Borrowed Vows

by Sandra Heath

  She gave a rueful smile. If she was honest with herself, the whole thing had been brought on by wishful thinking. A lover like Sir Dane Marchwood was what every red-blooded girl wanted, so in her sleep her subconscious had rooted around in the memory banks and unearthed an old book or movie with the perfect hero.

  The chink of bottles sounded outside, and curiosity got the better of her, so she got up to see what it was. A milkman was making his daily delivery at Jack Elmore’s door and whistled as he walked along the alley.

  She shivered, for the misty air was cool and she was naked. She put her hands to her breasts, remembering the silk nightgown she’d left on the floor in Dane’s bedchamber. Then she frowned at herself. She didn’t leave any nightgown anywhere, because there hadn’t been a Sir Dane Marchwood. She’d dreamed him, plain and simple. That was the end of it!

  She made some coffee and went to sit on the windowsill in her robe. The sun was up now and the mist had gone. Seagulls called across the rooftops outside, reminding her that Gloucester wasn’t all that far from the Severn estuary. She sipped the coffee and gazed along the alley to the street. Without warning a crystal-clear flashback swept over her, and suddenly she saw Dane walking through the darkness from his carriage. The illusion was so strong she gasped and closed her eyes. When she opened them again the alley was empty.

  She put her coffee down. This was crazy. Was she sickening for something? Was that it? Or maybe the dream had been brought on by indigestion! Yes, maybe the food she’d eaten last evening had lain a little heavy, or something. Maybe it still was this morning. Maybe. Somehow she didn’t think so. But then her glance fell on the literature the janitor had given her the night before. There, on top was a leaflet about Marchwood Castle.

  Shaken, she stared at it, and then gave a self-conscious laugh. Of course! She’d flicked through so much tourist information the previous night she didn’t even remember reading this one, but the fact that she had was all the explanation she needed for the dream. This was probably the last thing she’d read before going to bed, and when she’d fallen asleep it had gotten mixed up with her sexual frustrations and an old movie plot!

  She leaned across to pick up the leaflet. On the front was a view of the castle from across the meadows, showing an incongruous blend of beautiful terraced gardens and gray stone fortifications. Another view, this time from the village, showed how the battlements and towers rose above the surrounding trees and rooftops. There was a skimpy map on the back, with the castle in the center and lines radiating all around to show how far away the nearest towns and other attractions were. The text wasn’t very detailed, just a vague outline of the castle’s history, but it did mention a Sir Dane Marchwood who’d been knighted in the courtyard by King Richard II in the fourteenth century. And there was a sentence about some cannon from the field of Waterloo. So here she had two of the elements of her dream, Sir Dane Marchwood and Waterloo. There was a clear link between her nighttime adventures and this stupid piece of paper!

  Relieved to have some sort of rational explanation, she glanced through the leaflet again. Well, one thing was certain, her curiosity was aroused. Until this moment she hadn’t decided where to go on her first full day here, but now there was no contest. Marchwood Castle was open to the public, and she intended to take a look.

  The decision made, she took a shower and dressed in jeans and a blue check shirt. But just as she was about to leave, she noticed something odd. The tourist literature was in an unusually tidy pile. Unusual for her, that is. As she recalled, the night before she’d left everything scattered over the table, she certainly hadn’t bothered to arrange it neatly. Something wasn’t right.

  Slowly she looked around the apartment, and next noticed her supper dishes. She’d left them in the washer and forgotten to switch it on; someone had put that right, and now the dishes were not only washed, but had been removed from the washer and put on the shelf!

  Her unease increased as she continued to look around the apartment. When she dressed, she hadn’t taken much of a look in the closet, she’d just grabbed the first things that came to hand, but now she saw that everything was far too carefully arranged. On arriving, she’d just unpacked any old how and put everything away with minimum regard to creases, so this excessive tidiness certainly wasn’t her doing. She saw the reflection of the dressing table in the closet mirror, and turned sharply to look at the cosmetics placed so neatly on the polished surface. If she’d bothered to do her face this morning, she’d surely have noticed them, but instead she’d just used some moisturizer. She felt suddenly cold inside. Someone had definitely been here while she slept!

