There are two cases left, and I gasp at the sight of a Gutenberg Bible. This incredibly rare, fifteenth-century book was the first of its kind, the first to be printed using movable metal type, and I have never seen one with my own eyes before. I can’t fathom how much Marcus must have paid to have acquired this. And then something occurs to me: early last year a rare books’ storage unit was broken into, and a Gutenberg was one of the books stolen. It was widely publicised that the copy had a tear along its third page, the information released to warn buyers off from purchasing stolen goods. Instinct makes me look, and sure enough, there is the tear – a photograph of this page was spread so widely across the media and the Internet that I recognise it at once. A collector, Marcus would have known he was buying a stolen item. But that’s what a true collector does; if they can’t find something they want the right way, they will find it any way they can. Because it’s not about what the desired object is, it’s all about owning it.
The next case is empty, and I’m glad it is when I see a small brass plaque already fitted to it, reading The House at Scar Gill.
He hasn’t found Emily’s secret second novel before me.
At the end of the room is a roll-top desk, and above it, a framed family tree, with Marcus’s name solitary at the bottom. A curious sensation of expectation rises as I walk towards it. Resting my finger on the glass, I trace his line backwards through the generations, and right at the top of the family tree sits Marcus’s direct ancestor.
HENRY CASSON, BORN 1604, PENDLE.
Marcus is the descendant of Henry Casson, the man who did his best to take everything from my family. The fury is unexpected, as if the memory of the injustice he inflicted upon us was coded into my DNA. Almost four hundred years shouldn’t mean a thing between that man and the man whose house I’m standing in, but it does. So first I feel fury, and then, underneath it, I realise I’m afraid.
So Casson came from Pendle. He would have been a child of eight at the time of the hysteria of the witch trials, he could even have been one of the child accusers; at the very least he would have known the power that the terror of witchcraft could hold over a God-fearing population, power that he decided to use against Agnes, to punish her and silence her. And as for Marcus, I know now exactly why he was so interested in me, in my house.
‘Ah, Trudy,’ he says behind me as if I have conjured him from the air. ‘There you are; right in the heart of my collection, just where you belong.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
‘Oh, Marcus!’ I manage a laugh, my hand fluttering to my mouth, girlish and foolish. I’m going with that angle, which isn’t at all like any behaviour that he’s seen from me before, but maybe he will believe that I’ve been seduced by his marvels. ‘Please forgive me. I was finishing up in the library and thought I’d just like to figure out how Will got back here; and, well, I couldn’t resist climbing the steps – I mean, who could? And when I got here the door to this room was open, so …’
Marcus smiles, leaning against the wall as he watches me. He produces his phone and holds it up for me to see.
‘I get an alert to my phone every time someone attempts to log in. But credit to you, it didn’t take you long to figure out my passcode. The truth is, I was rather hoping you would.’
‘You are obviously a huge Emily Brontë fan; why on earth keep that under your hat?’ I gesture at the books, glossing over my incursion. ‘I mean, Marcus, these are incredible treasures. I’m totally blown away, really. I know I shouldn’t have come in here without asking you, but I mean, wow. These are the sorts of things to make a girl’s heart race.’
Marcus steps into the room, pushing the door shut behind him. I watch it thud to a close. Walking over to the empty cabinet, he stares at the vacant plinth within for a moment, before looking at me; a few seconds in which it just seems like a good idea to stroll a little closer to the shut, but unlocked, door.
‘You know about Emily’s second novel, don’t you?’ he says.
‘Yes.’ I admit it at once; what’s the point of lying?
‘What did you find in your house?’ He turns to me, leaning towards me, intent on discovering what I know. ‘When I was looking through the Ponden books, that’s when I found those letters. I couldn’t believe it, Tru. A new novel, a Brontë novel. A new Emily Brontë novel. And it felt like she meant it just for me. I searched every one of the other books from the Ponden library, but there was nothing else, so I figured that there must be more clues in Ponden itself. After all, that’s where the books came from, where Emily spent a great deal of time.’
