The Dead of Haggard Hall

by Marie Treanor

  “I’ve no idea,” Emily said. Her eyes widened into mine. “Oh dear, what if Irene’s frightened of thunder too?”

  I glanced at Susan, who was stabbing at an embroidery as if it were her worst enemy. Or an unwanted guest like me.

  “She won’t think of it, and on this, I can hardly advise her.” Emily drew in a deep breath and tensed to stand. “I’ll go and see her.”

  “Stay,” I said. “You have company here at least. I won’t be long, I promise. Where does she sleep?”

  “Above the schoolroom. You can reach it from your own corridor or from the ground-floor staircase outside the schoolroom.”

  I nodded, murmured my excuses, and left. The widowed Ladies Haggard clearly imagined I was leaving for the night.

  As I hurried across the spacious, deserted hallway towards the dark, east wing passage, a slightly eerie weeping sound reached me. It grew louder as I rounded into the passage itself. A flash of lightning pierced through the tall window above and broke over a couple huddled in the corner. The girl’s weeping was drowned by a thunderclap which shook the house, and Prince Bela stood in front of her, shielding her from my view—too late, for I had already glimpsed her red hair.

  I hesitated. I could have pretended not to see them; after all, I had no wish to interfere in affairs that were none of my concern. On the other hand, I refused to stand by while a guest of the house abused a maid. And she was weeping. So I halted and looked beyond Prince Bela.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked the hidden girl directly.

  “No, miss.” A sniff belied her words.

  “Milly is upset about the stable hand who died,” Bela said. “She and Martin were to be married.”

  In which case, it struck me she had picked a very odd comforter.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to the sniffing darkness. “If you need anything, you should speak to Lady Haggard—young Lady Haggard—who will do all she can to help you.” If the girl was with child, she would not confide it to me, a stranger.

  Bela said with relief, “That is what I have been telling her. Have you lost your way, Mrs. Darke?”

  “No, I’m going to check on Irene.”

  A candle flickered into life, illuminating the tear-stained maid and the table beside her where several unlit candles stood on a tray.

  “I’ll come with you, miss, if you like,” Milly said. “It’ll be dark at least as far as the schoolroom.”

  Bela patted her shoulder in a kindly sort of way and strolled off towards the stairs. Although it was odd of him to be comforting the maid in dark corners, he didn’t behave like a wicked seducer who’d been foiled. I decided not to probe that one too deeply. Yet.

  “What time does Irene go to bed?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know, miss.”

  “Who puts her to bed?”

  “I’m not sure now. It used to be Nanny Grace, but she died more than a year ago. I suppose it must be Miss Salton, the governess.”

  Not her mother, then.

  “You think she might be frightened of the storm, miss?” Milly said.

  “Lady Haggard wondered.”

  “Young Lady Haggard,” Milly said, then glanced at me, perhaps to see if I’d picked up on the implied criticism of the other Ladies Haggard.

  I was more concerned with the spirits playing around in the air. They didn’t seem remotely interested in us. Benign. And yet there were cold, evil emotions here too…

  I shivered as we passed the old nursery door. Faint illumination drifted down the staircase from the upper floor. We walked on to the schoolroom, where a light shone under the door. I opened it and went in.

  Irene stood alone by the window, gazing out at the storm. She wore night clothes with a woollen robe over the top.

  She swung around to us. “Mrs. Darke,” she said in surprise. “Milly.”

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed, miss?” Milly said.

  The child shrugged. “I was watching the storm. It’s too loud in my room. There’s a tree branch blows against the window like knocking hands, and in the lightning, it looks like wicked faces. Down here is better.”

  “What if we come up with you?” I suggested.

  Again, she looked so surprised that my heart broke for her. “We could look,” she said cautiously.

  As we left, Milly put out the lamp and closed the door. I said casually, “Of course, you are grown-up enough now to get yourself ready for bed.”

  “Yes, of course. But Miss Salton still makes sure I brush my teeth.”

