Maria did not even look up, but went on weeping.
'No,’ said Simon, taking the whip from Miss Parkins and coiling it round his hand. ‘I will not have Anna’s name tainted with scandal, and so the true circumstances of the evening must never come out. Anna has a chance now to come home and to live in England, where she can raise George in peace and safety, and where, when he is older, he can claim his inheritance. I will not have his future ruined by this night’s work.'
'What do you mean to do?' asked Helena, looking at him.
‘I don’t know. I have not decided yet. Say that Morton's death was an accident, perhaps.’
'She will never let your sister live in peace,' said Miss Parkins, her eyes still on Maria.
Helena looked at Maria and saw that she had become quieter. Her sobbing had all but ceased, and now she sat quietly on the floor, looking at the man in her arms.
'I think she will,' said Helena. 'She has too much to lose if she tells the truth.'
Simon nodded.
'Maria,' he said.
Maria turned red-rimmed eyes on him.
'If you give me your word you will never return to Stormcrow Castle and that you will never harm any member of my family, then I will see to it that you go free.'
She nodded dully.
‘You give me your word?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
'Very well,' said Simon. He thought. 'Then we will say this: that you were my house guest; that you expressed an interest in learning to shoot; that Morton said he would teach you; that your aim went wide, and that you shot him by mistake. Do you understand?'
'I do.'
'Good. Then I will send Eldridge for the undertaker. I will send for Sir Hugh Greer, too. I do not want anyone to suspect that anything is amiss.' He turned to Miss Parkins. 'I need you to get Maria out of the hall —’
‘You can put her in the housekeeper’s room,’ said Helena.
Simon agreed. ‘And Morton’s body, too. We don’t want any of the servants coming upstairs and stumbling across it.’
Miss Parkins inclined her head.
He turned to Helena, and saying, 'Wait for me in the library. I would like to speak to you when I return,' he set off for the stables.
Helena walked across the hall, her body feeling heavy. A reaction was starting to set in, and she felt cold. She went into the library, where the fire cast a mellow glow over the furniture and the clock ticked contentedly on the mantelpiece. To her surprise, she saw that only a quarter of an hour had passed since she had been sitting there last, waiting for Simon’s return.
She went over to the fire and knelt down in front of it, feeling glad of its warmth. She thought over everything that had happened, until the jumble of images at last began to resolve themselves into an orderly pattern, and she felt her lethargy leave her.
It was some time before Simon joined her. As he entered the library she could see there were lines of strain on his face. She stood up, lifting her hand to soothe them away, but then dropped it again, for she knew she must not touch him.
‘I have sent for Sir Hugh,’ he said.
‘How is Maria?’ she asked.
‘Still quiet.’
‘Do you trust her?’ asked Helena.
‘No. I think it possible that, once she recovers from Morton’s death, she will want revenge, so I propose to have her watched, to make sure she can do no more harm.’
‘What will happen now?’ asked Helena.
'We will hold the funeral as soon as possible. Morton has no family, so I propose to bury him here. He is my brother-in-law, and it will not seem too strange that I should do so. The funeral will be a quiet affair. I doubt if many people will come, for my neighbours did not know him, and I do not intend to noise it abroad: the sooner it is dealt with, the better.'
'I understand.'
There came the sound of voices from the hall, and the sound of footsteps: Sir Hugh Greer had arrived.
‘I must leave you,’ said Simon, stepping back.
The door was thrown open and Sir Hugh strode into the room, blowing into his hands.
‘Now then, Pargeter, what’s all this? There’s been an accident, I understand.’
‘Yes.’
'It’s a good thing your man found me on the road or he wouldn’t have got hold of me until tomorrow. I’m due at the Bancrofts’ in an hour, so you’ll have to be quick. What’s happened?'
'Unfortunately, my brother-in-law has been shot. He was showing one of my guests, a lady, how to fire a pistol. She had never held one before, and although she did her best to follow his instructions, her aim went wide.'
‘Dead?’ asked Sir Hugh succinctly.
‘Dead.’
‘Never put a gun into the hands of a woman,’ said Sir Hugh, shaking his head. ‘They mean well, bless ’em, but it’s asking for trouble.’
