Warned by a Ghost Read online

  Lady Esther was the most passionate, the most exotic and certainly the most inflammatory woman he had ever met.

  When he appeared in public with her, he knew that every man was envying him.

  It was therefore extremely gratifying when she told him that she loved him.

  “There has been no one, Ivan, in my life since Henry was killed,” she said in a pathetic little voice, “and I have been very lonely.”

  She made it clear that she had spent most of the time that she was in mourning in the country and she had only recently come to London.

  It goes without saying that she had been an immediate sensation in all the smart drawing rooms.

  Her beauty and her rank as the daughter of a Duke opened every door including that of Carlton House.

  It was not surprising that with so many people demanding his attention the Marquis had hardly had a moment to think about himself.

  Now as he entered the house and saw the old servants he remembered as a boy, he knew that he had come home.

  It was home he had thought about as he had tossed and turned in some extremely uncomfortable lodgings in Portugal.

  It was home he dreamed about when he slept on the bare earth of Spain under a tattered tent.

  It was home he longed for, when instead of returning to England after the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington had insisted that he went with him and the British Army to Cambrai.

  “I am very glad to be back, Hanson,” he said as he took his butler’s hand.

  He meant every word of it.

  There was champagne waiting for him in the library in a gold ice cooler that bore his Coat of Arms.

  Upstairs the valet who had looked after his father had a hot bath ready for him in the Master bedroom.

  After it the Marquis was helped into the evening clothes that he had worn before he had gone to the Peninsula.

  Downstairs in the huge dining room, which had remained unchanged since the Restoration, he ate an excellent dinner.

  “Give Mrs. Benson my compliments,” he said to Hanson as he finished, “and tell her that I shall be coming home as soon as possible, if for nothing else to enjoy her excellent food!”

  “We’ve all been wanting your Lordship back with us,” Hanson replied.

  “Thank you,” the Marquis smiled. “It is what I want myself and it will not be long now before I am able to leave London.”

  “I thought that was what your Lordship would be doing when two new horses arrived,” Hanson said.

  “I shall ride them tomorrow afternoon,” the Marquis replied, “but I have to leave very early on Thursday morning as I have an urgent appointment at the War Office.”

  “I understand, my Lord,” Hanson answered, “and I knows how proud his late Lordship, your father, would have been of you if he’d been alive.”

  The Marquis knew that this was true.

  As he left the dining room, he went into the study, which had always been his father’s favourite room.

  He almost expected to find him sitting at his desk with a pile of papers in front of him and he had always been very insistent on knowing everything that happened on the estate. Before they were paid he inspected every bill.

  “If you want a thing done properly, my boy, you must do it yourself,” he had said a thousand times to his son.

  The Marquis had found that was true on active service, but he had grumbled at the extra work it entailed.

  Yet he knew that the success of his own troopers was entirely due to his meticulous organisation of their training.

  He thought now that there were an enormous number of things to be done on the estate.

  He already had new ideas for farming the land, for breeding his sheep and cows and, of course, for training his horses.

  He had often thought that in some ways Windle Court was behind the times and, while he appreciated tradition, he knew that innovation was essential for progress and prosperity.

  One thing he had no wish to change, however, was the house itself.

  He looked round his father’s study.

  He appreciated the excellent picture by Stubbs over the mantelshelf and others by Aukin, while horses painted by several artists decorated the walls.

  The newspapers were laid out as they always had been on a stool in front of the fireplace.

  He glanced at them, but felt that he was too tired to read them.

  It was hardly surprising as he had not left Esther’s bed until it was nearly dawn.

  Even then she had protested.

  “I shall miss you desperately for the next two nights,” she sighed. “Oh, Ivan, why must you leave me?”

  “I will be back on Thursday and we will dine together then.”

  She smiled at him, before giving a little cry.

  “Have you forgotten,” she exclaimed, “that the Devonshires are have a dinner party that evening which we are both invited to?”

  “We will make an excuse not to go,” the Marquis suggested.

  He thought that she was going to agree.

  Then she said in her soft coaxing voice,

  “You know, dearest, I would rather be alone with you than have dinner in Heaven! But the Duchess has been very kind to me and is already captivated by you.”

  She hesitated for a moment before she added,

  “She said the last time I was with her that we were the most handsome couple in the whole country!”

  The Marquis did not reply.

  He knew exactly what Esther was insinuating.

  She had in fact made it very clear to him in the last few days what she wanted.

  It was not surprising, for women had wanted to marry him since he had left Eton.

  He had had to extricate himself with difficulty from several ‘designing Mamas’ even before he left for Portugal aged only nineteen.

  He had learnt during the years of the War that it was dangerous to be impulsive and sometimes disastrous.

  Some cautious streak in him told him that Esther was ‘rushing her fences’.

