The Edge of Dark

by Pamela Hartshorne

  Sibylla took the letter after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Go now,’ said Jane, ‘and then you may get back to your work.’

  ‘Yes, mistress,’ she whispered.

  It would take some time for the letter to reach London, but Jane could endure it if she knew Gilbert was coming. And he would come, she knew that. He loved her. He would have had time now to think, as she had done, and he would know that she had had no choice. Jane knew this in her heart.

  So she would sit, and she would wait, until he came.

  It was a day like all the others then, short and dark and dank, and the light faded barely halfway through the afternoon. Jane ate a simple meal in her room. She had no one to talk to, no one to share the long night with, but she was full of hope. It would not be long, she told herself. Gilbert would come for her.

  ‘Ready?’

  Ah, yes, she was ready! She smiled fiercely, only to realize that there was someone else in the room after all, a young woman in an elaborate dress but with strange, wild hair, and her smile faded before her perception stumbled and righted itself and the world slotted jarringly back into place.

  Not a strange woman, but Lucy. Lucy in costume. The launch at Holmwood House.

  Roz felt nauseous but she recovered her smile. ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ she said.

  ‘Are you nervous?’ Lucy asked as they made their way carefully down the stairs.

  ‘I am a little,’ said Roz, but she wasn’t thinking of the launch. She was thinking of Jane, waiting alone in the attic room, and foreboding tickled between her shoulders.

  ‘Ooh, look at Mark!’ Lucy hooted with laughter as she caught sight of the front-of-house manager looking uncomfortable in a blue velvet doublet and hose, but he took her teasing in good part, taking off his cap to flourish a bow.

  Adrian was bustling around in a white silk damask doublet and white satin trunkhose, but it was Helen who made Lucy’s jaw sag. She was wearing a magnificent farthingale covered in red satin with white sleeves and an enormous ruff pinned open around her collar, and her usual dour expression had hardened to an hauteur that was clearly intimidating the guests who were starting to trickle into the hall.

  ‘Wow! Helen looks absolutely amazing, doesn’t she?’ said Lucy. ‘It’s a bit obvious to keep the best dress for herself, though,’ she grumbled, but Roz didn’t answer. The warning tickle just below the nape of her neck was turning into an insistent pinch and she wriggled her shoulders to try and shift it, but the sense of unease only deepened as she looked around the hall.

  Everything was in place. The great hall looked magnificent now that the furniture lovingly sourced by Lucy was set up: a vast oak table, chests covered with Turkey-work carpets, a cupboard with a splendid display of silver, a fine chair by the fireplace. There were flamboyant hangings on the wainscot walls, colourful cushions in the window embrasures. Artificial candles flickered convincingly. It wasn’t quite as it had looked in Jane’s day, of course, but it was close enough to account for Roz’s unease.

  She hoped that was all it was.

  A team of waiters and waitresses, also in costume, were already circulating with glasses of champagne and trays of canapés. A musician was playing Elizabethan tunes on a lute in one corner. To Roz, the haunting notes seemed to accentuate the tension thrumming in the air, but nobody else appeared to notice anything amiss. She was just projecting her distress at poor Jane’s fate, Roz tried to convince herself. All she had to do was get through tonight and everything would be fine.

  Still, she wished Nick would arrive. She sneaked a glance at the mobile she had secreted in the purse hanging from her girdle to see if Nick had sent her a text to say that he’d be late, and frowned when she saw that the screen was lit up but blank. Odd, there was usually good reception in the house.

  The trickle of guests had turned into a flood. One moment the hall was almost empty, with a handful of people standing in self-conscious groups, the next it was heaving, and the noise of conversation swamped Roz’s sense of unease. Besides, she was too busy to think about that as she circulated, and she even missed Nick’s arrival.

  When Nick touched her arm, she turned in relief and kissed him. ‘There you are! Where have you been?’

  ‘Martin rang just as I was about to leave and offered me a travel piece,’ Nick said. ‘You know what he’s like. I couldn’t get him off the phone. Didn’t you get my text?’

  ‘My phone doesn’t seem to be working.’ Roz showed him the blank screen.

