Exhausted, Kelly all but threw herself into the nearest chair and made use of the ottoman with a deep sigh. ‘A lord – does that mean he’s royalty?’
Nancy snorted as she poked at the kindling. ‘Not at all – Lord Stanthorpe’s a viscount but his real name is Richard Ditchley. I’m sure you’ll get to meet him while you’re here.’
A silver tea trolley materialised in the doorway and Kelly giggled at the incongruous image Tom made as he drove the delicate cart into the room.
‘Aren’t you supposed to have servants to do those jobs, Tom?’ Kelly teased.
‘Actually, we have hired a full staff but most are currently training in London. Only Martin, one of our porters, is on site – so we have to make do until a few days before the opening.’
Tom handed Kelly a translucent china plate with teacakes and cookies before pouring tea from a gilt-edged pot adorned with pink cabbage roses. ‘Eat up, Kel, you’re skinny as a rake.’
The heavy brass hinges screeched in protest as the door swung inward. John Tarrant had heard the commotion downstairs a short while ago and knew the person he awaited had almost certainly arrived. From his narrow vantage he watched intently, every muscle taut in anticipation as the aged oak swung away again to reveal his visitor.
A woman.
Praise his maker! A woman was always easier to convince, always more open to the possibility than a man. Only a child proved more willing – though children, he had found, were always slower to overcome their fear. No – while he couldn’t smile quite yet, at least he knew that he had hope. Perhaps, after all these years, this time …
Turning in a slow circle, Kelly’s intent gaze darted from the gilt-edged 18th-century landscapes to what looked to be an antique cello that rested in a small circle of sunlight by the window.
An odd piece of bedroom furniture, she thought. Perhaps it belonged to an earlier occupant – though knowing Tom and Nancy, more likely a prop they’d placed there to add to the ‘historic’ ambiance of the room.
An uncomfortable ache filled her chest as she caught sight of her travel-worn reflection in the monstrous mirror, some six or seven feet tall and just as wide, that filled almost half one wall. Opposite sat the largest four-poster bed she had seen outside a museum. An intricately carved writing desk with its matching tapestry-upholstered chair sat beside it.
‘Oh, Nance …,’ Kelly marvelled, ‘you actually own this place?’
Nancy stuck her blonde head through the doorway and grinned. ‘Leased … but as of last month, yes.
‘Just dump the bags on the bed, thanks, Martin. The garment bag can be hung in the dressing room.’
Martin, laden with Kelly’s suitcase, garment bag and attaché case, followed her through the room. ‘Will do, Mrs Wentworth.’
Kelly intercepted him and took the attaché case from under his arm. ‘This stays with me,’ she said with a wink for the dour-looking young man as he struggled under the weight of her suitcase. She preceded him into the walk-in closet muttering exclamations as she went.
‘What’s through here?’ she called, though she’d already turned the knob to the door at the opposite end of the closet.
‘Heck, Nance, have you seen the size of this bathroom?’ Kelly’s voice echoed in the enclosed space.
‘Of course,’ Nancy replied as she entered the brightly lit chamber. ‘It still needs a bit of work, and if you look closely, you’ll see that almost everything is fake. The bath and toilet are obviously recent additions … but the tiles and cabinets are as close an approximation to the 1700s as we could manage with our budget.’
‘Well it is all stunning. The cello is a great touch, by the way.’
Nancy shook her head. ‘Not our doing, Kel. Like the bed, it belonged to someone who occupied the room more than a century ago.’
‘I’m going to sleep on a bed that’s over a hundred years old?’ Kelly asked as she headed back to the bedroom.
‘Probably two hundred, if the assessor is correct.’
Kelly shivered. The idea of sleeping on a bed with such a long history seemed slightly irreverent, but then again, perhaps it would inspire her when she wrote.
‘When the hotel opens this room will be kept for display purposes only.’
‘Why are you putting me here then?’
Nancy grinned. ‘Right now it is the only room, besides ours, that’s habitable. Unless you want to sleep with the smell of turpentine and wallpaper glue?’ she raised one brow in query.
