A Winter’s Tale

by Trisha Ashley

  I looked at him cautiously, wondering what had brought on this sudden friendliness. He must have seen my surprise, because he explained. ‘Ottie’s given me a rocket. As she pointed out, it would have been even worse if Jack inherited Winter’s End because there’s a good chance he’d sell it. That’s probably why he’s been urging me to turf the bottom terrace and leave the garden restoration at that, since Sir William died—he doesn’t want any more money spent on it.’

  ‘I know you don’t think a lot of Jack, but this is his family home and he wouldn’t sell it. You are quite wrong about that,’ I said hotly.

  ‘You really don’t know him that well yet, do you? No, Ottie’s probably right, so now I’m not allowed to be anything other than complaisant and helpful…even if I do still think that taking my gardeners off their own work, when we’re so near completing the lower terrace, is a bit arbitrary, to say the least.’

  ‘I haven’t entirely, they just have to help out with the house now too,’ I said patiently. ‘You must see that I need help and I can’t afford to employ more people in the house, so unless you want to lose a gardener or two entirely, this is the only solution.’

  He looked around at my handiwork and had to agree. ‘I suppose you’re at least putting your money where your mouth is—you’ve already single-handedly transformed this room.’

  I grinned. ‘Actually, I adore cleaning and have been dying to make a start. It’s my one skill. I’ve spent all my life mucking out minor stately homes. It’s something I know all about—that, and doing the tour guide thing.’ I turned on the stepladder and began to try to unjam the stiff brass curtain hooks again, and he pushed the window further open and climbed in over the sill.

  ‘Come down from there!’ he ordered. ‘Those curtains are too heavy. You should have got someone to help you.’

  ‘I managed fine, it’s just this last one that’s stiff.’

  But I was glad to let him wrest the hooks into submission, and when the last curtain was down, asked, ‘Would you mind helping me to bundle them up for the cleaners, too?’

  ‘Will they survive it?’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘They’ve got two chances—but they’re heavy William Morris fabric, so probably. But if not, I know you can still get the same pattern, at a price. I rather like it, don’t you? It’s Victorian, of course, but the furnishings and décor at Winter’s End are such an eclectic hotchpotch of ages and styles that they somehow blend together and I want to keep it that way.’

  Charlie had been sneezing at the dust and getting in our way while we were folding curtains, but as the door swung open he turned and barked wheezily at Jack, not stopping until I picked him up.

  ‘That animal hates me,’ Jack said disgustedly. ‘It has no discrimination. Hi, Seth, how’s the trug and trowel trade?’

  Seth sighed deeply, so I guessed he’d heard that line a million times before. ‘Fine,’ he said, putting the bundle of folded curtain down on the floor with the others. ‘See you later,’ he added, turning on his heel and going out by the terrace door, but whether he was talking to Jack or me I wasn’t sure. The room felt suddenly chilly and full of portents, and I was shivering.

  Alys has a cold way of expressing her feelings.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Jack asked, surveying me with amusement, and I felt suddenly aware of my dishevelled and filthy appearance. Unlike Seth, Jack clearly didn’t revel in dirt.

  ‘Making a start on the cleaning, like I said. I’m just about to do the windows, if you’d like to give me a hand?’

  I knew it was a silly thing to say even before he glanced down at his immaculate pale blue cashmere sweater and said, ‘There isn’t time—or not if you want to wash and change for dinner.’

  ‘It’s not that late, is it?’ I looked at my watch. ‘Oh God, it is. I’d better dash.’

  I left all the cleaning stuff where it was, but I did close the door, the window and then all the shutters, leaving Alys ensconced in slightly cleaner darkness.

  Chapter Sixteen: Polite Expressions

  It being Mary Wynter’s birthday and she a connection of theirs, tonight the Hoghtons sent over some of their company to entertain us with music and poetry and such like amusements. One of them, they say, came north to escape punishment for the writing of scurrilous verse. He was a very comely youth, perhaps a year older than myself, dark-eyed and with a smile that melted my heart. I could not help myself…I gave my husband a draught to sleep deep that night, and had Joan bring Master S to mee…For good or ill, this was meant to happen—it was my destiny, I know it.

