Mr Godfrey was leaning on a tomb, writing on a sheet of paper, noting down the items which were contained in a box which sat open beside him. He seemed utterly absorbed, and jumped, almost overturning his inkpot, when Bart spoke.
“Good day, Mr Godfrey. I trust that things are progressing well?”
The vicar took some moments to focus on them, after absently catching the inkpot and righting it.
“Lord Barton? Err… yes, quite well. There are so many items….”
“Yes, I can quite see that there is rather more here than anyone might have expected. But your progress seems impressive to me, as I can now see at least half of the floor in here.”
The crypt no longer seemed so eerie – the sense of the ghosts of the past hovering had dissipated, brushed away with the dust, although there was always a chill about the place.
“How can I assist you, Lord Barton?”
“We would like to take you away from this work for a short while, if we may.” The vicar looked unhappy at the prospect, but did not say so. “We would like to see the parish registers, from the 1750’s.”
“That long ago? Is there some particular reason?”
“Yes. Recently, Lady Sybilla and I went past Gallowbridge House whilst out riding, and noticed the graveyard there. We are interested in the history and families of the persons named on the headstones.”
The vicar took in a sharp breath, his face blanching in the flickering candlelight. Bart almost thought that he would refuse their request, as a flicker of emotion passed across his face. Then he looked around him, taking in the crypt, and its historic treasures, and seemed to make a decision. Bart was pleased – he had not wanted to resort to implying that he would limit access to the crypt if the vicar was not helpful. He was also puzzled, for the vicar’s hesitation had seemed something more than just a reluctance to leave his work here.
“I can certainly bring those registers out of storage for you. When…?”
“Might we go now? Lady Sybilla has other commitments this afternoon.”
The vicar need not know that those ‘commitments’ were writing a gothic novel…
“As you wish, Lord Barton, one moment.”
Mr Godfrey capped his inkpot, and tidied things away, before leading them out of the crypt.
~~~~~
In the back of the church, opening off the vestry, was a small storage room, containing, among other things, a large cupboard, full of all the old church records. With much muttering, Mr Godfrey had pulled out book after book, looked at a few pages, and thrust them back, until he found the right one.
Now, it lay before them on the table, lit by the angled early afternoon sunlight streaming in from the high window. And there, clearly written in brown/black oak gall ink, was the record of Genevieve’s birth.
‘To Ella Kentworthy, Marchioness of Dartworth, on this day, the 17 of July, 1753, a girl, Genevieve Ella. Father – Lord Stanford Barrington.’
They stared at it, amazed. For Stanford to have been recorded as the father was remarkable – a complete flouting of social expectations. Sybilla felt as if her family had suddenly become alien to her, with this wholly unexpected insight into their past.
“And Genevieve? Did she marry, or have children? Are there records to tell us?”
Sybilla’s voice was soft, as if she were imagining what they might find, imagining the existence of those who bore her family’s blood, who had existed, all unknown to the current generation. The vicar looked uncomfortable, for some reason, and he hesitated, as if reluctant to answer. Sybilla simply waited, looking at him hopefully.
“Ummm… it will take some time to look… I am not sure…”
“Then please do look, I wish to know, if at all possible.”
Sybilla sat on the simple hard chair, staring at the book in front of her, whilst the vicar went back to his records and, muttering, dug through the old books again. She traced her finger over the old ink on the page, as if by touching it, she could touch these long-gone people, whose story had so touched her. When she looked up, Lord Barton was watching her, the beam of sunlight drawing the highlights from his rich brown toned hair, and making her aware, all over again, of how well made a man he was. The lean, almost gauntness that comes from the privations of war had been replaced by the sculpted strength that spending most of one’s days riding horses could produce.
He said nothing, simply met her eyes, as they waited in a silence broken only by the vicar’s mutterings. She licked her lips, suddenly nervous under his gaze, wondering what he was thinking, as he watched her so steadily. His eyes followed her movement, warming, but still he said nothing. It was as if time had slowed, and there was no one in the world but them, caught in the beam of sunlight, like the dust motes turned gold that floated around them.
“Achoooo!”
The vicar’s sneeze broke them out of their trancelike state. He emerged from the store room, with three large volumes in his grasp, and deposited them on the table. Another puff of dust floated up from them, causing more sneezes.
“These, I think, are the ones that we want. 1770 to 1790. For if she was born in 1753, it is unlikely that she married before 1770, and unlikely that she had children after 1790, if she had married. Of course, if she married in another parish, we will find no record here. But you may look.”
Sybilla reached out and took hold of the first volume that she could reach. The vicar half reached out a hand, as if to hold it back, then stopped, and let her draw it towards her. Odd. But no matter. She turned her attention to the register before her, and began to read through the names. Lord Barton and the vicar each took a volume, and began to do the same. For some time, the sunlit silence reigned again, broken by nothing but the sound of turning pages.
“Ah! She did marry! I have the entry here.” Sybilla’s voice was excited, as she pointed at the page before her.
‘Married this day, the 20 of April 1780, Genevieve Ella, daughter of Ella Kentworthy, to Paul Titchworth, merchant.’
