Haunted Ground (13 page)

It was close to 5 p.m. by the time I arrived back at the house.  The men were packing up and loading their tools into the back of the truck, their good-natured banter washing over me as I walked up the stone path.  Aidan called out a greeting, but I gave a wave and kept walking, my mind swirling with questions and doubts.  I walked into the kitchen, set down my bag of books and sat down at the table, the only place in the house besides my room that still had something to sit on.  I propped up my head on my hands and stared into space as Aidan came in.

“Lexi, are you all right?” he asked, cocking his head to the side and giving me a searching look. “You look distinctly down in the mouth.” 

The funny expression made me smile a little, which is what he no doubt intended, but hot tears sprang into my eyes and I rummaged in my bag for a tissue, wiping away the moisture angrily with my hand when I failed to find one. 

“Go on without me,” Aidan called out to George, who came in to tell Aidan they were ready to go.  “I’ll see you at the pub later.”

George was about to make some comment about the two of us being left on our own, but noticed my tear-stained face and just retreated silently, while Aidan popped some bread into the toaster and began to open and close cabinets as if searching for something.  I was grateful that his back was turned to me so I could have my little cry. 

A short time later, Aidan presented me with a mug of milky tea and something on a plate that was brown and oozing.

“What in the world is that?” I asked, blowing my nose and giving Aidan a watery smile.

“That, my dear, is the meal of champions – beans on toast.  Now, eat up.”

“You seriously expect me to eat this?” I asked as I gently moved the plate away from me.  I’d never been a huge fan of beans, but to have them presented this way, on what was now soggy toast accompanied by tea was just revolting.  And since I hadn’t actually bought any canned beans, the logical conclusion would be that they’d been sitting in the cabinet since poor Mrs. Hughes was alive.

“Some Englishmen consider this to be a rare delicacy,” Aidan informed me as he took a seat across from me and took a sip of his own tea. 

“Then you can have it.”  I moved the plate toward him and took a sip of tea.  I’d never really taken it with milk, but this was strangely comforting. 

“So, what happened?” Aidan asked.  It made me feel a little better to see that he was genuinely interested, and not just being polite and discreetly looking at his watch to see how soon he could decently leave and join his mates at the pub.  He had a look of single-minded concentration, which made me feel as if at that moment I was the most important person in the world, but still I hesitated.  I wasn’t sure that I should be dumping my problems on my contractor, but at the moment he was the only one willing to listen, and the closest thing I had to a friend in this new life I had chosen for myself.  I took a deep breath and plunged in.  He might not be able to do anything about my predicament, but it was nice just to be able to share with someone.  Sometimes just saying things out loud made them appear different than when kept inside, where they always managed to fester and take on a greater significance than they deserved. 

“One: A murder took place in this very house and no one thought to tell me about it.”  I folded down one finger and continued. “Two: people keep staring at me and implying that I look like the woman who was killed.”  I folded down a second finger.  “And three:  I keep seeing a man in those ruins, but the physical evidence suggests that he’s not there.”  I was about to start crying again when Aidan gave me a brilliant smile. 

“What are you smiling at?” I asked petulantly.

“You.  And there I thought you had some serious problem,” he replied, still smiling in a way that suddenly made me feel silly.

“Did you know about Kelly?” I asked, my feelings ruffled.

“Of course I did.  A violent death of a young woman might not be news for long in New York, but in a place like this, the story will live on in infamy for generations.  There’s not a person in this village who hasn’t heard of Kelly Gregson.” 

“Well, why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my tone full of accusation.  Why the conspiracy of silence?

Aidan gave a non-committal shrug as he held my gaze.  “To what purpose?  This occurred nearly a quarter of a century ago, and as it happens, you’d be hard-pressed to find any place in Europe where someone wasn’t killed at some point in history.  If people refused to live where others had died, we’d have had to colonize the moon by now.”

I couldn’t help smiling at his logic.  He did have a point.  Aidan took my hand in his large one, making me feel strangely comforted as he went on, “As far as the other things go, you are simply feeling a little out of your element and your nerves are on edge.  There’s no man in the ruins, and people often notice resemblances that aren’t necessarily there.  You bought a house in a small English village, and they want to believe that something special brought you here, like family history.  They like to find meaning in what people do and find connections to the past.  Get used to it, Yank!” he said with a grin. 

