if he knew that the whole village believed she was going to marry him.
She was a little afraid to talk to him; he was an earl after all. People in the village spoke about him as the Earl or His Lordship, just as they would talk about anybody else, but nobody really knew him. Now Jessica was this close, and she was trespassing on his land, her stomach fluttered nervously.
But there was kindness in his dark eyes and he smiled gently.
“Miss Milligan, isn’t it?” he said.
She nodded, her voice temporarily frozen.
“You seem distraught,” he said. He gestured to the bench where she sat. “May I?” he asked.
She nodded again and her eyes followed him as he came and sat beside her.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
In reply, she handed him the letter from Simon, which he read faster than Jessica thought possible.
“I wondered why I haven’t seen him today,” he said. He put the letter back into her hand, giving a cursory glance at her ring as he did so. “I didn’t know he had got himself engaged,” he said. “I knew he was courting a young lady from the village; I allowed him to use my carriage and my motor vehicle to take her out. I presume that young lady was you?”
“Yes,” she said, finally finding her voice.
But while she sat in sorrowful silence, it occurred to her that Simon must have told the stable boy to tell her the note came from the Earl. His Lordship didn’t seem to know anything about it, didn’t seem to know that Simon had gone. How odd.
“And when did he tell you he was ill?” said the Earl.
“Yesterday,” she said. “We’ve been planning our wedding. Yesterday we met to set the date and … well, that’s when he told me how ill he was. And you see from the letter, he doesn’t want me to be nursing him.”
The Earl said nothing. He wanted to comfort her, take her hand or perhaps put his arm around her, except he would be breaking his own rule of never getting too close to his tenants or their families. But what the hell; the girl was devastated and he didn’t believe in Swinburne’s tale of heart failure. The man seemed perfectly healthy to him last week, when he was helping to pull up rotten fences.
At last he made up his mind; what could it hurt after all? He took her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it. Feeling the ring on her finger as he held her hand, he glanced down at it and caught his breath. He recognised that ring; it was from the Harrisford collection, he was sure of it. Perhaps Swinburne had copied it for his betrothal ring, but this one looked too old for that. He would look in the case when he got home.
“I am so sorry,” he said at last. “Would you like me to walk you back to the village?”
Lord no! Jessica could imagine what would happen if she was seen walking with the Earl; her father would have a field day.
“No, My Lord,” she said. “Thank you so much. I will be all right.”
They both stood up and His Lordship once more took her hand and kissed it, more so he could study the ring close up than any wish to offer more solace.
Some hundred yards along the road, coming home early from the farm, Jack Milligan stood nodding his head and smiling. Beside him walked Mrs Pauline Atkin, a widow woman he had been seeing for the past few weeks. She, too, smiled. If she played her cards right, she could soon be marrying into the Earl’s family.
***
Robert de Longueville, Earl of Harrisford, frowned thoughtfully as he returned to Knight’s Castle after his encounter with Miss Milligan. He would come to no conclusion, make no judgement until he had made certain, but he was already feeling disappointed.
Simon Swinburne had seemed to have excellent references and Robert was normally a good judge of character. He could scarcely believe that the man had stolen from him. No, he must have had the ring copied; that was the only thing to believe.
But what of this heart failure he was supposed to be suffering from? He had left both his home and his employment without a word to Robert and that in itself was disappointing.
As he closed the heavy oak front doors to the main house, he experienced, as he always did, that eerie emptiness that he wished he could fill. This house was never meant to be empty; it should be filled with servants and great parties and balls should be taking place here. Queen Victoria had visited here with her consort, Prince Albert, but that was many years ago, long before Robert was born.
Now the castle must remain empty out of necessity; Robert didn’t enjoy the hollowness, the echoes, but he had no real choice.
He glanced up when he heard a footstep crossing the floor above and held his breath, hoping it would stop soon. When silence fell once more, he was still holding his breath and now he exhaled quietly, briefly closed his eyes.
The great hall was not part of the original castle and it was the only room where people were allowed to visit once a year. Those people were the villagers and townsfolk, nobody else. The men loved to come and look at the ancient suits of armour dressing the mannequins in the hall, the heavy steel swords that hung on the walls and the hundred year old muskets that Robert kept cleaned and serviceable. The women loved to look at some of the gowns from the last century, his mother’s wedding dress with its intricate pattern of tiny pearls, and the jewellery.
Robert displayed the jewellery that had been in his family for generations. There were necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings, even head adornments, all laid out in locked display cases for the village women to coo over.
In medieval times, this hall was where the then own
er would hold great banquets. He and his family would eat at the top table, while the servants had their meals farther down. The farther away from the family, the lower they were in the scheme of things.
Robert never used the hall. He had no use for it; no balls or banquets were going to take place in his lifetime, but the house was clean enough. He employed a number of women from the village and town to come in once a month and clean the place thoroughly, and one young girl who came in every day to keep the dust under control. He trusted Susan; she appeared to have secrets of her own and since she never spoke to anyone, she was a fairly safe option.
But the women didn’t enter the old tower. It was those women who had heard noises and footsteps and spread the word that the place was haunted. Some of them had even seen a woman in the window of the Castle tower, the only part of the original castle still standing. Robert never explained and they were all too afraid to ask. Let them believe in a ghost; it was preferable to the truth.
The display cases that held his jewellery were drawers that could be pulled out and rested on trestle tables, then locked away in two huge chests. It was toward those chests that he now made his way, reluctantly, but ready to be relieved.
He opened the top drawer and pulled the case out as far as it would go; this is where the rings were kept. Each row held a ring, some silver, some gold and even a few in platinum. Each was set with precious gems, diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. The ring he sought was not here; the space where it belonged was empty and he knew where he had seen it last – on the finger of Miss Jessica Milligan, the daughter of one of his tenant farmers.
He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts, then opened each and every one of the other display cases. They were all in order, with the exception of the last; that showed him a faded piece of velvet, a space where a silver brooch had once been. He had no doubt at all that Miss Milligan also had possession of that brooch.
Knight's Acre: Till Death Do Us Part Page 7