Moonlight And Mistletoe

by Louise Allen

  ‘I think I will hold a party here,’ Hester announced. ‘On the twenty-second. Something quite informal… a supper party, probably. We must have the piano tuned and I will make a guest list.’

  By the time the Moon House party trooped over to the church next morning, Hester had made her list and written her invitations. Fortunately her acquaintance was still not large, for, if everyone accepted, the front rooms would hardly hold the company.

  Both Nugents could be glimpsed in their front pew and Hester timed her exit from the church to catch them as they shook Mr Bunting’s hand.

  ‘Miss Nugent! How do you go on? I was so sorry to hear about your tooth.’

  The slender figure turned, a fine, dense veil shielding her face. ‘Miss Lattimer, good day. I am much better, thank you. Only rather sore still and the bruising has still not gone down.’

  Her brother hovered protectively at her side and Hester turned her smile on him. ‘And Sir Lewis-thank you for delivering that other book. I have passed it on to his lordship, who is doubtless finding it most interesting.’ She fell in beside them as they made their way down the churchyard path to the lych-gate.

  ‘Has anything else strange happened recently?’ Miss Nugent’s voice seemed rather muffled, doubtless by the painful results of the extraction and Hester glanced at her just as a gust of wind caught the edge of her veil. There was a glimpse of her face before she snatched at the hem and had it under control again. The cheek revealed was quite definitely swollen and there was indeed a fading bruise-a bruise that showed clearly the marks of four knuckles.

  Sarah Nugent was the ghost. Hester got both her face and voice under control and made a rapid decision.

  ‘Yes. Yes, something very worrying has happened,’ she confided, making her tone anxious. ‘May I tell you in confidence?’ They both nodded earnestly and Hester cast a rapid glance round before whispering, ‘Someone is getting into the house and leaving…dead roses.’

  Sarah gave a little shriek of alarm, which, if she had not seen her bruised face, would have convinced Hester of her surprise. ‘Roses! I knew it-the curse. My dear Miss Lattimer, I beg you, reconsider and accept Lewis’s offer to buy back the Moon House before it is too late.’

  ‘I do not know.’ Hester hoped she was sounding undecided yet unnerved. ‘It is such a lovely house and yet, now I feel so uneasy there. Perhaps I am being over-imaginative. I am reluctant to make any decision before the Christmas season is over. Which reminds me…’ She took an invitation out of her reticule and handed it to Sarah. ‘I am having a small party on the twenty-second; just a sociable evening at home with supper and perhaps singing carols around the piano. I do hope you can come.’

  There was a perceptible pause. What were they thinking? ‘That would be delightful, thank you, Miss Lattimer,’ Sarah said at last. ‘We had made no plans ourselves because of our sad loss, but an evening with friends would be most welcome.’

  Sir Lewis took her hand and squeezed it. Hester repressed the urge to snatch it away and box his ears and instead gazed trustingly into his green eyes. If at any time you come to a decision to sell, Miss Lattimer, you have only to say.’

  Hester watched them climb into their carriage and turned back grimly to distribute invitations to others of her acquaintance who were leaving the church. A gratifyingly large number expressed their immediate acceptance and Hester made her way back home, mentally writing lists and reviewing her wine cellar. As they reached the front gate she glanced across at the Old Manor standing red and forbidding across the lane.

  Where was Guy now? He had not been gone a day and already she missed him with a dull ache. She wanted to talk to him, tell him about Sarah Nugent, confide that she had risked speaking about the roses. And more than that, she wanted to be held in his arms, feel the strength of him under tier hands, against her body. She wanted him to make love to her.

  ‘Miss Hester?’ It was Jethro, obviously wondering why she was standing on the front step with the door wide open letting the heat out. ‘Miss Hester, I was talking to one of the footmen from the Hall up in the church gallery and he says that every Christmas the Nugents used to have theatrical parties.’

  ‘Did they, indeed?’ Hester stepped briskly inside and closed the door. ‘What else did he say?’

