The Ghost Who Fell in Love Read online

  “Well, you are not going to be, so the question does not arise,” Gerard said with a sudden note of authority in his voice. “If I let you stay in the Priests’ Room, do you swear to me, that you will not come out of the secret passages as long as Trevarnon or any of his guests are in the house?”

  He paused before he added,

  “I mean that, Demelza. You will give me your word of honour or you and Nattie will have to go to Northumberland.”

  “Of course I promise you,” Demelza said disarmingly. “You don’t think I wish to meet men like the Earl or any of your other raffish friends? Although it fascinates me to hear you talking about them, I disapprove of most of them and all they do!”

  Gerard laughed.

  “Of which you know nothing, thank goodness! Well, I trust you. Perhaps I am doing the wrong thing, but I do understand that the whole household depends upon you.”

  “That is the nicest thing you have said to me,” Demelza smiled. “But, Gerard, as you are getting so much money, you will give me some for the wages and for our food when you are not here?”

  “Yes, of course I will,” her brother answered. “I am a cad to you in a lot of ways, Demelza, but just as you share the bad times, naturally you will share the good.”

  “Thank you, dearest, I just knew you would understand and I hate owing money to the local tradesmen.”

  She kissed her brother’s cheek as she spoke and he said,

  “I have not cashed Trevarnon’s cheque yet, but here is a guinea or two to be going on with.”

  He drew some golden coins out of his pocket and put them into her hand and Demelza kissed him again.

  “Now I must go and get everything ready,” she said. “There is very little time if the gentlemen are arriving tomorrow and you had better go to the stables and tell Abbot to expect the horses. The stalls are all right except for the three at the end where there are holes in the roof and the rain comes in.”

  “It does not look as if it is going to rain,” Gerard said. “It was terribly hot riding here and both Rollo and I were pretty well done in by the time we reached Windsor.”

  ‘You rode Rollo the whole way? Oh, Gerard, how could you?”

  “I rested him while I had something to eat and rode him carefully for the last five miles,” her brother answered. “I also came across country, which is shorter as you well know. I cannot afford to have more than one horse in London at the same time.”

  “Yes, I know that, but it is really too far for him.”

  “And for me!” Gerard replied. “I suppose there is no chance of a bath?”

  “Of course there is, if you don’t mind a cold one.”

  “I should welcome it.”

  “I will go and get it ready for you,” Demelza said, “but you will have to fetch a bottle of wine for yourself. There is very little in the cellar, but I suppose his Lordship will be bringing his own.”

  Gerard grinned.

  “He will be very thirsty if he survives on what we can provide.”

  Demelza reached the door.

  “You have not told me how many there will be in the party.”

  “Six with me!”

  “And are you here for dinner?”

  Gerard shook his head.

  “I am going over to see Dysart at Winkfield to tell him that the Earl will be staying here. He is dining with him on Tuesday after the Grafton Sweep which the Duke of York is quite convinced he will win because he has drawn Trance.”

  “I expect he will with Trance,” Demelza said reflectively. “Is there a lot of money on him?”

  “Thousands!” her brother answered.

  The way he spoke made Demelza glance at him sharply. “How much have you risked?”

  “There is no risk where Trance or Moses are concerned, as you well know,” he replied.

  Demelza, though she wished to argue with him, knew that he spoke the truth.

  Trance was an exceptional horse and the Duke of York had won the Derby with Moses the previous year.

  With the exception of Crusader the latter was the most outstanding animal amongst all the highly bred ones which would be seen at the race meeting.

  *

  As Demelza hurried upstairs to open up the bedrooms, many of which had not been in use for a long time, she was thinking with interest and excitement about the horses she would see in two days’ time.

  To her they were far more important than the crowds of distinguished people who watched them race, and to think that Crusader would actually be stabled at The Manor was a thrill beyond anything she had known for a long time.

  She longed to talk about it with Abbot, but she knew that first she must prepare the house for the Earl and his guests and she only hoped that he would not feel that his money had been misspent.

  To her the large but low rooms, with ancient carved panelling on the walls and huge four-poster beds whose canopies touched the ceiling, were an enchantment that she loved and which had been part of her life and her imagination.

  Now as she drew back the curtains, many of which were worn, and threw open the diamond-paned windows, she wondered if the Earl who was so rich would only see how shabby everything was.

  Perhaps he would not notice the mellow beauty of the faded tapestries, the colour of the polished floors or the soft shades of many of the rugs that lay on them.

  To Demelza there was beauty everywhere, just as there was the history of the Langstons in every room, in every picture and in every piece of furniture.

  One blessing, she thought, was that because it had already been such hot weather she had made fresh potpourri and most of the rooms were fragrant with it.

  Her mother had taught her the secret recipe which had been handed down from their Elizabethan ancestors, just as there was a special one for the beeswax that polished the floor and furniture.

  There were also recipes for cordials which she gave the villagers when they had an ailment that the doctor in Windsor thought beneath his condescension.