‘I found more notes from Emily,’ I tell him. ‘And a buried strongbox – but it was empty. And I found out her inspiration for the novel. The story of a girl called Agnes. She lived at Ponden at the time of Henry Casson, your ancestor. It was her story that Emily was writing about, Agnes’s, and what Casson did to her.’
Every sensible part of me rebels against what I’m telling him, and yet I can’t resist sharing what I know with someone who will find it as incredible and exciting as I do.
‘Emily’s second novel was about my family?’ Marcus shakes his head in amazement. ‘I knew, I always knew that I had this special connection to her. I felt it. When I read Wuthering Heights for the first time, I felt it. She would have understood me, I know it.’
‘Perhaps,’ I say. ‘Though I have to say that from what I know so far, Henry doesn’t come out very well.’
‘Legend has it that he was a bad ’un,’ Marcus says and grins. ‘Some even say he’s the Greybeard that you people see when there’s about to be a Heaton death. That he’s doomed to haunt the people he can’t have for eternity. But he can’t be that bad; he let you Heatons get your property back, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ I say carefully. Nothing about him is offensive, nothing is threatening; he’s his usual jovial self, and yet I am terrified of him. ‘Do you know why he did that? He could have argued about it in the courts for decades, but he didn’t. He relented.’
‘I don’t know.’ Marcus shrugs. ‘Henry made a deal with Robert Heaton, but I don’t know why, so Robert bought back his inheritance, and Henry – well, he vanished into thin air. Luckily, not before he’d done his duty in continuing the family line. Some thought Robert had paid him to leave, or even killed him himself, but we’ll never know.’
I wouldn’t be so sure of that.
‘You’d never heard of Agnes before now?’ I ask him. ‘She came to Ponden with Casson from Pendle – you have some papers on her in your box files that I came across the other day.’
‘Oh those!’ Marcus grins. ‘That was my dad’s project, tracing the family history, etc. He’s the one that had the family tree commissioned. Never really appealed to me. All I want is to find that novel. Imagine that, Trudy, to be the first people to set eyes on it, to read it, to hold it. To know what was in her mind before anyone else. It would be like … it would be like being as close to her as it’s possible to be.’
‘It certainly would have been a wonderful discovery to give to the world,’ I say. ‘And that’s what I plan to do with the papers I’ve found, Marcus. But I’ve looked everywhere for her novel, everywhere there is to look. In the house and on what’s left of our land. There’s twenty more acres to search, but that doesn’t belong to the Heatons any more. I think we have to accept that it’s lost.’
‘No, Tru, we don’t.’ Before I know it, Marcus has crossed the room and is holding my arms in his hands. ‘You and I aren’t the sort of people to give up on something like this, are we?’
I see the focus in his blue eyes, the determination and, yes, obsession.
‘No, you’re right. For now, though, I’d better get home to Will.’
‘Will you let me help you look at Ponden again?’ Marcus asks me. ‘Let me search the house with my builder’s eye. I could take it apart, brick by brick, and put it back together and you’d never even know.’
‘No, honestly, Marcus, I swear to you it is not there.’ I hav
e to hold his gaze for several seconds before he seems to accept my word and lets me go. ‘But thanks, we’ll just have to keep looking and hoping for the best. And thanks for not going mad about me being up here. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Trudy …’ Marcus steps in my path as I walk towards the door. ‘I hope you don’t think less of me, for my passions.’
‘Of course I don’t.’ I make myself smile. ‘I love her too, you know. We differ on what to do with treasures like these, but I understand you, Marcus, because I feel the same way that you do.’
