‘But it’s so romantic, soul mates waiting one thousand years to be reunited.’
‘Yes an evil, bitter witch, a thousand year old curse, two people in love who will never see each other again. Yes, very romantic.’
‘It is, if the lord of the castle spots his soul mate, after all this time, then it really was meant to be.’
‘Well that’s why the flag flies all day and night – so the dragon can find her way home.’
‘I love it. But I’ve heard this story before. Well, a version of it.’
‘I don’t doubt it; it’s probably a combination of several fairy tales.’
Milly rubbed her head, trying to remember. ‘My mum used to tell me something similar, though I can’t remember any of it now. She had this necklace, with a golden dragon wrapped around a red heart. It was beautiful and she wore it every day. She used to tell me that we were guarding the heart until I found my true love, when I found him I was to give it to him and he would cherish it forever.’
Cameron was silent for a moment. ‘What did the necklace look like?’
‘Exactly like my tattoo, that’s why I had it done. Trust me though, it’s nothing like the flag.’
‘Well, as I said, there were very different versions of the flag. Can I see your tattoo?’
‘I’d have to get half undressed for you to see it.’
‘I don’t mind that.’ Cameron waggled his eyebrows playfully.
Milly smiled. ‘You’ll have to wait till Friday when I’m on holiday.’
Cameron stared at her. They hadn’t actually spoken about what would happen; whether as of five o’clock on Friday night she would jump straight into bed with him, or whether they were going to date or do something more traditional first. Now the cards had been dealt and it seemed that the horny, hadn’t-had-sex-in-years side of her had made the decision.
They sat in silence for a moment staring at each other, before Cameron cleared his throat.
‘Do you know what happened to the necklace? Do you still have it?’
Milly shook her head. ‘I never saw it again after my mum died. It was just a piece of costume jewellery, I’m sure, but I always loved the story.’
‘Well, the legend says that the lord will recognise the girl in three different ways. She will be wearing a dragon heart necklace …’
‘Shut up, it does not say that! You just want to get in my pants a few days early by feeding me this story that we’re obviously lost soul mates.’
He laughed. ‘It’s the truth. I’m just telling you the legend, you wanted to know the story. It explains why the Grey Lady was so interested in your tattoo, she may have seen it before. I don’t think she was there to admire your boobs, as great as they are.’
‘Stop it,’ Milly giggled. What had she done? She’d opened the door for him to unashamedly flirt with her for the next few days. ‘What are the other two ways?’
He dished up the salad and the chicken onto two plates and offered his hand to her.
‘Come on, I’ll show you.’
She took his hand and he led her through the banquet hall and up the stairs.
‘So, there is a heart of stone in the study. It is said that when the lord holds it in his hand and kisses his one true love, the stone will turn to dust,’ Cameron said.
‘So the lord has to carry this around with him every time he kisses a pretty lady, that’s a bit inconvenient.’
‘I know, it is rather. Big, heavy thing it is, too.’
‘When was the stone heart made?’
‘No idea.’
‘Is it a precious stone?’
‘No it’s just stone, but it was one of the things that was specifically left to me in the will.’
Cameron walked into the study and left her to walk around the other side of the desk. He opened a drawer and pulled out a big box, which was clearly quite heavy. He undid the catch and flipped open the lid, pushing the box across the desk towards her.
Sitting on a blanket of blue velvet was a hand sized stone heart. There was nothing remarkable about it, nothing even very pretty. It looked very old and like it could crumble at any time.
Cameron walked back round the desk and picked it up, weighing it in his hand. He looked up from the stone at her.
‘So … we should probably kiss, just to test it out.’
Milly laughed at Cameron’s tactics. ‘I’m not kissing you just to see if some silly legend is true.’
‘A minute ago, the silly legend was very romantic.’
‘It is, but it’s just a story, besides that rock looks like it would crumble at the slightest touch, even without my kiss.’
‘True.’ He gave it a hard squeeze but the rock remained intact. He looked up at her hopefully.
Milly sighed. ‘OK, a quick one.’
He grinned and gathered her to him with one arm round her back. He smiled at her as he lowered his lips to hers, kissing her softly and sweetly. Sensations rushed through her as soon as his mouth met hers. A rush of flames ignited her, she felt euphoric and blissfully happy. A soft breeze wrapped round them, a scent of flowers, mingled with gentle laughter. She pulled away in shock and the laughter faded. She stared up at Cameron, wondering if he had felt it too. She couldn’t tell from his expression but he had obviously enjoyed the kiss.
She glanced down at the stone heart in his hand, still intact and completely unaffected by their incredible kiss. She felt disappointed but she didn’t know why. She had only known Cameron a few days. Of course she wasn’t his true love, that kind of love took time. Love at first sight was a fairy tale.
She stepped back a bit out of his embrace. ‘Well, we probably needed to be in love to break the spell.’
‘Maybe we both needed to hold it while we kissed, or maybe you should have held it,’ Cameron suggested. Was he disappointed too?
‘Give me that thing,’ Milly said, offering out her hand.