  She went through into the drawing room again, and for the first time saw her jewelry box on top of the TV. She’d left it in a suitcase in the bedroom, but someone had found it! She gasped. Oh, no! How much had been taken? She hurried to see, but to her astonishment, everything was still there. She couldn’t understand it, for some of the pieces were expensive and worth stealing. Why go to the trouble of breaking in if the only purpose was to tidy up and then inspect jewelry without taking it? If indeed theft had been the intention.

  Her first thought was to call the police, but even as she picked up the phone she knew how stupid her story would sound. Well, officer, it was like this. Someone poked around in my apartment, washed a few plates, cleaned up a little, riffled through my jewelry and make-up, and then took off without stealing anything. She could imagine how plausible that would sound! Deciding there was no point in reporting anything, she put the receiver down again.

  Then she noticed the telephone answering machine was blinking to show there was a message. God, she must have slept like the proverbial log not to have heard either the intruder or the phone ringing.

  She pressed the button and Richard’s voice came through clearly. “Hi. I guess you’re asleep now. I just called back to say again how great it was to get that second call from you. I’ve hated the quarreling too, and can’t bear to know you’re so far away. If you really mean it when you say you’ll cut the vacation short and come home right away, I just want you to know there’s nothing would make me happier. I wish to God I’d told Brand to go play with his own shaft, but I didn’t, so I’m stuck with it. Well, kind of stuck. Now I’ve taken a look, I’m sure the problem’s probably not as bad as he thought. A little judicious dimension-tweaking here and there might just do it, and if I’m right, I won’t have to stay here more than a few days. As for Phoenix, well, you were right, Brand intends to preen his incompetent feathers on that one. Still, he is retiring, and I’m the favored son right now. Aside from that, I could be back in New York by the weekend, and if you could be back there too ... Need I say more? I love you, Kathryn, and want to forget all about the past few months. I don’t care now if we can’t have a family, I just want you. I know I’ve been a selfish pain for far too long now, and being apart, even for this short time, has proved you’re more important than anything else. Just come home, sweetheart. Love you.”

  Kathryn stared at the machine. What was he talking about? What second call? As for calling her sweetheart and all that stuff about cutting the vacation short and starting anew, all she knew was her last call to him had ended with her thinking seriously about divorce! Was he being facetious? She rewound the machine and listened to the message again. No, he wasn’t that good an actor. He meant what he said.

  She felt uncomfortable. First there was all that “been here before” business yesterday, then the dream, followed by finding out someone had been in the apartment while she slept. Now this. Just what was going on here? Talk about dreaming an old movie plot, she was beginning to feel she was still in one. A Hitchcock movie!

  For a moment or so she hesitated about going out, but then decided what the heck. Maybe Jack the Janitor went sleepwalking and liked to try on women’s things! And maybe she’d been a little tidier than she remembered; after all, she had been very tired last night, so tired she didn’t even recall reading about Marchwood Castle. She c
ouldn’t explain away Richard’s message, though.

  More than a little rattled, she deliberated about what to do. She still didn’t see the point of informing the police, they’d be certain to think she was imagining things, and there wasn’t much point calling Richard now. It was the middle of the night in Chicago, and when he was away from home he always told hotels not to put calls through to him unless they were urgent. She couldn’t exactly pretend this was urgent, so she’d wait until later before calling. Besides, she wasn’t in the mood to dwell on all this now. She wanted to go see that darned castle.

  Armed with the road atlas she’d bought at Heathrow, she drove south out of Gloucester. It was the same route she’d taken in her dream, but that could be explained because when she’d fallen asleep she’d already seen the map on the back of the Marchwood leaflet.

  It felt good driving out of the city on such a beautiful summer morning, while all the rush hour traffic poured in. Rush hour traffic? Compared to New York this was about as busy as a Kansas back road! Still, she didn’t doubt the people of Gloucester thought it just as much the pits as anything Manhattan had to offer on a bad day.