  Jethro took her heavy cloak and gloves, favouring his right side where the muscles were still paining him. ‘That Sir Lewis was a good actor, but Miss Nugent was even better and that she organised everything and made up the plays and Sir Lewis just does what she says.’

  Hester went into the sitting room, calling the others after her. ‘Miss Nugent is our ghost; I saw the bruises from Lord Buckland’s knuckles plain on her cheek under that veil. And if Sarah is such an accomplished actor, no wonder she has been able to spin all these tales about ghosts and a curse and appear so distressed.’

  ‘Shall we start to search the house?’ Jethro was already rolling up his sleeves, only to be interrupted by a scandalised cluck from Miss Prudhome.

  ‘Not on a Sunday, Jethro!’

  ‘His lordship has been travelling on a Sunday,’ he muttered mutinously.

  ‘We can discuss how we are going to search and where,’ Hester suggested placatingly. ‘And we can think about our Christmas plans. I cannot recall when I have been so behindhand with that.’

  An hour later, nibbling the tip of her quill before the sitting room fire, Hester thought back to Christmases past. English Yuletides with her parents were a distant memory; fresher were the colourful, often chaotic celebrations in Portugal with roast ribs of beef acquired by dubious means, the mix of uniforms adding to the festive scene and the sun shining in a way it never did in England in December.

  Then, two years ago, returning to England, bereaved, desolate, shivering in an English winter, her only sanctuary the house of an old friend of her father, invalided out of the army two years previously. The house where she expected to spend her first English Christmas for many years.

  Hester had found the address in Mount Street and handed the gaunt, crippled man who lived there her father’s letter addressed to him. Colonel Sir John Norton had read it while she had watched him, shaken that a contemporary of her father’s should look so much older. Major Lattimer had referred to a shoulder wound that would have soon healed, but the man before her was suffering from far worse than that.

  But shaken as she was by the appearance of her host, she was even more confused by the letter he handed to her which had been contained within his own.

  …as we have spoken of before now if you find yourself alone you will have gone to my good friend John Norton… he and I agreed… make provision for you… best for you to marry him, for there is no one else I can send you to…

  She had had to read the letter twice before she could take it in. Her father and his old friend had hatched a plot for her protection, which involved her marrying the colonel if her father was killed.

  She had looked up, startled, and had met the kind, tired eyes that were watching her.

  ‘I was not such a wreck when he and I parted,’ he explained wryly. ‘An operation went wrong, I contracted a rheumatic fever that affected my heart. The quacks give me a year.’

  ‘I am so sorry.’ She had tried to smile bravely. ‘I cannot possibly impose on you, that is obvious. Perhaps you can suggest a respectable hotel-’

  She had got no further. Sir John pointed out with a forcefulness, which left him breathless, that if she married him she would have a home, the protection of his name and would, very shortly, become a wealthy widow.

  Hester had refused point blank and the battle between the mortally ill man and the homeless young woman had raged for two days before she had agreed to stay and he had agreed to respect her determination not to marry him.

  She soon realised that, as well as being ill, he was lonely. His servants were adequate, but no substitute for family or friends, and his relatives, with whom he had had little contact or sympathy while he was in good health, saw no need to
seek him out now. Hester settled into the role of companion-housekeeper within days and a strange, warm friendship grew up between the dying man and the bereaved girl.

  When John had died she had felt bereaved all over again as though she had lost a second father. Facing the prospect of homelessness and genteel poverty on the small portion she had inherited, she had been touched and deeply grateful that at the reading of the will it transpired that the colonel had left her a respectable competence as well as his wine cellar. And with it the chance to remake her own life away from London.

  Hester tossed down her quill and got to her feet to stare out of the window at the uncompromising red-brick wall on the other side of the road. Now, here in the Moon House, she was determined to build a future on what John and her father had given her. The past was behind her.

  She turned back from the window with a shiver, the thin sunlight throwing her silhouette in front of her across the boards. It seemed like a warning, a reminder that what was behind you could cast a long shadow into the here and now.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The next morning Hester rallied her troops and set them searching.