  Everything was usually so quiet at The Manor. It stood on the very edge of Windsor Forest surrounded by trees and, although it was only a little over a mile from the Racecourse the noise of the crowds did not encroach upon it.

  But now, Demelza thought, it was somehow very exciting that The Manor should be drawn into the thrill of Race Week.

  She knew it was not only the thought of the house being ill-used that made her fight to stay when Gerard would have sent her away, but also that she could not have borne to miss the races.

  She had attended them ever since she was a small child and loved every moment of it.

  Now she knew that all along the edge of the course the tents and booths were going up, just as they did every year.

  There would be every kind of refreshment for hungry and thirsty people, entertainers of all sorts – jugglers, glee-singers, freaks and a profusion of gaming tents which, as Demelza knew only too well, fleeced all those who were foolish enough to risk their hard-earned savings.

  Even Jem had been taken in last year by the thimble game men who were always numerous on the Heath. He had lost over a guinea trying to identify the thimble which his grandfather had so scornfully denounced as ‘a mug’s game!’

  Also arriving in their hordes would be the pickpockets and the thieves.

  She and Nattie, who always accompanied her, were still laughing about the gang who, on a hot day such as they were likely to have this week, made off with seventy greatcoats stolen from out of carriages and stands.

  But whatever happened, it was all entrancing to Demelza and something to talk about and laugh over during the year which ensued until the next meeting.

  ‘I could not bear to miss it,’ she said to herself, ‘and this year I shall not only see Crusader run, but I shall be able to talk to him and touch him when he is here in the stables.’

  What could be more fortunate, she thought, than that her grandfather, the spendthrift who had wasted a great deal of money on slow horses and fast w
omen, had also built some very fine stables?

  ‘Perhaps they will all be in use at the same time,’ Demelza thought.

  Her eyes were shining as she ran to the linen cupboard to see if there was enough linen for the six beds that would be in use.

  The sheets and pillowcases all had lavender bags packed between them which she had made the previous year.

  She hesitated for a moment as she looked at one pile separate from the others which were edged with real lace. These had been her mother’s pride and joy.

  Then almost beneath her breath Demelza said,

  “He is paying enough, he deserves them!”

  She carried them into the Master bedroom where the Langstons who owned The Manor had slept since Sir Gerard Langston had been given the Monastery and its grounds by King Henry VIII.

  It was where Demelza’s father had slept, but, when Gerard inherited, he preferred to keep his own room.

  This was filled with all the things he treasured ever since he was a small boy and the trophies he had won when he was at Oxford and racing his own horses in amateur steeplechases and point-to-points.

  The Master bedroom was furnished with dark oak and the huge four-poster had the Langston coat of arms emblazoned on red velvet.

  The curtains were drawn back and the windows were open when Demelza entered the room. She laid the sheets she carried down on the bed.

  Because she had loved her father, she kept his things as he had always liked them, his ivory-backed brushes were on top of a high dressing table and his polished riding boots still stood in the wardrobe.

  ‘I must move those,’ Demelza thought to herself.

  She picked them up and was about to carry them to one of the cupboards in the passage when she had a better idea.

  She went towards the fireplace. On the right-hand side of it where the panel was exquisitely carved with flowers, she put out her hand and pressed one of the petals.

  Silently a whole section of the panelling opened.

  Inside was a flight of steps leading downward and upwards.

  This was one of the secret staircases that she had spoken of to her brother which led up to the very top of the house where there was the Priests’ Room.

  Used as a Chapel during the reign of Elizabeth, it had also secreted many Priests when the Catholics were persecuted and burnt at the stake, just as the Protestants had been under her sister Mary.

  Langston Manor had in fact been one of the most notable secret hiding places for the Jesuit Priests in the whole of England.

  Demelza thought that some of the secret staircases had been built before that time, perhaps by the monks who wished to keep watch on the novices or perhaps for more sinister reasons.

  But, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the house had become a labyrinth of stairs and narrow passages with doors that could be opened into almost every main room in the house.

  Gerard had been aware, as she was, that once she was sleeping in the Priests’ Room and using the secret staircases, it would be quite impossible for any outsider to have the slightest idea that she was in the house.

  ‘Even if they do see me,’ Demelza thought to herself with a smile, ‘they will think I am the ghost of the White Lady.’

  She told herself that she must remember to tell Gerard to refer laughingly to the Langston ghost which was locally a famous legend.

  The Langstons at the time of Cromwell had openly declared themselves uninterested in the political fortunes of the country. Cromwellian troops had even from time to time been billeted in the house and grounds.

  But the daughter of the Baronet had fallen in love with a fugitive Royalist and had hidden him in the Priests’ Room.

  Unfortunately one day when she was away from home, he had been betrayed by a treacherous servant.

  Dragged out by the troops he had been executed on the spot, his body buried before she returned.

  Legend related that distraught by not knowing what had occurred the lady had finally died of a broken heart, but her ghost continued to seek for her lover.

