A Winter’s Tale

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘What was that?’ I asked, dazedly opening my eyes and blinking.

  ‘Pride. I should have inherited Winter’s End and instead all I’ve got is the title. One day I’d like to invite the woman I love to share my home with me, not the other way around…and that’s why I’d really like you to sell the house to me now, or sign it over at least, Sophy,’ he said earnestly. ‘That’s not unreasonable, is it? Then we can turn it into a true family home.’

  He tried to kiss me again, but as his words slowly sank in, my state of boneless bliss began to dissipate slightly and I pulled back.

  He looked tall, gloriously handsome and rather hurt. ‘Darling! I don’t want to rush things, but you do feel the same way too, don’t you? That we have a future here, together, once this is sorted out?’

  ‘But I hardly know you yet, Jack,’ I began, feeling rushed, flushed and confused.

  He laid one finger over my lips. (His other hand was running lightly up and down my spine in a rather distracting way.) ‘Come on, Sophy, you know you feel just the way I do, admit it! And you said yourself that William should have left Winter’s End to me.’

  ‘Did I?’ I couldn’t remember saying that, but I suppose I might have done—before I came back and fell under the house’s spell again.

  ‘Yes you did, and all you have to do to make things right is sign the place over to me. All your problems will then be mine to resolve, with no need to turn the place into some kind of Shakespearean theme park. In fact, we won’t need to open to the public at all, this can just be our home.’

  My legs might have gone a bit weak while he was kissing me, but my brain, such as it was, hadn’t entirely turned to mush. Sign over my inheritance? Cancel all my lovely, exciting plans?

  At this not entirely inopportune moment the air stirred icily around me in a now-familiar way, and I heard a thready whisper: ‘Don’t do it—Winter’s End belongs to you and only you.’

  I stared around wildly, but there was no sign of Alys.

  ‘What’s the matter, darling?’ Jack asked tenderly. ‘Are you shivering?’ He took off his jacket and slung it around my shoulders, the silk lining still warm from his body.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said, wondering if this time I had only imagined those words of warning, that chilly presence? I shivered, but this time not from the thrill of Jack’s nearness. In fact, I discovered to my astonishment that although I found him very attractive, the idea of marrying him held no charm whatsoever—if that was what he (and not just Hebe) had in mind. I mean, even if I had been as mad about him as he evidently thought I was, did I want to spend my life watching him forget my existence every time Mel Christopher, or any other beautiful woman, walked into the room? Or spend even another minute with his boring, hideous friends? I don’t think so.

  Anyway, I was getting really excited about my plans for the estate!

  I stole a glance at him: he was looking as icily angry as he had the first time we’d met, like an irate Lucifer who turned out to be my guardian angel instead, though actually Alys’s shade seems to have taken on that role now.

  ‘Jack, can’t you see that your solution would put me in the position you say you find unbearable?’ I pointed out gently.

  Letting me go abruptly, he turned to stare out of the window.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ I said, miserably aware that I had led him on a bit…or maybe that should be a lot, ‘but that’s how I feel. I’m just being honest with you.’

  Sophy Winter, now eligible for Slut of the Year.

  To my relief, when he turned he was smiling again, albeit ruefully. ‘I’ll just have to change your mind then, won’t I? I expect people have been telling stories, prejudicing you against me, that’s what’s making you so cautious. But you can trust me—and once you really get to know me you’ll realise we both want the same thing for Winter’s End, and I hope we want each other too. Now, are you going to come and see me off?’

  ‘Off? I thought you were staying for lunch?’ I said, following him downstairs.

  ‘Afraid I can’t after all. I’m already packed and Jonah should have brought the car round to the front and put my bags into it by now. You’ll have to say goodbye to old Hebe for me.’

  I fetched my duffel coat and gave him back his jacket before we went outside, where the long, lean shape of his sports car was indeed sitting in front of the porch. Beyond it, Seth was leaning over with one large hand braced against a spouting dolphin, picking dead leaves out of the fountain.

