Moonlight And Mistletoe

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The next morning Hester rallied her troops and set them searching.

‘Jethro, see what you can find in the kitchen and scullery. Somehow someone is getting in, so look from the outside first. The rest of us will search for this treasure. Susan, you take the ground floor, Maria, the bedrooms, and I will search the attics.’

She had to scrub a rag over the tiny windows in the eaves and light two lanterns, but at last Hester could see to explore the attics. Unfortunately it was also sufficient to reveal some very large spiders. The contents were disappointingly sparse, almost all broken and most had never been of any value at all. Nor could she see any possible hiding places, despite carefully tapping and pressing every piece of woodwork and prodding each loose brick or slate.

Straightening her back, she called downstairs to Maria and Susan, but they too reported not so much as a painted-over cupboard to give any hope. Hester eyed the dust-smeared floorboards. ‘I suppose you are the obvious place.’ she muttered at them resentfully. ‘What a good thing I never liked this gown overmuch.’

Lantern in one hand, she inched across the floor on her knees, trying to lift the boards at the ends, prodding the knot holes. Nothing. And then, in the furthest corner, her hand brushed against a change of level. She held up the lantern and revealed a painting, thick with dust. Hester pulled it out and lifted it, showering herself with dirt and what seemed to be a mass of ribbons. It was the canvas, sliced and torn into shreds, which still clung to the frame where the edges of the canvas remained intact.

Hester knelt there, her arms aching with the effort of supporting it and felt the cold horror of violence that had filled her when she first saw the ravaged dressing room. To have done this spoke of bitter anger and spite and a fanatical desire to despoil.

Wishing she could take it straight to Guy, she got to her feet, blew out her lanterns and carried the frame and its fluttering tatters downstairs. Maria emerged from the unoccupied back bedroom, shaking her head. ‘I’ve had all the rugs up, pulled the shutters right out of their boxes-nothing. My goodness, what is that?’

‘Come downstairs and I will show you. Susan!’

Hester carried on down to the dining room where she lowered the frame on to the table. ‘Do you recall that sheet of glass we found in the shed? If you can fetch that, I will use it to lay out the canvas and we can see-’ She broke off at a cry of triumph from the kitchen. ‘Jethro?’

‘I’ve found it!’

They hurried in to see the lad standing triumphantly in the doorway of the unused cupboard. ‘Look-no wonder it was damp in here, there is a hidden doorway in the bricks at the side and it does not quite meet the ground. See?’

Susan and Maria squashed into the cupboard after Hester, exclaiming at the ingenuity of the secret door, ducking outside into the recess that had seemed blocked by the overflowing water butt and the pile of old hurdles. ‘No wonder Sir Lewis did not want you sending for a builder, Miss Hester.’ Jethro pushed the door closed and brushed up the dead weeds against it. ‘We’d never see this, but any craftsman checking the brickwork couldn’t help but find it.’

‘And his man came down, looked all round here and said nothing. More evidence for the magistrate,’ Hester said triumphantly. However much her head had told her there was a malevolent human agency behind the appearance of the roses, it was still a relief to see tangible proof of it. ‘Try and leave everything as it was, Jethro, we do not want to frighten off the Nugents. Not yet. Brr, I am cold, let us go in.’

‘Miss Lattimer? I knocked at the front door and could not make myself heard.’ It was Guy. Hester scrambled over the hurdles with more speed than grace and caught his hand, the cold forgotten in the comfort of feeling that strong, warm clasp.

‘We have found it! Come and see. I am so glad you are returned.’

He paused, closing his hand tight around hers, and looked down into her face. ‘So am I.’ Hester felt the yard go quiet around her. Somewhere behind her the voices of Maria and Susan were a faint twittering like birds in a distant tree. Her cold hands and feet ceased to have any feeling. All she was conscious of was the warmth in Guy’s eyes, the meaning in his voice, the sensual curve of his lips.

The edge of a hurdle cracked under her foot and the moment was gone. Feeling as though she had woken from a deep sleep, Hester blinked. ‘Jethro found the door. Look.’

Guy climbed over the barrier and helped her back. Together they examined the door, its carefully disguised hinges, the slight angle that the wall was set at which hid it utterly unless one was face-on to it. ‘As I suspected, this was built as part of the house, not added later.’

‘So it must be part of the original secret, the same secret as the treasure?’ Hester speculated as they regained the kitchen.

‘Yes. If there ever was a treasure. I am beginning to wonder about that. And you know, those old family books of legends make no mention of any dead roses or of this house at all.’

