The Bluebell Castle Collection

by Sarah Bennett

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Lucie asked, suddenly nervous. No one had been inside the tunnel for who knew how long, but if Thomas had been the cause of it being sealed up, then it must have been at least a century and a half.

  ‘We’ll be careful, I promise.’ Arthur looked his usual, confident self, and she tried to feel reassured by that. ‘We won’t step inside until we’ve checked it out, okay.’

  ‘Okay.’ Folding her arms across her middle, it was Lucie’s turn to pace as Arthur and Tristan took turns to duck inside the entrance hole, their torches shining in every direction.

  ‘It looks solid,’ Tristan said. ‘No sign of any water damage that I can see.’ He took a breath. ‘It’s a bit musty, but the air doesn’t smell bad.’

  ‘I can’t sense any damp or rot,’ Arthur agreed. He stuck his hand back into the tunnel entrance. ‘It’s very faint, but there’s a breeze which would indicate air flow.’

  ‘You’re going in.’ It wasn’t a question. She could tell from their body language as much as their conversation they were gearing up for it. ‘Promise you’ll be careful.’

  ‘I’ll go in,’ Tristan said. ‘You should stay here, just in case. You’re the baronet, after all.’

  Arthur rolled his eyes. ‘And as it stands, you’re my heir so there’s no call for you to take the risk over me.’

  Tristan flicked a very pointed look in Lucie’s direction. ‘And you’ve got a very big incentive to look after yourself standing right there.’

  ‘Okay, okay, you’re right. But no daredevil stuff. You take a couple of paces in and no more.’

  Lucie crossed to stand next to Arthur, clutching his hand tight as they watched Tristan bend low and step into the tunnel. As he took his first step forward, Arthur reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt. ‘Just in case,’ he said, when Tristan laughed.

  ‘I’ll be fine, big brother.’ His voice echoed from inside the tunnel. ‘The walls are still dry as far as I can stretch my fingers. I can’t feel any moss or mould, just stone.’

  ‘How do you feel? Any dizziness?’

  ‘Nope, all good. I think I’ll go a bit further.’

  ‘Give me your hand, first.’ Arthur tucked as much of his body as he could inside the tunnel whilst keeping his head outside.

  ‘You’re such a fusspot.’ Tristan’s voice came fainter as he shuffled further down the tunnel.

  ‘Baronet’s prerogative.’ Arthur’s retort made them all laugh, and Lucie felt the tension begin to seep from her frame. It was a bittersweet moment, and she hugged the simple joy of it close to her heart. A memory to tuck away for later. When she was alone. Arthur winked at her, eyes bright with mischief, and it was all she could do not to cry. Turning back to the hole, he called out to his brother. ‘Can you see anything yet?’

  When Tristan spoke, he sounded like he was right behind Arthur, making them both jump. ‘I think there’s a junction further on. I could see a stone wall at the end, but when I shone the torch to the left there was a dark section, like empty space.’

  Arthur eased his body out of the gap to let Tristan back into the bedroom. ‘You feel okay?’

  ‘I’m absolutely fine, I swear it.’

  He looked okay, but that didn’t stop Lucie from feeling nervous. ‘I think we should fetch the others before you both go in there. If something should happen, I’m not going to be able to get you out on my own.’

  Arthur gripped her shoulders. ‘I’m not going to let anything happen to us, I promise.’ Ah, if only. But the wheels were already in motion, and things were careening out of her control. All she could do was cling on and try to enjoy the final moments of this rollercoaster ride.

  While Arthur and Tristan headed out to the stables to find some rope, Lucie hunted down Lancelot in the dining room where he was lingering over a late cup of coffee and Maxwell who was in his office. When she explained what was happening, the butler swapped his suit jacket for a navy-blue cotton overall which he buttoned over his shirt and trousers. ‘We have some portable lamps in one of the store cupboards, Miss Lucie. The castle has been known to lose power if we get a severe storm in the area. I’ll go and fetch them and join you directly.’