  ‘Jethro, see what you can find in the kitchen and scullery. Somehow someone is getting in, so look from the outside first. The rest of us will search for this treasure. Susan, you take the ground floor, Maria, the bedrooms, and I will search the attics.’

  She had to scrub a rag over the tiny windows in the eaves and light two lanterns, but at last Hester could see to explore the attics. Unfortunately it was also sufficient to reveal some very large spiders. The contents were disappointingly sparse, almost all broken and most had never been of any value at all. Nor could she see any possible hiding places, despite carefully tapping and pressing every piece of woodwork and prodding each loose brick or slate.

  Straightening her back, she called downstairs to Maria and Susan, but they too reported not so much as a painted-over cupboard to give any hope. Hester eyed the dust-smeared floorboards. ‘I suppose you are the obvious place.’ she muttered at them resentfully. ‘What a good thing I never liked this gown overmuch.’

  Lantern in one hand, she inched across the floor on her knees, trying to lift the boards at the ends, prodding the knot holes. Nothing. And then, in the furthest corner, her hand brushed against a change of level. She held up the lantern and revealed a painting, thick with dust. Hester pulled it out and lifted it, showering herself with dirt and what seemed to be a mass of ribbons. It was the canvas, sliced and torn into shreds, which still clung to the frame where the edges of the canvas remained intact.

  Hester knelt there, her arms aching with the effort of supporting it and felt the cold horror of violence that had filled her when she first saw the ravaged dressing room. To have done this spoke of bitter anger and spite and a fanatical desire to despoil.

  Wishing she could take it straight to Guy, she got to her feet, blew out her lanterns and carried the frame and its fluttering tatters downstairs. Maria emerged from the unoccupied back bedroom, shaking her head. ‘I’ve had all the rugs up, pulled the shutters right out of their boxes-nothing. My goodness, what is that?’

  ‘Come downstairs and I will show you. Susan!’

  Hester carried on down to the dining room where she lowered the frame on to the table. ‘Do you recall that sheet of glass we found in the shed? If you can fetch that, I will use it to lay out the canvas and we can see-’ She broke off at a cry of triumph from the kitchen. ‘Jethro?’

  ‘I’ve found it!’

  They hurried in to see the lad standing triumphantly in the doorway of the unused cupboard. ‘Look-no wonder it was damp in here, there is a hidden doorway in the bricks at the side and it does not quite meet the ground. See?’

  Susan and Maria squashed into the cupboard after Hester, exclaiming at the ingenuity of the secret door, ducking outside into the recess that had seemed blocked by the overflowing water butt and the pile of old hurdles. ‘No wonder Sir Lewis did not want you sending for a builder, Miss Hester.’ Jethro pushed the door closed and brushed up the dead weeds against it. ‘We’d never see this, but any craftsman checking the brickwork couldn’t help but find it.’

  ‘And his man came down, looked all round here and said nothing. More evidence for the magistrate,’ Hester said triumphantly. However much her head had told her there was a malevolent human agency behind the appearance of the roses, it was still a relief to see tangible proof of it. ‘Try and leave everything as it was, Jethro, we do not want to frighten off the Nugents. Not yet. Brr, I am cold, let us go in.’

  ‘Miss Lattimer? I knocked at the front door and could not make myself heard.’ It was Guy. Hester scrambled over the hurdles with more speed than grace and caught his hand, the cold forgotten in the comfort of feeling that strong, warm clasp.

  ‘We have found it! Come and see. I am so glad you are returned.’

  He paused, closing his hand tight around hers, and looked down into her face. ‘So am I.’ Hester felt the yard go quiet around her. Somewhere behind her the voices of Maria and Susan were a faint twittering like birds in a distant tree. Her cold hands and feet ceased to have any feeling. All she was conscious of was the warmth in Guy’s eyes, the meaning in his voice, the sensual curve of his lips.

  The edge of a hurdle cracked under her foot and the moment was gone. Feeling as though she had woken from a deep sleep, Hester blinked. ‘Jethro found the door. Look.’