“I see that Genevieve is given no family name in the records. Perhaps because they did not know which to call her?”
“I do not know, Lady Sybilla.”
The vicar looked pale, and almost worried.
Perhaps he was simply fretting to get back to his exploration of the crypt. Lord Barton looked up, a look of surprise on his face.
“Titchworth? I am sure that I’ve heard Tideswell mention that name. I will need to ask him”
“We must keep looking. For if she married, she may well have had children.”
Sybilla went back to turning the pages, with all the more enthusiasm for having found at least one piece of information. Soon after, Sybilla again exclaimed, pointing at the page. There was the record of the birth of a child, to Genevieve – a boy, born in 1781 and named John. Excited, they kept looking, but nothing further was recorded.
“Perhaps they moved away from this parish? Or perhaps they had no more children?”
“Either is possible, Lady Sybilla, for the parish registers only record the births deaths and marriages which happen in this parish. If people move elsewhere, then whatever happens from that point will be recorded in another parish.”
The vicar looked at her, apologetic, but also seeming, in some slight way, relieved.
“But surely vicar, this being so close to here, and you being such an expert on local history, you have some hint of what happened next? You have been here, the local residents have told me, for twenty years – can you not remember the gossip from when you first arrived, or whether Genevieve and Paul Titchworth were still in the parish?”
The vicar looked away a moment.
“I… let me think…” Silence fell again, and they waited, as the vicar stared into the distance, looking most uncertain. “I do believe that I faintly remember them. But they moved to Inkpen, or further away, in that first two years that I was here. Now that you make me think about it, I remember there being some grumbling that, although they moved, they did no
t sell, or let out, Gallowbridge House. If the son John still lives, then it is likely that he still owns Gallowbridge House, for it’s been empty all the years that I have been here.”
“Thank you, vicar – that at least gives us somewhere to start, for if the father was a merchant, it’s probable that the son is a merchant – and surely, there cannot be too many merchants by the name of Titchworth in the towns hereabouts.”
As Sybilla finished speaking, Lord Barton’s voice cut across hers.
“That’s where I’ve heard the name! Tideswell was speaking of a merchant we’ve been dealing with, a few towns away, to obtain some of the replacement furniture and other items for Dartworth Abbey! I will ask him tomorrow what more he knows of the man.”
The vicar looked inexplicably distressed by this pronouncement and smiled weakly.
“Excellent, my Lord, I wish you, and Lady Sybilla, well with your investigations. Although, Lady Sybilla, I am surprised that you wish to know. Generally, I have found that those of the nobility prefer to let previous generations peccadilloes be forgotten, rather than to bring them into the light of day.”
Sybilla laughed, but blushed a little.
“Mr Godfrey, you have the right of the way that most would see it. I suspect that my mother would be included in those of that opinion. But it is a mystery, and I am too caught up in it to care what others may think – if they even know – for if I know of it, that does not mean that I will feel the need to tell all and sundry.”
That afternoon, as Sybilla sat at the escritoire in the library of Greyscar Keep, she was distracted from her writing. The day’s discoveries had left her feeling odd, and the silence of the library seemed filled with ghosts of the past, as if Stanford’s actions, all those years ago, had left echoes in the stone, right down to today. He, and Ella, and Genevieve had become so real in her mind, that she half expected to see him walk into the room.
Her mind replayed the early afternoon conversation with the vicar, as they had looked through the registers. The vicar had seemed most unhappy that they wished to pursue their investigations – which was strange in a man obsessed with history. It was almost as if there was something that he did not wish them to find. As if he were hiding something from them.
What was it, about Gallowbridge House, that made people respond that way? For had not Mrs Westby also been most uncomfortable, and unforthcoming about the topic, when Miss Millpost had asked her?
The thought worried her – she felt that she was missing something important, but she simply couldn’t see it. She pushed the whole thing aside, and went back to writing. In this chapter, she had trapped her poor heroine in a lightless crypt, with no way to escape. Now she had to write just the correct gothic atmosphere, as the poor girl waited for the hero to discover her.
That thought produced a mental image of Lord Barton, and the kiss that they had shared in the crypt under Dartworth Abbey. Her body heated at the very thought, and she stared blankly before her, writing forgotten, as she relived it in memory.
~~~~~
Mrs Westby went into the library, shutting the door behind her. The girl and her companion were off to Dartworth Abbey again for the morning, so this was the best time to clean and dust in the library. She glared at the escritoire where the pile of Lady Sybilla’s writings and associated notes sat, with a paperweight holding them down.
She wished that the girl would just finish the dratted book and be gone back to Meltonbrook Chase. Every day that she was here was a reminder and, as if that wasn’t enough, she and that uppity and nosy companion kept poking into history that was best left lie. And the way that she was going, with all of the time that Lady Sybilla spent over at the Abbey, with that young Lord Barton, she wouldn’t be at all surprised if the follies of the past had a way of repeating themselves.
Her expression was grim, as she went about the dusting.
Her thoughts went back to the message she’d had from John, just yesterday. He wanted to sell Gallowbridge House – to sell it! How had it come to this, that his business was doing so badly that the money was needed? Surely, there was another answer?
