The Silent Touch of Shadows

by Christina Courtenay

  An hour later, her head was beginning to throb and her cheek muscles hurt from keeping up the polite rictus grin throughout boring conversations. Although everyone she’d talked to had been welcoming, so far she hadn’t met anyone she’d really like to be friends with. All she wanted was to go home. And if one more person asked what she did for a living and where Mr Grantham was, she thought she would scream.

  Where’s Prince Charming when you need him? she wondered, taking a fortifying sip of her drink.

  Just at that moment, the crowd shifted and she caught sight of Jake standing over by the wall. She hadn’t expected him to be there, although why not, she couldn’t say. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him and she stood entranced, just staring in his direction. He looked different, perhaps because she’d never seen him in a formal suit and tie before, but unlike her, he seemed to blend in perfectly. He was talking to Caroline, who had one arm around his waist and was laughing up at him coquettishly. This made something ugly stir inside Melissa and she shook herself mentally and turned away.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, what is the matter with you?’ she muttered. Jake is not Prince Charming, any more than Steve was. And he’s perfectly entitled to talk to any woman he likes. Was Roger playing tricks on her again? she wondered. Could he influence her even in someone else’s house? The thought gave her goose pimples.

  She finished her drink and grabbed another glass of champagne from a passing waiter, then took a large gulp and headed for the door. Out in the vast hall, the air was cooler and Melissa breathed deeply. She was shaken by her reaction to Jake. There was no doubt she was very attracted to him, more so for every time they met it would seem, but why? Had she just struck lucky and happened to meet a man with whom she had exceptional chemistry, or was there something more sinister going on?

  She rubbed a hand over her brow, trying to ease the tension. The simple truth was she didn’t have any answers. Roger was clouding her mind, deluding her and …

  ‘So this is where you’re hiding yourself.’

  Jake’s voice, so like Roger’s, made Melissa jump and she turned too quickly and spilled some of the champagne onto the floor. ‘Oops … Hello, Jake. What brings you out here?’

  He smiled and bent to whisper, ‘Remember what you said about preferring a good book and some chocolate? I couldn’t agree with you more right now.’

  Disturbed by his nearness, Melissa found herself stammering. ‘R-really? Well, I’m glad I’m not alone, then.’

  He put his head to one side and studied her with an appreciative glint in his eyes. ‘You look absolutely lovely tonight. You should wear dresses more often.’

  Melissa felt colour flood her cheeks. ‘Thank you, but I prefer jeans.’

  He glanced again at her legs and murmured, ‘Shame.’ Pulling his eyes away, he cleared his throat. ‘Well, now that I’m out here in the hall, I think I might just make my escape. Caroline won’t notice with so many other people to talk to and I really should get back to the surgery. There are several patients needing attention, especially my favourite, a little hedgehog who had pneumonia. I want to check on them all.’

  ‘Hedgehog with what? Surely not?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They can get it too, quite badly. But he’s back to normal now after a course of antibiotics. I just like to keep an eye on him to make sure he stays well. You should come and see him sometime; he’s a sweet little thing. Amy wants me to keep him, but of course that’s impossible.’

  ‘Impossible, yes …’ Oh, Lord, am I turning into a parrot now?

  ‘Right, well, I’ll be off then. Please, don’t tell on me.’

  ‘No … no, I won’t.’

  Halfway to the door he turned. ‘I nearly forgot. When can I come over to see that family tree you promised to show me? Would tomorrow be any good?’

  ‘Umm, yes, sure. Tomorrow evening is fine.’

  She leaned against the wall after he’d gone and closed her eyes. Something inside her was desperate to see Jake again and it scared the wits out of her.

  If only she could be sure of the reason.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘By all the saints, Sibell, what kept you so long?’ Henry snarled as Sibell took her place next to him at the table. ‘I swear you’ll make Sir Fulke a useless wife if you can’t even attend meals on time.’