  By the time she’d returned to the bedroom, Iggy was there as well, and together with Lancelot she was tying a long length of rope around Tristan, then Arthur, with plenty left coiled on the floor at their feet. It was probably overkill, but Lucie was relieved they were taking sensible precautions. ‘Maxwell’s bringing some portable lamps.’

  The next ten minutes were the longest of Lucie’s life as Tristan and Arthur disappeared back into the tunnel each carrying a couple of free-standing electric lanterns. A faint glow could be seen coming from the tunnel, but frustratingly, that was all she could see as Lancelot had stuck his head and shoulders inside to follow their progress.

  ‘Now what’s happening?’ Iggy demanded for the third time in as many minutes, making Lucie grin. Impatience wasn’t gnawing at just her nerves.

  ‘They’re coming back,’ Lancelot reported a few moments before he backed out of the gap in the wall, Arthur then Tristan following on his heels.

  Neither spoke as they untied the rope from around their waists, and then Arthur was holding his hand out to Lucie. ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Wait, what did you find?’ Iggy demanded, but Tristan stilled her with a hand to her arm and a firm shake of his head.

  Anticipation and trepidation warring within her stomach to the point of almost sickness, Lucie let Arthur lead her down the tunnel. The lanterns did their job, illuminating the blank grey stone walls as well as the floor beneath their feet. As Tristan had surmised, the tunnel took a turn to the left where it opened out into a small octagonal shaped area. Arthur’s torch swept slowly around the space, and Lucie followed the beam of light. The walls were the same dressed stone as the passage way, apart from a section of red brick mirroring the one they’d removed from the bedroom wall. ‘Do you think that leads to the tower?’

  ‘I’m assuming so, but we’ll worry about that another day. Look.’ The beam from his torch shifted towards the centre of the space, highlighting a small wooden frame covered in a large cloth.’

  Knees weak, Lucie clutched at his arm for support, sending the torchlight dancing wildly for a moment before he tensed his muscles to take her weight. ‘Is it…?’ She wet her dry lips and tried again. ‘Did you look underneath?’

  Arthur switched the torch to his other hand then lifted his free arm to pull her into his side. ‘No. I wanted us to do this together.’

  A million thoughts raced through her brain. It could be anything under there, or if it was the painting then it could be damaged either by Thomas’s rage or the years it had stood here alone in the dark. It might not be finished, or it could be unsigned…the whirling doubts rolled in an endless loop. ‘I can’t bear to look,’ she whispered.

  ‘But if we don’t look, we’ll never know. This is it, Lucie, this is the future within our grasp. I can feel it.’ The surety with which he spoke was almost enough to drive her to her knees. Fingers trembling, she lifted both corners of the sheet and inched it up. The cloth moved freely and before she knew it, it was a crumpled heap on the floor beneath the easel.

  Arthur passed the torch slowly over the surface of the painting, illuminating first the figure of a man dressed in full medieval armour kneeling on the ground his adoring gaze fixed upwards. The beam of light followed that gaze to reveal a woman sitting side-saddle on an ivory-white horse, her brilliant azure gown spilling like a waterfall over the horse’s flanks to trail upon the ground. ‘She’s a redhead, just like you,’ Arthur breathed against her ear.

  ‘She’s exquisite.’ The image wavered before Lucie, tears welling in her eyes until they all but obliterated her vision. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ Overwhelmed, she buried her face into Arthur’s chest and began to sob. A tumult of emotions assailed her. They had an original, previously unknown JJ Viggliorento in their possession. Ar
thur’s troubles were over.

  And hers were just beginning.

  It was a selfish thought, but she couldn’t help it. ‘We should go.’

  ‘What?’ Arthur’s incredulous voice echoed from the ceiling.

  She tugged on his arm. ‘I mean it Arthur. We need to leave this as it is until an independent expert can come and inspect it.’ Digging in, she kept them moving backwards towards the tunnel.

  ‘But you’re the expert.’ He sounded completely bewildered and looked as much when one of the lanterns illuminated his face. ‘You’re not making any sense, Lucie.’