‘The Nugents think there is a treasure, or why else are they doing this? Oh, yes, and I forgot to tell you-Miss Nugent is our ghost, I caught a glimpse under her veil yesterday and she has the bruises of your knuckles on her cheek, plain as day. She is also a good actress, according to Jethro’s sources.’

‘Is she, indeed?’ Guy regarded his knuckles. ‘I have never hit a woman-I cannot say it gives me any great pleasure, whatever she has been about. As for the “treasure”, they may be misinterpreting some clue-that letter you glimpsed, for example.’ Guy leaned against the kitchen table and looked around the room. ‘This is a home, this place. I cannot see it as some kind of treasure house, can you?’ Hester shook her head, intrigued that he seemed to experience the same kind of feelings as she did for the Moon House. ‘It is feminine, warm. A house for a man to come to and relax, sit by the fire, enjoy a woman’s company.’

His gaze rested on Hester as he spoke and she found her lips curving into a smile of recognition at the picture he was painting. She could see herself seated by the fire, or curled upon the chaise in her bedchamber, holding out a hand to Guy as he came through the door in the candlelight. She would pull him down beside her in the firelight while the snow swirled against the window panes…

‘Why, then, would he need to sneak in through a secret opening?’ Hester wondered aloud. ‘An assignation?’ Jethro, Susan and Maria had all vanished from the kitchen. She wondered why, then supposed they had all gone to wash hands and faces after their dusty explorations.

Guy shifted position suddenly as though to snap himself out of his flight of fancy. ‘Perhaps. I need to read that box of documents.’

‘But how?’ Hester felt she could watch the play of expression on his face for hours. In company he shielded his thoughts and emotions and one saw only what he wanted you to see. But lately she felt he let his guard down with her-or perhaps, being in love with him, she could read him more clearly.

‘What is it, Hester?’ Guy reached out a hand across the table and she put hers into it with a smile, surprised once more at how right his touch seemed.

She must have looked startled at his question, for he added, ‘You were staring at me. Have I a smudge on my face?’

‘No, no… I was wool-gathering.’

‘Well, you have-a smudge, I mean. And cobwebs in your hair. In fact, I think you are even grubbier than the first time I saw you.’

Guy watched the emotions chase across Hester’s face, then mischief won over indignation. ‘Wretch! To remind me of that is most unfair.’

‘I thought you made a very fetching parlourmaid,’ he commented, wondering how much longer he could hold her hand before she became self-conscious and snatched it away.

He very much wanted to do more than hold her hand. If he was honest with himself, the thought of kissing her again, holding her in his arms, making love to her, was beginning to obsess him. Up there on the chilly downs he had thought for a dizzy moment that she returned his feelings, but it seemed that all she felt was friendship-and attraction. In the tone she had used, that was the sort of word which was usually preceded by unfortunate.

The vehemence with which she rejected the idea of a carte blanche puzzled him. Of course any well-bred young lady would be appalled at the thought, but her reaction was more intense, more personal. And the fact that it had occurred to her at all, significant. Had someone tried to force his attentions on her in the period after her father’s death when she had been alone and not yet safely employed?

Whatever her secret was, he did not intend cajoling or tricking it out of her. If she trusted him, she would tell him when she was ready, and if she did not trust him, then this was pointless anyway. A patient man, Guy settled himself to play a long game, but for the first time he found himself apprehensive about whether he would win it.

He must have been lost in thought for long enough to make her uncomfortable for Hester coloured and, extracting her hand from his grasp, stood up. ‘I am keeping you from your sister. I am sorry, I should have asked you if she had a comfortable journey.’

‘She had a very comfortable journey, I thank you. During the course of it she sprung the news upon me that her husband has gone north to County Durham to visit a very sick great- uncle of his, leaving her to amuse herself as best she can over the festive season. Being Georgy she has decided that descending upon me and causing me to celebrate Christmas in style would entertain her best.

‘By this I imagine she expects me to decorate that hideous house with evergreens, dispense mince pies and punch to tuneless wassailers, issue invitations to the local society and generally behave in a manner that is best calculated to drive me back to London to shut myself up in one of my clubs until it is all over.’

He could not suppress the grin that Hester’s gurgle of amusement provoked. ‘Oh, poor Guy! And you such a curmudgeonly recluse-entertaining will obviously go right against the grain with you. Is Lady Broome explaining all this to Parrott at the moment?’

‘No, fortunately she decided she would call upon her very dear friend Lady Redbourn who lives in Watford, so I was able to drop her off for a couple of days of exhausting gossip and character assassination before she comes on here.’

He saw Hester was looking dubious in the face of such a frank description. ‘I adore my sister, and at a distance of twenty miles we get on excellently well. I think about a sennight will be delightful, after that I will not vouch for the Christmas spirit enduring.’ He regarded Hester who was looking somewhat relieved. ‘I think she will like you. At least, should we manage to keep you from looking like a chimney sweep. Here, stand in the light.’

