House of Shadows (18 page)

Holly raised her eyebrows.

‘You’ve got a secretive face.’ Fran was on a roll now. ‘You should have been a bloody Trappist monk—’

‘In another life, perhaps.’

Fran closed the first blind with a metallic click and locked it. ‘She’s had a lot of problems, that girl,’ she said. ‘They both have, Flick and Joe. Mark’s been a star for taking them on. Actually I think it helped him too. Gave him something to focus on.’ She glanced at Holly over her shoulder. ‘How did it go last night?’ she asked. Then, when Holly looked blank, she prompted: ‘With your grandparents? Weren’t they coming over to take a look at what you’ve done with the mill?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Holly smiled. ‘They like it. We had a nice time.’

‘Not too difficult?’ Fran pressed. ‘I mean after Ben’s disappearance I wouldn’t have expected that any of you would want to set foot near the place.’

‘I would have thought so too,’ Holly admitted, ‘but I like it there. It’s comforting, somehow.’

‘Great.’ Fran gestured towards the deli counter. ‘Look, would you like a hot chocolate? Hattie and Luke are with the child-minder until six so there’s plenty of time. We could take it outside as it’s still warm.’

‘You’ve cleaned up already,’ Holly objected. ‘Won’t it make a mess?’

‘Hot chocolate with whipped cream is worth any amount of mess,’ Fran said.

‘I’m starting to feel that all I do here is eat and drink,’ Holly said with a sigh. ‘Not that I’m complaining.’

She went outside with Bonnie whilst Fran switched on the machine. The low hum of it mingled with the caw of the rooks nesting in the edge of the wood and the everpresent drone of the diggers at the building site. Mark must work long hours whilst his kid sister was running around the countryside in a flash sports car.

‘Does Mark have a sports car?’ she asked Fran when she reappeared with a tray complete with two mugs of chocolate, a pot of cinnamon sprinkles and a plate of cupcakes.

‘Yeah,’ Fran said. ‘It’s an Aston Martin. Racing green. He calls it the last vestige of his past life.’

‘It must be hell on these roads,’ Holly said. She took a sip of the chocolate. ‘Oh, that’s good. Thank you, Fran.’

‘My pleasure.’ Fran sat back in the chair with a contented sigh. ‘Aren’t these warm evenings gorgeous?’ She turned her head and looked at Holly. ‘Have you found out any more about Ben’s research, by the way?’

‘I’m going to take a look at some of the papers he consulted tomorrow,’ Holly said. ‘I must say I was a bit surprised to find out that there was a link between Ashdown Park and the Winter Queen,’ she added. ‘I had no idea. I met someone recently …’ she hesitated, ‘who gave me an artefact from Elizabeth’s court in The Hague. A piece of crystal.’

‘Really?’ Fran was lying back in her chair, face tilted up to the sun, eyes closed. She sounded sleepy. ‘You don’t seem very pleased. Is it hideous? Give it away. Or better still, sell it on eBay.’

Holly almost snorted into her hot chocolate at the thought of trying to sell the crystal mirror on eBay.
‘Pre-loved mirror decorated with diamonds, boasting a slightly
dodgy reputation … Very beautiful if you like that sort of thing, may tell the future but may also bring bad luck …’

‘I’d better get going,’ she said regretfully, draining her mug. ‘I want to do some more work this evening. No, Bon Bon—’ she pushed the dog’s nose gently away from the remaining cupcakes, ‘not for you. I’ll give you your tea when we get back.’

‘I’ll stay here a bit longer,’ Fran said. ‘It’s so peaceful.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Did you find your way back OK yesterday? The path by the Pearlstone?’

‘Oh yes,’ Holly said. ‘Thanks. It’s a magnificent sarsen, isn’t it?’ She picked up Bonnie’s lead and made for the stile that led to the footpath. ‘Thanks for the hot chocolate,’ she added, over her shoulder. ‘It was delicious.’

The sun was low now, sparkling with golden radiance. It struck across Holly’s eyes for a moment, completely dazzling her, then over the trees she saw the top of a bright white house with a dainty cupola crowned with a golden ball, so high that it seemed to sail against the blue of the sky.

‘Are you all right?’ Fran sounded concerned.

‘I’m fine.’ Holly realised she was standing stock still in the courtyard with both Bonnie and Fran staring at her curiously. She glanced back instinctively at the woods. No house stood there. There was nothing but the woods, sunlit and empty, nothing at all.

I
raised the birch and belaboured Lord Hiscox about his plump posterior until it was rosy and heated and his lordship was begging me for mercy. Knowing that he required to be beaten in order to be roused I ignored his pitiful pleas for clemency and struck all the harder until his member jutted forth, painfully purple and distended, and I was able to give him the relief he craved. As soon as he was spent the others ran forwards to untie him and his place at the flogging stand was taken by Lord Carvel, so eager he was trembling with excitement.

