The Haunted Knight 0f Lady Canterley

by Patricia Haverton

  * * *

  Tristan stood at the top of the hill staring down at the men who lay dead at his feet. Not a single one of the blackguards remained standing. The Earl sat leaning against the wall, the bloody bandage on his head giving him a lopsided look as he glared up at Tristan in challenge. “It appears that you are all that remains of your criminal enterprise,” he remarked, wishing that at least one had survived to bear witness against the Earl in court. Sighing, he moved forward knowing what needed to be done.

  Jacob, Malcolm, and Fergus were tying the bodies to the backs of their horses when Jacob called out for Tristan to wait. “What is it?” Tristan asked, noting the tone of his friend’s voice. He walked over to stand beside him and peered at the piece of paper in Jacob’s hand.

  “I found this in one of the men’s pockets.” Jacob handed the letter and a bag of money to Tristan. “It details the entire plot to kidnap the girl.”

  “And it is in the Earl’s handwriting,” Tristan murmured in triumph. He clasped his friend’s shoulder in joyous relief.

  “It would appear that today, in this instance, we need not destroy the world,” Jacob noted, smiling.

  “No, in this instance we will let the courts do that.”

  “And in so doing save your Amelia’s world.” Jacob clapped him on the shoulder knowingly.

  They finished gathering up the dead, including the man in the forest and rode to the nearest town. Thankfully there was a magistrate to whom they turned over the Earl, the dead, and the letter detailing everything. Fergus took Jonathan, who had passed out from loss of blood, directly to the house of the town’s only physician. Once he had finished with the magistrate, Tristan followed, while Malcolm and Jacob gave their witness statements.

  Tristan found Amelia sitting by her sister’s bedside holding her hand, a look of peace on her face as she watched her sleep. She turned to look at him as he stood in the doorway. She smiled and arose to greet him. “The surgeon says that she will be well in time. She will need extra care and rest for a time, but she will recover.”

  “And Jonathan?”

  “He will recover as well with nothing but a scar to boast of his war wounds.”

  Tristan could not remember ever seeing her so happy and at peace. In spite of everything that had happened, with both of her siblings under the care of a physician, her father in jail, she stood in the fading light of the window glowing with such happiness that it robbed him of breath. As if reading his puzzled expression, she stepped forward and laid her hand on his arm.

  “Do you not see, Tristan? Do you not feel it in your bones? It is over and we are all still alive. It is over and we are free.” She breathed the words with such awed reverence that gooseflesh rose along Tristan’s arms.

  Tristan reached up and touched her face cradling her cheek in his palm. For the first time in her entire life she was free. He smiled down into her eyes, tears clogging his throat. “Kiss her already,” a raspy feminine voice commanded from the direction of the bed. Tristan turned to find Grace smiling up at them, her fever having been reduced to a manageable level through the surgeon’s ministrations.

  Tristan turned his gaze back to Amelia. “I promised you that I would wait until you were ready, no matter how long it takes, and I will stand by that promise no matter how much I may wish to do otherwise.” He backed away to show that he meant what he had said.

  Amelia stopped him with a gentle touch to his arm. “I am ready.” Amelia laughed in joyous surrender and the sound of it was as music to his ears. She looked up into his eyes in invitation and that was all he needed. Bending his head down to hers he took her lips in a kiss of such passion that they were forced to lean against the doorframe to stay upright.

  “Well, it is about time, I say,” Jonathan’s voice applauded from the hallway as Henry wheeled him into the room.

  “I would have to agree,” Henry nodded smiling, bending to kiss his own beloved. “I could not keep him in bed. Once he awakened, he had to come and see that you were well with his own eyes.”

  Grace smiled and reached out her hands to both of her siblings. Amelia moved forward taking Tristan with her. “You told them?” Tristan asked Amelia softly for only them to hear.

  “Yes, they know of father’s misdeeds and we are at peace with it. He will meet justice and that is all that we can ask.”

  Tristan nodded and Amelia reached out to take Grace’s hand. Their mother’s presence seemed to fill the room between them, as if she were there with them smiling down upon her children. Amelia’s next words said that she felt it too. “Mother said that when she was gone all that we would have was each other,” she spoke with tears glistening in her eyes, “but she was wrong.”

  Tristan startled in surprise at her words, but she went on speaking pulling him closer to her side. “For we have been blessed with so much more than we or even she could have ever foreseen.” Amelia looked around the room from her siblings, to Henry, her eyes landing lastly on Tristan’s face. “We have been blessed with a family that goes beyond the ties of blood and name, a family not made of obligation or duty, but one created of love.”

  She released Grace’s hand and turned into Tristan’s arms. “I love you,” she whispered. “Marry me?”

  Tristan felt as if all of the air had left the room in an instant, then rushed back in with such strength as to knock him over. Grace giggled behind them, while Jonathan and Henry grinned from ear to ear. Tristan looked down into her eyes and smiled. “Is it not usual for the man to ask for a lady’s hand in marriage?” he teased.