  Sibell muttered something about a kitchen disaster that had to be dealt with, but it was a lie and she hoped no one would question her more closely. She knew she was late, and had been for the past few mornings, but in truth she couldn’t help it. Every day for the last week she had woken later than usual and as soon as she tried to get up her stomach rebelled and she’d been vilely sick. Fortunately, she had the little chamber to herself so no one else had found out about her affliction, but she had to tread warily. At first she’d thought it was something she had eaten, but when it happened again and again, she began to suspect another cause. And that was something she definitely had to hide.

  ‘Henry’s right, girl, tardiness won’t be tolerated from the mistress of the household. Nor bad housekeeping – why is this bread stale?’ Her father added his grumbling to that of his sons, and threw a half-chewed crust onto the table.

  Sibell bit into her own bread, which wasn’t stale at all, and guessed her father must be suffering from toothache. Anything harder than sops would hurt him to chew.

  ‘Yes, it’s grateful we’ll be when we can hire ourselves a more efficient housekeeper,’ Henry spat, giving her a sour look. ‘I pity Sir Fulke, truly I do.’

  Sibell kept silent and tried to stem the tide of nausea threatening to overcome her. She had learned early on that it was never any use retaliating or talking back since Henry would always exact his revenge somehow at a later date. No, far safer to keep one’s mouth shut and endure his jibes.

  It was with great relief that she escaped into the garden some time later to breathe in huge gulps of fresh air. She sank down under an old apple tree in the orchard and allowed her body to relax. To her relief, the nausea slowly ebbed away. Henry’s parting shot was still echoing in her brain and she shook her head, unable to understand his unreasonable hatred of her. It had always been that way, for as long as she could remember, and one particular instance from her childhood came back to her as she closed her eyes.

  ‘Who needs girls? Father says they’re useless.’ Henry’s sneering voice had interrupted a nine-year-old Sibell as she was concentrating on her sampler. Tongue poking out slightly from one corner of her mouth, she’d been making a huge effort to set the tiniest stitches she could manage in order to please her mother, Elinor, who was unwell. She looked up with a frown.

  ‘What do you know? You’re just a nasty little boy,’ she retorted and almost added, ‘Mother says so,’ but thought better of it.

  Henry came to stand in front of her, closely followed by Edmund, who bent down to rip the piece of cloth out of her hands with a swift movement. Edmund and Simon always followed Henry’s lead whenever their oldest brother, John, wasn’t around.

  ‘No! Give it back, you’ll ruin it!’ she shrieked, jumping up to try and grab her handiwork back. Edmund held it out of her reach and since he was so much taller, her puny efforts were no use. She felt tears prick her eyelids and tried to hold them back. She glared at her half-brothers. ‘Why do you hate me so much? What have I ever done to you?’

  ‘You don’t belong here. We don’t want you or your mother. She is forever scolding us, telling us to wash, mind our manners, not spit on the floor …’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t behave like such oafs then, should you?’ Sibell interjected.

  ‘Hah! This is our father’s house. We can do what we like and we don’t need some weak-brained female telling us what to do. The sooner you’re gone, the better.’

  ‘Gone? We’re not going anywhere.’ Sibell frowned at him, baffled by his words.

  ‘Well, maybe you’re not, but your mother …’ Henry shrugged and turned to leave the hall.

  ‘My
mother? Where is she going? What do you mean?’ Surely her father couldn’t send them away? But her half-brother didn’t reply.

  Edmund threw the by now crumpled sampler into her lap and gave her a smirk before following his brother out the door. Simon brought up the rear. Sibell stared after them with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, wondering what they meant.

  Godwin, the third oldest of her half-brothers, had watched the scene in silence from his perch on a bench near a window. He rose slowly now, and came over to pat her awkwardly on the head.

  ‘Don’t mind them, they’re only making mischief. You are not leaving Ashleigh.’

  She looked up at him with gratitude and a hesitant smile. Smaller than his brothers, and the only one with true blond hair rather than red, he had never treated her badly, but he seldom spoke to her or anyone else.

  ‘I’m sorry I cannot defend you against them, but the others are all bigger than me …’ He shrugged philosophically and walked away before she could reply. She knew he was always beaten into submission should he ever dare to question his brothers or his father, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. She didn’t blame him for not coming to her aid.