  I smiled. “Does she tuck you in?”

  “Oh no. She goes down for her own dinner, and I read or play and put the lamp out when I choose.”

  I wondered if her mother even looked in on her later.

  She had a nice bedroom, though, prettily decorated and bright, with lots of books and dolls and hand-covered cushions. The curtain had been pulled back, so I could see what she meant about the tree.

  “No more knocking,” I told it severely. “Miss Irene has to sleep… I beg your pardon?”

  I turned my head on one side, then smiled at Irene, who was watching me wide-eyed. “The tree was just trying to chat to you. He likes to play too. I suspect he’ll calm down when the storm does.”

  Irene giggled. She didn’t believe a word of it, but I could see she liked the idea. She trotted towards the bed as Milly lifted up the covers for her.

  I glanced back to the window, meaning to come up with an amusing remark from the tree, but a movement below caught my eye, and I looked down instead. A dark figure lurked there in the storm, barely visible. He—it looked like a man’s outline—seemed to have been staring up at the house, and with a jolt of my stomach, I wondered if Irene was right to have been uneasy in her room. Then he moved, raising both hands to his bare head, and dropped like a stone into a crouch, head down, his body as small as it could be.

  I didn’t need my gift of empathy to recognize human torment. Behind him, the wind howled in the trees, whipping their branches as the rain beat down on them and on the crouching man on the ground, for whom something was unutterably unbearable.

  I nearly asked Milly who he was, only I didn’t want to upset Irene any further, and in any case, I realized this window was on the same side of the house as the attic studio. The window from which Martin had fallen was almost directly above the crouching man.

  Grief. Only grief. And he was entitled to his in privacy.

  “Maybe,” I suggested, turning back into the room, “you’d like to keep me company until the storm passes? Silent company.”

  “Or me,” Milly said, catching on. “Then you could go back to Lady Haggard, miss, and I wouldn’t be alone.”

  And perhaps poor Milly needed the distraction.

  Irene glanced from one to the other of us. “You’re both daft,” she pronounced, lying down. “But you can stay if you like.”

  “Thanks, Milly,” I said to the maid, and to Irene, “Good night.”

  Irene gave me a friendly, much more contented smile than the one I’d seen in the schoolroom. I cast a last glance out the window, but the tormented man had vanished, so I simply drew the curtains and left the room. This time I walked along the winding bedroom passage until I reached the central staircase and ran lightly down to the gallery, from where I could see Emily warily crossing the wide entrance hallway below.

  When she caught sight of me, her shoulders relaxed in relief, and I hurried down to join her. She stopped to wait for me. “I’ve been sent to find cards so we can play whist.” She wrinkled her nose. “I detest whist, and old Lady Haggard cheats.”

  “Maybe you won’t be able to find the cards,” I suggested.

  “Excellent idea. How’s Irene?”

  “Brave but a little put out. The maid Milly is with her. Emily, does no one see that child into bed?”

  Emil
y frowned as I joined her. “I don’t know. I assumed Miss Salton—” She broke off, clutching my arm as lightning flashed through several windows at once, followed almost immediately by a deafening clap of thunder that seemed to roll right over the roof.

  At the same time, a rush of air chilled my scalp, stirring my hair, and several candles in the hall blew out at once, leaving only the dim light from two wall lamps.

  Emily’s eyes widened and her mouth opened and closed soundlessly before she managed to say, “That shouldn’t happen, Barbara. You know it—”

  As the thunder began to die away, something crashed into the front door opposite us, making us both jump and Emily squeal.

  “What’s that?” she whispered in panic.

  “It sounds like someone knocking on the door,” I said as calmly as I could.

  “Why don’t they ring the bell?” she countered as the banging went on.

  I thought about it. “Maybe the bell is broken, which is why the servants don’t hear.” I began to walk across the hall with Emily dangling from my elbow, trying to hold me back.

  I paused and stared at her. “What? Do you think it’s some evil spirit knocking on the door to get out of the rain?”