‘It’s heavy.’ Cameron warned as he placed it in her hand.
As soon as the stone touched her hand it crumbled into pieces, leaving nothing more than a pile of sand and dust in her palm.
Milly’s heart missed a beat. And then another. She didn’t dare move or breathe and she certainly couldn’t look at Cameron.
Eventually she found her voice. ‘It was very old.’
‘Yes, probably a thousand years.’
‘Stop it,’ but Milly could find no humour in it now. This was ridiculous, a fairy tale, nothing more. She didn’t believe in fairy tales.
Not knowing what to do with the dust, she let it pour onto the blue velvet in the box and she snapped the lid closed.
‘Shall we have lunch?’
She turned and walked from the room but Cameron quickly followed her.
‘Do you not want to know what the third way is?’
He clearly thought the whole thing was hilarious.
She sighed and turned round to face him. ‘Go on.’
‘There is a cameo brooch that …’
‘Oh, stop it! You’re playing with me, why are you playing with me?’ She felt angry and hurt that he would tease her like this. It was all a trick.
Cameron looked shocked at her sudden anger. He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘What’s wrong?’ He was genuinely concerned and she regretted her outburst. He was just joking around with her, he didn’t mean any harm.
‘You saw the cameo that Jamie bought me for my birthday and now you’re weaving it into your legend. I have to give you points, it’s one hell of a story.’
‘I didn’t see it, I swear. I was on the other side of the table.’
Milly shook her head and walked down the stairs. ‘Go on, tell me the way that it fits into the story.’
‘Well, it’s said that Matthew had the cameo made in the librarian’s likeness and gave it to her sister with strict instructions to pass it to her daughter and then her daughter’s daughter and every daughter after that. Matthew was sure that the girl that came back to break the curse would be a direct
relation to the librarian. The girls were supposed to wear it on their wedding day so that their true love would recognise the girl he had lost all those years before.’
Milly rolled her eyes. ‘And let me guess, my cameo is exactly the same as the one that Matthew made.’
‘I didn’t see your cameo, I had no idea Jamie bought you one, but I can show you the one that’s part of the legend. Let’s go to the portrait gallery above the banquet hall.’
Milly sighed, her stomach rumbling hungrily. But as he’d gone to so much effort to create the story, she didn’t see any harm in humouring him for a bit longer.
He took her into the portrait gallery and to a large portrait of a very austere looking woman.
‘Twice in the past the lord of the castle married the librarian of the village, I’m not sure whether it was in an attempt to break the curse, or just because they fell in love. This was Alexandra who married Charles Heartstone in 1674. You can see the blue cameo brooch she is wearing.’
Milly squinted at the brooch. It was a cameo but it was impossible to see whether it bore any resemblance to her own, currently sitting in the kitchen.
‘She died during childbirth a year after they were wed.’
‘Cheery,’ Milly said, sarcastically.
Cameron gestured for her to come over to the other side of the room. ‘This is Sophia who was my mad old Uncle Boris’s first wife. She died just a few weeks after the wedding of scarlet fever. It broke my uncle’s heart and that’s what sent him mad. The legend says that both women died because the thousand years wasn’t up.’
Milly sighed and walked closer to the painting, faltering a bit in her step as she drew nearer.
‘That’s the Grey Lady.’
Cameron looked at the picture more closely. ‘I suppose it is, yes.’
Milly stepped closer and felt her heart thunder against her chest.
‘Sophia used to wear her cameo brooch as a choker necklace. I believed she tied a piece of ribbon to the pin,’ Cameron explained.
Milly tried to draw in breath but her throat was closed, black spots exploded in her vision and she felt physically sick.
That was why the Grey Lady had appeared to her, clutching her throat. She was trying to tell her she wanted her cameo necklace back. The cameo that was painted in extraordinary detail on the throat of Sophia in this painting was the exact same cameo that was sitting in a black velvet box in Cameron’s kitchen.
Chapter Thirteen
Cameron had never seen anyone go as white as Milly had up in the portrait gallery. He had thought she was going to pass out. He’d quickly brought her back down to the kitchen and made her eat her lunch and she’d not said another word since.
She was looking a lot better now, the colour had returned to her cheeks. She had finished every bite of the salad and was happily sitting opposite him reading a newspaper. Well, she was going through the motions as if she was reading it, but he strongly suspected she hadn’t read a single word.
He was dying to look at the cameo that was sitting at the end of the table, but he hadn’t dared. He figured from her reaction it was quite similar to the one in the painting but there were hundreds of blue cameos out there, they had been hugely popular, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There was no way that the cameo in Milly’s box was the exact same one. He hadn’t seen many cameos in his life but the ones he had seen all looked very similar.
The silence between them was unbearable. They had sat in silence many times since she had arrived but it had never felt like this.
He stood up and she looked up at him warily.
‘I need to get some groceries from the village, did you want anything?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine thank you.’
‘Right.’ Cameron felt awkward and he didn’t know why.
