House of Shadows (37 page)

T
he building development looked completely different from how it had been in the days running up to the Open House. Then there had been an air of mild panic. Dustsheets were still on the floor and over some of the furniture. Last minute paint had been applied and tiles grouted. Tonight, though, the wide gates of the former stable yard were flung open and lanterns lit the way to the show houses. It looked exactly what it was: elegant, luxurious, new life given to wonderful old buildings. Holly could feel the buzz of excitement in the air as she made her way across to the entrance. Ideally she should have arrived earlier to dress the house but she doubted that Mark expected her to turn up at all. She had butterflies in her stomach at the thought of seeing him. There was so much to say. She hoped he would want to hear it but she could not be sure.

She had brought Bonnie with her. When she and Mark
had discussed the Open House they had agreed that Bonnie would add the final touch, lying picturesquely in pride of place in front of the Aga on the stone-flagged kitchen floor in the converted laundry house. Bonnie could turn a house into a home.

Most of the guests had not yet arrived and through the lighted windows Holly could see Fran and Paula setting up the buffet. She clutched her cardboard bags of vases and paperweights nervously and knocked at the door. A harassed looking PA let her in and directed her to the cloakroom, leaving her free to wander around placing the glass where it would show to advantage and also enhance the setting, an engraved panel here, with the light shining through, a paperweight there, elegantly placed on a wooden windowsill.

She stowed her bags away and took Bonnie away from the temptations of Fran and the canapés. Guests were starting to arrive now. Holly knew Mark was out in the hall greeting them and she stayed out of sight. She didn’t want to ruin his big night. Later there would be time to talk.

It got busy quickly. People dropped in to ask her about her work. A tutor from the local college gave her his card and asked her to call about running a course in their Art and Design department. One of Mark’s competitors suggested that in future she dress their show homes instead and offered an outrageous sum of money to poach her. Several people took her cards and promised to ring for commissions. Everyone admired the dog.

It was an hour later when she saw Flick come in, sipping a glass of champagne, looking pale and ethereal in a silver
shift dress. She was chatting animatedly to Joe but her eyes were tired. Holly wondered if she had not been sleeping. Today, the day of Ben’s funeral, must have been particularly difficult for her, having no part, staying away, pretending.

Holly had guessed Flick might be there and had been on the lookout for her; she knew she needed to speak to her first, even before she talked to Mark. Suddenly, though, she felt inadequate, afraid to say the wrong thing. Flick was looking both stricken and terrified and Joe was watching them warily, and suddenly Holly understood that this wasn’t about her and that nothing except unconditional love would be enough to reassure Flick. Holly wasn’t demonstrative, she never had been except with closest family and friends, but she put her own glass down with a snap and walked over to Flick and hugged her tightly.

She felt Flick’s surprise melt within three seconds and then she was hugging her back so tightly that Holly thought she might choke.

‘Hey,’ she said, feeling Flick’s hot tears scald her neck, ‘stop that. You look too good to ruin your mascara.’

Flick gulped and laughed and hugged her again, and then Joe was smiling and stooping to kiss her and Flick was talking and wiping the streaks of make up off her cheeks. When Mark walked in they didn’t see him for a moment and then Flick stopped talking and Holly looked up. She felt a moment of panic.

‘Holly,’ Mark said, ‘I didn’t think you would come.’ His tone was careful, guarded.

Holly raised her chin. ‘I said I’d be here,’ she said. ‘I don’t let my clients down.’

She saw a flicker of amusement in Mark’s dark eyes. ‘That’s very professional of you,’ he said gravely.

‘Also,’ Holly said, taking a quick breath, feeling her heart start to hammer, ‘I need to talk to you. I know it can’t be now, but maybe later?’

‘Why not now?’ Mark said.

Holly felt her stomach drop. All around them the party buzzed with excitement, voices and laughter. She waved an arm around to encompass the room and everything beyond. ‘Because of
this
,
’
she said. ‘Because it’s important—’

‘Some things are more important,’ Mark said. He caught her wrist. ‘Come with me.’

‘I’ll look after Bonnie for you,’ Flick called after them.

‘And I’ll look after the guests,’ Joe said. ‘Especially the good-looking women.’

Mark steered her across the stable yard to the corner where the estate office sat in darkness. Moonlight lay across their path, broken by the scudding clouds and the whispering shadows of leaves. It was quiet, the sounds of the party floating across to them from a distance. Mark held the office door open for her and Holly walked inside and immediately felt enveloped in the past. The slow ticking of the clock could have been any time. The light from the lamp illuminated a corner of the room with warmth.