  ‘Hmm, that’s odd,’ he said, shaking it experimentally. ‘Must be a dead zone here.’

  A dead zone. An icy finger skimmed down Roz’s spine, and she shivered.

  Nick looked around the hall as he snagged a glass from a passing waitress. ‘It all seems to be going with a swing so far.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Roz, but foreboding was gathering, bunching its muscles at the back of her mind, ready to spring.

  ‘Is Jeff around?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for a while.’ Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen Adrian or Helen for a while either. But she could hardly go chasing after them, Roz told herself. She shook off the feeling. ‘Come on,’ she said to Nick, ‘I’ll introduce you to some people.’

  It was some time before she saw Adrian again. He appeared at her elbow, looking uneasy. ‘Roz, could I have a word?’ he said.

  Roz glanced around at the hall, which was buzzing with conversation. It seemed an odd time to have a heart-to-heart. Adrian should be circulating. They both should, in fact. ‘Now?’ she said in surprise.

  ‘If you don’t mind. It’s a little difficult . . .’

  ‘Well . . . sure.’ Roz smiled an apology at the guests she had been talking to. Nick was nearby, deep in discussion with a journalist from the local press. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked him in an undertone as she followed Adrian past him, and he nodded.

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Adrian wants to talk to me about something. Not sure what can’t wait, but I’ll come and find you later.’

  ‘All right,’ said Nick absently, already turning back to his conversation, and Roz hurried after Adrian, who was threading his way through the crowd, barely noticing the guests who were trying to catch his attention. Adrian’s usual urbane manner had vanished, she noticed uneasily.

  ‘What’s this about, Adrian?’ she asked when they reached the passage. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Could we go to your office?’

  ‘My office?’

  ‘You’ll see why,’ he said.

  Away from the noise and company, disquiet clawed at her once more. Roz hesitated and glanced up the stairs, searching desperately for an excuse. She really didn’t want to go back up there, not right then. Jane was up there, waiting, she knew it. She could smell the smoke drifting down the stairwell. The smoke that no one else could smell and no smoke alarm detected. The air was heavy with the foreboding that had been dogging her all week, and every instinct told her to run back into the hall and find Nick, but she could hardly refuse to go with her boss, could she? The house was full of people. Nothing was going to happen to her. And besides, it was just Adrian.

  So in the end she shrugged and led the way back up the stairs, up to the first floor, and then up the second, smaller staircase that led up to the attics. The further they climbed, the more the sound of the party below receded and the louder their footsteps echoed in the dim stairwell. Roz’s heart was thudding by the time she reached the top floor, and the smell of smoke was very strong. She had to force herself along the corridor to her office, only to falter in the doorway.

  Helen was sitting behind her desk, her expression gloating. She made such a bizarre picture in the elaborate gown and ruff beside Roz’s desktop computer and shiny phone that for a moment Roz could only blink.

  ‘Helen! What are you doing in here?’

  ‘Haven’t you told her yet?’ Helen demanded, looking at Adrian. All at once she seemed taller and more commanding, her personality unfurling and swelling t
o fill the space while Adrian was oddly diminished in comparison.

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘Told me what?’ said Roz.

  ‘The necklace is missing,’ he said in a rush.

  ‘Stolen,’ Helen corrected sharply.

  Jane’s necklace. Roz felt sick. She hadn’t expected that. ‘That’s awful! Have you called the police?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Adrian shifted, clearly ill at ease. ‘The necklace was taken from the safe, so it has to have been someone who knew the code. I don’t want to involve the police unless I have to. We only discovered it when Helen suggested the gown she’s wearing would make a fitting setting for the necklace.’

  The thought of Helen wearing Jane’s necklace made Roz recoil. ‘It’s not her necklace!’ she said instinctively.

  ‘No, and it’s not yours either,’ Helen snapped back as if Adrian wasn’t in the room. ‘So how does it come to be in your desk?’ She pulled open the top drawer where Roz kept pens, Post-it notes and other messy stationery items neatly stashed away, and slowly drew out the necklace until it dangled, glittering with a kind of menace, from her hand.

