Mariana Read online

  “You have a lovely garden,” I said to her, and she smiled.

  “Thanks, but I can’t take the credit. Iain’s done most of the planting.”

  “Is there anybody’s garden he hasn’t worked on?” I wanted to know.

  “Likely not,” Iain himself answered over his shoulder, rummaging in the refrigerator. “I like gardens. Hate to see them wasted.” He straightened up with a sandwich in his hand. “There used to be a nice garden up at your house, come to that. Old Eddie let it grow over. Didn’t want to be bothered with it.”

  “The garden where the Green Lady appeared.”

  “That’s right,” Geoff spoke up, seating himself on a long sofa in the open-plan sitting room. “You have been digging up the local legends, haven’t you?”

  “I find it fascinating. I’ve never had a ghost before.”

  “You don’t necessarily have one now,” he pointed out. “The Green Lady hasn’t been seen since I was in short pants. Unless you’ve seen her yourself, lately?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.” I shook my head, as Vivien drifted across from the dining area and handed a glass of pale amber liquid to Geoff.

  “She has been finding old letters stashed about, though,” she told him. “Was there a Mariana lived there, do you know?”

  “Mariana…” Geoff sipped his drink thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. Do you know what her last name was?”

  “Farr,” I said. And then, in response to Vivien’s questioning look, “I found her grave in the churchyard.”

  “Mariana Farr. No, I don’t remember. But she may be mentioned in here.” He tapped the thick file folder he’d brought with him, which now lay on the low coffee table at his knees, flanked by trays of carefully arranged cheese and dry biscuits.

  “You’d better sit beside Geoff, Julia, so you can see better,” Vivien maneuvered smoothly. “Iain, did you want some Scotch as well?”

  “Single malt?”

  “Blended.”

  “Then I’ll just have one of these, thanks.” He lifted a bottle of imported beer from the refrigerator and joined us in the lounge, settling himself on the love seat that faced the sofa across the coffee table.

  “And what would you like, Julia?” Vivien asked. “To drink, I mean.”

  Every time I had been asked that question in the past, I had, without fail, managed to choose the one item that my host did not have. This time, I tried a new approach.

  “You’re the bartender.” I smiled. “I’ll let you choose.”

  “Trusting soul,” Geoff remarked, as Vivien went to get my drink. “So, tell me. What, specifically, are you interested in?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Historically. Just your property?”

  “Mainly, yes. But I’m also quite interested in the history of your Hall.”

  “Are you really?” He looked pleased.

  Iain groaned audibly. “Here we go,” he said, through a mouthful of beer and sandwich.

  “Why? What did I say?”

  “Nothing,” Vivien said, returning with two tall glasses filled with a pale drink. “It’s just that Geoff does tend to get stuck in a rut, sometimes, when he launches into a history of the Hall.” She set my drink in front of me and took her seat beside Iain, who shot her a sideways glance.

  “That’s putting it kindly,” he commented.

  I looked at my drink, curious, and Vivien smiled.

  “There’s rum in that,” she warned me, “but the rest of the ingredients are top secret.”

  My first experimental sip was a pleasant surprise. “It’s wonderful. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Now then, Geoff, on with the lecture. I suppose you’d better take us right back to the Benedictine priory and go on from there, since Julia’s interested.”

  “Right.” He opened his file folder and cheerfully arranged the papers inside, just like a schoolboy exhibiting a class project. “That was in 1173, I believe…”

  “Seventy-four,” Iain corrected, rubbing his eyes with one hand.

  “…when Henry the Second granted a plot of land to one Thomas Killingbeck, for the purpose of building a Benedictine monastery. The Benedictine order was pretty big in those days.”

  “Henry the Second,” I mused, leaning forward. “That’s Richard the Lionheart’s father, isn’t it? The one who had Thomas à Becket murdered?”

  Geoff turned approving eyes on me. “Yes, that’s right. Not many people remember that.”