‘Then don’t go now.’ Marcus closes the space between us. ‘I admit that when I first came to Ponden it was the manuscript I was interested in, that I was excited by being so close to a part of Casson history. But then I met you. I never expected to feel so drawn to you, Trudy. You excite me. A Heaton, a direct descendent of the family that took Ponden away from my ancestor, of the man who loved Emily Brontë. You are like a living artefact yourself – and I want you. If you were mine you could have my library, this room, all of these treasures, whenever you wanted them. I’d be kind to you, Trudy; I’d love you, take care of you – and it wouldn’t matter if you never loved me in return, as long as I had you. Together we’d reunite two families and Ponden would be back in the hands of both of its owners. Wouldn’t that be something?’
‘I have to go …’ But even as I say it, I know that he isn’t just going to let me leave.
‘Don’t go, not yet.’ Marcus holds my arms once again; I feel his hot breath on my cheek. ‘Trudy, it feels like fate, doesn’t it? Our families have always been entwined and now, here you are. I know it’s soon, but maybe your husband wasn’t the one you were meant for. Maybe it was me. It is me.’
He presses me against the cold wall and I feel his lips, gums and teeth on my mouth.
‘No!’ I push him away, and do all I can to keep the fear out of my voice. ‘No, Marcus. That’s not how I feel about you.’
It takes every ounce of composure I have to look into his eyes without showing him that his desire to collect me, and keep me, just as he has these precious books, makes me sick to my stomach.
‘Marcus,’ I say carefully, ‘you are a great man, and this is an amazing house. I’ve told you before, in another life I can’t see how I would have resisted you, but I love my husband – and the idea of being with a man who isn’t him is impossible to me.’
‘You don’t have to love me back, Trudy,’ he says, taking my chin between his finger and thumb. ‘You just have to let me have you. Please.’
‘No, I don’t have to do anything, Marcus.’ Oh, the great relief when he doesn’t resist as I push him aside and make my way onto the staircase. But he doesn’t simply let me walk away.
‘Trudy, if you find the book I’ll buy it from you. I’ll pay ten times more than anyone else. I’ll give you back the First Folio and Birds, if you’ll sell to me.’
‘If I find it,’ I say, focusing on keeping my footing on the twisting stone steps. ‘If I find it, I’m going to make sure it is protected and preserved in a place where anyone in the world can see and study it.’
‘But that’s not what she wanted!’ Marcus grabs hold of my shoulder. ‘She wanted it to be kept private, Trudy. Let me have it, give it to me. I’ll pay you whatever you want.’
As I try to break free, his grip tightens and I stumble, feeling my feet slide, and I’m tumbling painfully down the stone stairs. The room sparkles and blurs and I taste blood. For a few seconds I stare, stunned, at the shadow above, and then I pull myself up into a sitting position. I’ll be covered in bruises, but I don’t think I lost consciousness.
‘God, Trudy!’ Marcus runs to my side. ‘Please. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen …’
‘Just get away.’ I stand up, a little unsteadily, grabbing my bag. ‘Just leave me alone.’
‘What will you say happened?’ Marcus keeps asking me the same question as he follows me out to the car, which I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be attempting to drive, but I don’t care; I just have to get away from here.
‘It was an accident,’ I say. ‘I just want to go home, Marcus, just let me go home.’ But he takes the keys out of the ignition.
‘Marcus!’
‘Trudy, promise me you’ll keep it to yourself – about my treasures room?’
As I stare at him, the world swims and sways a little. I should just say yes and get my keys back, but the words come before I can think of them.
‘Marcus … there’s a stolen Gutenberg Bible in your treasures room. Everything else you have, maybe you acquired them legally, although you and I both know that all the Ponden books should be with my family. But I know that Bible is stolen – and I can’t keep that a secret. Now give me my keys.’
‘Wait,’ he says. ‘I’ve got something. I’ll let you see it if you promise not to go to the police.’
‘What is it?’ I ask him impatiently. When I wipe my forehead with my fingers they come away tacky with drying blood.
‘Henry Casson’s confession,’ Marcus tells me. ‘The last thing he wrote before he vanished. If you keep quiet about the Bible, I’ll let you have it.’
The moment he says it I know that I want it, and I also know that I will never have another chance like this again.
