Ghosts of Winter

Can Ros Wynne, who has lost everything she thought defined her, find her true life—and her true love—surrounded by the lingering history of the once-grand Winter Manor?

When Ros unexpectedly inherits Winter Manor on the condition that she oversee the restoration of the remote and dilapidated house, it seems the perfect place for her to retreat from her recently failed relationship, the death of her mother, and the loss of her job. But Winter Manor is not entirely at rest. The echoes of its past reach forward into the present, and Ros’s life is perceptibly shaped by the lives—and loves—of the people who inhabited those rooms and corridors in the centuries before her.

Then Anna arrives. The architect—with her designer clothes, hot car, and air of supreme professionalism—is at first an unwelcome, if necessary, intrusion. But as Ros learns Anna’s truths, she finds solace from her past losses in their developing intimacy. And when their love is threatened, Ros must decide whether her own ghosts will forever define her, or if she can embrace her life for what it is—past, present, and future.

Ghosts of Winter

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Ghosts of Winter

© 2011 By Rebecca S. Buck. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-514-7

This Electronic Book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, New York 12185

First Edition: April 2011

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Credits

Editor: Ruth Sternglantz

Production Design: Susan Ramundo

Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

Ghosts of Winter was written over a time of transition in my life. As a result, there are very many people—friends and family—I would like to thank for your love and support, far too many to name you all here! I hope you know who you are and how heartfelt my gratitude is. Some of you have always been in my life, some of you I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in this last remarkable year. You help me create a world in which my imagination can be unleashed. Thank you.

There are some people I simply must mention by name:

Ruth, you worked as hard on Ghosts as I did. Thank you for every moment of your time and all of your amazingly skilled input. It is a privilege to work with you to make the best book we can and I consider myself incredibly lucky.

Radclyffe, thank you for being the inspiration and guide behind all that Bold Strokes Books is and will be, and for letting me live my writing dream.

Sheri, this cover is stunning. Thank you so much for making my book beautiful.

Lynda, thank you, your help with the yoga was invaluable!

And to everyone else at BSB too: the feeling of being part of a team is so incredibly special and my words only become that most magical of things—a book—because of you. Thank you.

Raych, I honestly don’t think this book would be what it is without you. Thank you for all the words we’ve shared.

Lindsey, writing can be a solitary thing. Sharing my lonesome writer’s world with you makes it less daunting and much more fun. Thank you!

And once more to those I haven’t named. I take no one for granted. Thank you.

To the ghosts. Those of history and of our own lives.
May they inspire us, teach us, and remind us
of our common humanity.

1746 – Lord William Fitzsimmons Winter inherits an old Tudor manor house from his father, has it demolished and rebuilt in Palladian style.

1751 – The new Winter Manor is complete. Lord William invites his friends to visit in June.

c.1780 – Lord William dies with no children. Winter passes to his cousins, the Richmond family.

1848 – Though his father still lives, Edward Richmond moves into Winter, with his wife Kitty and his children, Francis and Catherine, then aged nine and five.

1862 – In autumn Maeve Greville comes to tea at Winter and meets Catherine for the first time.

1863 – Maeve returns to Winter in spring, as Francis Richmond’s fiancée.

c.1865 – Catherine Richmond drowns in the river in Winter’s park.

c. 1893 – Francis Richmond inherits Winter from his father. He does not marry and has no children.

c. 1900 – Francis Richmond dies, Winter passes to his distant cousins.

1917 – The legitimate male heir to Winter, Wilfred, is killed in World War I.

1925 – Simon, master of Winter, dies with no living children. Winter passes to his sister, Mary.

1926 – Mary, mistress of Winter, dies and her daughter, Evadne Burns, inherits the house.

1927 – Evadne Burns has a liaison with John Potter, the neighbouring farmer, and falls pregnant. That summer Evadne invites her school friends to Winter for a reunion. Later in the year, John Potter marries May Shipley, the housemaid. Their daughter, Maggie Potter, will eventually inherit her father’s farm.

