‘A tour would be great,’ she replied with feigned enthusiasm; she suddenly felt incredibly tired.
‘I’ll call for you … say … around ten? Do you ride?’ Richard asked.
‘Ride? You mean a horse?’
He nodded.
‘No, I’m a real city girl, I’m afraid. The only horses I’ve ever seen were on a racetrack, and then only from a distance.’
He didn’t try to hide his disappointment. ‘We’ll take the Jeep tomorrow, then. And, if you have a mind to learn, I can teach you to ride while you’re here.’
Tom did a slight double take. ‘Didn’t you say you had to return to London on Monday at the latest?’
‘Just for the day, my dear fellow, just for the day.’
From the subtle scowl Richard sent Tom, Kelly got an uncomfortable sensation. Maybe Richard knew about the divorce and had thought up some diversionary therapy of his own. Again, she hoped not.
‘To be honest, I find horses a little scary. Jeep travel is just fine by me. Well,’ she said making for the stairs just beyond dining room door, ‘goodnight, then.’
She dashed up the staircase as if the sound of their fond ‘goodnights’ would catch her and somehow trap her there. But on the landing she halted when she noticed that the giant mirror that filled the rear wall of the landing was an enlarged replica of the one in her room.
Transfixed, she stared, not at herself, but at the reflected image of the foyer behind her. Like the mirror in her room, the image it projected seemed distorted. It gave the impression of sealing her in a claustrophobic space, as if a looming darkness wanted to shroud and oppress her. All the portraits along the wall appeared to be watching her and she couldn’t prevent the slow shiver that crept up her spine. Yet when she turned and surveyed the view directly, the feeling instantly vanished.
‘My imagination has gone into overdrive. All this nonsensical talk of ghosts is not healthy,’ she told herself out loud, not caring if her friends below could hear.
After a final glance in the mirror, she took the last few steps to the upper hall and sought refuge in her room.
John Tarrant watched as the clock slowly ticked the minutes away. Only a little more than two hours until midnight.
‘ “And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me”,’ he murmured.
The woman, Kelly – I must call her by name, he reminded himself – was fast asleep. She’d returned a few moments after nine and had thrown herself fully-clothed onto the coverlet – if one could call those unbecoming faded trousers ‘clothing’. She hadn’t even bothered removing her shoes and he marvelled at the multi-coloured, corrugated soles that faced him.
Fashion had certainly changed in the forty years since the room had last been occupied.
In the vast silence, he studied her from head to toe. And now, as he let his gaze drift over her small body, he decided that the trousers did outline her derrière in a most enticing way.
He checked the thought instantly. Harbouring unattainable ideas was dangerous to his sanity, as he had learned so bitterly in the past. Better to concentrate on what he needed from her, not base desires that would remain unfulfilled for all eternity.
But she did look almost ethereal as shafts of moonlight struck her form.
The clock continued its relentless ticking and chimed the quarter hour. Kelly didn’t move, and he feared he wouldn’t be able to wake her when the time came. He knew she wasn’t sotted with wine, she’d barely touched her glass at dinner. But the others had commented, more than once, on how tired she looked and though he didn’t yet know her, he had to agree that a weariness seeped from her like a slow leaking wound, surrounding her with a greyish haze that only he could see.
It pleased him that the new owners wanted to commission Kelly to find him – perhaps it would make her accept him more readily.
He hadn’t been impressed when Ditchley interrupted dinner. Indeed, the last thing he needed was for Kelly to be distracted by that man’s seductive wiles. The man reminded him of many gentlemen of his previous acquaintance, all of whom drank or gambled too much, and were as insincere with their women as they were in their friendships.
While he hadn’t had much opportunity to observe the current viscount, since Ditchley spent most of his time away in London, John wasn’t sorry to see the young couple take on the running of Stanthorpe. They were a lively pair and much had already been accomplished in returning the building to its former glory. It pleased him greatly that they had opened the south wing where his mother once kept her rooms. For too long the spiders had been permitted to spin their webs uninterrupted amongst the few treasured possessions that remained.
