by Sandra Heath
Leaving the cocoa untouched on the mantelshelf, she went to the window and looked out at the rain-drenched January night. Berkeley Square was busy, a modern scene of wet traffic, city noise, and streetlights. She found herself wishing she and Jenny were already in the Cotswolds, as far away as possible from the pressures of London.
It was then she remembered something truly startling. It had slipped her mind until now because Jenny always referred to her parents’ hotel as simply ‘the hotel’, but out of the blue the real name came winging back. The Deveril House Hotel!
Chapter Three
Laura decided not to say anything to Jenny. It was all so wild and far-fetched, she felt a little like someone who’d seen a UFO—deciding to keep quiet rather than be thought crazy. She’d had a close encounter of the weird kind, and chose to keep it to herself.
She was curious about it all, though. Was it entirely the product of her imagination, or was there a basis in truth? Had any of the people actually existed? The fact that the hotel bore the name Deveril suggested the latter might be the case. Unless, of course, it was her subconscious. At the back of her mind she’d known the name of the hotel, and her brain had done the rest. It was all she could come up with to explain the apparently inexplicable.
Jenny didn’t prove any help concerning the origins of the hotel’s name, or indeed of its general history. A search on the internet didn’t prove helpful either. The house’s past seemed destined to remain a mystery. It turned out the Fitzgeralds had bought the house some ten years ago from a reclusive rock star, who in turn had bought it from an elderly, equally reclusive spinster. Beyond that, nothing. Jenny hadn’t spent much time there because of her stage career, and the only piece of interesting information she could come up with was that the nearest village was called Great Deveril. She thought her parents might know more, and then, in response to Alun’s message, she set off immediately. Laura had an important last-minute audition to attend, and followed two days later.
That was how things stood the morning Laura herself at last drove out of London for the Cotswolds. The audition had gone well and it felt good to be setting out on vacation. There hadn’t been any further close encounters and she was beginning to relax, determined not to let it become anything more than a fleeting blip on her otherwise clear horizon.
In spite of the cold, overcast weather, she intended to do a little sightseeing on the way, and left the M4 freeway at Reading to use back roads to Cirencester, a market town about five miles from the hotel.
She drove into the town square at about two in the afternoon, and parked close to a central hotel called the King’s Head, the age of which suggested it was the same King’s Head where her Regency self was to stay on her way to be interviewed by Blair Deveril. It was market day, and the street was thronged with people and canvas-topped stalls. Everyone was hunched against the biting cold, so she turned up her coat collar before getting out of the warm car, but the moment she stepped onto the sidewalk, she experienced another close encounter.
The sun seemed to suddenly come out, almost as if someone had switched on a giant electric light, and the temperature rose perceptibly, changing from winter cold to balmy May warmth in the space of little more than a heartbeat. The clamor of the modern market and traffic was silenced to the more muted sounds of the past.
She halted in dismay. Not again! Please, not again! But as she looked nervously around her, she saw the Cirencester of 1818, where the King’s Head was a posting house. She was part of events again, and wore an emerald and white floral gown made of thin cotton, and a little emerald velvet spencer. Her hair was piled up beneath a wide-brimmed emerald hat, and several long ringlets fell over her left shoulder.
She and Stephen Woodville had just alighted from his carriage, and he had gone into the King’s Head to confirm that a room had indeed been reserved for her. He wore a braid-trimmed brown coat and cream trousers, and his top hat was tipped back on his head. He looked disheveled and out of sorts, and the deeper they’d driven into the Cotswolds, the worse he felt. He looked forward to his reunion with Marianna, but his unwilling involvement with Miles’ plot spoiled everything. He didn’t want to ruin Marianna’s love for him, and this present deceit would certainly do just that. He despised himself, knowing he wasn’t worthy of such an angel’s glance, let alone be granted her heart.