‘This is fine by me,’ Kelly said. As she placed her attaché case on the writing desk and glanced about, she acknowledged this room was an ideal location.
‘What are these?’ she asked, approaching the mantle where a row of egg-shaped objects sat as if on parade. Stretching out a hand to touch the closest, she almost jumped when a jolt of static electricity arced through her fingertips.
Nancy laughed at Kelly’s reaction. ‘I’m told they’re called druid’s eggs.’
‘Druids …? Surely not …’ she glanced at Nancy with furrowed brows.
‘Your guess is as good as mine. Like the cello, they were already here.’ Nancy shrugged. ‘It was stange though, we put them in the foyer downstairs, but when we got up the next morning, they were back on the mantle. I guess someone thinks they belong here.’
‘Weird. Will I be able to plug in my laptop somewhere?’
Nancy grinned. ‘Sure – it’s 2000 here in England too. There’s a data outlet just behind that pot if you need it,’ she pointed to a large porcelain vase of oriental design beside the fireplace.
Kelly crouched next to the pot to assure herself that she’d indeed be able to go online.
‘We had to have the whole place cabled for the internet. But,’ she wagged her finger at Kelly, ‘this is supposed to be a vacation, so I don’t want to see you working. Unless, of course, it’s on Tom’s little project.’
Kelly turned sharply. ‘Project? Tom didn’t mention anything about a project.’
With a wave of dismissal, Nancy headed for the door. ‘Don’t sweat it, Kel. No biggie. Tom will explain over dinner. Now I’ve got some chores to do, so I’ll leave you to settle in and maybe take a relaxing bath. We dine at eight. Martin will come up and fetch you. Okay?’
‘Sounds great,’ Kelly agreed as she followed Nancy to the door and threw an arm around her shoulders. ‘Thanks – thanks for understanding and thanks for giving me somewhere to hide.’
‘Hey, what are best friends for? Just throttle back and forget all about Frank and the divorce, and concentrate on getting some colour into those cheeks, huh?’
Feeling the unwanted tears prick at the back of her eyelids, all Kelly could do was nod.
Nancy gave her a brief squeeze then let her go. ‘Get some rest. You’ll feel much better.’
After the door closed, Kelly stood for a long moment, staring into the mirror. Nancy was right. She looked pale and drained and in need of a few round meals. She’d lost more weight than she’d realised. Her jeans and blouse hung limp; if it wasn’t for the fact that her eyes had aged immeasurably, she would have thought the reflection she saw was some little girl playing dress-ups in her big sister’s clothes.
Extending her view, she studied the room in reverse. Now Nancy had gone, it looked heavy and almost oppressive in its opulence. In two dimensions the abundance of reds and golds in the drapes, the busyness of the striped wallpaper and the contrasting floral of the carpet, all seemed to crowd in on her. The intricate gaudiness of the picture frames and plethora of objets d’art cluttered the room to the point that a feeling of insignificance, of claustrophobia, swept through her. She supposed she was more exhausted than she thought.
Shaking her head, she marched into the bathroom to prepare her bath.
‘So,’ John mused as he watched the tiny, raven-haired woman from his hiding place, ‘a divorcee?’
While he wasn’t prudish, the revelation disturbed him somewhat. She would, in the way of women, undoubtedly be over-emotional a
nd fixated upon her own problems, and would thus have little time or sympathy for a tired man who sought her help to find peace. Well, he would make do, as he had done each time in the past. God had dealt him his just reward and he could only hope that this time He would be merciful. And if this woman could not, or would not, render him aid … then he would simply go back to his waiting.
After all, time was the one resource he had in abundance.
The woman returned momentarily to fetch another pair of faded blue trousers from the portmanteau sitting open on the bed before she again disappeared through the dressing room and into the bathing chamber.
Kelly – an odd name for a woman – he’d known an Irishman called Kelly once, a groom, when he spent a brief time with the Queen’s Cavalry. He was a nice enough fellow, though if memory served, the man had a lot more meat on his bones than this slip of a woman.