He just prayed that the item he sought might be found in one of the many abandoned hidey-holes that riddled that section of the house.
Stanthorpe contained many Gothic revivalist features. The builder, a man of some note during the late 1700s, had added an abundance of secret places and made new entrances to passages within walls or behind the built-in furnishings. These served to aid the then viscount, Thomas Tarrant, a gentleman with a great reputation for philandering, when he had needed to make a quick exit from a guest’s bedroom.
In his youth, John had read some of the journals hidden in the back of the viscount’s private study that described in detail Thomas’s elaborate house parties, sometimes lasting weeks on end, where his main sport was not pheasant shooting or the hunt, though such diversions occurred regularly, but betting against his lecherous cronies over how many of his guests’ wives or daughters he could seduce into his bed within the season. The fact that he was reputed to be a fair ‘Adonis’, so fashionable in a time that looked fondly upon any form of classicism, gave him an unfair advantage over the other men of his set.
John spent countless hours considering the portrait of his forebear that held pride of place in the gallery along the main staircase. More than once he’d lamented that he favoured the dark brooding men of his mother’s ancestry instead of Thomas’s line. If he had, perhaps fate might have dealt him a different hand. The present viscount appeared to have inherited Thomas’s features and demeanour in spades and, on the few occasions he’d graced the manor, he’d had no shortage of women to help him emulate his ancestor.
The clock chimed eleven, and with the sound a wind whipped up outside. The full moon broke through the clouds to cast dancing shadows upon the rug as the tree beyond the window swayed with the sudden gusts. John smiled to himself. How fitting that it should storm tonight of all nights.
It had stormed that night, too.
Droplets of rain began to spatter the lead-lined panes and the pleasant scent of ozone drifted slowly into the room through the small vents high above the window. Strangely, the air carried her fragrance with it, a mixture of lemon, vanilla and a tangy spice he didn’t quite recognise, to swirl around him in taunting waves that stirred memories best left in the past.
With a last look at Kelly’s sleeping form, he took himself off to check that the rest of the house remained quiet, and that Ditchley had indeed retired to the old coach house where he belonged.
2
Day One
The clock chimed for the twelfth time.
‘Kelly.’
‘Go away,’ she murmured.
‘Kelly. It is time to wake.’
Lightning flashed, flaring brightly. Eyes still closed, she groped about until her hand came upon another pillow. She dragged it over her head as the thunder rattled the small square panes of the window. ‘Go away,’ she murmured again as she hugged the pillow tighter.
He chuckled softly.
‘Kelly. You must awaken.’
She groaned as her head slowly emerged from its warm haven, her dark hair all tangled and her pale face almost aglow in the dim light.
‘What time is it?’ Her head dropped back onto the pillow and she sighed.
‘Midnight,’ he whispered.
Her head rose and she peered into the darkness as if totally disoriented. �
�Fr–Frank?’
‘No – not Frank.’
For a few seconds she just lay there, then something must have registered in her mind because she shot upright and clutched the pillow to herself as if it could somehow shield her from danger.
‘Wh– who’s there?’ she asked in a tiny voice as she stretched one arm toward the small lamp on the table beside the bed. ‘Who’s there?’
‘Do not be frightened,’ he said in his most reassuring tone. ‘My name is John.’
Following his voice she glanced into the mirror. The instant she saw him her eyes widened and a frenzied scream burst from her throat. She flung herself off the side of the bed and scrambled across the floor to take refuge beside the cello.
Cursing his own eagerness, he stepped out of her direct view.
Less than a minute later, the door slammed open, rattling everything like another peal of thunder.
‘Kel?’ Tom rushed into the room and switched on the main lights.
Nancy followed a split second later. ‘There,’ she pointed to the niche where the cello sat.
‘Kelly – what happened?’
Stupendous, John thought, now there will be two hysterical women!
Tom helped her to stand. ‘What happened, Kel?’