Holly closed down the ebook and her screen went blank. She felt quite exhausted reading about all the flagellation that went on in Lavinia’s brothel. The published version of Lavinia’s memoir was an endless litany of sexual excess. From the rampant outrages of Oxford undergraduates to every conceivable fetish of the
Haut Ton
it romped along with no apparent plot or indeed moral to the story. The Lavinia of
The Scandalous Diary of a Regency Courtesan
was a happy prostitute who leaped from one liaison to the next, or several at a time. She bore little relation to the Lavinia of the handwritten memoir and although some of the story was the same it was written in a parody of Lavinia’s lively prose style and it felt like a cheap, exploitative copy.

She turned to the weighty tome she had picked up at Swindon Library after her chat with Fran. It was an analysis of sexual morals and mores in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and it mentioned Lavinia’s diary a number of times, describing it as an attempt to cash in on her experience as a courtesan in order to make sufficient money to support herself in later life. Originally entitled, quite wittily, Holly thought,
The Transit of Venus
, it had gone through various editions and was generally considered to be one of the more explicitly erotic writings of the time. It did not try to present Lavinia in a sympathetic light or with any shred of good reputation. It was this, the author asserted, that had made
The Transit of Venus
a great deal more financially successful than the daring but relatively discreet diaries of other courtesans.

It was the comment about financing a retirement that made Holly wonder what had really happened to Lavinia in the end. Her grandfather had said that Lavinia had disappeared from the public view but that was the extent of her knowledge. She clicked on the Internet and keyed Lavinia’s name into the search engine. There were a number of brief biographies of her; all of them claimed that she had retired to live abroad. There was no record of where she had gone or when her death occurred. No one seemed particularly interested, which felt odd. It seemed extraordinary to her
that scholars had made such assumptions about Lavinia’s retirement. But then they had only read the published diary, which ended with Lavinia disappearing into the sunset to live happily ever after on the wages of sin. No one but she – and perhaps Ben – had seen the original diary and realised how very different it was.

It had a completely different tale to tell.

Holly got up and walked over to the sink, filling the kettle and switching it on. The hiss of boiling water filled the quiet room. Outside dusk was falling. It had been another long, hot, dry day. As she waited for the tea to brew, Holly thought about the memoir. There was no doubt that the two different versions were a puzzle. Perhaps Lavinia had submitted the original to a publisher and they had thought it too tame and spiced it up. But Holly was certain that the published version was not actually Lavinia’s work. She felt it deep inside; the ‘fake’ Lavinia of
The Transit of Venus
was far too brash and superficial. She had none of the nuance of the diary. She was cold and dislikeable where the ‘real’ Lavinia, for all her faults, was a warm and vulnerable woman.

Holly took her cup of tea back to the sitting room and picked up the original, settling back against the cushions, opening the book at the page she had last left off reading. Instantly she felt comfortable again, drawn back into the true story.

Ashdown Park, 9th February 1801

Someone has come. Something has happened in this deadly dull place. My lord has invited a gentleman to visit so that he may make an up-to-date survey of the estate. It seems an odd time of year to
choose for such a project with the snow lying thick on the ground. It is even odder of Evershot to want yet more maps of his lands when he already has a dozen of them. However I am past trying to understand his behaviour.

Mr Verity, the surveyor, is a very serious fellow with a horse whose face is as long as his own. The only dash of frivolity he betrays is in his apparel, which is very elegant; buff breeches and a blue coat that suits him very well. He rides out each day about the woods and hills, making small cairns out of stone and measuring distance with a peculiar squat piece of machinery. This much I have observed. I know no more as Mr Verity is silent the rest of the time, which makes for dinners no more entertaining than they were before his arrival.

In the beginning Mr Verity’s presence seemed to lighten my lord’s mood, which was very welcome. They would study the maps together and Evershot would often retire to bed in a state of high excitement and make love to me with great energy and little skill for a number of hours until in desperation I was ready to beg him to cease. I had no idea that the study of old maps could be so arousing to his senses.

Alas, his good humour did not last and for this I only had myself to blame. In my vanity I tried to win over our guest. Of course I did. The practice of flirtation comes naturally to me as breathing. I soon stopped for Mr Verity was impervious to my charms. There are women who claim that they can seduce any man living but clearly they have not met Mr Verity, for he appears to find his scientific instruments a great deal more attractive than any member of the opposite sex.

Even the mildest sign of flirtation was sufficient to send my lord into a jealous rage. He has an angry and possessive disposition and
on the second week of Mr Verity’s stay he took exception to some words we exchanged and positively dragged me from the room to berate me over it. After that he punished me long into the night with fearful games of his own devising. He has a particular liking for the crop and I am badly marked from it this morning. The ministration of my punishment drove my lord into such a frenzy of lust that I am bruised and sore as well. I had to send Clara into Lambourn to fetch ointment and I stayed in my room all day pleading illness, which was not so far from the truth. My lord seemed little concerned, for he went out hawking from dawn to dusk and did not send word to ask after me even when he returned. But I expect no more than this. I am bought and paid for, a commodity. To demand concern, consideration or even affection would be naïve and would only lead to heartache. My heartache, that is. Evershot, I am persuaded, has no heart to wound. He cares for nothing but material pleasure which, dear reader, probably makes him less of a fool than I.