  “Well, it’s my brother’s name, you see,” I explained. “Thomas Beckett. I sort of paid attention to that part of the history lesson at school.”

  Iain stretched his legs out in front of him, slinging one arm along the cushioned back of the love seat. “Your brother’s name is Thomas?” His gray eyes twinkled in amusement. “Rather appropriate naming on your parents’ part, wasn’t it?”

  “Rather.” For the benefit of Geoff and Vivien, I explained. “Tom’s a vicar in Hampshire, not far from here.”

  Geoff laughed. “Not really? Well, if he makes Archbishop of Canterbury he’ll certainly turn some heads, won’t he?”

  “I don’t think he’s that ambitious. Tom likes the country life. Anyhow, I’m getting off the subject. What happened to the priory?”

  “Well, the monks did just fine until Henry the Eighth decided to nationalize the monasteries. The last prior was hanged for resisting royal authority.”

  “He’s one of the ghosts, isn’t he?” Vivien asked.

  “Supposedly. Quite a few people have reported seeing a ghostly monk floating around in the hallways, but whether it’s the prior’s ghost is open to speculation.” He spoke with surprising frankness, as if seeing a ghost in one’s hallway were an everyday occurrence. “At any rate,” he carried on, consulting his notes, “the property was sold in 1547 to Sir James Crofton, who started building a house on the site of the ruined monastery. The house gets its name from him. In the old maps it’s referred to as Crofton’s Hall, and as time went on, people just began leaving off the s. He only lived there fourteen years, before selling the place to Nicholas Hatch, who gave it to his son Edmund as a wedding present.

  “Edmund Hatch didn’t have much time to enjoy the house, either, because he died in 1594. Some sort of shooting accident, apparently. He left the estate to his wife, Ann, and she, bless her heart, promptly married my forefather, William de Mornay.”

  “What did William do for a living?” I asked.

  “He was a retired soldier. I don’t know why she married him—she was barely out of mourning, and the old codger was twice her age.”

  “Maybe he was rich,” Iain suggested.

  “Possibly.”

  I was inclined to disagree. If Geoff’s charm and looks were at all inherited from his ancestors, then I thought I knew exactly why the widowed Ann Hatch had hastened to marry William de Mornay.

  “Ann and William had one son, also named William, just to add to the confusion. Dad had an awful time trying to sort out which papers were talking about William the Elder and which ones were about William Junior. William Junior, at any rate, was a bit of an interesting character. During the Civil War, when the country was divided between King Charles the First’s followers and those who supported Cromwell’s Parliament, William Junior made the fatal, if noble, mistake of siding with his king.

  “When the king lost his head, William Junior lost his manor, and was thrown in the Tower for his troubles. He was let out of prison in 1660, when Charles the Second was restored to the throne, and his lands were given back to him, but he never regained his health. He died within the year. There’s quite a good portrait of him in the dining room at the Hall—I think I’ve got a photograph of it, here… yes, here it is. That’s William Junior.”

  He slid the photograph across the table to me, a
nd I leaned closer for a better look. My earlier supposition had been correct. The good looks were definitely inherited. William de Mornay cut a dashing figure in his vibrant portrait, with his curling dark hair and Vandyke beard, and languid dark eyes that hinted at a sensual nature. In his scarlet coat and breeches, one hand upon his sword hilt and the other resting defiantly on his hip, he looked every inch the gallant cavalier.

  I handed the picture back, reluctantly. “It’s a marvelous portrait.”

  “Yes. We’ve never been able to find a record of any of his children, but he must have had some, because the manor passed to his grandson, Arthur de Mornay. Bit of a mistake, that. Arthur seems to have been something of a compulsive gambler, and not only lost the family fortune but ended up selling off the manor itself, to pay his debts. So the de Mornays lost their land a second time. We didn’t get it back until my father bought the Hall in 1964.” He turned a few more pages with an absent frown. “I really ought to get back to this, you know, one of these days. My father had a passion for genealogy—spent days shut up in the Public Record Office, looking for wills and things. But he rather lost interest in it, towards the end, and I just never seem to have the time…”

  Iain shifted in his seat. “Gets a bit boring after old Arthur, don’t you think, Geoff? Why don’t you find us something about Julia’s house?”