As the two men talked, Helena resumed her role as the housekeeper and quietly withdrew.
Chapter Fourteen
It was a cold, dreary day when Morton was buried. As Simon had foreseen, few people attended the funeral, and none of them accompanied him back to the castle afterwards, although he had been scrupulous about asking them. There had been a little gossip, but it had soon been overtaken as a subject of interest by news of Mrs Willis’s expectation of a happy event.
‘We all thought her husband was too old,’ said Mrs Beal to Helena at breakfast a few days later, ‘but there, she’ll be delighted, poor thing. Always wanted children, she did. “It must be awful to be alone in the world,” she said to me once. She was thinking of it even then. Two years married and not a sign of a child. But now . . . yes, it’s a happy event.’
Helena thought of Mrs Willis and the young man at the ball, and then she thought of Mrs Willis’s strange words when they had taken tea together: It was a pity she was all alone in the world, with no one to miss her when she was gone and knew now that Mrs Willis had not been thinking her aunt was an easy target for wrongdoing, as she had suspected at the time, but had simply been thinking of her own situation.
Helena finished her breakfast and then went to the housekeeper’s room to start on the day’s work. As she went in, she saw Le Morte d’Arthur sitting on her desk, and she picked it up, meaning to return it to the library, for she had finished it. As she did so, she thought about the many forms love could take: the courtly love of her book, Maria’s love for Morton, Simon’s love for Anna, Anna’s love for her son.
And then she thought about her own love: her love for her parents, her love for Caroline, her love for her aunt . . . and her love for Simon. She could no longer hide it from herself; she was in love with him.
She was crossing the hall when she saw Miss Parkins coming down the stairs. Miss Parkins was dressed in her outdoor clothes, with a long grey cloak covering her bony body, and in her hand was a valise.
‘Are you going out?’ asked Helena in surprise.
Miss Parkins turned calm eyes on her, and Helena was surprised at the change in them. They looked human at last. Her face had smoothed, as though she had been holding herself rigid for a long time and had finally allowed herself to relax.
‘My time here is done,’ she said.
‘You don’t mean you’re leaving?’ asked Helena in surprise.
‘I have done what I promised. I have looked after my lady’s children. Her oldest son I could not save; he was dead before I made my vow. But her remaining children will now be happy. Her daughter is rid of a monstrous brute, and her younger son . . . I blamed him for a time, but now all is forgiven. I have forgiven him, and he has forgiven himself.’ Miss Parkins walked towards the door, then turned and said: ‘I wish you well.’
There was a flicker of a smile in her eyes and Helena saw in her a completely different person; not a terrifying, unnatural mannequin, but a devoted woman who had loved her mistress and who had loved her mistress’s children.
It seemed strange to think she had been so frightened of Miss Parkins when she had arrived
at the castle, for now she knew that, although Miss Parkins had been alarming, she had been dangerous only to those who had threatened the Pargeters, and had been dangerous to Helena only whilst she had thought that Helena was a threat.
‘And I you,’ said Helena. ‘Where will you go?’
‘To my sister. She lives in Dorset. It is where we grew up. I am looking forward to going home.’
Simon stood on the landing, watching Miss Parkins through the window as she climbed into the carriage and set out on her journey. She had been a part of his life ever since he could remember. She had given him a sense of security in his childhood, for she had always been there, always the same . . . until the day his sister-in-law had died.
He remembered how Miss Parkins had blamed him; not for the death of his sister-in-law, nor even the death of his brother, but for the way Richard’s death had killed his mother.
But now Miss Parkins had forgiven him. And she was right, he thought, as he remembered the words he had overheard, he had forgiven himself. It was as though a great burden had been lifted from him, and now that it was gone, he could look to the future again. A future with Helena.
He began to walk downstairs. He had been determined never to fall in love, because love led to loss, and loss led to pain. But something had happened to him when Morton had turned the pistol on Helena. He had known in that moment that it was impossible to avoid love, because love had found him anyway. But he had known something else, too: that, terrible though it would be to lose Helena, it would be better than never having loved her, because the joy and the pleasure of loving her had been worth any pain.
And now he wanted to tell her so.