  Guy climbed over the barrier and helped her back. Together they examined the door, its carefully disguised hinges, the slight angle that the wall was set at which hid it utterly unless one was face-on to it. ‘As I suspected, this was built as part of the house, not added later.’

  ‘So it must be part of the original secret, the same secret as the treasure?’ Hester speculated as they regained the kitchen.

  ‘Yes. If there ever was a treasure. I am beginning to wonder about that. And you know, those old family books of legends make no mention of any dead roses or of this house at all.’

  ‘The Nugents think there is a treasure, or why else are they doing this? Oh, yes, and I forgot to tell you-Miss Nugent is our ghost, I caught a glimpse under her veil yesterday and she has the bruises of your knuckles on her cheek, plain as day. She is also a good actress, according to Jethro’s sources.’

  ‘Is she, indeed?’ Guy regarded his knuckles. ‘I have never hit a woman-I cannot say it gives me any great pleasure, whatever she has been about. As for the “treasure”, they may be misinterpreting some clue-that letter you glimpsed, for example.’ Guy leaned against the kitchen table and looked around the room. ‘This is a home, this place. I cannot see it as some kind of treasure house, can you?’ Hester shook her head, intrigued that he seemed to experience the same kind of feelings as she did for the Moon House. ‘It is feminine, warm. A house for a man to come to and relax, sit by the fire, enjoy a woman’s company.’

  His gaze rested on Hester as he spoke and she found her lips curving into a smile of recognition at the picture he was painting. She could see herself seated by the fire, or curled upon the chaise in her bedchamber, holding out a hand to Guy as he came through the door in the candlelight. She would pull him down beside her in the firelight while the snow swirled against the window panes…

  ‘Why, then, would he need to sneak in through a secret opening?’ Hester wondered aloud. ‘An assignation?’ Jethro, Susan and Maria had all vanished from the kitchen. She wondered why, then supposed they had all gone to wash hands and faces after their dusty explorations.

  Guy shifted position suddenly as though to snap himself out of his flight of fancy. ‘Perhaps. I need to read that box of documents.’

  ‘But how?’ Hester felt she could watch the play of expression on his face for hours. In company he shielded his thoughts and emotions and one saw only what he wanted you to see. But lately she felt he let his guard down with her-or perhaps, being in love with him, she could read him more clearly.

  ‘What is it, Hester?’ Guy reached out a
hand across the table and she put hers into it with a smile, surprised once more at how right his touch seemed.

  She must have looked startled at his question, for he added, ‘You were staring at me. Have I a smudge on my face?’

  ‘No, no… I was wool-gathering.’

  ‘Well, you have-a smudge, I mean. And cobwebs in your hair. In fact, I think you are even grubbier than the first time I saw you.’

  Guy watched the emotions chase across Hester’s face, then mischief won over indignation. ‘Wretch! To remind me of that is most unfair.’

  ‘I thought you made a very fetching parlourmaid,’ he commented, wondering how much longer he could hold her hand before she became self-conscious and snatched it away.

  He very much wanted to do more than hold her hand. If he was honest with himself, the thought of kissing her again, holding her in his arms, making love to her, was beginning to obsess him. Up there on the chilly downs he had thought for a dizzy moment that she returned his feelings, but it seemed that all she felt was friendship-and attraction. In the tone she had used, that was the sort of word which was usually preceded by unfortunate.

  The vehemence with which she rejected the idea of a carte blanche puzzled him. Of course any well-bred young lady would be appalled at the thought, but her reaction was more intense, more personal. And the fact that it had occurred to her at all, significant. Had someone tried to force his attentions on her in the period after her father’s death when she had been alone and not yet safely employed?

  Whatever her secret was, he did not intend cajoling or tricking it out of her. If she trusted him, she would tell him when she was ready, and if she did not trust him, then this was pointless anyway. A patient man, Guy settled himself to play a long game, but for the first time he found himself apprehensive about whether he would win it.

  He must have been lost in thought for long enough to make her uncomfortable for Hester coloured and, extracting her hand from his grasp, stood up. ‘I am keeping you from your sister. I am sorry, I should have asked you if she had a comfortable journey.’