Another private carriage approached from the London direction. Laura was sure it had been at the Oxford inn where she and Stephen had halted earlier. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that it had also been at the Tyburn turnpike when they’d left London. And had it been in Haymarket on opening night too? The blinds were lowered as it passed, but she caught a brief glimpse of a woman’s hand and a glint of signet ring. Who was she?
Remembering she’d left her parasol on the carriage seat, Laura turned to retrieve it. The summer sunshine vanished, and the cold January afternoon and modern market returned. She stood there, both disoriented and frightened, and her modern self’s interest in sightseeing had evaporated. Getting into the car, she drove quickly out of the town en route for the Deveril House Hotel.
Jenny had given her written directions from Cirencester, and by using a road map as well, Laura soon found the narrow road to Great Deveril, but the plentiful lanes were winding and many had no signposts. One pretty stone village could quickly appear very much like another, and it wasn’t long before Jenny’s careful instructions and the map lost all meaning because there wasn’t a crossroad where Laura thought one should be, just another fork without a sign of any description. Then, when she was faced with a hump-backed bridge she recognized, she knew she was going around in circles.
Uttering a very unladylike four-letter word, she stopped by a gate into a ploughed field, a few yards short of the bridge. The brief winter afternoon was beginning to close in, and the beautiful scenery had started to blur into gray silhouettes. The road was in one of the many tree-filled valleys that snaked through the hills, and the bridge spanned a wide stream. About half a mile away behind trees on top of a ridge she could just make out the roofs of a village.
She got out of the car to consult the intricacies of the map with a flashlight. Ash keys rattled in a tree overhanging the road, and she could hear pheasants calling raucously in the distance.
The stream chattered noisily beneath the bridge, and there was such a chill in the air that she shivered. The nearest buildings belonged to what appeared to be a large farm on the hillside below the village. It was almost hidden by a canopy of evergreens, and the fine house, more like a superior manor than a farmhouse, seemed to be built of the fine stone for which the Cotswold Hills were so famous. It was the only house with lights, but unless she trudged through muddy fields in the dark, it seemed inaccessible.
Leaving the safety of her car was out of the question, so with a sigh she looked around again. There was an isolated church on a crest about two miles away in the other direction. Surely that was a landmark of sorts? She directed the flashlight at the map again, and after a moment found what seemed to be the same church. If it was, the village above the farm should be Great Deveril, and the farm not a farm at all, but the hotel!
She pored over the map, and saw there should be a fork about a quarter of a mile beyond the bridge. Then she hesitated as she noticed that according to the map there was a tunnel further along the valley, running for several miles through the hill beneath the farm and village to the next valley.
What sort of tunnel could it be? A double set of blue dotted lines approached the tunnel, and the legend indicated such lines to mean a disused canal. It was a canal tunnel? Her interest aroused, she leaned on the gate to see if she could make anything out in the gathering dusk.
In the blinking of an eye she was bathed in warm sunshine again. January became May, present became past. It was such a shock she pulled hastily back, and the moment she did so there was just the dreary twilight of January again. Her heart beat faster. Another close encounter so
soon? Taking a deep breath, she leaned forward slowly, and once more found herself gazing at a sunny day in May. She glanced down at her clothes. They hadn’t changed, and she knew this brush with the past would be like the one with the mirror—something she’d observe without participating.
She looked at the view again. The passing centuries had seen a great changes. In 1818 the fields were a gracious park, and the ridge-top village was more clearly visible because its screen of trees had yet to grow. Most of the houses and cottages were much smaller than in years to come, when they’d be gradually extended, improved, sought after and expensive, but there was one glaring exception to the rule. The building she thought was the hotel had somehow become a great country house surrounded by formal gardens, and was at least two-thirds bigger than in the twenty-first century. Where had so much of it gone?
The barking of dogs caught her attention. About a hundred yards away on her side of the stream she saw a man in Regency clothes riding toward the bridge, with three liver-and-white springer spaniels bounding at his horse’s heels. It was Sir Blair Deveril.