Helena returned Le Morte d’Arthur to its place on the bookshelves and was about to leave the library when Simon walked in. He stopped and looked at her with such intensity that her hands clenched and unclenched themselves. He seemed about to speak, but then he closed his mouth and walked over to her until he was standing in front of her, so close that the front of his coat was touching the front of her dress. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheeks and she felt as though something momentous was about to happen.
‘Helena . . . there is so much I want to say to you . . . ’ he began.
She turned up her face to his expectantly and saw the words die on his lips. His head came closer and her own tilted in response, and then he kissed her.
And her heart quaked.
‘I suppose it is too much to hope that the villagers will stop calling you Stormcrow,’ she said, as they walked outside in the garden some hours later. Though the day was dull, it was fine, and it felt good to be out of doors.
‘It is. But it is not a bad name, and when our children are old enough, I will tell them so.’
She looked at him and he took her hands in his.
‘Helena, I’m in love with you. Will you marry me?’ he said.
‘Yes, Simon, I will.’
He smiled, a natural smile, with no shadows in it, then he put his arm around her and they walked on.
‘A stormcrow brings warning of a storm, it is true, but it also flies before the storm and, in the end, outraces it,’ he said. ‘We are all stormcrows, each one of us, for we all, at some time, bring bad news. But whilst I had to tell my brother that his wife was dead, and my mother that her son had died, I was also the bearer of good news, for I told my sister she was free. Our children will have their own storms and their own sanctuaries in the course of their lives, their own good news and bad.’
‘And, if they are lucky, they will find their own loves, as we have,’ said Helena.
She thought of the first time she had seen Simon. She had had no idea, when he had taken her up in his carriage, that she would fall in love with him. It had come upon her so slowly that she could not pinpoint the day or the time when it had happened, but it was now so much a part of her existence that she could no longer conceive of life without him.
Byron’s poetry came back to her and she murmured the words softly:
‘A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love. Each kiss a heart quake.
‘I never thought I would find it, that kind of love, nor my place in the world,’ she said, ‘but here it is, at Stormcrow Castle, with you.’
For more Kindle books by Amanda Grange please
visit her Kindle page on Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon DE
Amazon FR
Amazon IT
Or click the links to individual titles below
(Links to Amazon US on following page)
Jane Austen retellings (also available in hardback and paperback)
Darcy's Diary
(Pride and Prejudice)
Mr Knightley's Diary
(Emma)
Captain Wentworth's Diary
(Persuasion)
Edmund Bertram's Diary
(Mansfield Park)
Colonel Brandon's Diary
(Sense and Sensibility)
Henry Tilney’s Diary (ebook forthcoming)
(Northanger Abbey)
Regency romances
A Most Unusual Governess
The Earl Next Door
The Six Month Marriage
One Snowy Night
The Silverton Scandal
One Night At The Abbey
Castle of Secrets
Edwardian romances
That Would Be A Fairy Tale
Titanic Affair
(Set on board the ill-fated liner, Titanic)
All books originally published in hardback by Robert Hale Ltd
Except Titanic Affair, originally published in hardback by Severn House
Please visit Amanda Grange’s website at http://www.amandagrange.com for more information
For more Kindle books by Amanda Grange in the US,
Please visit her Kindle page on Amazon US
Or click the links to individual titles below
Jane Austen retellings (also available in hardback and paperback)
Mr Darcy’s Diary
(Pride and Prejudice)
Mr Knightley’s Diary
(Emma)
Edmund Bertram’s Diary
(Mansfield Park)
Colonel Brandon’s Diary
(Sense and Sensibility)
Captain Wentworth’s Diary
(Persuasion)
Henry Tilney’s Diary (forthcoming)
(Northanger Abbey)
Regency Romances
A Most Unusual Governess
The Earl Next Door
The Six Month Marriage
One Snowy Night
The Silverton Scandal
One Night At The Abbey
Castle of Secrets
Edwardian Romances (Downton Abbey era)
That Would Be A Fairy Tale
Titanic Affair
(Set on board the ill-fated liner, Titanic)
Please visit Amanda Grange’s website at http://www.amandagrange.com for more information
Amanda Grange, Castle of Secrets
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