  She fisted his shirt, trying to get him moving again. Trying to put some distance between her and the painting as though her very presence would somehow taint it. ‘I’m not independent though, am I? I’m your girlfriend and the art world is so full of rumours, suspicion and innuendo that if anyone catches wind of my involvement they could claim we cooked the whole thing up. Leave it!’

  Desperate now, she tugged until he reluctantly followed her out. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s fine, Arthur, everything is fine.’ As they made their way back into the bedroom, she couldn’t bear to look at him. ‘You guys get everything here tidied up and I’ll go and make a call to Witherby’s. I’m sure they’ll be able to send someone up in a day or two and get the ball rolling with authenticating the painting.’

  Not waiting for an answer, she fled the room. It was now or never.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Stunned by Lucie’s swift exit, Arthur could only gape after her until his brother’s voice intruded. ‘Did you see it?’ Tristan demanded.

  ‘It’s amazing. More beautiful than I could have imagined,’ he replied, still dazzled by the few glimpses he’d seen of the painting.

  ‘I want to see it.’ Iggy started towards the tunnel, but Arthur blocked her way.

  ‘No. Nobody can go down there. Lucie said we need to wait for an expert to come and authenticate it.’ He held out his arms to cut off the hole in the wall.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Lancelot demanded. ‘What’s the problem?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but Lucie thinks we need to get an independent expert up here to verify it. She’s gone to make a call.’

  A babble of confusion rose from the others. ‘But she’s the expert!’ came from more than one person.

  ‘But not independent,’ he stressed, because that seemed to be important to Lucie. ‘Because she and I are together, it might cast doubt on the authenticity of the painting.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ Tristan protested. ‘We’re all here as witnesses to what happened.’

  Arthur shrugged once more. ‘That’s what she said, and we’re going to have to trust her. Come on, let’s sort this mess out.’

  Ten minutes later, he checked his watch with a frown. How long did it take to make a call? Something wasn’t right. From the moment Lucie had laid eyes on the painting, something had been off. Panic gripped him, and he was running from the room before he was fully conscious of moving. As he hurried along the corridor, the dogs sent up a cacophony of noise from the great hall, and he put on a burst of speed.

  Running into the hall, he stopped short at the sight of the pack milling around before the closed doors, and his gut twisted again. He waded through the barking mass and dragged open one side of the door just in time to hear the crunch of tyres on gravel. Stumbling out onto the drive, he saw a flash of red as the retreating car touched its brakes before turning out of the gateway and disappearing. What the hell?

  Leaving the dogs sniffing and snuffling around outside, Arthur was halfway up the stairs when Tristan came thumping into the great hall, the others on his heels. ‘Arthur, what’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, before hurrying up the stairs. But he had a very bad feeling about it.

  *

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Iggy said, for what must have been the dozenth time in the past hour. ‘How could she just up and leave like that?’

  Tristan held up the newspaper clipping he’d retrieved from the carpet after it had fluttered from Arthur’s nerveless fingers. ‘Do you think this is really her dad? The bloke in this article?’

  ‘Surname’s the same, and the dates would fit.’ Assuming Lucie had told him the truth about her age, and given she’d apparently lied about everything else, who could tell. Not him, that was for bloody sure. His eyes strayed to the pages of the letter scattered across the bed next to him. It already felt as though every word had burned its way into his brain. Still, it didn’t stop him from picking it up to read again.

  My darling Arthur.

  Well, that was a bloody joke for a start, wasn’t it?

  I’m so sorry to do this to you, but I wasn’t sure how else to try and explain everything to you.

  She could’ve opened her goddamn mouth and tried. There’d been plenty of time when the two of them had been cuddled up in this bed together. He felt sick just thinking about it. On and on he read as she laid out one excuse after another for not telling him about being put under investigation by Witherby’s. How his advert had felt like a lifeline when everything was falling apart—Ha! He knew the bloody feeling. How it was all for the best, that once he’d given it a bit of time he’d understand she was acting in his best interests.

  Cold fury settled over him as he scanned the final few lines.