The smudge on the end of her nose was irresistible. Guy proffered one corner of his pocket handkerchief and Hester obediently licked it. The pink, pointed tongue darting from between her lips was so erotic he almost dropped the handkerchief. Instead he dabbed carefully at the end of her nose. ‘There. Now the one on your forehead.’ She was standing very still, looking at him solemnly with those great brown eyes. Guy could feel his heart thudding. His hand shook slightly; was it the effort not to snatch her into his arms or was there something in her gaze that was making him vulnerable?

Another glimpse of that tongue would undo him. Guy dipped the cloth in a bowl of water standing in the sink. He dabbed at the line of dirt on Hester’s cheekbone and stopped, his hand upraised, his eyes locked with hers. ‘Those gold flecks are back again. Are you angry or happy?’

She blinked at him and then said tartly, ‘Chilly, my lord. There is cold water dribbling down my cheek.’ The dimple at the corner of her mouth showed she was feigning anger, but Guy knew he was close to overstepping whatever invisible boundary she had set between them.

‘I am sorry. Here.’ He handed her the towel, which hung on the back of the door, making no attempt to wipe the water away himself. Suddenly he could not trust himself to touch her.

Hester knew she was making rather a business of drying her face. It was ridiculous, if Guy had the slightest idea of the effect he could have on her with such a simple gesture as washing away a trace of dirt, he would imagine she was fevered. In an effort to control her hectic imagination, which had him taking her masterfully in his arms and heeding not the slightest her maidenly pleas to desist, she dragged her mind back to the last sensible thing they had spoken of.

‘You did not tell me how you intended examining the box of documents in the library at Winterbourne Hall.’

‘Let us just say that the Nugents do not have the monopoly on breaking and entering around here.’

His expression spoke of nothing but a thoroughly masculine delight in doing something dangerous, reckless and foolhardy. Hester found her anxiety surfacing in a rush of anger. ‘Are you all about in the head? Housebreaking? Breaking into a magistrate’s house at that? No one would think the worse of him if he took a shotgun to an intruder. And what if he doesn’t shoot you? What is the penalty for breaking and entering? Hanging? Of all the stupid, ill thought out…male things to be contemplating-’

She broke off, panting, as Guy held up both hands placatingly and leaned against the edge of the kitchen table. ‘It is not ill thought out. I know exactly how and where to do it and have not the slightest intention of being caught.’ He held up his hand again as she opened her mouth to disabuse him of any delusion that this was a comforting assurance. ‘And as for being a male thing to do, well, I am a man.’

‘I had noticed,’ Hester snapped.

‘I am gratified,’ he responded smoothly, apparently intent on provoking her into reaching for the skillet, which stood temptingly to hand. ‘Now, I will send over a footman again tonight at about ten o’clock. I imagine your people will be in and out of the kitchen until then. We do not want to show our hand yet by securing the secret door. In fact, tonight is the night when six roses are due, is it not? That should keep the Nugents suitably distracted, trying to find a way to deposit them. Do you not like the idea of paying them back in their own coin, sweetheart?’

Hester was too cross for the endearment to register. She was also, she realised, very chilly. ‘It is freezing in here. The front door must be open. Susan!’

The front door was indeed open. Hester pushed it to. ‘You must have left it open when you came in. Oh, no, I was forgetting, you came round the side because we were all at the back. Where are they all? They must have gone out and not pulled it shut.’

‘I can hear voices in the kitchen.’ Guy put his hand on the door handle. ‘I must be off, but before I go, how is young Ackland’s shoulder?’

‘Much better. It seemed to heal all of a sudden, although he still favours it a little and I will not let him lift anything heavy.’

‘Ah, the benefits of youth. Goodbye, my dear.’ And he was gone, leaving Hester prey to a very mixed bag of emotions indeed.

She mulled them over as she closed the door behind him and walked back to the kitchen. Anxiety over his plan to break into Winterbourne Hall warred with a warm, selfish glow of happiness that his sister was not staying with him yet and she had a few more days of his company.

The three members of her household were busying themselves with an air that Hester could not help but find suspicious. It was not until Susan said casually, ‘His lordship’s gone, then?’ that the penny dropped. They had gone off, leaving her alone with him quite intentionally.

‘Yes, he has,’ she responded robustly. ‘And where did you all vanish to, might I ask? Maria, you are supposed to be chaperoning me-did you think you were matchmaking?’

That reduced Miss Prudhome to blushing incoherence and Jethro simply to blushes. Susan, however, stood up for herself. ‘And what if we were? He’s a fine gentleman and he likes you very well indeed.’