  “I am not your usual lady.”

  “No, no you are not, and I thank God every day for it.” Gathering her into his arms once more, he kissed her with all the love and desire of a lifetime spent in wanting what he thought he would never have.

  “Well, will you?” she pulled back, asking.

  He smiled brushing his lips against hers. “Yes.”

  Epilogue

  Three Months Later

  “May ye e’er be blessed with love and prosperity all the days o’ yer lives! Slainte!” Malcolm’s voice reverberated through the room as he stood in front of the newly-wedded couples in the ballroom at Slantonshire Manor.

  “Slainte!” the crowd joyously replied in unison.

  Jonathan stood and raised his glass with tears in his eyes. “To my beautiful and much-beloved sisters on this your wedding day. May you never again know sadness or grief. May those in your life never give cause for tears of sorrow to ever dance again upon your cheeks. May your husbands ever adore you and love you in good faith, for if they do not, my gun barrels await.” The crowd laughed as Jonathan gave each groom a good-natured look of warning. “But most of all may you ever know joy.”

  “Here, here!” the crowd agreed.

  “To the happy couples,” Jonathan drained his glass and smashed it into the fireplace to a loud round of applause and cheers.

  Amelia and Grace rushed forward and embraced their brother. “Mother would be so proud of the both of you. You have chosen well. Tristan and Henry are the very best of men.”

  “She would be proud of you too, for you were the strength that held us all together so that we might make to see this day,” Amelia reminded him.

  “Now we must find a wife for you, Jonathan,” Grace smiled with devious charm. She tapped her chin in thought as she surveyed the room for possible candidates.

  Jonathan laughed and shook his head. “Your husband might object to you spending your wedding day matchmaking.”

  Henry and Tristan walked over and joined them upon hearing this. “She may do whatever her heart desires,” Henry remarked wrapping his arm around Grace’s waist and placing a kiss upon her cheek.

  “You are of no help,” Jonathan grumbled good-naturedly.

  “Oh, nay. I plan to be of great help in this matter. I have a few ladies who I think would make excellent candidates for the next Lady of Canterley,” Henry teased.

  Jonathan rolled his eyes and turned to
Tristan. “Help me, my friend.”

  Tristan grinned and surveyed the room. “What about that one?” he asked gesturing toward a beautiful girl in emerald green with scarlet hair.

  Jonathan gave Tristan a withering look that clearly said that he was no help at all. He turned to make a comment but was stopped short at the sight of the woman that Tristan had pointed out. He cleared his throat. “Well, as the brother of the brides it would be rude not to speak with the guests,” he murmured moving forward toward the woman in question.

  Tristan chuckled and gathered Amelia into his arms. “Happy?” he whispered.

  “Yes.” Amelia turned from watching her brother to gaze into the eyes of her husband. “You?”

  “There are no words to describe how happy I am in this moment with you and how happy I will always be just as long as you are here with me like this wrapped in my arms.”

  “I thought marriage was a trap, something to be endured by women who had no say in their lives or futures.”

  “And now?”

  Amelia looked up into his eyes, tracing the line of his collar bone beneath his shirt with the tips of her finger. “I am certain that it is still thus for many women, but for me here with you…” she paused reaching up to caress his cheek. “With you it is freedom. Your love, the way you love me for me and not who you wish me to be, is the most freeing experience of my life. How do you do it? How did you manage to truly love me when no other man, including my own father, ever could?”

  “It is simple, my darling wife. It was fated in the stars.” He smiled down into her face lovingly. “I have loved you from the first moment that I ever saw you, for in that moment when you held me in your arms as children and sang to me in my pain, I saw something that very few people in your life has ever seen.”

  “What did you see?” she asked mystified.

  “I saw the true nature of your soul and it was beautiful beyond compare. In that moment you showed me everything that I would ever need to know about you. That day when you walked away, you took my heart with you, and it never returned. In that moment of joy and pain, my soul joined yours and I knew that I would never love another for as long as I lived. I have loved you nearly all the days of my life and by the grace of God I will continue to love you until the end of time.”

  Amelia smiled and laid her head upon his chest, watching her sister dance with her new husband, all signs of trauma erased from her face, their mother’s face. “By the grace of God…”

  The End?

  Extended Epilogue

  But Amelia and Tristan’s story doesn’t end here! Click below for a look into out favourite couple’s future!

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  But before you go, turn the page for an extra sweet treat from me…

  More lovely historical romance

  Turn on to the next page to read the first chapters of The Last Lady of Thornhill Manor, my first novel ever!

  The Last Lady of Thornhill Manor

  About the book

  Lady Amalia Gallagher, daughter of the Duke of Thornhill, is terrified.

  Having already lost her only brother to illness, and with her ailing father knocking on death’s door, she finds herself under tremendous pressure to find a suitable husband. When a new suitor appears asking for her hand in marriage, she realizes that as her time runs out, so do her choices.