Wincing, Holly put down Lavinia’s memoir. Here was another example of the original diary differing greatly from the published memoirs; in the published version Lavinia had become intimately acquainted with Lord Evershot’s penchant for BDSM from the start and participated enthusiastically in it. The tone of Lavinia’s diary was, however, quite different. She did not complain of Evershot’s practices but it was clear that he had hurt her badly and that she was in no way willing.

Holly imagined that the reality must have been so much more difficult to bear than the bald words of the diary suggested. Being the kept mistress of a rich aristocrat was not necessarily a privilege. Women could be abused in as
many ways as men chose, men who thought it was their right.

Holly found she had wrapped her arms about her for comfort against the revulsion that gripped her. For Lavinia to be subject to the sadistic sexual whims of the man who had bought her was demeaning. She liked hard-headed, grasping Lavinia too much to see her humiliated by Evershot and that, she realised, was one of the reasons that the published diary angered her too. It was a travesty of the real Lavinia. It exploited her as much as Evershot had.

For a moment she was tempted to put the diary aside but that felt like a coward’s way out. Not reading about Lavinia’s treatment did not make it any more acceptable. Her heart ached a little as she picked the diary up and read on to the next entry.

Ashdown Park, 14th February 1801

It snows and snows and snows until all is obliterated in unending blankness. It is too deep for Mr Verity to make his measurements so he spends his time in my lord’s library writing out complicated mathematical calculations. This delay in his quest frustrates my lord very much and then he vents his irritation on me. A bear with a sore head would be of sunny disposition in comparison.

This place begins to haunt me. On these dark winter days it is full of gloom. All the dead faces of Lord Evershot’s ancestors gaze down at me from the walls of the staircase and landings in censorious disdain. I feel their eyes following me. There is only one of them that I like and it is a beautiful picture of the Earl of Craven with the Winter Queen. He is seated and she is crowning him with a wreath of laurel. He looks very handsome, but a little melancholy,
whilst she is so very beautiful. Oh, to find a love like that! But I am no ingénue. I know love is not for me and indeed I should not want it for it addles the wits and leads to all manner of mad behaviour.

I have been reading about the Earl of Craven. The books I chose were by my lord’s mother who has written several works of dubious quality. She fancies herself a playwright but I think she flatters herself. She has also written a family history not only reinventing her own story to erase those inconvenient infidelities to the late Lord Evershot, but also to give the family an even more illustrious pedigree than it already had. This may be as much a work of fiction as her plays but I found it entertaining enough.

She writes of the famous exploits of the Earl of Craven, that grand cavalier of two hundred years ago. He sounds most dashing. He saved the life of Prince Rupert of the Rhine in battle, he rescued London from fire and plague and he was the model of honour and virtue and gallantry. I quite believe that Lady Evershot is in love with him herself, or at least with the notion of him. She states quite plain that the Earl and the Winter Queen were married, though she does not say from whence she has gained this information. According to her they were wed secretly in The Hague during the years of the English Civil War and when they returned to England at the Restoration of the King in 1660 they lived together quite openly in London. Alas, though, some quarrel drove them apart, though not even milady’s fertile pen comes up with an explanation for this. It cannot have been so very serious, however, for upon her death, the Queen left to Lord Craven her portraits and her hunting trophies as a sign of her regard for him. Those wretched antlers! They adorn every room of this house and make me think of the poor deer that gave their lives in the service of Her Majesty’s entertainment.

Mrs Palfrey, the housekeeper, tells me in the strictest confidence that there were other royal possessions bequeathed to the Earl, including a famous cross of rose gold that had belonged to the King of Bohemia. With much whispering and furtive glances she told me of another treasure too, a pearl of great price that men spoke of softly because it was said to have the power to foretell the future. It is said that Lord Craven hid it for fear of men’s greed and covetousness.

Now this made me think. Perhaps it is this pearl that my lord Evershot currently seeks for I hear the rosy cross was sold long ago to pay his gambling debts. Since he is the greediest and most covetous of men, it would make sense that he should be seeking to exploit his ancestor’s riches. I will confess that finding a pearl of great price, or indeed any treasure, would certainly enliven our days here. Unfortunately Mr Verity is too discreet and Evershot too irritable to discuss their business with me, so I am unlikely to discover the truth. This is a great pity since my curiosity very nearly consumes me but I know I must hold my tongue. I do not wish to give Evershot further cause to whip me.

Holly put the book down slowly beside her on the sofa. She could feel a ripple of goosebumps over her skin as though there was a cool breeze blowing through the mill. For here it was: the reference to the Sistrin. Ben must have found it too when he was reading through the memoir. Like Evershot before him, he must have been on the trail of the Winter Queen’s pearl. That would explain why he had read up about its history and contacted Espen Shurmer for information on its whereabouts. He believed Lavinia’s memoir when she claimed the Sistrin was hidden at Ashdown Park.

Holly stood up, rubbing her eyes. It was very late but suddenly her tiredness had fled, banished by an excitement that gripped her hard. Had Evershot discovered the pearl’s hiding place? She guessed that he had not since Espen Shurmer had told her it had never been found. But Ben might well have done.