  Soon she was in open countryside, but it wasn’t long before she saw the sign for Marchwood, and left the main highway to follow the minor road to the village. As the first houses swept into view ahead she braked to stare at the castle, because the déjà vu she’d felt on first seeing Gloucester was as nothing to the feeling she had now. Maybe the scene had been moonlit in her dream, but everything was exactly as she remembered. Marchwood hadn’t changed much over the centuries; the castle still loomed above the trees, and the village nestled in its protective lee.

  Suddenly she felt stupid. Of course it all seemed familiar, it was one of the views on the leaflet! One thing was different from her dream, though, and that was the large parking lot provided for visitors. Last night she and Dane had driven through the village and then over the old drawbridge, but these days the village was spared the endless flood of visitors. Now cars were left on this new lot, and a gravel path led between the trees toward the side of the castle rather than the front.

  She drove on. There were few visitors so early in the morning, and since her rented car had no air-conditioning, she chose a shady place beneath a wide-spreading tree and then walked a little nervously toward the small hut where entry tickets were sold.

  Her appearance at the window startled the plump woman seated inside with her knitting. “Good heavens, you’re bright and early.”

  “Yes, I guess I am,” Kathryn replied.

  “American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we’ve put on some grand weather today. You’ll be able to go back and tell all your friends it’s not true it rains here all the time,” the woman said with a smile as she took Kathryn’s coins and dispensed a ticket. “Just follow the path; everything’s sign-posted.”

  “Thank you.”

  Gravel crunched beneath Kathryn’s feet as she walked through the trees to the castle. Marchwood parish church stood behind an ivy-clad wall to her right, and to her left was part of the old moat, grass-filled and barely discernible. She passed the castle stables and coach houses, now converted into a gift shop and restaurant, and then she emerged onto a wide area where the original approach road passed beneath the immense gatehouse into the castle.

  This was where the Waterloo cannon were on display, and at the far side she could see ornamental steps leading down to the terraced gardens. Beyond the garden were the marshy meadows where the little River March, a tributary of the much larger Severn, wound its way across the estate, and then vanished into more woodland toward the estuary. It was from somewhere on those meadows that the view of the castle had been taken for the leaflet.

  But it was at the drawbridge and ancient gateway she stared now, remembering how the wheels of Dane’s carriage had rumbled on the wood before sweeping into the great inner courtyard. A cool finger ran slowly down her spine. This was exactly as she remembered it from the night before, and it wasn’t a scene depicted on the leaflet. So how could she have possibly seen it so clearly in her dream?

  Chapter Nine

  Kathryn felt quite rattled. All this was beginning to get just a little too creepy for comfort, and far from wanting to go on into the castle, she suddenly wanted to cut and run. No, that wouldn’t do, for if she high-tailed it at this juncture she’d never forgive herself for being such a wimp. All she needed was a few minutes to sit and think.

  She glanced toward the restaurant in the old stables, and quickly retraced her steps toward it. It was old-fashioned inside, with a self-serve counter, and tables and chairs that didn’t match. It smelled of coffee and confectionery, and the radio played bland music. The coffee looked undrinkable, so she got the tea, which didn’t look much better, but before sitting down she noticed an elderly woman seated at a corner table. Dressed in a neat brown suit and white frilled blouse, she was studying a newspaper crossword. The badge on her lapel announced her to be one of the castle guides.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Kathryn approached her. “Excuse me, may I have a word with you?”

  The woman looked up. “Why, yes, of course.”

  “I see you’re one of the guides, and wondered if I might ask you a few things?”

  “About the castle? Feel free to ask anything you wish.” With a charming smile, the woman indicated one of the chairs at the table.

  Kathryn sat down and then toyed nervously with her cup and saucer.

  The woman looked inquiringly at her. “What is it you wish to know?”

  “It concern’s the castle’s history.”

  “Ah. Your ancestors came from these parts?”

  “No. Well, my husband’s family came from Gloucester, but that’s not relevant. I’m actually interested in the Marchwood family at the time of Waterloo, or thereabouts.”

