The Echo at Rooke Court

by Harriet Smart

  THE ECHO AT ROOKE COURT

  by

  Harriet Smart

  Copyright © 2018 Harriet Smart

  Published by Anthemion

  Made with Jutoh

  ISBN 978-1-907873-50-8

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  For a list of the characters in this book, please see the Dramatis Personae.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Epilogue

  Dramatis Personae

  Excerpt from The Fatal Engine: Chapter One

  Also by Harriet Smart

  The Butchered Man: Northminster Mystery 1

  The Dead Songbird: Northminster Mystery 2

  The Shadowcutter: Northminster Mystery 3

  The Hanging Cage: Northminster Mystery 4

  The Ghosts of Ardenthwaite: Northminster Mystery 5

  The Fatal Engine: Northminster Mystery 7

  The True Value of Pearls

  The Daughters of Blane

  Green Grow the Rushes

  The Wild Garden

  The Lark Ascending

  Reckless Griselda

  A Tempting Proposal

  About the Author

  Made with Jutoh

  Chapter One

  August 1841

  “Farewell, Caledonia,” said Eleanor, as the steamer passed the twinkling lights of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

  They had sat on the stern deck since after dinner, watching the coast of Scotland dwindle into the fading light, to the accompaniment of the industrious thud of the paddles. Now it was almost dark. She leaned in closer towards Felix, seeking comfort from him.

  “We should go to bed,” Felix said, reaching for her hand and kissing it.

  “Not yet.”

  “You’re not cold?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “Not with my plaid.”

  She was wrapped in the vast tartan shawl that had become her constant companion ever since Felix’s mother had presented it to her. She had learnt how to wind it about her, in true Highland style, and had declared that she would wear it when she had her portrait painted. This had delighted his parents and Felix too, although he suspected his vision of the portrait would differ somewhat from theirs. They probably had in mind a half-length in an oval, and modest dress. For Felix, Eleanor would be painted in full length, sitting in rural glory in the Birks of Pitfeldry, wrapped in the shawl with nothing much more than her chemise under it, her feet bare and her hair unpinned and flowing over her shoulders. He had thought of attempting such a sketch himself, but he did not think his limited skill with the pencil could ever capture the potent charm of the real Eleanor in delicious disordered dress.

  “I shall want to go to bed quite soon,” Felix said, kissing her hand again, and then her wrist.

  “You always want to go to bed,” she said, “don’t you?”

  “Not always,” he said, “but often, certainly. Any man would, in the fortunate position of being your husband.” Now he folded back her glove and began to stroke her wrist. “And I have happy memories of that cabin. As do you.”

  It was where they had spent their first night together, a hot-breathed, surprisingly successful adventure. He had been afraid of her innocence, but she had discarded it readily.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “But regrettably, I find I am unwell,” she added, with the last word whispered.

  “What?”

  “Unwell,” she said again quietly.

  He would have queried this again, but then he realised what she was implying.

  “Oh, I see,” he said. “Well, that’s a shame, but it’s for the best. I was beginning to worry, actually, that –”

  “To worry? About what?”

  “That –” He hesitated. “That we had been reckless and it would catch up with us. Rather, that I had been reckless, for it is my responsibility and I have been foolish, but I promise you, from now on, I will begin to be more careful. I do not want to endanger your health and ruin everything.”

  “What do you mean?” she said, twisting out of his embrace and facing him. “What are you talking about? Be more careful? In what respect?”

  “When we are...” Now he lowered his own voice, so that the other passengers who remained on deck should not overhear. “Intimate. I will take care that there is no risk of your getting with child.”

  Even though the light was dim, and her face was shadowed by her bonnet brim, he sensed her surprise.

  “Marriage and parenthood are not inevitably linked,” he went on, quietly. “We can spare ourselves the trouble of all that, for a while at least. I certainly don’t feel ready for it, and surely you don’t?”

  “Perhaps I will go in,” she said after a moment’s silence. “It’s getting cold.” She stood up, pulling her wrap about her, and said, “Will you find Stevens for me?”

  “Yes,” he said, also getting up. She went towards the cabin and he went to look for her maid.

  Her lack of answer began to nag at him as he searched for Stevens. Had he offended her? Surely he had not. She could not want to be a mother yet. She had never said anything to him to that effect. It had been preying on his own mind that he had been foolish in giving in to temptation as he had done, and the subject was one that ought to be dealt with, sooner rather than later.