  “What?” Geoff looked up blankly, then smiled. “Oh, right. Just a minute, I’ll have to look around a little.”

  I watched his hands, fascinated, as he shuffled the papers round. He had beautiful hands, lean and strong and suntanned, and there was a certain casual elegance in the way they moved.

  “Aha!” He pulled a sheet of paper from the pile. “Here it is. Greywethers. According to the surveys, it was built in 1587 by a man named Stephen Sharington, a farmer who rented his land from our old friend Edmund Hatch. The house was inherited by Stephen’s son John, who sold it in 1626 to one Robert Howard, merchant. You all right?”

  I nodded. “Just a chill. Please, go on.”

  “The Howards kept the house until the early 1800s, when they sold it to Lawrence Alleyn. He was kind of a fun character—fought with Wellington at the battle of Waterloo, no less, and spent a few years out in India. He only had one child, his daughter, Mary, who was a little ahead of her time. Wore trousers and wrote novels.”

  “Horrible novels,” Vivien elaborated with a slight shudder. “I read one, once. Typical Victorian stuff. Full of long descriptive passages and dry as a bone.”

  “Nevertheless.” Geoff smiled indulgently. “She died in 1896, and the house was sold to Captain James Guthrie.”

  “That was the ‘Captain Somebody’ the lads were telling you about, the other day,” Vivien said. “I asked my aunt about him. She said he was a naval officer, or something, sort of mysterious. Some people thought he was a spy. He ran the house like it was one of his ships, apparently. Had three daughters, who were hardly ever allowed to go out, poor things.”

  “What happened to them?” I asked.

  “Oh, eventually their father died.” She smiled. “Poisoned, most people thought. And the girls went off and got married. That would have been in the early twenties.”

  “Well, that fits,” Geoff conceded, “because in 1921 the house was sold to William Randall, old Eddie’s father. He managed to convince the man who owned Crofton Hall then—Pilkington, I think his name was—to sever off part of the property, so the Randalls were the first ones who owned their own land.”

  “And after the Randalls, the next owner is you,” Vivien told me. “No mention of a Mariana anywhere, was there?”

  Iain shrugged. “She might have been a servant.”

  “Or somebody’s wife,” Geoff suggested. “These old records rarely mention the women of the household.”

  I nodded. “Either way, it’s very interesting. I don’t suppose you could make me a copy of that?”

  “The history of your house? I’d be glad to.” His eyes smiled warmly into mine, and I suddenly felt as if I wasn’t getting enough air. I turned away, breaking the contact, and reached for my drink.

  “Would you like another one?” Vivien offered, looking at my glass.

  “Oh, no thanks, I’m floating as it is.”

  “I’ll have another Scotch, though.” Geoff held up his empty glass hopefully, and Vivien rose smiling from the love seat.

  “Well, that rather goes without saying, doesn’t it? Iain? Another beer?”

  “Sure, why not?” He yielded up the empty bottle. He looked nearly as tired as I felt, and I remembered that, as a farmer, he was probably up at the crack of dawn each day.

  Geoff leaned back in his seat, his drink replenished, and shifted a little on the sofa to face me more fully. “So, how are you settling in up there?”

  “Quite well, thanks,” I told him. “I’ve got most of the important things unpacked, and the rooms cleaned, and the rest I’m just going to leave until the mood strikes me.”

  Vivien settled herself back on the love seat, curling her legs beneath her. “I think you’re wise,” she said. “After all, the only important rooms are the kitchen and the bedroom, really.”

  “And the bath,” Geoff put in.