  There was no escaping Jack’s final, lingering kiss, though this time it did absolutely nothing for me, not even a slight tremble around the kneecaps. This might have had something to do with the fact that Seth watched our embrace rather sardonically—which I know because I kept my eyes open this time.

  Still, Jack seemed satisfied enough with my wooden response and drove off, tooting his horn triumphantly. Maybe Obtuse and Optimist are his middle names—but then, he is warm, affectionate, tall, rich, handsome, charming and right out of my league, so why should it ever enter his head that I could refuse him anything he asked?

  Chapter Nineteen: Suitable for Bedding

  The baby is darker than the Wynters…but so am I, taking after my mother in such things. It was beyond disappointment to them that it was a female child, but already they are planning one day to marry her to her cousin and so the line will go on…

  Another Wynter—I think often of my mother’s words and am comforted in my grief and guilt, for surely these things are ordained and the pattern cannot be changed?

  From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1581

  Seth had gone back to his leaf picking, but I walked round the knot until I was facing him. ‘Was any of that true, what Jack said about the roof?’

  He straightened and rubbed his straight nose reflectively. ‘I don’t think so. The house is structurally sound, just shabby and neglected—a fact I seem not to have noticed until you came along. So maybe Ottie’s right about my being blinkered about the garden, after all—only it is so frustratingly close to completion!’

  It was a partial capitulation, but I had more important things on my mind at the moment. ‘The house is in a worse state than you think: Jack just showed me a deathwatch beetle grub he found in an old book in the attic and he says it’s rife up there, plus wet rot, dry rot and goodness knows what else.’

  ‘Does he?’ Seth said sceptically. ‘Strange—I could count the number of times I’ve ever seen Jack voluntarily open a book on the fingers of one hand.’

  ‘He said he found the grub while he was collecting some of his belongings from the attic.’

  ‘You can take it from me, books weren’t part of them. Look, Sophy, perhaps I’m being a bit unfair to Jack, but I would tend to take anything he says with a pinch of salt. I know he can be very persuasive.’

  ‘I’m not so easily taken in,’ I said defensively, though I knew I had blushed. Maybe he would think it was the cold air making me pink-cheeked?

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Seth had turned and was looking thoughtfully at the neglected façade. ‘Sir William told me he wanted you to have the place, and Lucy after you. The house may be down at heel, grubby and shabby, but he wouldn’t have let it fall into total disrepair, because he loved it—he just loved the garden more.’

  ‘As you do.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

  I frowned. ‘So, are you implying Jack brought the grub with him? But surely he wouldn’t do something like that just to scare me into selling Winter’s End to him, especially if he seems to think he can get it for nothing, just by—’ I stopped dead and this time went totally scarlet.

  Seth raised one eyebrow. ‘Jonah tells me Jack took one of the Danse du Feu roses to give to you this morning—very romantic.’

  ‘The snitch.’

  ‘Come with me to the rose garden,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ve been thinking about the Shakespeare angle and I think we could follow it through a bit there…It’s still a work in progress, as you
can see. Once William had put in all those beds of shrub roses along the drive, he thought we might as well go the whole hog and have a rose garden proper. This space wasn’t really doing anything.’

  It wasn’t doing much now, either. It still looked rather bare and forlorn. ‘If it makes you feel any happier, I would much rather Jack had left the rose on the bush,’ I said. ‘It must have been the last flower left in the garden.’

  ‘Just about, though I’ve known the old moss roses to have the odd bud even at Christmas.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I just got some new rose catalogues and when I was flicking through I found a very attractive crimson William Shakespeare and there’s a Dark Lady, an Ophelia, a Thisbe, a Falstaff—lots of roses with Shakespeare connotations. And a Sophy’s Rose, too—described as suitable for bedding,’ he added gravely, though I was pretty sure he was laughing at me.

  I looked at him suspiciously. ‘There aren’t any Sophys in Shakespeare, are there?’

  ‘Perhaps not, I can’t think of any—but it would look good in this back border.’

  ‘A Shakespeare rose garden would be lovely,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘He mentions musk roses too—we ought to have some of those.’