  He had intended to have a frank and honest conversation with her at the first opportunity about the benefits of avoiding conception. But the appropriate moment had never arisen. From the moment they were first alone together in the carriage, driving from the wedding breakfast to the railway station, he had felt his resolutions evaporate like dew on a fine summer morning. The sheer excitement of being alone with her at last, the possibilities of untrammelled intimacy, had made him drunk and weak. Her beauty, her high spirits and her enthusiasm for
all things sensual had made him a slave to congress. How could he speak to her of French gloves or coitus interruptus or any of that clumsy, ugly stuff when all she wanted to do was lie in his arms and return each kiss, each caress? He had never imagined a woman could be as hungry or eager for congress as a man, and yet Eleanor...

  Such temptation it had been, and such pleasure. Caution had gone entirely to the wind. But now it was time to be rational, and he felt sure that she would see it, once it was all explained properly to her. Why on earth would she want children so soon, after all?

  Having found Stevens and sent her to Eleanor, he took his ease on the deck, elbows on the rail, gazing out into the darkness. Of course, he knew that this idea was not conventional, but neither was Eleanor. She did not think or behave as ordinary women did. She had a rebellious, spirited mind – it was one of the things he adored about her.

  Stevens was just leaving as he returned to the cabin. Eleanor was on her knees by the bunk, saying her prayers which she did every night with child-like sincerity. She had finished just as he was pulling on his nightshirt, and she got up from her knees and climbed into the bottom bunk, without another word.

  He picked up his book and wondered if, in light of her indisposition, he ought to climb up into the bunk above. She had curled herself up in a ball, and seemed to be feigning sleep rather than making space for him to join him as usual. He stood there, in a state of indecision, remembering all too vividly that first night alone together in the cabin, and then waking with her in his arms as they steamed into Leith Harbour.

  “I’ll just read for a while,” he said, and climbed up the little ladder. He opened his book – it was an anonymously published novel that he had turned up at one of his favourite booksellers in Edinburgh. It had a peculiar, frank and passionate tone which had charmed him, and the shop man had told him it had caused a great stir at Oxford, for it contained a savage critique of the University and the Church, and many other shocking things besides. Felix had not yet read anything in it that he found remotely scandalous, but he had not got beyond the first few chapters where the hero was still a boy at home, with a beautiful but sickly mother. He was thinking that the mother would not last much longer when he heard Eleanor say, “Felix?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m cold,” she said.

  So he abandoned the novel and got into the bottom bunk with her, and she gratifyingly pressed herself against him, shivering in his arms.

  “About what you said earlier,” she said. “You did not mean it, did you?”

  “Yes,” Felix said.

  “But,” she said, “doesn’t the Prayer Book say that marriage was ordained for –”

  “Yes, but we don’t need to abide by that, do we?”

  There was a pause and she said, “Do we not?”

  “No, not really,” Felix said. “At least not to the letter. When that was written no one had any notion of how procreation might be limited, and perhaps they could not see the benefits of it either, though I am sure there were plenty of women in the past who would dearly liked to have been spared the endless misery of childbearing.”

  “Is that not immoral?” she said.

  “No, not at all. Physical love is an appetite that needs to be satisfied, by both men and women. You have found that for yourself, yes? And now we have the means to limit its consequences. What possible harm is there in that?”

  “It is taking pleasure for the sake of it,” she said. “And it is interfering with natural law, surely – with what Providence intends! It is not our business to do that.”

  “Natural law?” he said. “What is that, precisely? And as for interfering, you might say that of vaccination. That has been of the greatest public benefit. Think how many lives have been saved by it!”

  “And you are proposing to destroy lives by never allowing them to begin,” she threw back. “That is what you are saying.”

  “No, no, I only think that if we could regulate conception then the lives of many people would be improved immeasurably.”

  “The lives of men especially,” she said, sitting up. “For they would feel freer than ever to seduce women if they knew there would be no consequences to their actions! Yes?”

  “Yes,” he was forced to concede, admiring how she had gone on the attack. “That might be a result. But one might hope that relations between men and women –”

  “And you would not even exist,” she went on. “Think of that. You are here, surely, because of the natural consequences of physical love?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but my not existing is not necessarily a terrible thing in the grand scheme of things. How can I regard my own existence as important?”

  “I’m not sure your parents would see it that way. For them you were a gift from God – as much as if you had been their own flesh and blood. Your mother prayed for a miracle and there you were!”

  “She said that to you?”