If they sold it, she’d have to clear everything out. The thought of that was like the thought of desecrating something holy. She’d never been able to bring herself to go through it, to look through her mother’s things, and her grandmother’s. She wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to see what was there, to find what might have been left. It would make it worse, to know how Stanford Barrington had truly felt about her grandmother.
Every day, for the last seventeen years, she had worked here, in a house owned by the Barringtons. At first, she was a housemaid, but she soon fell for Westby and married him, and came to live here at Greyscar, as Housekeeper. They had been good years, there was no denying that, and the Barringtons were generous employers, but none of that changed the facts. If Stanford Barrington had not been so rash as to seduce her grandmother, when she was already a married woman, she, Isabel, would have been born a child of an aristocratic family somewhere, not the child of a merchant who had been kind enough to marry an illegitimate girl who was the result of a scandal.
It grated. For years, she had ignored her feelings on the subject, simply because the Barringtons had rarely visited, as the now Dowager Duchess of Melton had never liked Greyscar. But now, with Lady Sybilla here… it had all risen to the surface. And the girl hadn’t even been helpful enough to be scared by the ghost stories!
She’d rather enjoyed telling the chit all about every haunting story that she could remember, in the most chilling way possible. She’d hoped that the girl would get scared, like that silly maid of hers, and leave. But it hadn’t worked. Whilst Lady Sybilla had shivered a bit, and looked nervously around her, she’d shaken that reaction off, and simply said ‘that’s excellent material to help me write my novel’.
Mrs Westby sighed. If they sold Gallowbridge House, it would be like she had lost a part of herself, her last tie to a heritage of noble blood. She would pray that it wasn’t necessary, but if it was… well, then, she would cope. Over the years when she and Westby had needed help, John had always been there with money, when the business had been thriving, so if he needed help now, she really couldn’t say no. But it would hurt…
With a last flick of the duster, she glared at the pile of writing on the desk again, and left the room.
~~~~~
The frost was so thick that morning, that it seemed almost like snow. The air was clear, and for once, it was still. The only sound was that of the horses’ hooves crunching in the frost and the mournful calls of a few birds circling above. Their breath, and that of the horses, turned to mist in front of them. Yet it was so beautiful that Sybilla could only stare around her in wonder.
They had not stopped for long, anywhere, for the chill was fierce once one stopped moving. Instead, they kept moving steadily, talking as they went, at times.
“I am puzzled by something. Nothing that I can clearly explain, it’s just a feeling that I have.”
“Oh? About what?”
“Well… I didn’t think of this until yesterday afternoon, when I was sitting trying to write. But the two things put together… Some while ago, when Miss Millpost first asked Mrs Westby about Gallowbridge House, and the gravestone, Mrs Westby was very evasive – she apparently went quite pale, then turned the conversation to other things. Yesterday, when we pressed the vicar to help us find more information, he seemed very reluctant – he looked a little anxious, all the while we were there, almost as if there were things that he didn’t want us to find – things that he was hiding. It left me wondering what everyone is hiding from us – for I truly feel that they are. What is it about Gallowbridge House, and the things that happened there, that makes people unwilling to discuss it?”
“I don’t know. When you put it like that… yes, the vicar did not seem at all happy to discuss it. I wonder why. That makes me all the more intent on finding the merchant Titchworth, and asking about it. Tideswell is c
oming to see me this afternoon, I’ll ask him to dig further.”
They fell to silence again, the horses close by each other, side by side, happy in each other’s presence, yet neither feeling able to say how they felt. It was often that way, of late – moments where they drew close, where one would look at the other, go to speak, and then hold back. Bart felt drawn to those moments, to the sense of closeness with Lady Sybilla, even if he could not tell her how he felt. He kept reminding himself that wishful thinking was foolish – yet his mind went back to that kiss, in the crypt, and he wanted to kiss her again.
He wanted to touch her, to know, in a sense that she was real, this woman who had seen him shatter, and who had not condemned him. Still, it had only been once. How would she respond if it happened again – when it happened again, for it surely would. He could not know. The horses walked, long relaxed strides, reins loose, and they each tended to guide them with one hand at times, tucking the other inside their warm coats for a while.
Every time she released her hand, he wanted to reach out and take it. He resisted, but they rode so close, he on her left, that his leg brushed hers – even that small touch heated his blood. It was bittersweet pleasure this, taunting himself with the tiniest touches of something that he could never have. Yet he was helpless to stop.
She turned to him, smiling, the mist of her breath drifting to him, and he remembered the feel of her lips. He did not know what to say, or do, but he found himself leaning towards her, as the horses faithfully carried them forward, at that steady walk. It seemed simple in that moment, and he acted, before thought could impede him. He leant just a little further, and brushed his lips across hers. She sighed, the mist of her breath tangling with his, and her lips returned the pressure, ever so slightly.
He drew back, unsure how she would react, and internally castigating himself for his foolishness. He should not risk his friendship with her, for a moment’s rashness. As always, she surprised him.
Healing Lord Barton: Sweet and Clean Regency Romance (His Majesty's Hounds Book 9) Page 8