  ‘Yes, and now would be a good time to order new roses, ready for bare root planting.’

  And mean yet more expense. Winter’s End seemed to need constant drip-feeding with money. ‘If you let me have a list of what you want to order, I’ll see what I can do,’ I conceded.

  ‘I’ve got some short Shakespeare quotes for the wall too. Ottie and I had a brainstorming session,’ he said. ‘Ottie says to tell you she will have them carved as a gift to you and Winter’s End.’

  ‘That’s very generous of her!’

  ‘Oh, you can’t fault her generosity and she seems to think it’s a good idea. But as soon as the engraving is done, I’ll need all the gardeners back to get that wall rebuilt,’ he added firmly. ‘We can’t start on the last knot and the beds properly until then.’

  ‘I expect they’ll have finished most of the major tasks I wanted done by then anyway,’ I said. ‘After that I’ll just need them for odd jobs as they crop up.’

  He was about to say something—and probably a fairly terse something—when a tall, stringy man with a camera in one hand walked through the arch.

  ‘Hello! I thought I heard voices. Would you by any chance be Sophy Winter?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes, I am. But who—’

  He whipped up the camera and took several shots in quick succession and then, as Seth started towards him, took to his heels and ran. A motorbike roared into life on the drive a second later.

  ‘Gone. He must have wheeled it up here, or we’d have heard him,’ Seth said, coming back. ‘You do realise what this means, don’t you?’

  ‘That you have pathetically desperate paparazzi in Lancashire?’

  ‘No, that it’s a slow news week in the Sticklepond and District Gazette, and you’re about to make the centre spread.’

  After that, I made Seth go up to the attics with me to see the evidence of rot and infestation that Jack had pointed out, even though he protested that he was no expert at anything except knots.

  ‘And I was going to go back and change for lunch. Your aunt Hebe will give me the fishy eye if I turn up like this.’

  He had a point. He was wearing the usual layers of jumpers that looked as if they had been ravaged by a giant moth and the outermost one was unravelling at the hem. But I dragged him up there anyway.

  He walked after me through the attics in silence but, when I pressed him, said that it was odd the way all the places that showed signs of infestation were near a working light bulb. ‘And the woodworm holes are regular, almost as if they’ve been drilled. They’re all new too—there don’t seem to be any old ones nearby—and this powdering of sawdust underneath looks fresh.’

  ‘Jack said he came up here to get some of his old things, but everything is covered in thick, undisturbed dust, except for my belongings in the first room,’ I said reluctantly. It’s not that I wanted galloping woodworm, wet rot and death-watch beetle in the attics, it’s more that I didn’t want Jack to be proved to be so devious as to plant the evidence of them. ‘He was carrying a holdall when he came out too.’

  ‘ To bring out the book in, naturally,’ Seth said drily. ‘I can’t see anything up here that looks as if it belongs to Jack, and if there are any more books, they’re packed away in boxes, not lying about.’

  ‘Yes, OK,’ I snapped. ‘I think I’ve got the message loud and clear! He does want me to sell Winter’s End to him, but you are wrong about his motives because he sees us running it together as a family home.’

  ‘I see,’ Seth said. ‘But there was no need to bite my nose off for pointing out the obvious. You made me come up here, after all!’

  I knew it was unfair of me, but after all, he had made me wonder just how devious Jack was. I didn’t want to believe he was using his considerable amatory technique simply to get me to part with Winter’s End, even though I knew a man like him could have pretty well anyone he wanted…and probably had. No, I was sure Jack was sincere—but that wouldn’t stop the businessman in him trying to get it for less!

  It hadn’t worked anyway—the merest suggestion that I signed over Winter’s End and I went all Gollum, even without Alys putting her oar in. I thought we had reached an impasse in our relationship…

  Seth and I were still glaring at each other when the gong rang, so that we arrived for Sunday lunch late, cross and cobwebby.

  ‘What a pity Jack had to rush off like that, Sophy, just when you were getting on so well,’ Aunt Hebe said, anointing her roast beef with a generous libation of horseradish sauce. ‘I am so glad, it will be the perfect solution.’