The object of his thoughts returned again, clad in a white robe that scraped the floor as she moved, muttering about finding her ‘cosmo’, which was, he assumed once she’d extracted a colourful and shiny booklet from her smaller case, reading matter of sorts. He had once seen advertising for similar booklets on the viewing box in his mother’s old sitting room.
When Kelly had gone again, he took himself off to the main dining room where he knew young Martin would be about setting the table for dinner.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’ Kelly barely kept a straight face. She looked from Tom’s earnest blue eyes to Nancy’s equally serious amber ones. Neither so much as flickered an eyelid. She expected Tom to be the first to crack but he just stared back at her. She turned to Nancy with raised brows. ‘He’s kidding.’
Nancy swallowed a morsel of her bread roll before dropping the rest to her side plate. She placed her cutlery at forty-five degrees on her empty dinner plate then elegantly wiped her lips with her napkin before facing Kelly.
The smile she wore struck Kelly as a little false and inner alarm bells began to clang. ‘He’s not kidding?’ she squeaked before Nancy could open her mouth.
‘Unfortunately … not. You know me, Kel, I would never have believed it if I hadn’t heard it with my own ears. This place is either haunted, or somebody has a really sick sense of humour.’
Kelly wanted to shake her. Both of them. ‘Guys, I don’t have to tell you that there’s no such thing as ghosts. Somebody’s playing games with you.’ She slumped back in her seat and took a big gulp of wine. End of discussion.
‘I wish I could say so with such conviction, Kel,’ Tom said as he screwed his napkin and tossed it onto the table with an air of frustration. ‘We’ve searched the place from top to bottom and we can’t find any microphones or speakers of any kind. We’ve checked behind every painting and tapestry – and I can tell you, there are a lot of those.’
‘So I noticed,’ Kelly returned with a wry twist of her lips.
Tom cast her a look that begged forbearance before continuing, ‘The noises can be heard at all hours of the day and night. It often sounds like someone is murmuring behind the wall or talking in the next room but every time we investigate, we find nothing. I even had a security technician come in and sweep the place for devices last week, but he couldn’t find a thing.’ He slouched in his chair and twirled his wineglass.
‘If that’s the case, what do you think I can do?’
Nancy leaned closer. ‘Well … we thought … if you heard it too, and can maybe prove that it’s legitimate … that you might write a story for the newspaper and help us attract some up-market clientele.’
‘You mean to say you want me to try and prove that the place is haunted?’
‘About sums it up,’ Tom said.
Before Kelly could tell them both what she thought of that idea, Martin – who obviously covered every job to be had – entered the dining room. ‘Excuse me, Mr Wentworth. Lord Stanthorpe apologises for disturbing you but asks whether you might have a moment to sign some papers. He’s waiting out in the foyer.’
Tom grinned. ‘Sure.’ He started to rise then appeared to think better of it. ‘Why don’t you tell him to come in and join us for coffee.’ He turned to Kelly. ‘Lord Stanthorpe inherited this place but found the taxes and upkeep too much to handle, so he leased the bulk of his holdings to us for the hotel.’
Nancy patted her husband’s arm. ‘I told Kelly about Richard earlier.’
The man who entered the room a short moment later made Kelly pause mid-thought. She didn’t know why, but she’d automatically assumed a viscount would be a thick-set elderly man with a walking stick and long, mutton-chop-shaped sideburns. In contrast to her mental image, the man before her must have been all of twenty-five years old, tall and athletic, with sun-streaked blond hair. And if Kelly had to put a word to it, she’d say he was almost ‘pretty’. His mouth curved with a fleshy fullness and his lashes were far too long to belong to a man. The blue of his eyes echoed the sky on a summer morning and the indulgent smile he wore as they briefly shook hands, told Kelly he knew exactly how attractive most women found him. If she’d been ten years younger, she would probably have been breathless, but a pessimism – born of too much time spent with too many ‘beautiful people’ – had rendered her immune.
‘Very pleased to meet you, Kelly,’ he said as he pinned her to the spot with a gentle but penetrating gaze.
Kelly returned his slight smile and nodded. ‘Richard.’
After taking the seat beside her, he tasted the cup of coffee Martin handed him. ‘What, Tom … no brandy to enliven the taste of this bitter brew?’