“Well, since you put it that way, I feel kind of silly now,” I grudgingly admitted.  I was reading too much into things and seeing things that weren’t there.  I’d always had an overly romantic imagination, so it stood to reason that I was allowing my fantasies to cloud my judgment.  I still had my doubts about the man in the ruins, but there had to be a logical explanation for what I’d seen.  The most likely explanation was that I’d seen an actual person who just happened to come upon the ruins and stopped to explore.  He was long gone, so I had nothing to worry about.

“Good, now eat your beans.”

“That, I refuse to do.”  I was laughing now, my misery of a few moments ago forgotten.  It was nice having someone to talk things over with.

“I think the last thing you need is to spend an evening alone in this empty house.  Why don’t you come back to mine?  We’ll watch a movie and get a pizza, since you refuse to taste my culinary masterpiece.” 

“Thank you, Aidan, but I think I’ll just have a bath and read a little.  I’m actually kind of tired.  Didn’t get much sleep last night,” I added sheepishly. 

“Like that, is it?”  He got to his feet and put his mug in the sink.  “Well, ring me if you change your mind.  I can come and collect you, so you don’t have to walk.”

“I won’t change my mind,” I said, “but thank you all the same.”  

“Drinks in the garden?” Alastair Dees called out as his wife slammed the door shut behind her and kicked off her expensive pumps.  Paula didn’t bother to reply as she let herself out the back door and into the garden, which at the moment was a riot of blooms, lovingly tended by Alastair in his every spare moment.  Normally, Paula loved to sit out there in the evening, enjoying the blissful tranquility that was her sweet little cottage, but tonight she was positively livid. 

A promising deal had fallen through, and then she had the encounter with Lexi Maxwell – all before noon.  The rest of the day wasn’t any better, with Paula staring resentfully at the telephone which rang only once in the afternoon – an inquiry that amounted to nothing.  Business usually picked up a little at the end of the school year, with parents opting to move while the children were off for the summer holidays, but there weren’t many properties for sale anywhere in the village or thereabouts, and the third quarter promised to be much slower than the second, which at least yielded the sale of the Hughes place.

Paula gratefully accepted a glass of Merlot from Alastair and gave him a wan smile.  It wasn’t his fault she had a bloody awful day.  The sight of Alastair always lifted her spirits though.  Not every woman was lucky enough to have such a wonderful husband, a fact on which she congratulated herself daily.  Alastair carelessly brushed a stray lock from his forehead and settled across from Paula, his expression one of concern.  Paula was so rarely in a bad mood that when she was, Alastair feared something catastrophic had occurred.

“What is it, love?” he asked gently.  “You look positively draconian.”  It always made her laugh when he used words like that, being a linguistics professor, but today it failed to amuse. 

“It’s that bloody Maxwell woman,” Paula hissed, taking a healthy sip of her wine.  As much as Paula was upset about the business side of things, it was the confrontation with Lexi that had thrown her off balance.  That was personal.

“The one who bought the Hughes pile?  I thought you were happy about that.  You were positively giddy last week.”  The amount of the commission check did make Paula giddy, especially since linguistics experts didn’t rate much these days, at least not in any financial sense.  If only Alastair could secure a position at Oxford or Cambridge – something that would not only boost their finances considerably, but also give them the kind of social standing that Paula always craved.  Being married to an Oxford don was almost as prestigious as having a minor title, in her opinion, but Alastair was perfectly happy puttering in his garden and working on his book.  He’d chosen some obscure theory which delved into the origins of “ye olde English,” as Paula called it, that likely no one would ever care to read, much less actually publish.

“She came in this morning accusing me of withholding information about Kelly Hughes,” Paula mumbled, pouting like a small child who’d been told off by her mum.

“I suppose she has a right to know,” Alastair offered in his most conciliatory tone.  He was never afraid to tell Paula the truth, but presentation made all the difference to how she took it. 

“I took a calculated risk.  I knew she’d find out soon enough, but by then I’d have the money for that lovely holiday in Ibiza, and no one would be the wiser.  That’s not what really upset me though.”  Paula gave Alastair a sad puppy look that made him get up, walk over to her side of the table and plant a kiss on top of her head. 

“Out with it, love,” he said as he settled back into his seat and raised the glass of wine to his lips. 

“She keeps asking questions about the ruin.” 

Alastair shrugged, failing to see the cataclysmic implications of Paula’s statement.  “So what?  There’s absolutely nothing to find.  Nothing.  All that happened nearly four hundred years ago, and there’s not a soul in this village who even knows about it.”

“I know, and so did old Mrs. Hughes.  She might have told Kelly and Myra.  I won’t have this stain on my family name exposed.”  Paula’s normally pale face was stained red with indignation and worry. 