1928 – Evadne gives birth to a baby girl she names Edith, Edie for short.

1930 – As a result of the global economic meltdown, Evadne is forced to abandon Winter for a smaller house and find work.

1940 – Winter is requisitioned as a place for wounded soldiers to recuperate during World War II.

1945 – Winter is given back to Evadne, in terrible condition. She cannot afford to renovate it, but refuses to sell.

1965 – Evadne Burns dies, and Edie inherits Winter but cannot live there.

c.  2010 – Edie dies and leaves Winter to Ros, then aged 30.

In the rear-view mirror, the road was empty for now, wide and black beneath the bright mid-afternoon sky. Peering ahead, I saw darker skies, threatening rain. I hoped fervently it wasn’t an omen. A sign came into focus, telling me the city of Durham was only another fifty miles north. Only another sixty miles to go until I discovered just what sort of a predicament I’d thrown myself into this time. Starting a new life just after my thirtieth birthday, every familiar part of my life hundreds of miles behind me, wasn’t an adventure I’d ever expected or craved. Yet here I was, driving into the uncertainty.

Winter Manor
. I let the words drift through my head in the way they had done so many times over the last weeks. They were familiar now, but remained as unsettling as they had been from the beginning. A manor house? Not only a manor house, but a manor house located two hundred miles away from everything familiar to me.
My
manor house.

Considering it too deeply made it ludicrous. More ridiculous still, I now had all of my worldly possessions packed into my battered silver Ford Fiesta and was heading for the wilds of County Durham—a region I’d never considered, let alone visited—to move in to said newly acquired manor house. Apart from what I hoped were reliable assurances the house had water and electricity, and a wealth of preliminary structural reports I’d tried to wade through, I knew very little about my new home. I’d not even known it existed a month ago.

A few days after my thirtieth birthday in mid-November, a belated and half-hearted birthday card from my sister had arrived in the morning post through the door of my compact London flat. With it came an intriguing, intimidating letter, summoning me to the offices of a lawyer I’d never heard of. That letter tormented me with curiosity for days. It was all very well informing me I’d been left something in the last will and testament of Miss Edith Burns, and I had to make an appointment to learn the size of the bequest.

What I’d really wanted to know was: who on earth was Miss Edith Burns?

I smiled to myself now as I remembered the kindly lady who lived across the street from my family home in our pretty Hertfordshire village, the house my mother, sister, and I had lived in until I was nearly eleven. Always known to me as Auntie Edie, though she was no relation at all, she had been my surrogate mother, an indulgent grandmother, and an amusing playmate for me in my childhood. My own mother, too busy in her work as a beautician or with indulging my sister—who was five years younger than me and far prettier—had never seemed to have the time for me I’d craved. I’d turned to Auntie Edie instead. I remembered with huge fondness and gratitude her constant supply of lollipops, the horrific lime-green pullover she’d once knitted for me, and the shiny fifty-pence piece she gave to me every birthday.

I’d felt terrible in the lawyer’s office when I’d been informed that Miss Edith Burns was Auntie Edie. I hadn’t forgotten her kindnesses, but I’d not had cause to think of her in many years. The honour that she’d left something to me in her will was momentarily eclipsed by my sadness on realising she had passed away. Eternally a sprightly sixty-something year old in my recollection, I was shocked to learn she had been over eighty when cancer had claimed her. Auntie Edie had been a retired nurse when I knew her. I imagined the bequest would be the adult equivalent of that birthday fifty-pence piece, and I told the lawyer as much.

The lawyer had smiled mysteriously at that point. She informed me Auntie Edie had been born in a small country house, Winter Manor, in County Durham. The property had been in her family for most of the twentieth century but had fallen into disrepair since it was last inhabited in the 1940s. Auntie Edie, having no children, had remembered the little curly-haired child I’d been and left the place to me. I’d also been left most of her money, the result of her lifetime of saving, which was no small sum. The only condition in place required me to oversee the renovation of Winter Manor, returning it to its former glory.