  Reginald Davidson, Marquess of Lyonhall, has made a vow to protect Amalia at all costs, even if it means never confessing his true feelings for her.

  But bad things come in threes. As her father’s health grows worse by the second, Reginald suddenly goes missing, and in the manor's study, there’s a pistol with her name on it…

  Chapter 1

  Lady Amalia Gallagher bent to lay flowers on the grave at her feet. Her eyes skated over the inscription on the headstone—Lord Marshall Gallagher—though she had no need. It had been two years since he had passed on, but she still felt the tears sting her eyes and would not let them fall. She was the daughter of the Duke of Thornhill, and she would not weep in public.

  “I apologize for not visiting you earlier, brother,” she murmured. “No excuses, really, as I seldom leave the house anymore, save to visit you. Father would have come as well, but he is not well right now.”

  Blinking away her tears, she gazed around the quiet cemetery grounds, taking in the lush grass and the tall trees with their branches shading the graves below. “I miss you terribly, Marshall. So does Father. Nothing is the same anymore. He keeps pushing me to find a husband, but all I want is to look after him.”

  Breathing in deeply the fresh, clean breeze with the hint of cooler air to follow autumn waiting in the wings, Amalia nodded her respect to the dead. “I will visit more often. I promise.”

  Turning away from her brother’s grave, she lifted her skirts to pick her way carefully along the path toward her waiting carriage. The footman who attended her stood back to offer her some semblance of privacy, then fell in behind her after she passed him. Approaching the small coach, Amalia observed a man dismounting a stocky horse with a coat the color of flame, and immediately her sorrow lifted.

  “Reggie,” she exclaimed, hurrying forward. “I had no idea you came to visit Marshall, or I would have waited for you.”

  Reggie, his raven black hair tumbling in a rakish fall over his brow, grinned, his even white teeth gleaming. “I have a confession, Amalia, I did not come to visit your brother, though I know I need to pay my respects. I saw your carriage from the road.”

  He bent to kiss her cheek, his startling blue eyes that contrasted sharply with his pale complexion warm as he gazed down at her. “I have not seen you lately.”

  “All you had to do was knock on the door,” Amalia answered, her tone prim as she responded to his affectionate grin. “As Marshall’s best friend, you are always welcome.”

  “What if I wanted to knock on the door to visit you?”

  Amalia laughed. “Of course, you can. You are my friend as well, are you not?”

  “Forever and always. How is your father?”

  Her smile fading, she shook her head. “He is not well, or he would have come with me today.”

  “What is wrong? His Grace is not young, nor is he old yet.”

  “His physician is stumped, Reggie. I always fear that he will go the same way as Marshall.”

  Reggie’s expression tightened. “Never think that. He will be fine; this is only a passing issue.”

  His words brought another smile to her face. “You know just what to say to bring me comfort. Would you like to come back with me? Say hello to Father?”

  “I was planning to inquire if I might escort you home,” Reggie replied, his grin returning. “Am I invited to supper?”

  Amalia pursed her lips, eyeing him up and down in a mock examination. “Hmm. Well, you appear presentable, my dear Marquess of Lyonhall. I suppose an invitation will be extended.”

  “And you, my dear Lady Gallagher, are as beautiful as ever.”

  “You flatterer. Come along, tell me, what you have been up to lately? Have you been to your estates in the north?”

  Ambling sedately beside him toward her carriage, Amalia reflected briefly on her long friendship with Reggie that began when they were children. She, her brother Marshall, Reggie, and her cousin Patrick grew up quite close and had been an inseparable foursome. When Marshall died, they had become a threesome.

  “Yes, I only just gotten back,” Reggie replied, bringing her back to the present. “Now that I have returned to London, perhaps I might escort you to the ball at Dame Garson’s in three days?”

  Accepting his assistance into her carriage, Amalia smiled sadly down at him. “I am sorry, Reggie, you know I do not like going to parties anymore.”

  “I do know,” he replied, his devilishly handsome face slipping into a smile with
that quirk she was so fond of. “I had hoped that you were starting to come out of that shell you placed around yourself.”

  “I am afraid not; it is still there and as hard as ever.”

  “I will crack it soon enough.” Mounting his horse, he grinned through the window. “Do not think I will not stop trying.”

  “You do that,” Amalia challenged, signaling her driver that she was ready to go. “Besides, you know the ton despises me now.”

  “Since when do you care what society thinks?” He reined his horse in as close as he could to make conversation easier.

  “I do not,” she replied with a sniff. “It is just easier on everyone if I remain at home and care for Father.”

  “That is not a good way to find a husband, Amalia.”

  She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Do not start on me, Reggie,” she replied, glancing out at the coach and wagon traffic on the wide avenue. “Father has been nagging me for months to get married. I have no desire to do so, however.”