  I fell in love with Thomas and Eudora’s story, just like I found myself falling in love with you. And though I know all the reasons why you would have to do it, I couldn’t stay and watch you sell the painting. It would break my heart, almost as much as leaving you is going to do.

  I’m so very sorry, love Lucie.

  Break her heart? Break her fucking heart? A bitter laugh escaped him. She didn’t have a heart to break, and she certainly didn’t know the first goddamn thing about falling in love. He stared at the telephone number she’d scribbled at the bottom. Not hers, of course, but the details of a contact at Witherby’s. A proper expert.

  He looked from his brother to his sister. They were what was important now. Them and the rest of the family. He was Baronet Ludworth, and he had responsibilities to see to. After tearing the bottom off the letter—the only bit of its contents that were of any use to him—he stood. ‘Right, I’d better make a call then.’

  *

  It was several days later when Tristan knocked at the door of his study before barging right in. ‘I told you I was busy,’ Arthur said, irritably, as he laid down his pen. He’d sent a photograph of the painting to some bloke named Piers at Witherby’s, together with scanned copies of several pages of Thomas’s diary and was waiting to hear back. There was nothing more he could do, so he’d thrown himself into planning the midsummer fete. Even if the painting was found to be genuine, he still had the future of this family to secure and had decided to plough ahead with the plans for opening the castle to the public.

  Ignoring his glare, Tristan shoved his hands in his pockets as he propped himself up against the wall just inside the door. ‘You have to talk about her, Arthur, you can’t pretend she never existed.’

  Oh, couldn’t he? Well, he was going to give it a damn good try. ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

  ‘Bollocks! If it wasn’t for Lucie, we wouldn’t be sitting on a potential goldmine. She was the one who found the sketch of Eudora and understood its significance. She was the one who spent hour after hour ploughing through those diaries and sorting out all the mess in the archives. If it wasn’t for her, we’d have never found the plan which led us to the tunnel, and that bloody painting would still be mouldering away in the dark. Forgotten!’

  His brother might have a point, but Arthur was damned if he was in the mood to listen to it. ‘She lied to me. To all of us.’

  Tristan scoffed. ‘She didn’t lie, she just didn’t tell the truth. And who could blame her? No one wants to drag out the worst bits of their life and expose it to the public gaze. I know I wouldn’
t if I was in her position.’

  ‘But she took the job here under false pretences, she said as much in her bloody letter!’

  ‘She also protested her innocence, most vociferously!’

  Arthur’s head snapped up. ‘You read it?’

  ‘Well, of course I bloody read it, you idiot, what did you expect me to do?’ Tristan pushed himself upright and came to stand before Arthur’s desk. ‘Shall I tell you what that letter said to me?’ He didn’t wait for Arthur to tell him he couldn’t give a shit what it said to him, he just ploughed on. ‘It said to me that a young woman who’s been branded unfairly by an age-old incident that was nothing to do with her put your needs before her own. Not just yours, the whole bloody family’s! She was on the cusp of the discovery of her career and she walked away to make sure that you had the means to save the castle and the rest of us along with it.’

  God, why wouldn’t he just shut up and leave Arthur alone? Because maybe he had a point, but Arthur wasn’t ready to hear it. Lucie had left him, hadn’t trusted him with her secrets, and broken his heart in the process. ‘She should’ve told me!’

  Tristan banged his fist on the desk, making them both jump. ‘Why should she when this is how you reacted?’

  No! He was twisting things. If Lucie had stayed and faced the music, had given him the chance to show her he could be trusted, it would’ve been fine. He would’ve understood. Wouldn’t he?

  ‘If you don’t get your head out of your arse and stop sulking, I’ll never forgive you. Each day you sit in here brooding, you’re letting the best thing that’s ever happened to you slip through your fingers, Arthur! Dad never fought for Mum when she left and look at how he ended up—miserable and alone for the rest of his life!’

  How dare he? How dare Tristan put Lucie and their mother together in the same sentence. ‘She’s worth a hundred of Mother, a million!’