  Demelza had never actually seen the White Lady herself, although she had sometimes imagined that she felt her in the picture gallery, late at night and heard her footsteps moving behind her on the twisted staircases which led to the Priests’ Room.

  But the maids, especially the younger ones, continually shrieked out that they had seen the ghost and even Nattie had at times admitted to a ‘cold feeling between her shoulder blades’ and complained that ‘a ghost was walking over my grave’.

  ‘I shall feel like a ghost, when they are having a party in the dining room,’ Demelza told herself, ‘and I am shut outside and cannot take part in it.’

  Then she laughed because it did not trouble her in the least that she could not be invited to the parties that the Earl would be giving, while she could be with Crusader and his other horses in the stables.

  ‘Abbot will be able to tell me all about them,’ she thought, knowing that in most cases if they had run in any major race she would already know how they were bred and who had sired them.

  “Could anything be more thrilling?” she asked aloud.

  She looked at the velvet cover on the big bed which had once been red, but had now faded to a lovely shade of pink, thinking that the owner of Crusader would sleep there.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she decided, ‘I will pick some of the roses which are exactly the same colour and put them on the dressing table.’

  She wondered if the Earl would notice.

  Then she told herself it was very unlikely he would notice anything except that the ceiling was stained with damp and that one of the gilt handles was lost off the chest of drawers.

  ‘Why should we apologise?’ Demelza asked disdainfully. ‘He will certainly be more comfortable than he would have been at The Crown and Feathers, and if he does not like it there is nowhere else he can go.’

  Some pride within herself made her almost resent the fact that they had to take money from a man who was so rich while they were so poor.

  “Our family is as good, if not better than his,” she said and lifted her little chin higher.

  Then she heard Gerard calling her, his voice echoing up from the hall.

  She ran down the corridor to lean over the banisters. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I want to talk to you,” he replied, “and what about my bath?”

  Demelza started guiltily.

  She had forgotten in her anxiety to open the rooms that Gerard wished to bathe in.

  “It will be ready for you in a few minutes,” she promised.

  She rushed to his room to pull from the cupboard the big circular tin bath in which he bathed when he was at home.

  She set it down on the hearth rug, laid a bath mat and white towel beside it and still running as quickly as she could went down the backstairs.

  Fortunately at this time of the day old Jacobs thought that most of his chores were done and was sitting, as she expected, in the kitchen drinking a glass of ale and talking to Nattie.

  Demelza burst into the huge kitchen with its flagged floors, its long beams from which in prosperous days had hung hams, sides of bacon and strings of onions but which were now lamentably unencumbered.

  As she entered Nattie looked up at her in surprise.

  She was only fifty years of age, but her hair was streaked with grey. With her clean apron and rather severe face she looked exactly what she had always been, a child’s nurse, loving and tender, but at the same time strict as to discipline.

  “What is it, Miss Demelza?” she asked in a surprised tone, “and your hair needs tidying.”

  “Sir Gerard has come home, Nattie,” Demelza said and saw the older woman’s eyes light up.

  If there was one person in the world whom Nattie loved more than Demelza and who had been her baby from the time she was born, it was Gerard.

  “Home!” she exclaimed. “I suppose he’s on his way to stay with some of his smart friends.”

  �
��The Crown and Feathers was burnt down last night,” Demelza related breathlessly, “which means that all sorts of thrilling things are going to happen here.”

  “Here?” Nattie questioned.

  “Sir Gerard wants a bath, Jacobs,” Demelza said.

  She knew the old man, being rather deaf, had not heard her.

  “A bath, Jacobs!” she repeated. “Will you take two cans of water upstairs to Sir Gerard’s bedroom?”

  Jacobs put down his glass.

  He was an amenable old man and reliable as long as he knew exactly what he had to do.

  “Two cans, did you say, Miss Demelza?”

  “Two cans,” Demelza repeated firmly.

  He shuffled out of the kitchen and Demelza, her eyes shining, began to tell Nattie of the excitements that lay ahead.

  Chapter Two

  “Will you drive me to Windsor Castle tomorrow?” “No!”

  “Why not? I felt sure you would be staying there when I learnt you cannot go to Bracknell as you intended.”

  “I have made other plans.”

  “Whatever they are they must be in the vicinity of Ascot and surely you can take me to The castle on your way?”

  It was difficult to imagine how any man could refuse Lady Sydel Blackford when she pleaded with him.

  Lying back on a chaise-longue she looked exceedingly alluring, wearing little or nothing but a diaphanous gauze negligée which clung to her perfect body.

  She had been told so often that she resembled in face and figure the exquisite Princess Pauline Borghese, sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been sculpted by Canova, that she almost instinctively fell into the same pose as the statue of the Princess.

  Her golden hair was caught up on top of her head and her blue eyes looked at the Earl from under long dark eyelashes which owed more to artifice than to nature.

  Everything about her was in fact slightly artificial, but at the same time there was no doubting her beauty or her sexual allure.

  The Earl, however, leaning back in an armchair and sipping his glass of brandy, seemed for the moment immune both to her beauty and to the pleading in her eyes.