‘Throw in all the Ponden books you have in the library. Return them to me and you have a deal.’
Tru and Abe
His hand had moved from the top of my thigh, over the curve of my hip, and settled in the nook of my waist, his eyes on mine as we lay, face to face, covered only with a sheet.
‘I wish you didn’t have to go,’ I’d said softly. ‘I miss you so much when you aren’t here, Abe.’
‘It’s just for a few weeks. And you’ll get full control of the TV back and all of the bed – you know how you like all of the bed.’
‘I do like all of the bed,’ I said. My hand had travelled up the curve of his bicep to his face, and he’d rubbed his stubbled cheek against my hand. ‘But even after twenty years I like you more.’
‘Good to know.’ Abe nuzzled in closer to me. ‘This will be the last time. I’m getting too old for humanitarian aid work. Who do I think I am, Captain America?’
‘Captain Hackney, more like.’ I had pressed my lips into his cheek. ‘All that we’ve been through to get here, Abe. There have been times I thought we might not make it, but through it all we’ve stuck together. That means something, it means we’re strong.’
‘The strongest,’ Abe had told me. ‘Strong enough to last one more trip.’
‘One last trip,’ I’d sighed. ‘Just be safe and come back to us.’
‘No need to worry.’ Abe had smiled as I’d rolled into the crook of his arm. ‘Don’t you know by now that what we have is unbreakable, Trudy? When we’ve come this far there isn’t anything in the world that will keep us apart, I swear it. Twelve weeks and I’ll be home again. Forever.’
‘Promise?’ I’d climbed on top of him. ‘Promise you’ll come straight home, that you won’t be seduced by some young doctor, or the offer of another trip and a chance to bask in glory again?’
‘I promise,’ Abe had said. ‘I love you, Trudy. There is nothing in the world that will ever keep me from you.’
‘Or me from you,’ I’d said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
‘Bloody Hell!’ Ma makes me sit down the moment I get through the door. ‘What the Hell happened?’ She narrows her eyes at Marcus as he follows me into the sitting room.
‘She fell,’ Marcus says as I collapse onto the sofa. ‘Total accident. I drove her home – she wouldn’t let me take her to a hospital.’
‘They’ll only tell you to keep an eye on me for forty-eight hours, and I’m fine now. I’m married to a doctor, remember?’ I tell Ma.
‘That’s not the same as being a doctor, lass.’ Ma observes me anxiously.
‘I just need a rest and a cup of tea, Ma.’ My head is pounding, but I’m not about to tell her that. I want Ma
rcus to go as soon as possible, not find more excuses to hang around.
‘Bring in those boxes,’ I tell him, and at once he does my bidding.
‘Where’s Will?’ I ask Ma.
‘He met Jean’s grandkids on the lane, and they took him back up to Jean’s for a play. One’s in his year, so I thought it’d be all right. I’ll walk up and get him in a bit.’
I nod. ‘Yes, that’s good, I think.’
‘What did you fall down to get a cut that nasty?’ Ma narrows her eyes at the door Marcus has gone out. ‘I’ll kill him.’
‘Will you put the kettle on? Cake might help, too.’
‘I’ll get some Dettol, clean you up,’ she says, bustling into the kitchen.
‘You can go now,’ I tell Marcus when, several minutes later, he brings in the last boxes, setting them at my feet.
‘All the Ponden books, except for the First Folio and The Birds of America.’ Marcus repeats the terms of our deal, during the making of which I realised that I hadn’t been that badly hurt at all, but there was no harm in exaggerating a little.
‘And you’ll lend the miniature book to the Parsonage for an indefinite period,’ I say.
‘And if you do find Emily’s novel …’
‘I don’t think I will find it, but if I do, you will be the fourth person I tell,’ I promise him. ‘I’ll send out a cab and an extra driver to pick up my car tomorrow.’
‘Do you think, one day, sometime in the future, you might feel differently about me, Trudy?’ Marcus asks me.
The Girl at the Window Page 28