  When her mother died two days later she understood what Henry had meant, however. Everyone else had known that Elinor would not recover from her illness, but no one had thought to tell Sibell. Her life, which had been bearable as long as her mother was alive, became purgatory. For several months she endured abuse and neglect until her father unwittingly saved her by accepting Lady Maude’s invitation for her to foster with the Presseille family. Sibell had thanked God for it ever since.

  She sighed and stared at the blue summer sky now. Her life had once again become unbearable after her husband’s death, but she was older now and she vowed to fight with every means at her disposal. She put a hand to her abdomen. As yet there was no sign there might be a life in there, but she was fairly certain she was with child. The thought thrilled and alarmed her at the same time and her heart increased its rhythm.

  ‘Don’t worry, little one,’ she whispered, ‘I’ll make sure you don’t have to grow up here with my father and half-brothers, no matter what it takes.’

  Melissa dressed casually for her meeting with Jake, in black jeans and a charcoal-coloured sweater that hugged her figure, but she couldn’t resist spraying on a whiff of exotic perfume.

  ‘Idiot,’ she murmured. ‘He’ll think you’ve made a special effort just for him.’

  When he arrived with Amy in tow, however, she was inordinately pleased to see the appreciation in his eyes as they scanned her quickly. She hurried to put some distance between them, otherwise she knew she wouldn’t be able to think, never mind speak coherently. Amy rushed off upstairs as usual and Jake followed Melissa into the dining room.

  ‘Dorothy not in tonight?’ he asked casually.

  ‘No. Whist at the Partridges. She’ll be back soon, I think.’ Melissa tried not to show her nervousness at being alone with him in the room and took refuge in business. ‘Right, here we are.’ She had spread the family tree and other papers out on the dining table and launched into a lengthy explanation before he could ask any more questions. Jake listened without interrupting until she ran out of breath.

  ‘So you mean my name should really be Presseille?’ Jake grinned, pronouncing the word with a horrendous mock-French accent. ‘That sounds awfully grand.’

  A gurgle of laughter escaped her. ‘Yes, but it would suit you, I think. Shame you don’t own Idenhurst anymore. I wonder where it is, or was? I have looked on the map, but there doesn’t seem to be a property of that name anywhere around here.’

  ‘Perhaps it was renamed or fell into ruin?’

  ‘Yes. The family might have moved to another manor. Rich families usually had several and moved between them. I’ve been in contact with the local historian, but he didn’t know either. He’s going to try and find out so I’ll let you know what he says.’

  ‘So this Sir Gilbert fellow is the earliest Presseille you’ve found?’ Jake pointed to the top of her chart.

  ‘Yes, but I haven’t connected you to him for certain yet. I know he was alive in 1461, but then there’s a gap until 1495, which is as far back as we got with the manor court roll. There may be more, but we’ll have to wait until the conservationists have had a look at it. The damn thing is stuck you see. Shame, I had hoped to find Roger.’ Her hand flew to cover her mouth and she looked at him in consternation. Jake lifted an eyebrow questioningly.

  ‘Roger? Who’s Roger?’

  ‘Oh, nobody. That is, er … someone connected with Ashleigh. I … I got confused and forgot which house we were talking about for a minute.’ She turned away and fiddled with some of the papers on the table, trying to keep her cool.

  Jake was nobody’s fool, however, and now his curiosity must have been piqued. When Melissa looked up again she saw his eyes narrow. ‘Hang on a minute, didn’t you call me Roger that time when you fainted?’

  Melissa ran a hand through her hair and sighed. ‘Umm, yes.’ She took a step away from him and hugged herself defensively. ‘Look, I don’t want to talk about it. If I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy and you won’t let your daughter be friends with Jolie any more and then she’ll be heartbroken, and how am I going to explain that to her and–’ Her ramblings came to an abrupt halt as she glanced up and noticed him frowning at her.

  ‘Melissa.’ He took a firm grip on her shoulder with one hand and made her look him straight in the eyes. ‘What’s going on? I promise I won’t think you’re crazy, whatever you tell me.’