With a laugh, Tom shook his head. ‘Sorry, my friend, I’m still waiting on that shipment from London. I do have a bottle of Chivas Regal, though, if you’d care to partake?’
‘Ah, now that is music to my ears,’ Richard said.
Tom poured Richard and himself a measure, while the ladies stuck with coffee.
‘So, Kelly,’ Richard edged closer to her as if sharing a secret, ‘Tom tells me you are going to lift the lid on our resident ghost.’
‘As I was attempting to say just before you arrived,’ she glared pointedly from Tom to Nancy then turned back to Richard, ‘I really don’t know what help I can be. I don’t believe in ghosts, therefore my aim would be to debunk whatever evidence you might think you have.’
‘But that’s the idea,’ Tom exclaimed. ‘If we can make a believer of you – we can convince anyone. The tourists will clamour to stay here if there’s a chance they’ll have a visitation from a real, live ghost.’
‘A bit of an oxymoron, don’t you think, Tom?’ Kelly raised one eyebrow for effect.
‘Oh, you know what I mean, Kel. We need an angle to get people to come out here and our ghost is a ready-made attraction.’
‘Aren’t ghosts run-of-the-mill in this part of the world?’
‘Perhaps,’ Tom replied. ‘But according to the tourist board, it is still the number one reason people holiday at places like this.’
‘Have you ever thought of putting in a nine-hole golf course? Or perhaps a kiddie park? Maybe be a little different?’ Kelly said with untempered cynicism.
‘Those things are in the works, but a ghost, a genuine ghost, will guarantee the hotel’s success. Will you do it, Kel? Can you do a serious investigation and write about it if you discover we’ve really got a ghost on our hands?’
She glanced at each expectant face in turn – even Richard seemed to want her to say yes, and she wondered whether he still had some financial stake in the place.
Taking a sip of her coffee, she savoured its warmth as she gathered her thoughts and considered what something like this could do to her journalistic reputation. Her renown had come from tackling hard-hitting issues with a fearless disregard for officialdom. But this was entirely different. And the repercussions – not only professionally, but personally – might be more than she wanted to contemplate.
‘What you’re asking is impossible – you must know that nobody has ever actually proven the existence of ghosts. If I t
ake this on, I’d be doing everything in my power to prove it is a hoax. And if I do, what happens then? What would that do to our friendship?’
Nancy placed her hand on her husband’s arm before he could respond.
‘We’ve been the best of friends for more than fifteen years, Kel. You’ve helped me through some of the worst times of my life. If you prove that our ghost is a hoax … well … we’ll just have to make do’ – she shrugged – ‘and if that is the case, we certainly wouldn’t blame you for it. But if you think the task is too difficult, say so and we’ll try to get someone else to investigate.’
With a sigh, Kelly sat back and closed her eyes for a second. This wasn’t a decision she could take lightly. Leaping in too quickly had landed her in trouble before. Marriage to Frank was a prime example, she thought ruefully. She needed time to sort out her feelings.
‘Can I let you know in the morning?’
At that Tom and Nancy exchanged a rather satisfied smile, one Kelly recognised from times past. Her friends undoubtedly assumed she’d say yes. What was more, as she studied each of them in turn, she had a very strong suspicion that this whole idea was just a scheme they’d cooked up to distract her from the divorce.
She slid her chair back and stood. ‘If you’ll excuse me, jetlag is beginning to catch up. I think I’ll get an early night.’
Richard rose also. ‘Perhaps I can give you a tour of the house and estate some time tomorrow?’
Grinning, Nancy jumped in before Kelly could answer. ‘Would you, Richard? That would be very nice – you know the place so much better than we do. And we’re both going to be busy tomorrow. Tom has a meeting with the renovation crew in the morning and I have a lot of boring errands in the village.’ She turned to Kelly, ‘What do you say, Kel?’
Fait accompli, she thought, her suspicions about her friends’ motivation already confirmed. Perhaps Lord Stanthorpe was part of their well meaning, but misguided, distraction plan. She hoped not.
Secret Reflection Page 2