  She blinked, gave a half laugh, and released my elbow, although she scurried after me the rest of the way to the door. I struggled with the heavy latch, and then, as soon as I began to draw the door back, the wind whipped it out of my hand and blasted me backwards. At the same time, lightning forked across the sky, flashing over the grim, angular face of a large, soaking-wet man, all hollow cheeks and hard eyes that showed amber like a wolf’s.

  Emily let out a cry and fell back, clutching me around the waist as the stranger, water running off him like a fresh shower, strode into the house and forced the door shut once more.

  Only, of course, he wasn’t a stranger. My hand crept up over my heart to my throat.

  Arthur bolted out of the dining room above, no doubt to see why his wife had screamed, Bela Hiranyi and Henry Faversham at his heels. Arthur was scowling over the banister with concern, until he caught sight of his visitor, when his face relaxed into a grin, and he rushed downstairs.

  “Patrick!” he exclaimed, pushing right past us and holding out an eager hand. “We didn’t expect you!”

  “Apparently not,” Patrick said dryly.

  My worst fears were realized. Arthur’s cousin and unofficial guardian was indeed the man who’d witnessed my mother’s séance so contemptuously the night before I left London. His name was just as my mother had said.

  But more than that, something in the way the rain rolled off his soaked person made me think of the agonized man I’d seen crouching in the storm. He carried his torment with him, like an echo which bounced between us.

  Chapter Five

  Somehow, I felt as if Emily and I were naughty school girls, while the men ignored us in greetings. I would, in fact, have quite cravenly effaced myself except that Emily’s fingers clung to mine with a grip of iron. Even before I’d come here, I’d understood that this cousin intimidated her. And when Patrick Haggard was extricating himself from Prince Bela’s very un-British embrace, his amused gaze fell on us and hardened at once. But at least the wolf-like amber was revealed as a trick of the lightning.

  Patrick Haggard was not a handsome man by most standards. His features, like his body, seemed too large and flung together. And yet there was something about him, the same something that had attracted me in London. His attitude then had told me I wasn’t the only woman who’d noticed. He was used to the attentions of women. But I would allow neither that nor anything else about him to intimidate me. Or Emily.

  Deliberately, I dropped my protective hand from my throat and let it hang by my side.

  “You are soaking wet!” Bela exclaimed. “Did you ride from Market Gainborough? In this storm?”

  The harsh dark eyes moved to Bela. “My horse didn’t care for it. I stabled him myself.”

  “What was your hurry?” Arthur demanded. “Is something wrong?”

  Patrick Haggard turned to him. “So I heard. You have a dead stable lad.”

  I couldn’t see his face, but something in it made Arthur’s crumble, perhaps in compassion or even shame. I didn’t know him well enough to gauge, and there was so much emotion swirling in the hall at that moment—including my own—that I couldn’t isolate his. In any case, it was a tiny moment, swiftly passed as Mr. Haggard turned to us, and stepped politely closer, his hand held out to Emily.

  “How do you do, Emily?” he said. “I’m sorry for turning up unannounced. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not.” Reluctantly, it seemed, Emily released my fingers to take his hand. “You know you are always welcome here. It’s your home too.”

  I didn’t quite approve of that. It seemed to me Emily regarded this house as everyone else’s home, which was why it wasn’t hers. I could see her difficulties with the previous ladies of Haggard Hall, but a mere cousin she didn’t like, even if he was her husband’s unofficial guardian, was carrying things too far.

  On the other hand, I found nothing exceptionable in his greeting to cow her. His manners were a little careless, perhaps, but that seemed to be his way. He was, so far at least, perfectly civil.

  “And you must meet my friend Mrs. Barbara Darke,” Emily said warmly. “Barbara, Mr. Patrick Haggard, who’s Arthur’s cousin, in case you haven’t guessed.”