  ‘That’s what you say now,’ she muttered, trying unsuccessfully to evade his hand.

  He wouldn’t let her go and as he looked into her eyes, she knew she had to tell him the truth. It was, after all, affecting him too, although he didn’t know it yet. She sighed.

  ‘Tell me, Melissa. Please?’ he pleaded. ‘This has something to do with me, I can feel it, so I think I have the right to know.’

  ‘Okay, fine, but I’m sure you won’t believe me. Let’s go and sit down, this is going to take a while.’ Her back straight, as if she were going into battle, she led the way into the sitting room. Jake took a seat opposite her in one of the huge wing chairs and waited patiently for her to begin.

  Melissa silently cursed her big mouth. She had made up her mind to be businesslike during this meeting and had succeeded quite well for a while, but as she had explained to him about the various people on the chart and their relationships to one another, she had lost herself in the past. As always, she’d been caught up in the excitement of genealogy and Roger’s name had just slipped out.

  She fidgeted, trying to concentrate on the matter in hand, and decided that he deserved the whole truth. Hesitant at first, she told him about seeing the ghost. She described the uncanny resemblance between Roger and himself and recounted Dorothy’s story about Sibell. She left nothing out, except the strange emotions Roger evoked in her, or the feelings he himself inspired. But Jake again came to his own conclusions.

  ‘So you think that I’m Roger, returned from the dead, and you’re Sibell reincarnated? Is that it?’ He was frowning and she could tell the idea didn’t appeal to him in the slightest. Obviously she’d been wrong and Roger was only working his magic on her. She wasn’t sure whether that was a relief or not.

  ‘No, not exactly, but …’

  Jake shook his head and tried to make light of the matter. ‘It sounds like that old horror movie The Mummy with Boris Karloff.’

  ‘Don’t be s-silly,’ she stammered, realising how stupid it all seemed when discussed rationally. Nevertheless, she had seen a ghost and she couldn’t doubt the evidence of her own eyes. ‘I think perhaps he’s influencing us somehow, bringing us together, but I don’t believe in souls returning to possess people. Anyway, why would he ask me to help him, if his soul was already in you? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. Also, if they had simply come back as us there w
ould be no need for a ghost, would there? Or there should be a ghost of Sibell too, but nobody has ever seen her, have they?’

  ‘No, not that I know of. It’s all so frustrating.’ She bit her lip. ‘I don’t even know his surname, so I can’t look for any record of him. That was another reason why I was hoping he was a member of your family. I was sure he must be, you look so alike.’

  Jake shook his head and pushed back his floppy fringe with impatient fingers. ‘This all seems a bit far-fetched.’ He looked at Melissa. ‘On the other hand, there is obviously something weird going on. Your strange reaction to me that first day proves you’re telling the truth, at least as you see it. And as for me, well …’

  ‘I’m glad you don’t think I’m completely insane.’ She gave a brittle little laugh. ‘As long as Amy can still come over and hang out with Jolie, all is well.’ With a resigned shrug she added, ‘Could we just forget the whole thing? If he ever appears again, I’ll ask for his full name, date of birth and everything else. Until then, let’s leave it.’

  ‘Good idea. Why don’t we do something entirely normal, like go and see a movie? There must be something on at the local flea pit.’

  Melissa knew she shouldn’t go out with him, but suddenly she was past caring. Perhaps it would be better to get it out of her system. She had a feeling her attraction to Jake wouldn’t go away by itself, no matter what she did.

  ‘Sure, why not?’ she heard herself reply and was rewarded by a blinding smile.

  Letting out his breath slowly, as if he’d been unsure of her answer, Jake suggested they meet up in half-an-hour. He left soon after, taking his new family tree with him. Dorothy, when she returned from the whist playing, happily agreed to keep an eye on the two girls, who had already decided that Amy would spend the night at the manor.

  ‘Have a lovely time, dear,’ Dorothy trilled.

  It sounded so normal, but Melissa knew her life was far from ordinary at the moment. Would it ever be again?