  ‘What will?’ Ottie asked, looking up from her plate. ‘Solution to what?’

  Hebe ignored her. ‘Poor Jack was terribly hurt that William didn’t leave Winter’s End to him, and he hates the idea of it being commercialised and spoiled when there is no need for it. It should be his—and, of course, if he and Sophy make a match of it, then it will be!’

  I nearly choked on my roast parsnip.

  ‘We’re not going to make a match of it, Aunt Hebe,’ I said firmly. ‘Fond though I am of him, of course, we won’t be traipsing together down the aisle together any time soon.’

  ‘Yes, aren’t you going a bit fast?’ Ottie demanded crisply. ‘Sophy hardly knows the man! And she hasn’t so far struck me as being entirely stupid either, even if Jack has been turning on the charm.’

  ‘I expect you are worried that Melinda is still around such a lot, Sophy,’ Aunt Hebe said kindly, ‘since she is so terribly attractive and wealthy. But Jack has assured me that it isn’t him she comes to Winter’s End to see, but Seth, so there is no need to be jealous.’

  ‘I’m not jealous,’ I said flatly and rather untruthfully.

  Seth, who had been quietly but methodically demolishing roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, looked up. ‘Mel loves the thrill of the chase, so I expect she’s trying to use me to make Jack fall back into line with the rest of her numerous admirers.’

  Going by what I had seen and heard in the graveyard, I thought Seth was seriously underestimating her interest in him.

  ‘Oh, no, Seth,’ Aunt Hebe said, ‘Jack isn’t interested in Melinda in the least, he told me so. Yo u were the one who was devastated when she married Seldon. I remember William saying that you had sworn never to marry anyone else. And you haven’t, have you?’

  He coloured slightly under his tan. ‘That was an awfully long time ago!’

  ‘Yes, and even though he hasn’t married, he hasn’t exactly lived like a monk for the last twenty years, pining for his lost love,’ Ottie pointed out. ‘Far from it!’

  ‘Thanks, Ottie,’ he said, deadpan.

  ‘And when she came back and the unattainable became the opposite, I expect you quickly got her out of your system,’ she said kindly.

  ‘Look, could we leave my persona
l life out of this? Mel was just a youthful folly and I think we’re all entitled to at least one of those,’ he said, looking as embarrassed as any teenager being quizzed by his elders about his love life.

  ‘I’d agree with that,’ I said, thinking of my brief marriage, ‘and I’m not about to commit any more, youthful or otherwise. I’m sorry, Aunt Hebe, but though I’m already very fond of Jack, it’s just in a sisterly sort of way.’

  Ottie nodded agreement, but Seth was looking so sceptical that I would have thrown my dinner at him, had I not somehow managed to clear the plate while we were talking.

  It was clear from Aunt Hebe’s expression that she didn’t really believe I could resist Jack’s charms either, however much I protested.

  And unfortunately, I feared, neither did Jack.

  *  *  *

  I tossed and turned all night, going over and over everything, so I was bleary-eyed by the time I reached the estate office that morning. You’d think I would fall into a stupor of exhaustion every time I climbed into my gorgeous antique bed—but no, I am Sleepless in Sticklepond, which doesn’t sound quite as romantic as Seattle…

  Mr Yatton, who had enough energy for both of us, had already made more appointments for me with the accountant and Mr Hobbs.

  By mid-morning, after some lively bargaining in the stables, he had also closed the deal on the fountain for more money than I thought anyone would be prepared to pay for a limp stone girl with a deformed duck, and started looking into the price of airline tickets back from Japan on the internet, just in case.

  I did some calculations with what was left of the money and decided to have Alys Blezzard’s portrait sent away for cleaning, buy Grace the Dysons of her dreams, Seth his rose bushes (as a sweetener to his temper), and have the Larks’ rooms redecorated and a shower installed…And that would probably be it, apart from a small contingency fund.

  ‘The next step is to sell the Herring painting,’ Mr Yatton said, ‘which should fetch enough for you to begin upgrading the visitor facilities. Would you like me to contact the auction house?’