  At last those devastating eyes landed directly on mine, harsh and cold with a scorn I had done nothing yet to earn. If he had been the man prostrated by grief, I saw no trace of him now. But at least he was polite enough to offer his hand.

  “Mrs. Darke,” he said, with more than a hint of mockery. “Have we met before?”

  It was so clear that he expected me to deny it or to evince some kind of shame in our last encounter that I almost laughed.

  “Not formally,” I said, curling my lip. “But then, I don’t believe you were acquainted with our hostess.”

  Perhaps it wasn’t wise to bait him with accusations of vulgar trespass, although that was undoubtedly what he’d done. I was sure he’d been looking into me, to see if I was worthy to enter his cousin’s home. And if he’d found my mother’s abode, then he’d spoken to the school. But I refused to be ashamed of any of it.

  The tiniest twitch of one eyebrow was his only sign that I’d surprised him, although I thought a new gleam entered his eye as he took up the challenge.

  “On the contrary,” he said gently. “Lady Fairford and I are old acquaintances.”

  I was ready for that one. “Lady Fairford’s name should not have been on your card of invitation. There was clearly some mistake.”

  “Clearly,” he said, his voice and his expression merely amused.

  I narrowed my eyes, for he obviously wished to imply that the mistake was somehow mine.

  Fortunately, perhaps, Emily interrupted our ill-natured tête à tête. “You know each other?” she said in amazement.

  “No,” I said baldly.

  “A mere memory across a crowded room,” Mr. Haggard mocked. “Mrs. Darke was taken unwell.”

  I smiled. “No, I wasn’t. I was perfectly well.”

  “You didn’t look it,” Mr. Haggard said frankly.

  “Ah well, you know me so little.”

  Mr. Haggard finished stripping off his wet coat and handed it to the approaching butler with a surprising quick, rueful grin. Then he turned back to me, smiling straight into my eyes, and I have to confess the effect was devastating, especially when accompanied by a spark of that powerful lust I’d sensed in him before.

  “But I can see how charmingly you look now. The difference is most marked.”

  I was sure he recognized the black lace I’d been wearing that night too. I felt colour rise to my cheeks. Anger, of course, but I still hoped the dim light in the h
all would hide it. “I’m not sure if I should thank you for that.”

  “No,” Mr. Haggard said and turned to Emily. “May I nip up to my old room and change out of these wet clothes?”

  “Of course,” Emily said faintly. “Oh and I’ll send to the kitchen for some dinner for you.”

  “Don’t let Patrick tease you, Mrs. Darke,” Arthur said easily as his cousin ran upstairs with a light, familiar tread. “It’s just his sense of fun, and he likes it when you give as good at you get.”

  “Which you did,” Emily murmured, taking my arm and giving it a little squeeze.

  Arthur laughed, taking his wife’s arm on her other side, and together we repaired to the drawing room, Bela and Mr. Faversham following us, since the men seemed to have given up their port by tacit agreement.

  “Was someone at the door at this time of night?” Susan demanded as we entered.

  “Patrick,” Arthur said happily.

  “Him,” old Lady Haggard uttered, grimacing. She gave an unexpected bark of laughter. “Why is he always here when someone jumps out of the attic?”

  “Mother!” Arthur and Susan exclaimed together.

  “Only saying what the world is thinking,” the old lady growled.

  “Of course the world thinks nothing of the sort,” Susan said severely. “He can’t have been anywhere near here when the boy fell.”

  “Besides,” Arthur added, “what does Martin have to do with Rose? I think we have to take this as a particular kindness in him, coming here now. It can only dredge up terrible memories for him.”

  If he was the man I’d seen in the storm, then it clearly had, and whatever else, my heart went out to him.

  It was a timely reminder to me that everyone had tragedies in their lives and dealt with them in different ways. I had lost Gideon; Patrick Haggard had lost his wife. But at least Gideon had not chosen to die, to leave me. How did you deal with someone who had deliberately abandoned you in this way? How much unhappiness went into such an act? How much guilt and pain was the survivor left to suffer?