  “Waterloo. Now let me see, that would be Sir Philip’s time—no, I tell a lie, it was his father Sir Dane’s time! Yes, of course, what am I thinking. Sir Dane fought at Waterloo itself; he captured the cannon and brought them back here.”

  Kathryn’s pulse quickened, and her mouth was suddenly dry. There really had been a Sir Dane at the time of Waterloo? The leaflet didn’t mention that! She cleared her throat. “I, er ... Dane is an unusual name, does it run in the Marchwood family?” she asked.

  “Not really. There was another one in the fourteenth century, but that’s all as far as I know. Maybe some minor members of the family were called it, but I wouldn’t really know about that. As far as Marchwood castle is concerned, there were only two.”

  Kathryn didn’t know what to say next.

  The guide sipped her coffee. “The Waterloo Sir Dane was a very dashing and dangerous fellow, much given to pistols at dawn. He fought four duels and won them all, killing his opponent on each occasion.”

  Kathryn began to feel sick inside. Four duels? In her dream there had only been three.

  The guide went on. “But the last one left a stain on his reputation. He always used his own set of dueling pistols, and on this occasion was alleged to have tampered with the one his opponent used in order to ensure victory, and since this adversary was the younger brother of one of his previous victims, you can imagine how shocked local society was by his apparent lack of honor.”

  Kathryn was numb. The fourth opponent had been the brother of one of the previous ones? Who else could it be but Thomas Denham? But the leaflet hadn’t mentioned Thomas Denham, so how could she explain his appearance in her dream? Come to that, how could she explain knowing about the three original duels?

  The woman didn’t notice her stunned reaction. “Still, it was probably no more than Sir Dane deserved, for he played the devil once too often. Getting away with three duels was amazing, but to emerge victorious from a fourth was tantamount to a miracle. There had to be a penalty, albeit a relatively minor inconvenience to someone like him. Although, on reflection, I suppose having one’s honor called into questi
on was probably a serious business in those days.” The woman drew a long breath. “Devil or not, he was very handsome. From his portrait, I’d say he’d give any present-day heartthrob a run for his money. The original tall, dark, and handsome, that was Sir Dane.”

  Kathryn had to ask about the last duel. “Who was his final opponent?” she asked, knowing in her heart what the answer would be.

  “A gentleman by the name of Thomas Denham, of Denham Hall, just to the north of Gloucester. The duel was on Lammas Day, 1815. That’s August the first,” the guide added in explanation. “The whole business was most unfortunate, for Thomas’s elder brother William had fallen foul of Sir Dane ten years previously. There was talk of a vendetta, or whatever word would have been used at that time. The Denhams were once an important local family, but have died out now, and the hall was pulled down about fifteen years ago to make way for a new road. Anyway, I’m wandering from the point. The story goes that Sir Dane accused Thomas of a liaison with his wife, Rosalind.”

  Shocked to the core now, Kathryn stared at her. There had been a Rosalind too? All the people she’d dreamed about last night had actually lived? She struggled to keep a grip on herself. It could still be because she’d read a book or seen a movie. She gave the woman a weak smile. “Tell me, has the story ever been turned into a novel? Or a movie?”

  The guide laughed. “Oh, dear me, no; we’re small fry here at Marchwood. The history of the castle has been written, of course, but that’s all. Sir Dane’s tale would make an excellent book, though, and if it were filmed, he would make a marvelously handsome hero.” She sat back thoughtfully. “Actually, I suppose Rosalind would be the perfect heroine as well, for she was said to have been very beautiful. According to the records she had golden hair and green eyes, but the only portrait of her was destroyed in a fire about fifty years ago. She’s a rather enigmatic figure, and must have been perverse, for how could any woman prefer the rather dull Mr. Denham to such a tempestuous and infinitely more exciting husband like Sir Dane? I really don’t understand. Anyway, Sir Dane was succeeded by Sir Philip, his son by his first wife, Elizabeth. The Marchwood line eventually came to an end in 1990, and the castle has been the property of the nation ever since.”