House of Shadows (39 page)

When she had first come to Ashdown Park she had not imagined that she would be here to see the summer come around. She had not thought that far ahead. She had not wanted to, she had not dared. Half in fear, half in hope she had perhaps believed that Ben would have come back by then and she would be back in the city where she belonged, with the noise and the people and the rain splashing onto hot pavements and making them smell of dust.

She looked at Mark who was resting one elbow on the gate now and gazing out across the stubble fields where the rising sun was turning the mist to gold. He turned and looked back at her but he did not smile and she knew this was where her final choice was to be made.

She waited; listened, and felt love, like a fall of petals against her cheek again, and she heard a whisper:

‘Be happy.’ It was Lavinia’s voice, Lavinia’s last gift to her. She took Mark’s hand and held it tightly.

I will love you until the end of time.

They did not speak for a long time. When Mark finally let her go Holly took the Sistrin’s chain and held it for a moment in the palm of her hand, nestling next to the pearl.
‘I think Elizabeth would want it to be destroyed,’ she said.

Mark nodded. ‘Close the pattern,’ he said.

They walked a little way down the track to where the brook plunged beneath a small stone bridge. Holly threw the chain and the pearl as far and as hard as she could over the edge and into the water. For a moment the sunlight gleamed on gold and then it disappeared. When she leaned her hands on the worn stone of the parapet and looked down into the water there was nothing. Both the chain and the pearl had gone.

‘The current runs fast here,’ Mark said. ‘There’s a spring that joins the stream just by the bridge. Legend has it that the water comes up from the heart of the earth. If anything has magic …’ He paused. ‘Well, I’d say that it was this water.’

He put his arm about her and Holly rested her head against his shoulder, feeling the strong and steady beat of his heart.

‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘No,’ Mark said. He bent to kiss her. ‘It’s just beginning.’

London, February 1662

S
he dreamed about the house on the night before she died. In the dream she felt as insignificant as a child, a miniature queen clad in a cream silk gown embroidered with gold. The collar prickled the nape of her neck as she craned her head to gaze up, up at the dazzling white stone of the house against the blue of the sky. It made her dizzy. Her head spun and the golden ball that adorned the roof glittered and plunged like a shooting star falling to earth.

She knew now that she would never see it. Her story finished here in the lonely luxury of Leicester House. The cavalcade of crowns and glory, exile and defeat, love and loss was at an end. First, though there was something she had to do.

She knew now, at the last, that love was the most powerful magic of all.

She sent for William Craven. She entrusted the pearl to his hand with her undying love. And so her story closed and a new one opened.

House of Shadows
was inspired by the research I have done during my fourteen years as a volunteer guide and historian at Ashdown House in Oxfordshire. The house is real, as were William, First Earl of Craven and Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen.

I have made use of the known historical facts about Craven and Elizabeth’s lives as the framework for the story. Some of the rest is historical interpretation drawing on what evidence there is from the time. It was reported, for example, that Frederick’s court at Heidelberg was a focus for the Rosicrucian Enlightenment. From the 1660s onward it was rumoured that William Craven and Elizabeth Stuart had married during their years in the Netherlands but no proof of their union has ever come to light. I have taken these and other elements of their history and filled the gaps with historical imagination. The biggest liberty I have taken is in weaving together the fates of Ashdown and Coleshill Houses. Coleshill was destroyed in a fire in 1952. Ashdown still stands, and I hope it will for many years to come.

ISBN: 978-1-474-03808-9

HOUSE OF SHADOWS

© 2015 Nicola Cornick

Published in Great Britain 2015
by Harlequin MIRA, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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