“Sweetheart, countless men from this village died in the last hundred years alone.  Between the two world wars, this village was left nearly without men.  What difference does some four-hundred-year-old murder make in the face of that?”  Alastair tried to sound reasonable, but Paula’s color rose and her eyes flashed daggers at him.

“You just don’t understand.  There’s a difference between dying on a battlefield, and being betrayed and murdered in cold blood.  There’s divine retribution.”  With that, Paula drained her glass and marched off in the direction of the bedroom, where she slammed the door with enough force to make the windows rattle in their panes.

Alastair leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath of the sweet June air.  It was fragrant with the smell of flowers blooming all around him, freshly cut grass, and a whiff of resin from the lawn chairs.  Life was wonderful, and Alastair was damned if he would allow himself to worry about something that happened centuries ago.  His wife really was too dramatic sometimes, but that’s what made her so fun.  Her theatrics extended to the bedroom, so were well worth putting up with.  Alastair smiled happily and took another sip of wine.  When Paula’s passion was aroused, he was the beneficiary, so he had better not drink too much.  He’d need his strength tonight.

September 1650

England

The house was quiet as a chapel when Brendan woke up on Sunday morning.  A gentle rain fell outside, the leaden sky making the gloom in the loft nearly impenetrable as Brendan gritted his teeth and forced himself to get up.  He took a few tentative steps around the loft before sitting back down again, his muscles shaking with tension from disuse and his head light from the loss of blood he suffered.  Pain was his constant companion these days, dulled only by cups of mead before bedtime.  Brendan reached for the glass of milk and slice of bread so thoughtfully provided by Rowan before she left last night.  The milk was pleasantly cool, but the bread, which Rowan had wrapped in a piece of muslin to keep from getting stale, was a bit hard, so Brendan dipped it in the milk to make chewing easier.  A tooth on the right side had been bothering him for months, the pain shooting into his jaw as he thoughtlessly bit on something hard.  At this point, the only part of his body that felt intact was his feet, but he was too weak to use them.

He’d been at Reverend Pole’s for nearly a week now, but neither his aunt nor uncle had come to visit him.  He understood their reasons, but perhaps they felt relieved to be rid of him, although he didn’t really believe that.  Uncle Caleb was the type of man you could trust implicitly; the type of man you wanted next to you in battle, and in life.  Brendan always relied on first impressions, and Uncle Caleb was the type of man who on first impression appeared to be a man of sound judgment and stout principle.  He could not be bought or cowered, and would do the right thing, if only to appease his conscience. Brendan trusted Caleb with his life. 

Aunt Joan was also a kind woman, much like his mother when it came to those she loved, and she’d always treated him like a son. If they hadn’t come, it was for his own safety, he reasoned, needing to feel that someone in this world besides Meg and his mother still cared for him.

Brendan perked up as he heard movement downstairs.  Reverend Pole was back from church, so it must be around noon.  Brendan stilled in an effort to hear any sounds made by Rowan, but it seemed Reverend Pole was alone.  It would make sense for Rowan to go home after the service and have Sunday dinner with the family.  She likely wouldn’t come at all today.  The thought depressed Brendan, but he resolutely put it out of his mind, cursing himself for a fool. 

The creaking of the ladder announced the imminent arrival of the reverend.  It took him a long while to make it up to the loft, especially if he were carrying something in one hand.  The poor man was a mere shadow of the man he’d been only a few years ago at Maisie’s wedding.  He was gaunt and frail, his rheumy eyes faded with age.  They must have been blue once, but now they were more of a washed-out gray, almost colorless, as was his face.  Brendan suddenly wondered if he would ever get to grow old, and if there would be anyone by his side when he did.

He hadn’t had much time to dwell on the future in the past few years, especially since it was assured, as long as he came back alive.  He’d marry Mary, inherit the estate, and go on much as his father had, content in the knowledge that he’d done his bit to try to bring about change and improve the political process of this country.  Brendan cursed himself for a fool once again, smiling humorlessly at his own naiveté.  Young girls didn’t wait patiently while men pursued their own ends; fathers had the power to alter the line of succession, and a fight for freedom was sometimes nothing more than a struggle to further one man’s ambitions.  Fool! 

The reverend finally made it up and placed a plate of cold roast pork, pickle and bread on the wooden trunk as he took a moment to catch his breath.  There was a wheezing noise coming from deep inside his chest as he sucked in air, almost in vain since he was still out of breath.  It took a few minutes for the reverend to finally recover from his ordeal, making Brendan feel terribly guilty for putting the old man into this position.