  It was something that he never did when he was on a horse.

  To preclude a controversial conversation he then kissed her.

  It was a gentle kiss without the passion that had raged through them earlier in the evening.

  “Goodnight, my dearest,” he said. “Take care of yourself and if we have to go to the Devonshires on Thursday we will leave early. Then you can tell me how much you have missed me.”

  “It will be agony without you!” Esther replied. “I love you, Ivan! I love you and when you are not with me the whole world is dark and empty.”

  The Marquis kissed her hands one after the other.

  Then leaving the bedroom he closed the door quietly behind him.

  As he went downstairs, walking cautiously in the darkness, Lady Esther flung herself back against the pillows.

  She had been certain after their lovemaking tonight that he would say the four words she wanted to hear.

  Yet once again he had eluded her.

  ‘I will make him say them!’ she vowed. ‘I will make him!’

  She snuggled down under the bedclothes.

  She was thinking of how fantastic she would look in the Windlesham tiara at the Opening of Parliament and the Windlesham pearls would enhance the translucence of her white skin.

  Walking back to Windle House in Grosvenor Square the Marquis had enjoyed the freshness of the dawn air.

  He was thinking of how the next morning he would wake up at home.

  ‘I will ride before breakfast,’ he promised himself.

  *

  It was now he remembered that promise.

  If he was to be called at six-thirty as he intended, he had better go to bed.

  The Marquis was very abstemious owing to his determination to be always fit and strong.

  He therefore never suffered, as so many of his contemporaries did, from a hangover in the morning.

  Yet even he found the rigours of the passion he encounte
red with Lady Esther fatiguing.

  Her beauty was certainly exceptional, but so were her desires.

  The Marquis could well understand why these were so demanding.

  As she had told him, she had been a whole year after her husband’s death without the solace of love.

  “Until I met you, darling, wonderful Ivan,” she murmured, “no man attracted me and, of course, living in the country or only staying with elderly relations when I was in London I did not meet many.”

  “How can I be anything but thankful for that?” the Marquis had asked.

  Then her arms were round his neck and her lips were on his.

  Now as he walked upstairs he noted that the night-footman was still on duty in the hall.

  He had said ‘goodnight’ to Hanson.

  The butler would not retire to his own quarters until he was sure there was nothing more his Lordship wanted before he went to bed.

  ‘It is just as it used to be in the past,’ the Marquis told himself, ‘and I am very lucky to have servants like Hanson and Mrs. Benson who know exactly how Windle Court should be run.’

  Groves, the valet, was waiting up for him.

  “Now you get a good sleep tonight, my Lord,” he said. “All them late nights I expects you have in London don’t do nobody no good.”

  “You are right there, Groves,” the Marquis answered in an amused voice, “and a good sleep is exactly what I intend to have.”

  He climbed into the huge bed that had been used by a long succession of his ancestors.

  He appreciated the softness of the mattress and the linen pillowcases smelled of lavender.

  It was his mother who had always insisted that the lavender bags in the linen cupboard should be changed every year. The Marchioness before her, and several Marchionesses before that, had insisted on the same thing.

  Before he got into bed the Marquis had pulled back the curtains so that he could see the stars.

  It was something he had always done since he was a small boy.

  His mother had told him that one of them held the Guardian Angel who watched over him.

  “Which one, Mama?” he asked her eagerly.

  “That, darling, you will find out as you grow older,” his mother replied. “You will feel that your Guardian Angel is with you during the da and know that at night he is in the sky shining down and protecting you.”

  The Marquis had insisted on having his curtains pulled back in the nursery and later in every room he slept in he did the same thing.

  He was thinking now that his Guardian Angel had worked very hard on his behalf while he had been serving in the Peninsula with the Duke of Wellington.

  He could not remember how many times a French bullet had missed him by a hair’s breadth.

  He had escaped from being taken prisoner by just a few minutes.

  A mortar bomb that had landed a few inches from him had failed to explode.

  And so he had lived to come home.

  He was sure that this was due to his Guardian Angel who had watched over him and was doing so now.

  “Thank you!” he said drowsily as he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  *

  The Marquis awoke with a start and thought that it must be morning.

  Then he was aware that the room was in darkness except for the moonlight coming through the window.

  Still half-asleep he was aware that what had awoken him was a voice.

  “Hear me – listen to me!” someone was saying.

  It was a woman speaking.

  It flashed through his mind that it was Esther, but quickly became aware that it was not her.

  He opened his eyes wider.

  He saw to his astonishment that there was a woman standing by the fireplace.

  Her hair was glittering as if it was covered with tiny stars.

  “I am here to warn you,” she was saying. “You are in danger – deadly danger – from a woman who is unfaithful to you with a man who is your enemy but who you have given your trust to. Save yourself. Save yourself before it is too late – and remember – I have warned you of danger – danger.”