Still white-faced, Kelly’s eyes scanned the room. ‘I thought … I …’
Lightning flashed, then the whole room began to shake as the accompanying thunder rolled through the manor. Her hands shook as she gripped Tom’s arm. She stared into the mirror for several seconds then began to laugh. ‘God, it’s just a storm! I feel like such an idiot.’
Breaking away from Tom’s supportive hold she sat on the side of the bed and scrubbed her face with her hands. ‘I must have been dreaming. The shadows … the lightning – I thought I heard Fra— someone calling me … but it’s just the storm.’
From his hiding place, John saw the glance that the couple exchanged. He was willing to wager that they thought their ghost had made an entrance already.
Little did they know.
When Nancy sat beside her and took her hand, Kelly gazed up with a wry smile. ‘I’m okay, Nance – really. All that talk about ghosts must have had me dreaming. Go back to bed, guys. I’ll be fine.’
‘You don’t look fine, and since when have you slept in your clothes?’
Kelly peered down at herself and furrowed her brow. ‘I lay down – just for a little while. Must’ve fallen asleep. C’mon,’ she said as she took both friends by the arm and started shepherding them to the door, ‘I’m fine – truly. I’m sorry I frightened you. Go back to bed.’
The concern remained etched on Nancy’s face. ‘Would you like a glass of scotch to help you get back to sleep?’
‘Hell, no! That’s the last thing I need. I got into the habit of having a little too much of that stuff when Frank and I split – even before. Pathetic, really,’ she scowled and looked down. ‘When the plane took off from LAX I vowed I’d leave behind my old life and all the crutches I’d been relying on. I can’t afford to fall at the first hurdle.’
Nancy smiled with understanding. ‘Warm milk, then?’
Kelly shook her head. ‘Nothing – I’ll be fine. I’m so tired I’ll probably be out cold within an instant of my head hitting the pillow. Now go to bed – you’re keeping me from my beauty sleep.’ She gave her friends a gentle shove. ‘Go.’
Ducking back for a hug, Nancy whispered, ‘We’ll talk in the morning when I get back from the village. Sleep as long as you like – I’ll call Richard first thing and get him to delay your tour until the afternoon.’
‘That’d be great, thanks.’
Kelly watched Nancy disappear down the darkened hallway. Light showered momentarily from beyond the landing, before a squeak and a thud told her that she was again alone.
After closing her own door, she made a broad circle around the mirror, feeling quite ridiculous as she gazed cautiously into the glass. Aside from a slight sense of vertigo nothing appeared unusual or out of place.
She let out a relieved sigh. It was bad enough that her whole world had disintegrated with Frank’s infidelity, she didn’t need to add insanity to her list of problems.
‘There’s no such things as ghosts,’ she murmured out loud, as if stating it made it more real.
With a final, apprehensive glance at the mirror, she marched into the dressing room to change into her nightgown.
John regretted his haste. Common sense would have told him not to try and gain her attention in the midst of a violent thunderstorm. Have I learned nothing in 140 years?
Slowly, slowly.
His only excuse, he supposed, was the fact that it had been twenty years since he last had the opportunity to find peace, and all that watching and waiting tended to make him eager.
He remembered a boy – 1921 the year, if he recalled correctly – who remained quite terrified for over a week, leaving John little time to search. And eighteen days was not long to achieve his aim, especially when the house’s occupants kept rearranging things. Coupled with the fact the John could only see into a few rooms now … success had become less and less likely. And there was always the danger that the very thing he sought had been disposed of along with the antique furnishings that Ditchley had sold at auction a few months ago. If that were the case, all was indeed lost.
Regrets. They seemed to fill his existence. And yet there was still hope; that slip of a woman in the room before him was his hope, and again he couldn’t help but feel the tiny spark of anticipation that this time … this time he wouldn’t fail; this time he would find peace in the oblivion of eternity.
A deep sigh shuddered through him.
Come morning he would try again.