Embarrassed color rushed into Laura’s cheeks as she remembered the last time she’d seen him. But he was far from naked now, for he wore a pine green coat and pale gray breeches, and a top hat which he removed as he reined in his fractious bay mount about ten yards away from her.
The spaniels gave no sign of seeing her, and he certainly didn’t seem to know she was there as he turned in the saddle to gaze toward the house. Then he removed a glove to glance at his wedding ring. Distress shadowed his face, and he drew the glove on again, as if to blot out the pain of loss. It was plain how much grief he still felt for Celina.
He dismounted and led the horse down to a deep, secluded pool sheltered by elder bushes that were heavy with blossom. The spaniels preceded him to the shady grass, and lay down so automatically she knew he went there frequently. She could only just see him as he dismounted and stood on the bank for a moment before beginning to undress to take a swim.
A shiver of guilty anticipation passed through Laura. He was going to make a voyeur of her again, and she was going to watch as brazenly as she had before, because if ever a man looked great naked, it was Sir Blair Deveril.
She saw him through a framework of summer leaves, his pale skin dappled with moving shadows that seemed to caress him. The horse nudged him, and he smiled and put his arms briefly about its glossy neck. There was something deliciously erotic about his nakedness against the animal, especially as she could see all of him now. She knew she shouldn’t look, but she couldn’t help herself. He was absolutely perfect, and his virility excited her. Yearning stirred through her veins, warming her skin and darkening her eyes. It would be perilously easy to surrender to this man, to indulge his every sexual whim...as well as hers.
He turned to the water and plunged in, cutting into the water without a splash, and at the same moment an only too modern male Gloucestershire voice shouted angrily behind her. “ ‘Ere! You got cloth ears or sommat?”
She straightened with a gasp, and immediately found herself in the cold January dusk again. The headlamps of a tractor shone across her car, which partially blocked the road, and the irate farmer had clearly been calling her for some time.
He tipped his hat back on his balding head, and gave her a long-suffering look. “I don’t mean to get funny, miss, but if you don’t shift your car, so ‘elp me I’ll shove it in the ditch!”
She glanced back over the gate, but there were just ploughed fields. “I—I’m so sorry, I just didn’t hear you. Can you help me please? I’m afraid I’ve gotten lost.”
He realized she was American. “A winter tourist, eh?”
“I’m looking for the Deveril House Hotel.”
He grinned and pointed past her toward the house on the hill.
She smiled too. “I thought it might be, but I wasn’t sure. So that’s Great Deveril above it?”
“Yes. I’m afraid it’s all too easy to get lost in these lanes. I can still manage it myself late on a Saturday night!” he gave a throaty laugh.
He probably meant it, she thought. “How do I get there?”
“The best way’s on over this bridge, and then turn right at the fork a little ways along. ‘Tis very narrow and there’s no signpost, but it’ll take you to the Great Deveril road. You’ll come to a T-junction, turn right, and in a hundred yards you’ll see the hotel lodge. There’s a great big sign, two darned huge yew trees that overhang the whole road, and this time on a January afternoon ‘tis all lit up too, so you can’t miss it.”
She gave a smile of relief. “Thank you.”
He touched his hat. “Now then, lessen you got some more daydreaming to do, I really would like to get home this side of tomorrow.”
“Yes, of course. I’m truly sorry for getting in your way like this.”
He nodded, and she returned hurriedly to her car. As she drove over the bridge, she couldn’t help glancing toward the hill and the building she now knew was the hotel. She almost expected it to have turned into a great house again, but it hadn’t.
It was dark as she reached the T-junction and turned toward the overhanging yews. Just as she was about to negotiate the steep downhill corner into the hotel drive, where the illuminated sign boasted of its two Michelin stars, the car headlamps picked out a road sign a little further on down the hill. It said, To Deveril Tunnel.