Mark waited for her to speak with the same contained stillness she had grown to know, but this time there was the burn of emotion in his eyes and the line of his shoulders was tense. Holly wanted to touch him then, but there were things she had to say first.

‘I wanted to say that you were right,’ she said. ‘I did
idolise Ben. I couldn’t see any wrong in him.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, Mark. It must have been absolute hell for you, knowing what was going on, wanting to protect Flick. Then I came along, asking questions, stirring things up. I’m surprised you even spoke to me when you realised who I was.’

Mark shook his head. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘I liked you from the start.’ He gave her a look. ‘Hell, that must have been quite obvious. But you were struggling so hard with Ben’s disappearance. I admired how gallant you were and I felt I couldn’t do anything to destroy the belief you had in him.’ He sighed. ‘Bad decision.’

‘I’ve made mistakes too,’ Holly said shakily. ‘I tried to keep you at arm’s length because I was scared of what there was between us. It was there from the start, the chemistry and the sense of connection. I just didn’t want to face it because I was scared of risking everything and losing it again.’

‘Sweetheart—’ Mark smoothed the hair away from her hot face. ‘You had reason.’

‘But in the end logic and reason don’t make you happy,’ Holly said. Her voice wobbled. ‘I love you. If you still want us to have a relationship …’ She stopped.

‘Yes,’ Mark said, before she had barely finished speaking. ‘I do.’ He pulled her to him. His mouth came down on hers.

‘I love you too,’ he said against her lips. He pulled her close into his side, his arms around her, her head resting in the curve of his shoulder.

‘Hell, Holly,’ he said, his mouth against her hair. ‘If only you knew.’

Holly tilted her head up to look at him. ‘Knew what?’

‘What it’s been like for me,’ Mark said. ‘From the very first moment I saw you.’

That stole Holly’s breath. She shook her head slightly, bemused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I felt it too,’ Mark said. ‘The sense of recognition, the affinity.’ He pushed a hand through his hair. ‘It was a shock,’ he said mildly. ‘I’d been down here a few years, I’d had PTSD and got wasted, I’d lost my marriage and taken on looking after my siblings. I’d foolishly thought nothing else could happen …’ He spread his hands in a gesture of surrender, ‘and then I saw you and this feeling just hit me. It was as though I knew you, as though I’d always known you. It felt as though somewhere along the line I’d lost you and as soon as I saw you I wanted you back.’

He pulled her down to sit next to him on the old sofa. ‘But you were Ben’s sister,’ he said. ‘And Ben was missing and Flick was all messed up … I told myself it was better to keep my distance. Except that I couldn’t. I’d never felt such a strong physical attraction to anyone. At first I tried to pretend that was all it was, but I knew it was more.’

This kiss held everything; gratitude, passion, promise for the future.

‘Come on,’ Holly said, taking Mark’s hand, pulling him to his feet. ‘We have to get back to the Open House.’

She held him tightly and for once she did not think of the past. This was her choice, to be with Mark, here, now. This was her life to live. She remembered her grandfather telling her to be brave, and smiled.

London, January 1662

T
he theatre at Salisbury Court was full that night with the audience preening and jostling like so many peacocks in the boxes and galleries. Elizabeth loved the noise, the dazzle and the excitement. This was what she enjoyed about London; it was alive. There was light, music and spectacle enough to entertain her forever. No need to dwell on all she had lost. This was her restoration too, just as it was Charles’s.

The opera was
The History of Sir Francis Drake
by Sir William Davenant. Elizabeth thought it an amusing if slight piece, the dashing Sir Francis painted in heroic light through his adventures off the coast of South America. The music was rousing, but the audience was there as much to be seen as to watch or listen. The candlelight reflected on the radiance of jewels and the blush of satin. They chattered, restive and shifting, like a sea of iridescence.

Seated to Elizabeth’s left, Craven seemed enthralled and heartily entertained. His enthusiasm was childlike and endearing. Hers was waning as the play progressed and she started to entertain herself instead by seeing how many of the audience she could name. She had not been back in London long but her acquaintance was extensive. Hertford, Killigrew, the Castlemaines … Her gaze slid to the woman at Barbara Castlemaine’s side. There was something familiar about her, something in the upward angle of the neck, something in that fading blonde prettiness, the ringlets too young a style for her. She thought it was a face from her time in The Hague – yet that was odd because all those men and women who had been a part of her court had hastened to visit her at Craven House. This woman had not.