The fresh air smelled almost intoxicating. Kelly hung over the casement and gazed out across the landscape. A painting in a gallery couldn’t have been as picturesque. From her second floor vantage, the view stretched out like a patchwork carpet of varying shades of green and yellow – and not a high-rise in sight. Blue, the clearest blue she had ever seen, extended from the edge of the horizon in every direction. The storm, long gone, had swept through and washed the world clean.
Her room sat above and slightly to the left of the circular gravel drive. And where yesterday she’d seen the hedges and rose gardens as edging to paths and walkways, from above she could now make out the pattern they made, like an intricate decoration on the border of a playing card or one of those medieval books inscribed by monks in the dark ages, the hedge formed loops and arcs that intersected like a maze.
She wondered whether there might be a true maze somewhere on the property. A question to put to Lord Stanthorpe later.
Above her, birds chirruped. She leaned further out the window in an attempt to see, but the brightness of morning blinded her momentarily. As her eyes adjusted she spied a mud nest at the very top of the eaves, with a family of tiny birds fluttering in and around the opening. The sight, the simplicity, made her smile.
‘Pray, do not fall.’
The words shivered through her, and for the merest instant she almost lost her balance before she thrust herself back inside, her heart pounding. Expecting to see Tom’s giant frame, Kelly was greeted by an empty room.
After casually checking the closet and bathroom, she opened the hall door and peered out. Nobody. Drawing her brows together, she backed up – almost afraid to look into the mirror. But that too, reflected nothing out of the ordinary.
Still jetlagged, she thought. The flight from Los Angeles had been a long one. Of course, I could finally be going insane.
With a dismissive shake of her head she grabbed her magazine from the desk and headed downstairs for a leisurely breakfast.
‘Ahh, the beauty awakes!’
Kelly found it somewhat disconcerting to find Richard sitting in the well-appointed kitchen, sipping tea. She had hoped to have a little more time to herself to soak up the atmosphere and do some independent exploration.
‘I thought Nancy p
ostponed our tour until after lunch,’ she said after greeting him with a cheery ‘good morning’.
‘She did, but I had little else to do and the pantry here is always well-stocked.’ Rising, he took another china cup from a nearby shelf and placed it in front of the seat beside his. ‘How do you take your tea?’
‘Actually – I don’t.’ Yesterday she’d been too tired to remind Tom of the fact. She turned and gazed about the kitchen. ‘I don’t suppose you know where they keep the coffee pot, do you?’
‘Spoken like a true American. And, yes,’ he pointed toward a door at the far end of the stainless steel bench beneath a high window. ‘I think you’ll find everything you need beyond that door.’
Richard was right. Behind the door lay a veritable treasure chest. Along one side of the long room were neatly stacked shelves holding every modern appliance known to man, and some she’d never seen before. On the other sat orderly groups of dry goods, coffees of various flavours – both instant and ground – tea, sugar, spreads and marmalades, cookies, and jars of preserved fruit.
Grabbing the smaller of two coffee pots, she gathered the makings of breakfast. Between her upside-down body clock and only picking at dinner the night before, her ravenous stomach growled loudly. After putting on the coffee, she followed Richard’s direction to a small cabinet that held croissants, rolls and wonderful-looking tarts layered with glazed strawberries. After a short battle of indecision, she took one of each.
‘The croissants are better warm,’ he commented as she went to sneak a bite before sitting. ‘Microwave’s over there.’
Obediently, she warmed the croissant and then lathered it with butter and marmalade. One bite told her she’d died and gone to heaven.
‘Good?’
‘Mmmm.’ She wasn’t sure whether she’d moaned with delight or groaned at the idea of becoming accustomed to such treats. At home she usually settled for coffee, and, if she had time, half a granola bar. Pastries were an absolute luxury.
‘You’ll find I usually know what’s what,’ he said with such a bland air of superiority Kelly had to consciously stop herself from reacting with her usual cynicism. After all, this wasn’t her home turf – that world was inhabited by blatant opportunists who played an ongoing game of power and manipulation, always assertive, never willing to give away the upper hand.
Secret Reflection Page 3