He stepped back, taking his time moving Milly’s shoes to the side of the room, hoping that she would say something to alleviate this weird feeling between them, but she didn’t. He walked out, determined to bring her back a gift, anything that would bring back her normal smile again.
He walked into the village, it was another gorgeously hot day. Preparations for the Summer Solstice play seemed to be underway on the village green. There was bunting being hung from the trees and tiny fairy lights were being strewn from the branches. There was a sense of excitement among the villagers, everyone was getting involved. Milly seemed to want to be a part of it as well, she had even been talking about making some Solstice cookies when she had returned from the village the day before.
A week ago, he would have wanted no part in these celebrations. He liked being anti-social, it suited him fine. But now … everything seemed better, he was happier than he had been in a long time. He still didn’t want to make an idiot of himself in front of the whole village but he would at least come down and watch the festivities with Milly.
As he strolled over to the mini supermarket he spotted Lavender, weighed down with her heavy bags on the way back from the shop.
Loath as he was to hear more mystic predictions about his life, he wasn’t going to let her struggle.
‘Here, let me help you,’ Cameron said, hurrying over and taking the bags.
‘Such a good boy,’ Lavender said, smiling at him as she walked at his side.
Cameron noted that, oddly, the bags seemed to be filled with cans of beans. ‘That’s nice of you to say, but you’re probably the only one who thinks that. Everyone else just chants “Oogie” at me.’
‘Well, you upset a lot of people when you sacked everyone.’
‘There’s no money in the estate, Lavender, and the severance pay I gave them completely cleaned me out personally.’
‘I did think you were too generous with that. Most people wouldn’t give anything and you were giving away thousands.’
‘It wasn’t much. I just felt bad. A lot of people had worked at the castle all their lives.’
‘And I bet no one thanked you for it.’
‘That’s not why I did it. And I understand people are upset but there really was no other way round it.’
Lavender pushed open her door and Cameron noted that she didn’t even use a key, it was just left unlocked.
‘How is your young Milly?’ Lavender said.
‘She’s not mine.’
‘She will be. I know she will be.’
‘Because you’ve seen it in the leaves,’ Cameron said, with a smirk.
‘Yes.’ Lavender said, looking at him in confusion as if she didn’t understand why he was questioning it.
‘And children too?’
‘Yes love, two daughters, your first will be here by the end of next year.’
Cameron smiled and shook his head. ‘She’s a bit sad today, actually. I told her the story of the family curse, she got freaked out by it.’
Lavender rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not surprised, you can’t just tell someone you’re their soul mate when you’ve only known them for a few days. You have to tread lightly, with Milly especially. She’s scared to put her trust in you for her future. You can’t just present it to her as a fait accompli.’
‘I didn’t, that’s not why I told the story …’
‘The best thing you can do to get her to trust you is agree to be in the Summer Solstice play.’
Cameron stared at her for a moment and then laughed. ‘Good try Lavender, but I’m not doing it.’
‘Milly has already agreed to be in it. It’s important to her and it will show your commitment to her.’
Cameron shook his head in exasperation. He guessed it would be one way to put a smile back on her face but he had been thinking of something along the lines of flowers or chocolates rather than public humiliation.
* * *
Cameron sat staring at a scene of his new book on the laptop. No matter how many times he tried, he couldn’t get the words to say what he wanted them to.
He glanced over at Milly, who was still diligently researching the castle
. She had seemed back to her normal cheery self when he had returned with the shopping hours before. She had been singing what sounded like Disney songs as she danced around the kitchen tidying everything up like a proper Cinderella. He had noticed that the cameo box had been removed and he didn’t dare ask where it had gone. She had been delighted with the peonies he had picked for her from the castle grounds, which were now displayed proudly in a vase in the middle of the table.
As long as he never mentioned the cameo or the legend of the Heartstone curse again, everything would be fine. Though he had been as shocked as she was when she’d reduced the stone heart to dust.
He returned his attention to the laptop and the words swam before his eyes. It was getting late now and really he should just give up and go to bed, but he didn’t want to be faced with sorting this scene out tomorrow. He would clear it up tonight, then he could go to bed.
‘Cameron.’
‘Hmmm,’ he answered, but he was only really half listening.
‘This hot movie sex that you always have?’
She had his fullest attention now. He looked across the table at her. ‘Yes.’
‘Is it really the sort of sex you see in movies, when you tumble through the door, ripping each other’s clothes off and do it on the nearest hard surface?’
He thought back to his last few sexual experiences. ‘Pretty much.’
She thought about this for a moment. ‘I must say, I do like the sound of the whole clothes being ripped off scenario. Adam never ripped my clothes off. We used to undress ourselves and then Adam liked them to be folded neatly on the chair.’
He leaned forward across the table. ‘When I make love to you for the first time it will be in my bed, it will be slow and sensuous and I’m really going to take my time getting to know you, to pleasure you. If you want I can tear your clothes off before we get that far but the fun stuff, screwing you on the kitchen table and in every room of the castle, that can come later. I’m going to make love to you first.’
She stared at him, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly open in shock.
‘You’re going to make love to me?’
The Secrets of Clover Castle Page 15