  From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1581

  Quickly I showered off the patina of filth, then brushed my wet hair as flat as possible, even though I knew it wouldn’t last. Water just seems to encourage it to curl even more dementedly.

  Then I changed into my favourite outfit of midnight-blue velvet jeans and a pretty top in the same colour, sprinkled with tiny silver stars, blasted myself with Elisabethan Rose, slung my embroidered bag over my shoulder and was ready.

  And yes, all this effort was entirely for Jack’s benefit, though I completely forgot about makeup until I was halfway downstairs and it was too late to go back.

  There was no sign of Charlie, who had headed off determinedly in the direction of the kitchen earlier, but Hebe and Jack were already in the drawing room and Ottie wandered in just after me. She was wearing a knitted striped wrap over a knee-length caftan and silk harem pants, with lots of clunky amber jewellery—you could hear her coming five minutes before she arrived.

  Jack pressed us to try some strange cocktail of his own invention, and though I knew by now that Hebe was a sherry drinker, she accepted a glass of the strange absinthe-and-God-knew-what concoction without more than a half-hearted protest, then sipped it gingerly.

  Me too. I’m not much of a drinker at all, but I was powerless to resist that bad-boy smile on his handsome face.

  Only Ottie was immune to his charm and, firmly declining, poured herself a whisky. I soon wished I’d had her willpower, because the cocktail not only made my head spin, but also scoured my sinuses like caustic soda. (Not that I have ever put caustic soda or anything else up my nose, you understand, but if I had, I would have expected the effect to be much the same.)

  ‘I hope poor Mrs Lark hasn’t done something that will not divide into four, like soufflés,’ Hebe observed as the gong rang out, looking sideways at her sister.

  ‘If Mrs Lark has cooked something that won’t divide, I’ll eat my hat—or bread and cheese,’ Ottie replied calmly. ‘I come over most nights when I’m up here, so why wouldn’t she expect me? Sophy doesn’t mind my coming over for dinner any more than William did, do you, Sophy?’

  ‘Not at all, you’re very welcome. I noticed there’s always an extra place set for you anyway,’ I said, as I followed her into the breakfast parlour where Jonah was clattering the serving dishes. Then a thought struck me. ‘Does Seth…?’

  ‘Mostly caters for himself, or goes down to the pub, though he’s generally here for Sunday lunch. William liked the whole family together, and it’s served early, so Mrs Lark can have the afternoon and evening off.’

  ‘That’s right—we go to church and visit the family,’ Jonah said. ‘Now come and get sat down, before your dinner goes cold!’ He placed a platter of salmon and dishes of vegetables in the centre of the table, amid a flotilla of crisply folded paper napkin swans (which seemed to be purely for decoration, since we all had linen ones at our places, as usual), and then went out.

  ‘Not that Seth is really family,’ Hebe said, seating herself, but carrying on the previous conversation. ‘Unlike dear Jack.’

  Jack grinned and blew her a kiss.

  ‘He’s my stepson, which is family enough—and anyway, William was fond of him,’ Ottie said. ‘So am I, come to that. He’s never been the least trouble, even as a child. Always off doing his own thing. Still is.’

  I thought of the lonely, motherless little boy, suddenly
presented with a brilliant but totally unmaternal stepmother. It was perhaps not surprising that Seth seemed defensive, verging on surly, though today he had shown an unexpected charm. And when he smiled, he looked so totally transformed that suddenly it had been all too easy to see why Melinda had been trying to reel him back in…

  ‘Penny for them,’ Jack said to me, and I went so pink that I’m sure he thought I’d been daydreaming over him.

  ‘Oh, I was just thinking about family relationships—you and Seth growing up here together,’ I said hastily.

  ‘I wasn’t actually here much except in the school holidays. I went to Rugby, Seth went to the grammar school.’

  ‘I thought he might like to go to boarding school too,’ Ottie explained, ‘but he just refused. Said he wasn’t going to leave his friends and he was happy where he was. Always had his own mind, did Seth…’

  Jack shrugged. ‘We’ve always got on well enough, but we’ve got our own friends and interests.’

  ‘You didn’t get on when Seth found you digging holes in the garden with that metal detector,’ Ottie said. ‘Treasure-hunting—and William not dead a week!’