“How are you, my boy?  On the mend, I hope.  I know I’m a poor substitute for Rowan, but she’s with her family today.  They’ll be joined for Sunday dinner by Stephen Aldrich and his children.  It’s become their custom of late.”

Brendan took a bite of pork and chewed thoughtfully, making sure not to bite down too hard with his aching tooth.  The pork was a welcome relief to the bread, which despite the milk felt as if it’d lodged in his throat.  Was there some significance to Reverend Pole mentioning this bit of information about Stephen Aldrich? 

“I don’t recall meeting him in the past.  Is he a friend of my uncle?”  Brendan could see from the reverend’s expression that he had been anticipating the question and he took a moment to answer, thinking how to phrase it best.

“I suppose they’re friends, but he’s Rowan’s intended.  They are to wed in the spring once Stephen’s year of mourning for his wife is at an end.”  Brendan’s look of misery wasn’t lost on the reverend, who told him of Rowan’s engagement on purpose to subtly discourage any affection he might harbor for the girl. 

“I’m sorry, Brendan, but I thought it best you knew.  She’s not likely to tell you herself, so I took it upon myself to be the bearer of sad tidings.  I might be an old man, but I see the look on her face after she’s been up here with you, and I have every reason to suspect the feeling is not one-sided.”

“Thank you, Reverend, but no apology is needed. Rowan is a lovely girl who’s been very kind to me, but I have no claim on her, and nothing to offer any woman at the moment; not until I reclaim the estate from Jasper.”  Brendan continued to chew, but the pork suddenly tasted bland and chewy in his mouth, as did the fresh bread which now felt like dust on his tongue.  He didn’t know why he was so upset; as he told the reverend, he had no right to be, but his stomach was in knots and he suddenly felt sorry for himself, not a quality he admired.  Brendan carefully set the plate aside and took a sip of ale, grateful for the cool liquid which washed the bitterness from his mouth.

The old man smiled apologetically as he reached for Brendan’s hand.  “That’s not all, I’m afraid. I have some bad news that has nothing to do with Rowan.  I spoke with your uncle after church today.  He can’t come to see you for fear of giving away your hiding place.”  Reverend Pole looked toward the little window, his face a mask of misery.  “It seems that some men came looking for you yesterday, informing your uncle that you’ve been accused of murder.  They mean to bring you to justice.”

Brendan just stared at the reverend.  Of course he had committed murder, but it was in self-defense.  It was kill or be killed, so how could anyone prosecute him for that?  In fact, how could anyone know it was him anyway, since there were no witnesses and the only person who might know was Jasper?  Brendan voiced his argument to Reverend Pole, who shook his head sadly, a look of pity in his colorless eyes.

“It seems some items belonging to you were found by the bodies.”

“What items?”  Had he dropped something as he fled?  He barely had anything on him other than his sword, a purse with a few coins in it, and the bundle of food Meg had given him for the journey.

“There was a prayer book with your name in it and a ring your father had given you on your eighteenth birthday.”  Brendan nearly gagged at the injustice of it all.  It was ludicrous.  He had not had a prayer book on him, and the ring his father had given him was still on his finger.  He hadn’t taken it off since the day he proudly put it on, so whatever ring was found at the scene of the attack was not the one.  Jasper had obviously planted these things when he found his men dead in an effort to tie Brendan to the crime without having to explain his own part in it.  A venomous snake in the grass, his brother was. 

“Brendan, the penalty for murder is hanging, and as a reverend, I wouldn’t be treated kindly for aiding and abetting a criminal.”

Brendan felt as if icy fingers closed around his heart, making it difficult to breathe.  “Are you asking me to leave, Reverend, or telling me politely that you are going to turn me in?” Brendan asked through clenched teeth, his hands balled into fists.  The reverend laid a hand on his arm in a conciliatory gesture, suddenly realizing the way he must have sounded. 

“Neither, my boy.  I know that you are innocent in the eyes of God, and that’s good enough for me.  I will hide you for as long as it takes, but I simply wanted to alert you to the situation and explain why your uncle hasn’t come to see you.  We must be very careful, for Rowan’s sake as well.  She has her own reasons to fear the law, so let’s not do anything that might endanger her.”

Brendan opened his mouth to ask, but Reverend Pole put a gnarled finger to his lips, shaking his head.  Whatever Rowan had done, was between him, her, and God, and he wouldn’t speak a word against her.  Brendan nodded in understanding, respecting the man that much more.  If Rowan wanted to share with him, she would, but he wouldn’t pry.  She was risking her own safety to care for him, and he was eternally grateful, regardless of what secrets she carried in her heart.