  “And my studio.” I smiled. “I’ve been terrible these past two weeks, I haven’t worked at all. My editor would have forty fits if she found out.”

  “Julia,” Vivien announced to the room in general, “paints illustrations for children’s books.”

  Iain took a long drink of his ale, his gray eyes twinkling in his impassive face. “Aye, I think I’ve heard something to that effect.”

  “Interesting work,” was Geoff’s comment. “It must allow you a great deal of freedom.”

  “It does. But I still have to keep myself to some sort of schedule, or I’d never accomplish anything. I usually work in the mornings, and take the rest of the day off.”

  “What sort of book are you illustrating now?” Vivien asked. “Another of Bridget Cooper’s?”

  I shook my head. “A collection of fairy tales, actually. It’s very good. A lot of the stories are from East Asia, and the translations are marvelous.”

  “Do you work from your imagination alone,” she wanted to know, “or from photographs, or what?”

  “A bit of both. Sometimes I have to draw from life, depending on the look I want.”

  “Then you’ll be needing models,” Geoff remarked, displaying his profile with a dramatic flourish.

  Iain grinned. “Fancy yourself as Prince Charming, do ye?”

  “King,” Geoff corrected him with a look of disdain. “Why settle for being a mere prince?”

  “Prince gets the girl,” Iain pointed out, and Geoff tilted his head, considering.

  “You’re right. All right, then, I’ll offer myself as Prince Charming. If you need me,” he said, with another heart-stopping smile.

  I preferred not to make a response to that one, though I had to admit that Geoffrey de Mornay was certainly qualified to play the role of fairy-tale prince.

  Our conversation ambled on comfortably for another half hour or so, by which time I was having to struggle to keep my eyes open. Opposite me, I was aware of Iain Sumner watching me with an understanding smile, his own head sinking lower against the cushions.

  “If you’re wanting to be Prince Charming,” he told Geoff finally, interrupting an anecdote, “you might think to stop talking and escort the poor girl home before she falls asleep.”

  Geoff looked over at me, surprised. “Sorry,” he said. “I forgot you spent last night partying in London. Would you like a lift home? I can fetch the car round.”

  “Take my car, if you like.” Vivien suggested. “It’s parked round the side.”

  The decision had apparently been made for me, and several moments later I found myself sitting beside
Geoff in Vivien’s well-kept Vauxhall, having taken a somewhat sleepy leave of my hostess and of Iain, who appeared to have grown roots to the deeply cushioned love seat.

  The drive home took only a few minutes. As he brought the car to a halt in the gravel drive, Geoff turned to face me, and I was suddenly aware of the sheer physical impact of his nearness in the darkened interior of the car.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. Why?”

  “Thought you might like to take that tour of the Hall I promised you. Sort of a behind-the-scenes look, if you like. Much more interesting than what the tourists see.” His smile was very sexy, and very persuasive.

  “All right.”

  “Good. Just slide by sometime in the afternoon, then. I’ll be at home all day.”

  “I’ll do that. Good night, Geoff.” I felt for the door handle. “Thanks for the lift.”

  “Anytime.”

  It seemed natural, somehow, that he should reach across and give me a good-night kiss. Natural, too, that I should lean a little closer to accept the gesture. It was a purely casual and friendly contact, and yet I could feel the warmth of it even after the Vauxhall’s back lights had disappeared down the road leading back to the village.

  With a little sigh, I turned and started across the lawn towards the house, dragging my feet in sudden weariness. The wind had picked up considerably since supper time. The night air felt heavy with the threat of rain, and to my right a distant rumble of thunder could be heard above the moaning of the wind through the creaking trees.

  I was still several feet from the front door when it suddenly flew open, spilling a slanting slab of yellow light across the lawn and framing the silhouetted figure of a man, who stood watching my approach with his arms folded across his chest.

  “Uncle,” I said, but my voice was lost in the wind.