  Roz’s first reaction was relief that the necklace was safe. Her second a desire to snatch it from Helen’s hand. It was easy enough to see where this was going now.

  ‘You think I stole it?’ She couldn’t help it. She laughed. ‘If I had, I’d hardly be silly enough to hide it in my own desk, would I?’ She looked at Adrian. ‘You don’t believe this, do you?’

  Adrian’s eyes flickered between Roz and Helen. ‘It does seem unlikely,’ he admitted.

  ‘Unlikely?’ Helen surged to her feet, fury contorting her features, her finger shaking as she pointed at Roz. ‘She knows the code for the safe!’

  ‘So do several people.’ But Roz was distracted by the way the jewels swung, glinting, from Helen’s other hand, and she was struggling to concentrate.

  ‘We all know you want it,’ spat Helen. ‘You practically grabbed it out of Sir Adrian’s hand the other week.’

  The winking jewels were blurring in front of Roz’s eyes. There were footsteps approaching along the corridor outside. She could hear them clearly, but when she looked at Helen all she could see was her mouth opening and closing, with no words coming out.

  Even as she realized that she couldn’t hear what Helen was saying, the world began to tilt and slide, and she grabbed desperately at the edge of the desk for support.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  She looked up at the sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs. It was early still for the servants to be going to bed. And there was something about the carefulness of the steps that made Jane pause, and a warning slithered down her spine. Without knowing quite why she did it, she braced her hands on the coverlet for support.

  Then the door creaked as it swung open, and there stood Geoffrey with a candle.

  ‘Sitting in the dark, Mother dear?’

  ‘I have a candle,’ she said, pointing to the tallow candle that guttered on the chest. ‘It is enough.’

  ‘Enough to write by?’

  Jane went still. ‘I think not,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Oh, then you must have written this this morning,’ said Geoffrey, drawing her letter to Gilbert out of his doublet. ‘It was so touching!’

  ‘That was not a letter to you,’ said Jane. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I saw that little servant scuttle out with it. It was easy enough to take it from her. And by the way, she will not be back in case you were tempted to try to write again. Your little rebellion has cost her a position in a good household.’

  The coverlet crumpled as Jane clenched it between her fingers. ‘What happened to you, Geoffrey?’ she asked. ‘What made you so cruel?’

  ‘Well, it seems I must just be made that way,’ he said. ‘Better than being mawkish like you.’ He unfolded the letter. ‘Mine own husband,’ he read mockingly. ‘I yearn for you . . . Do not forsake me, I beg of you, and send for me as soon as you may . . . You have my heart till death depart, your faithful wife, Jane. Ahh . . .’ Geoffrey pretended to be moved as he folded the letter. ‘What a shame Mr Harrison will never know how sorry you are!’

  ‘Why do you not let me go?’ Jane asked after a moment. ‘I am nothing to you. You do not heed me and you do not care for me. What matters it to you if I go back to London?’

  ‘I do not choose for you to go back to hang over that brat.’

  ‘William is a baby. I hung over you too, Geoffrey, when you were that age.’

  ‘He will not have what I cannot have.’

  ‘But you do not want me!’ said Jane, lifting her hands in despair.

  ‘You swore to look after me,’ he said.

  ‘Then I break my vow.’ She got to her feet. ‘I will go back to London, Geoffrey, with or without you. The Holmwoods do not care for you. They care only for themselves, and the money you bring.’

  ‘Do you think I cannot see that for myself?’ asked Geoffrey contemptuously. ‘I will deal with them in my good time, when I come into my estate. For now they are easily enough manipulated.’

  ‘Then come with me,’ she said urgently.

  ‘And leave my inheritance? I think not!’

  ‘They are depraved people,’ Jane said in a low voice. ‘I fear for you being near them on your own.’

  ‘I will not be on my own. You will be here to keep my thoughts pure.’

  Jane shook her head. ‘No. I have given up enough of my life for you, Geoffrey. I am going home.’

  ‘You have no money.’

  ‘I have this necklace.’ Her hand went to her throat, where the necklace lay warm and comforting, a reminder of Gilbert’s love for her. ‘I will sell it. I will go home, to my husband, to my son, to my family, whatever it takes.’