  ‘A slight disagreement,’ Jack said, smiling at me. ‘I’d just got it, and wanted to try it out, but I only dug where the earth was already disturbed. Seth is a bit hasty, sometimes, where the garden is concerned.’

  ‘I’ve heard all about your treasure-hunting—in fact, I’ve read that hidden treasures book in the library,’ I told him. ‘And I saw all the Enid Blyton adventure books in the nursery, so I think maybe she has a lot to do with this mania of yours too.’

  He flushed. ‘Hardly a mania, Sophy—just a little hobby. Don’t you think it is exciting that there might be something valuable hidden here at Winter’s?’

  Before I could reply, Ottie chipped in, going back to what we had been previously discussing with an air of spurious innocence, though her eyes were sparkling maliciously. ‘Actually, Jack, you and Seth do have one friend in common—Mel Christopher.’

  ‘Now, Ottie,’ Jack said with easy good humour, ‘you know very well we were all children together, so of course I saw a lot of Mel when she first moved back here—and before she moved back here too, for I was the first person she called when she was deciding what to do with that ghastly house Seldon left her. But if she and Seth have something more going on between them now, that’s their business and good luck to them.’

  He smiled at me across the table and added, ‘I’ve got other interests.’

  ‘Sophy, you used to play with Melinda occasionally, when you were a little girl,’ put in Aunt Hebe, ‘but she was a year or two younger.’

  ‘I did?’ I cast my mind back and said, doubtfully, ‘I do remember a little girl, but I’m sure she wasn’t called Melinda. She was a complete pain, always worried about getting her clothes in a mess.’

  ‘Yes, that was her—her mother called her Lindy.’

  ‘And little Lindy was stringing both Jack and Seth along before she upped and married Clive Seldon,’ Ottie explained helpfully to me. ‘And you can’t tell me she married a man old enough to be her grandfather for any reason except money.’

  ‘I am afraid she was always a trifle mercenary,’ Hebe agreed, shaking her head sadly, ‘though I hate to say so, since her mother is one of my oldest friends. The Christophers are poor as church mice, of course, but Mel is a wealthy widow now, so I suppose she can afford to marry anyone she wants to. I’m glad you can see that she’s not the girl for you, Jack. I knew William was quite wrong about that—and it’s just as well, as things turned out.’ She smiled meaningfully at me and I felt myself go scarlet.

  Jack’s veneer of affability was showing signs of cracking. ‘Mel’s just an old friend—don’t listen to these two being catty about her, Sophy! Just because she’s beautiful and married an older man—’

  ‘More than thirty years older,’ interjected Ottie, with relish. ‘Even her stepchildren were older than she was.’

  ‘—doesn’t make her mercenary,’ Jack finished determinedly. ‘And I can’t think how we got onto the subject anyway, because I’m sure we weren’t discussing Mel, but Seth, whose horticultural obsessions I find quite boring, to be totally frank.’

  Actually, I’d found Seth’s enthusiasm and passion worryingly attractive…

  ‘You find anything not concerned with making instant money boring,’ Ottie said.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Hebe defended her ewe lamb hotly. ‘Jack loves Winter’s End and cares deeply about all of it, including the gardens!’

  ‘Or does he just care for anything that enhances the value of Winter’s End?’ Ottie said, and Jack smiled sweetly at her from across the table, his good humour seemingly regained.

  ‘No, I just want—as Sophy wants—to see my home restored to the beautiful place it used to be.’

  ‘My home’, I noted, not ‘our’ or even ‘the family home’…and I was feeling increasingly Gollum-like in my obsession with Winter’s End. It was my Precious, and no one else’s! A potent combination of irritation and the absinthe cocktail made me decide to throw a conversational spanner into the works.

  ‘By the way, I actually do have Alys Blezzard’s household book,’ I said recklessly, helping myself to more salmon and cucumber.

  Hebe dropped her fish fork with a clatter.

  Jack’s was suspended somewhere between his plate and his lips, while his bright blue eyes were fixed keenly on me. ‘The real one, not a copy?’

  ‘Yes, the original. Mum did have it, but she entrusted it to me before she left for America. She said Alys appeared to her in a dream and told her to. So now it’s returned to its rightful place.’