  Her voice died away.

  Then, as the Marquis stared at the glitter of her hair, she vanished.

  One moment she was there, the next she had gone.

  The Marquis rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed. He could hardly believe what he had just heard and thought that he must be dreaming.

  Then he knew that the woman who had spoken to him was Lady Constance.

  She was warning him, as she had warned the family for many generations when they were in danger.

  ‘But Lady Constance has never been known to speak,’ he told himself.

  He knew all the strange stories of her being seen weeping and wringing her hands when any member of the family was in danger.

  He had heard about Lady Constance first as a small boy and when he was older he read more about her in the records that were kept in the library.

  He had been on active service when his father had died and one of his relations had written to tell him that the servants had seen the ghost moving through the Great Hall just before his father’s death.

  He remembered now that Mrs. Benson, Hanson and Nanny had been positive that they had seen Lady Constance.

  It did not surprise him.

  He would only have been surprised if there had been no tales of Lady Constance.

  Now Lady Constance had appeared in his bedroom to warn him of danger and then vanished.

  Quite suddenly he knew how it had happened.

  He jumped out of bed.

  Walking to the secret panel at the side of the mantelpiece he felt for the catch that opened it.

  He did so in the dark as he could remember exactly where it was.

  As he pressed it, the panel opened without a sound.

  He was certain that some woman had been impersonating Lady Constance and he knew now how she had disappeared.

  It took him a little time to put on his robe and light the candle beside his bed.

  He carried it across the room and stepped through the open panel.

  He remembered the secret passage and the steps that led downwards from his bedroom. He had played in the passages after his father had shown them to him when he was about eight years old.

  They had existed in this part of the house since it was first built and he recalled jumping out at his friends when they came to stay.

  He had frightened the housemaids by appearing in a room that they thought was empty.

  He hid from his Tutors and they had no idea where to look for him.

  It had all been part of his childhood.

  When he was older, he only used the secret passages when necessary and he thought it important that they should remain secret.

  Now, as he walked along them, he told himself that some woman, and he could not think who, had had the impertinence to come to his bedroom.

  Obviously she had thought it amusing to startle him with a lot of nonsense about his friends.

  He reached the Priest’s room and going in found it empty.

  He had half-expected to find the intruder hidden there.

  But he saw the ancient candle-lantern on the table.

  He touched it and found that it was warm.

  This confirmed that this was the way the woman pretending to be Lady Constance had reached his room.

  Then he saw something sparkling on the wooden floor.

  It was what she had worn on her hair that had given him the impression that it was covered with tiny stars.

  ‘I must find out who this woman is,’ he told himself angrily.

  Carrying the candle he went from the Priest’s room back into the passage.

  He knew, however, that by this time she would have escaped and there was little point in following down the passage any further.

  He knew that there was a passage that led down to the library and another ended near the entrance to the Chapel.

  A t
hird led to the room where the records were kept and was seldom used.

  They were all in the oldest part of the house and the intruder could have left by any of these exits.

  As the Marquis returned to his bedroom, he was determined that tomorrow he would make a thorough search.

  He would find out who besides himself knew about the secret of the passages.

  And who had had the audacity to approach him in such a manner.

  ‘It is grossly impertinent and I will not accept it,’ he thought angrily as he climbed back into bed.

  As he lay down, however, he began to think about what the woman had said.

  There seemed no reason, if it was a friend, for her to have warned him pretending to be Lady Constance and then to disappear.

  He recalled the words she had uttered.

  He realised, and he thought that it was stupid of him not to have been aware of it before, that the pretended Lady Constance was warning him against Esther.

  He could hardly believe that it was true.

  Yet there was no other interpretation for what she had said.

  ‘But how the devil,’ he asked himself, ‘could anybody here know about Esther?’

  People were talking in London – of course they were.

  But he could hardly believe that anyone he knew in London would take the trouble to travel down to Windle Court and appear as the family ghost.

  After all he had been home only a few hours.

  “It makes no sense!” he exclaimed aloud.

  If it was somebody in London, he reasoned, how would they know about the secret passages?

  The older servants in the house knew that they existed, especially those who had been here since he was a small boy.

  But he doubted if they knew how to work the catches, which had been very skilfully made.

  He was quite certain that his father had never let Groves know where the catches were.

  ‘Then who does know besides me?’ the Marquis pondered.

  Suddenly, almost as if a voice was telling him the truth, he remembered Sedela.

  She had been only ten years old when he had last seen her.

  But he remembered how his father had allowed her to come to the house whenever she wanted to and she rode his horses.

  In fact the old Marquis had treated her as if she was a relation – as in fact she was in a somewhat distant manner.

  “Sedela!”