  “Yes. And it is a miracle, is it not? For if Lord Rothborough had done as you are suggesting then there would be no Felix Carswell. How can you suggest we meddle like this, Felix? I don’t understand.”

  “Meddle?” said Felix. “It is not meddling. It is behaving rationally.”

  “I think it is meddling, plain and simple. I cannot agree with what you suggest. It feels absolutely wrong! I’m sorry to disagree with you, but really, it’s horrible!”

  “It is not,” Felix said. “It only feels that way because it is a new idea to you. You must think about it a little more and then you will see it, I’m certain of it.”

  “Will I?” she said. “How can you be so certain? Do you think my opinions are so weak and changeable?”

  “No, of course not, but this is simply common sense! I know you have plenty of that.”

  “If this is common sense, I would rather be thought silly,” she said, lying down again, with her back to him. Due to the tight space in the bunk, she had her face almost pressed against the bulkhead, in her uncomfortable protest.

  “I think I will go up again,” said Felix after a moment’s silence in which he rehearsed various arguments and then put them to one side as being too inflammatory. “We will never get any sleep like this. You can have my blanket if you are cold.”

  She turned now and regarded him.

  “I suppose you had better,” she said.

  “I would rather not,” Felix said. “I’m not sure I can sleep without you near me, Nell, to tell the truth.” Now she wriggled round and they lay facing one another. “And I’m sorry my ideas offend you,” he said, pushing back a mess of hair that covered her face. He leant forward a little and kissed her forehead, feeling the ache of quickening desire, and at the same time the annoyance that he would not be able to satisfy it.

  “Is this our first quarrel?” she said.

  “Is it even that?” he said. “No, we shall never have quarrels. Those are for commonplace husbands and wives.”

  “We will quarrel,” she said, touching his cheek. “People always do.”

  “Not if we are careful.”

  “If one simply agrees with the other, irrespective of what she really believes? For the sake of peace?” she said.

  “It need not come to that. Not if we are honest with each other and agree to disagree, when necessary. With luck it will not be often. If ever.”

  “But what we just discussed...?” she said.

  “I promise I will think about what you said, and you shall think about what I said, and we shall talk again about it, and I dare say it will all seem perfectly straightforward what we do then.” As he spoke, he was confident that she would still come around to his point of view, but at the same time he felt ashamed of his promise. He knew he would only be thinking of better ways to refute her arguments. “Does that seem reasonable?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But you must not imagine I will not be ready to fight you point for point, Mr clever Edinburgh man.” This was as stimulating as it was terrifying. He kissed her again, and he was glad to
find that she was as ardent as usual in her responses. They dallied for a while, and then, after assuaging their mutual frustration, they settled into each other’s arms and let the motion of the steamer send them to sleep.

  Chapter Two

  “Who could not love an ancient house like this,” Emma said, “where every creaking board tells a story?”

  “Creaking and sloping,” said Giles, squatting down and observing the way that the floor fell away from them. “But beautiful, yes.”

  “Oh, come and see this, Giles!” Emma exclaimed as she walked into the next room.

  He followed her into a large, well-proportioned drawing room. It had panelled walls painted a pale yellow, and a shallow domed ceiling that was wreathed with garlands of plaster fruit and flowers.

  “We could have quite a few couples standing up in here,” said Emma from the centre of the room. She dropped a curtsey to an imaginary partner while Giles went about the room tapping the plaster above the panelling. “And there is enough room for waltzing.”

  “Waltzing?” said Giles. “In the Minster Precincts? You will need permission from the Dean and Chapter.”

  As he spoke he realised that the fluted pilaster had appeared to amplify his words.

  “I wonder if this is a whispering dome,” he said, this time addressing the pilaster more directly but more quietly.

  “What was that?” Emma said.

  “Go and stand opposite. I think –”

  She obediently positioned herself, and he whispered, “Can you hear me?”

  She gave a shriek of delight and clapped her hands. Then she turned to the wall and Giles at his column heard her say: “A wonder! I have heard of these things before, but – oh, how deliciously eerie!”

  He saw her shudder, her shawl and flounces shaking.

  “I wonder why it was built this way,” he murmured into the wall. “It cannot have been an accident.”

  “Nothing ever can be an accident with you, my love,” Emma said to the wall, and then she turned and smiled at him across the room.

  “Perhaps,” he went on, again to the wall, “it was so that two lovers could talk discreetly?”

  “Oh yes, when the match had been forbidden by some stuffy old parent. But love triumphed,” she said.