‘And you know-and Jethro knows-exactly why I cannot think about marrying a gentleman, ever. Do you not?’

‘What do you mean, Hester dear?’ Maria emerged from behind her hands where she had retreated in guilty confusion. ‘An earl would be a very splendid match, hut not out of the question for a gentlewoman and the daughter of a distinguished officer.’

Hester sank down at the table, her legs suddenly too weary to support her. It was time to tell Maria the truth and if she decided she could no longer act as companion to someone with Hester’s reputation, then that was simply a judgment upon her for not being frank at the outset.

‘Let us go into the sitting room, Maria.’ Somehow this warm kitchen was too informal for the confession she was about to make, ‘Susan and Jethro know what I am going to tell you: I can only reproach myself for not having been frank with you from the outset.’

Bemused, Miss Prudhome followed her employer and sat in the chair opposite Hester’s, her hands clasped anxiously in her lap, the flickering firelight sparking off the jet brooch she wore.

‘When my father died I came back to England,’ Hester began painfully. She had never had to tell this story to anyone and it felt as though it were being wrenched from her now. ‘He was not able to leave me well endowed, and I had no surviving relatives, but he had left me instructions to go to an old army friend of his, Colonel Sir John Norton, in London. I went, hoping he would be able to recommend me to a suitable employer so I could become a companion.’

She told the story, seeing her own emotions reflected in Maria’s face: pity and shock at the realisation of the colonel’s condition; amazement, then rejection of his proposal and finally approval of the compromise they had reached together.

‘John only had a few relatives, and they had neglected him for many years, obviously feeling that a dying man, however gallant, was no concern of theirs. With no other heirs, they had no reason to fear he would leave his money elsewhere.

‘But after my arrival, it took only days for those distant relatives to scent my presence and descend upon Mount Street. The ensuing row was an epic and Sir John’s cousin, her husband, her two sons and their wives swept out of the house, having convinced themselves that he had fallen prey to a fortune-hunting hussy and that I had settled into the house as his mistress with an eye to his money.’

She sighed, wondering yet again if there was anything that could have been done at the time to stop the damage. But she had been too proud, and John too furious, to beg their understanding.

‘If they had taken themselves back to the country it might not have mattered so very much, but instead they settled in their town house and proceeded to spread the news of the colonel’s shocking liaison.’

‘I found myself pointed out in the lending library and the few callers Sir John had been used to fell away abruptly. At the fashionable milliner’s where I had begun to take my custom I found they had too much work on to oblige me and the ladies of households where I called to take up letters of introduction from my father’s commanding officer were never at home to me.’

Maria gasped in outrage. ‘How bigoted, how unjustified!’

Hester shrugged. ‘Can I blame them? I do not know. Reputation is such a fragile thing. My world closed in to the Mount Street house and my companionship with Sir John. I tried not to think about what I would do when he died, for my portion was small and the scandal had put paid to any hopes of becoming companion to anyone else.’

‘But I should have known better. He left me a legacy in his will. Not a fortune, for most of his wealth was entailed on his cousin’s son, but a very respectable competence, which, with what my father had left me, means I am able to support the appearance of a gentlewoman.’ She broke off and smiled. ‘Where, that is, no one knows of my reputation.’

‘And because of that reputation, even if it is quite undeserved, you cannot accept an offer from a gentleman,’ Maria stated sadly.

‘Not an honourable offer, that is for sure,’ Hester added wryly. ‘But I should have told you at the beginning, Maria; it was wrong of me not to. You might well have decided you did not wish to be associated with me-you may still feel that way.’

‘Never!’ Miss Prudhome leapt to her feet and hastened to hug her startled employer. ‘You are a gentlewoman, but even if these unkind rumours were true, I hope I can recognise true kindness and quality when I meet it.’ She sat down with a decided thump and blew her nose briskly.

Hester found she could not speak and contented herself with leaning over and squeezing Maria’s hand gratefully. The little spinster was so kind. If only she thought Guy would be as understanding if she told him frankly of her past. But, of course, that was asking too much. He was a leading member of society, a man with a reputation and a standing. He might take someone with a besmirched reputation as a mistress, but never as a wi- as a friend, Hester corrected herself hastily.

What am I thinking of? She turned and gazed into the flames, her eyes unfocused. Because I love him, because he has been a good friend to me and has shown he is attracted to me physically, that does not mean he would have any thoughts of marriage. When this puzzle was wound up she felt certain in her heart that he would cease to try and buy the Moon House for whatever mysterious reason motivated him. And then he would go, back to London, back to society, out of her life.