The woman raised her gaze to meet Elizabeth’s and to hold it. A small smile played about her mouth. With the slightest, most stealthy of gestures she slid her hand into her pocket and took something out. For a moment Elizabeth could not see what it was amidst the soft pink folds of her gown. Then there was a sparkle, a dazzling flash of light. Across the theatre, across time, the crystal mirror shone, the diamonds in the frame bragging their ancestry, the crystal itself glowing with the inimical light she remembered.

Elizabeth felt cold; faint. She stared. There could be no mistake. Beside her Craven laughed at some wit in the play but she could not copy the audience’s roar of humour. The sounds came to her from far, far away. Her face felt stiff. She could not smile. It felt as though her heart had stopped. The mirror, here, some twenty-five years after Craven had sworn it had been destroyed.

Then she remembered. The woman. Margaret Carpenter. The mistress she had tried not to hate because it was beneath her dignity as a Queen. There had been a rumour that Craven had wanted to wed Margaret before he had discovered she was already married. Had the mirror been his love token to her? Had he rescued it from Frederick’s grave and sworn it was destroyed only to give it to this woman so lightly, so carelessly?

The chill seemed to have seeped into every inch of Elizabeth’s body. She could not hear the words of the opera. The music and laughter faded. She was trapped within the dazzling spiral of the mirror that she had thought dead and gone and now found to be alive. The misfortunes of the past years toppled over her then like a flood. Three of her sons lost, her brother’s kingdom all but ripping itself apart, lands and dominions burned into barrenness, everything lost and so much death and slander and grief.

She felt such a fool. Through it all she, blinded by trust in Craven’s loyalty, had believed his protestations that the curse of the mirror and the pearl had been lifted. She had thought the mirror destroyed and the bond broken.

She had to get out. Suddenly the heat of the theatre, the press of the bodies, the smell of humanity was too much for her. She struggled to her feet. Immediately Craven stood too, all gallantry, solicitous for her comfort. She could not look at him.

She barely waited for the carriage door to close on them before she burst into speech. It was not calm and dignified. She sounded like a fishwife in the market.

‘That woman … Your
whore …
She has the mirror. I saw it. She has the mirror of crystal that was once mine!’

She saw Craven flush with confusion; he looked utterly bewildered and she wanted to scream at him.

‘Margaret.’ She gasped a breath. Her heart was hammering. Or perhaps it was breaking. She was not sure. There was such pain in her but the fear of the mirror was eclipsed utterly by her sense of betrayal. ‘Do you remember her?’ She bit the words out like poison. ‘The woman you wanted to
marry?
The one you gave my mirror?’

She saw the precise moment that understanding slid into his eyes. He turned ashen.

‘I thought—’ He stopped. ‘I thought she had sold it.’

So he did not even have the wit to deny it. The carriage rumbled and jerked through the streets, making her feel sick.

‘You gave it to her,’ she said.

‘She took it to pay for her carriage back to England.’

‘Back to present her husband with your bastard child.’

He said nothing. She could feel the jealousy welling up in her, the spite that she had tried so hard to master all those years ago in The Hague. She had thought those dark emotions banished by love and trust, but now the trust was broken.

‘It was all a lie,’ she said. ‘My faith in you.’

‘Elizabeth,’ Craven said. ‘Don’t be foolish.’

She could feel everything starting to unravel now but the fury was alight in her like a fire consuming everything in its path. She was seduced by it; it felt good to find a reason for all the misfortune, to know who and what to blame. This
was the explanation for the disaster that had blighted their cause.

‘You betrayed me.’ She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. ‘I trusted you! You swore loyalty to me and you broke it. I had belief in you and you proved false. You knew the mirror’s power—’

Craven lost his temper. ‘And you knew I always thought that superstitious nonsense.’

‘That was not your decision to make!’

Craven’s hazel eyes were stormy. He grabbed her by the upper arms, his grip fierce. She winced. ‘Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘I gave up everything for love of you! I abandoned my allegiance to your brother’s cause in order to be with you. I put you before all else, even before honour.’ He released her so suddenly she almost fell from the seat. ‘And in return—’ He turned away, ‘you value me so little you would not even admit we are wed.’

Old wounds, old grievances. They spilled their corrosive poison over everything until it withered and died. She looked at Craven’s face, so familiar to her, so dear, and felt her heart snap.

The coach jerked to a halt in the courtyard of Craven House. A blank-faced servant stood ready at the door but neither of them made any move to alight.

‘I must beg your hospitality for tonight at least.’ Elizabeth said stiffly. ‘On the morrow I will find some other place to go.’

She saw his shock. He had never imagined it would come to this but even as he was putting out a hand to her in a last gesture of appeal she had gathered her skirts and was
stepping down from the coach, turning her back on him, a queen back in her rightful place, above him, untouchable.

And the curse had completed its work.