  ‘I thought you must have it,’ Ottie said, but she looked relieved all the same. ‘I hope you have locked it back in the box?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And the box itself is now locked into the corner cupboard in the parlour, for extra security.’

  Hebe was staring at me indignantly. ‘But you told Jack you didn’t have the book!’

  ‘Of course I did, because according to what Mum had always told me, Jack shouldn’t have known anything about it in the first place. I needed time to think and to see what the situation was like when I got here.’

  ‘Ottie always had charge of the key and the book until Susan took them,’ Hebe said, ‘and although she didn’t look after the key very well, I suppose she should have it back again.’

  ‘No, I think Sophy should keep it now,’ Ottie said, unconcernedly carrying on with her dinner. ‘What she does with it is entirely up to her. I’m passing on my responsibility.’

  ‘I’m so relieved to know the book is safe,’ Jack said, ‘and I don’t mind admitting I’d love to see it! Since it isn’t a secret any more, won’t you show it to me, Sophy?’

  He gave me the sort of intense, butter-rich smile that makes you quiver from head to foot like a plucked violin string, but I hardened my heart—with an effort. ‘No, I won’t. And I know why you want to see it, Jack. You’re cherishing the mad idea that Alys wrote down a clue to the whereabouts of treasure. But she didn’t and you’ll have to take my word for it that the only treasures are the recipes. If you think about it sensibly, you’ll see that she hadn’t anything else to leave—how could she have? She wasn’t an heiress and could have had nothing to conceal of any value.’

  ‘You don’t know that!’ began Jack eagerly. ‘It’s rumoured that the family was hiding a priest in the house around the time she was imprisoned, and he had gold plate with him that he was taking to the Continent for—’

  ‘Just an old legend with no proof,’ I interrupted firmly, ‘and Mum said she was sure the house had been searched from attic to cellar several times over the centuries on the strength of it.’

  ‘I expect you’re right, but if I could just look…’ he wheedled.

  ‘No way, it stays under lock and key—and I have the key. And what’s more,’ I stated firmly, ‘I won’t stand for you, or anyone else, going on any more half-arsed treasure
hunts in or out of the house!’

  Hebe said primly, ‘That is hardly a polite expression to use, Sophy!’

  ‘Don’t be such an old spinster. And the girl is quite right, the place must have been searched so many times over the centuries that if there was anything to find, they would have,’ Ottie said. ‘And didn’t Sophy sound just like William!’

  ‘Yes, she did,’ Jack said, eyeing me thoughtfully. ‘Look, Sophy, I admit I’d like to find something valuable, and I’m still convinced there is something to find. But my only motive is to help keep Winter’s End in the family. It will take much more money to return it to its former glory and pay for its upkeep than you have any conception of.’

  ‘Yes I have, and I’ve got a plan,’ I said indignantly. ‘I keep telling you!’

  ‘A few extra visitors?’ He shook his head. ‘That isn’t going to make a significant difference.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but a vastly increased number of visitors over a longer opening season, all paying more to come in, and spending money while they’re here—that will make a difference. But first we need to enhance the attractions within the house, like working the Shakespeare and witchcraft angles more, and upgrading the café, so that the gardens aren’t the only draw.’

  ‘Using what for money?’ put in Jack smoothly, hitting the nail on the head because I knew spending the Herring money on upgrading the facilities in order to attract greater numbers of visitors was, to continue the fishy analogy, using a sprat to catch a mackerel.

  ‘Oh, I think we are all going to be very surprised by what Sophy will achieve,’ Ottie told him. ‘Just wait and see.’

  I hoped she was right—and I also hoped that, before too long, she would surprise me with whatever part of the family secret my mother hadn’t been able to tell me.

  Chapter Seventeen: Pressed

  Today a messenger came for Sir Ralph and later privily gave mee a small packet. Inside were some lines of verse to my dark beauty, though ye mirror tells mee that Master S is more than generous in his praise…I sent no reply, nor if he come again will I see him, but make some excuse of illness, for that way danger lies. I am like a butterfly that hath had her one day of dancing and pleasure and must now pay with death…though not yet mine. The shadows have left mee to gather around Thomas, who daily weakens before mine eyes, despite all my endevors.