  ‘No,’ said Geoffrey, a darkness in his face. ‘No, you are not going to leave me. My father told me you abandoned me once before, and you will not abandon me again.’

  ‘I had no choice. I was banished, and I came to fetch you as soon as I could.’

  ‘And kept me as little better than a vagabond!’

  ‘That is enough, Geoffrey,’ said Jane. ‘You speak like a child!’

  That was a mistake. Geoffrey advanced on her, still carrying the candle.

  ‘Give me that necklace now!’ he ordered.

  ‘No, it is mine.’ She put up her hands to ward him away, but he kept on coming, reaching for her throat. ‘I said no!’

  Wrestling him away, she knocked the letter and the candle to the ground. Geoffrey twisted his fingers around the necklace and wrenched, making her cry out as the catch came free and it slithered to the floorboards.

  She bent to retrieve it but Geoffrey grabbed her by the arm and pulled her round, and only then did Jane see how flames were gobbling up the letter. She could see two words quite clearly before they shrivelled and curled up. Dear heart.

  ‘Fire!’ she gasped. ‘Quick, stamp it out, Geoffrey!’

  But Geoffrey only stood there, watching the flames, his hand tight around her arm. ‘See how the flames reach out,’ he said. ‘See how they lick along the floor, eager for more.’

  ‘Geoffrey!’ Jane struggled to get free so that she could batter the flames herself. ‘Let me go! We must put it out before it spreads. You do not wish your own house to burn, surely?’

  ‘I have told you before, fire burns upwards,’ he chided her. ‘They may need a new roof, perhaps, but we can afford that.’

  He was surprisingly strong for a boy not yet twelve. Jane gave up trying to argue with him, and pulled at his hand instead, but viciousness raced across his face and he shoved at her, sending her stumbling back over the fire to fall and knock her head against the corner of the chest, and the world was wiped out in one savage blow.

  There was a terrible pain in her head, but when she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was her necklace, dangling tauntingly in front of her.

  ‘That is mine,’ she said, straightening and reaching for it with fierce
determination. She would not let it go again.

  ‘You see?’ Helen was triumphant as she swung the necklace out of Roz’s reach. ‘I told you we should have called the police!’

  When Jeff paused in the doorway, the office seemed crowded, but there was only Helen, face ablaze with dislike, and Roz, looking uncertain. Sir Adrian appeared overwhelmed between them.

  For a moment Jeff hesitated, frowning, confused about what was happening and what he had come for, but then his mind cleared and he strode forward towards the meddling women.

  ‘I will take that,’ he said, grasping Margaret’s wrist and taking the necklace forcibly from her.

  She gaped at him. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Taking what is mine. It were an insult to drape jewels like these around your scrawny harridan neck.’ He smiled cruelly at her expression.

  She went red and then white and then red again. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

  ‘Dare?’ He laughed in her face. ‘It is not a question of dare. This is my house and everything in it belongs to me. You have ruled the roost long enough, madam. I do what I like now, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.’

  ‘This is most certainly not your house!’ Gobbling with outrage, Adrian stepped forward but Jeff swatted him back with ease.

  ‘It is now. You do not deserve the name of Holmwood, neither you nor your filthy paramour there,’ he said, jerking his head contemptuously towards Margaret. ‘You are nothing but her creature.’

  ‘Jeff.’ A voice cut across Adrian’s spluttering. ‘Jeff,’ she said clearly as he turned on her. ‘This isn’t you. I know it isn’t. Don’t let Geoffrey do this to you.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Roz?’ That was Margaret, shrill as ever.

  Roz? Something needle-fine darted through him at the name and his concentration flickered for a moment before anger came surging back, stronger than ever.

  ‘Do not look at me like that!’ he roared at her. He hated the way she watched him with those clear eyes of hers, this woman who had calmly told him she was not his mother after all. He hated how she seemed to be able to look right at him and see everything that squirmed and seethed inside him. He’d had enough of her disapproval, of her understanding, of her constancy. He hated the way she held her shining honesty up to him like a looking glass and made him look at his own reflection.