She drove slowly down the rhododendron-lined drive toward the house on the slope below. Rhododendrons gave way to an avenue of clipped holly trees, and the grounds opened up before her, revealing the floodlit hotel complex sheltering in the lee of the tall evergreens. Barns and other outbuildings had been converted into sports and leisure facilities, and only the stables still served their original purpose. It had a very exclusive air, and there were numerous luxury vehicles in the parking lot.
A uniformed doorman came to take care of her car and luggage, and Jenny immediately hurried out beneath the columned portico to hug her. “You’re here at last! Whatever happened to you?”
“Well, thanks to your rotten directions, I managed to get lost!”
“My rotten directions? Your rotten driving, more like,” Jenny replied, linking her arm. “Come on inside and have some tea. You must need it after driving on a day like this. Tell me, how did the audition go?”
They went up the steps into the hotel’s spacious lobby, which had clearly once been the original house’s entrance hall. Or part of it. There was a log fire, and its warmth was welcome after the chill outside. The walls had carved oak paneling, and the stone floor was laid with a specially woven carpet patterned with a heraldic design. The receptionist, a perfectly manicured forty-year-old in a blue jacket and skirt, was spraying a bowl of snowdrops with a water atomizer.
An archway to the left gave on to a beautifully furnished lounge—once a drawing room, perhaps—and from a door on the right came the discreet chink of cutlery as the dining room was made ready for the evening. The murmur of numerous well-spoken voices drifted from the nearby lounge bar, where guests were assembling for pre-prandial drinks. It seemed the cuisine remained sought-after even in Alun’s absence.
A wide staircase led up beside the dining room wall, and Laura couldn’t help thinking it destroyed the symmetry of the hall. Something was wrong, for the internal design could not have been as the architect originally intended. It had something to do with the greatly reduced size of the present building.
Lack of symmetry or not, Laura was approving. “I think I’ll condescend to stay,” she murmured.
Jenny smiled. “Well, we might condescend to have you,” she replied.
“Is Alun coming back soon to prepare my Meringues Laura?”
“I hope so. It’s not the same here without him.”
“Ah, what it is to be in love,” Laura murmured, inspecting the carving around the stone fireplace. It included the same heraldic design she’d noticed on the carpet, a shield divided into a crescent moon on one side and a she
af of barley on the other. “Whose is the coat-of-arms?” she asked curiously.
“Mm? Oh, I don’t really know. Someone told my mother it was a play on the names of the man and wife who used to live here a couple of centuries ago, but I wouldn’t know. The same device appears all through the house, and in a wild flight of fancy, Mother chose to have the carpets woven to match.”
Laura glanced at the carpet. A play on names? A cool finger touched her as she gazed at the crescent moon. Diana was the moon goddess, and another of her names was Selene, or Celina! As for the sheaf of barley, she remembered from somewhere that ‘blair’ was a Scottish word for field. Barley was grown in fields. She smiled at such flimsy but not impossible reasoning. She was reaching for straws—or barley stalks!
Jenny linked her arm again. “Come on then, let’s have a nice cup of tea. My parents are longing to meet you.”
It was then that Laura saw the engraving of the very mansion she’d seen from the gate, right down to the last window and flowerbed. And the stream. All that was missing was Sir Blair Deveril riding toward the pool...
Jenny saw where her attention was directed. “Ah, yes. You asked about the original Deveril House. Well, that’s it. My father found the picture in a Cheltenham antique shop a few weeks ago. It seems we’re in the house right now, what’s left of it, anyway.”
Laura nodded, for what other explanation was there for the uneven design of the lobby? “What happened to the rest of it?” she asked.
“My father was told it burned down, but no one’s really sure. The records for the first half of the nineteenth century are missing, and somewhere around that time the house was reduced from a very large country house to an impressive but much smaller farmhouse. I suppose some really in-depth research would bring the facts to light, but none has ever been done.”
“There’s no information at all?”
