Page 25 of Christmas Spirits at Honeywell House (Ghosts of Rowan Vale #3)

AGNES

Agnes settled back in the sofa and prepared to revisit some distinctly uncomfortable memories. Where to begin? At the beginning, she supposed. And that was the day the estate passed from the Ashcrofts to the Wyndhams.

As Callie opened her mouth to speak, Agnes pressed on, not wanting to hear any words of sympathy or, worse, personal questions. It was hard enough to talk about Mr Wyndham’s past. She certainly wasn’t going to discuss her own.

‘The only candidate was an unlikely one. Thomas Wyndham was the Ashcrofts’ gamekeeper – a duplicitous wretch if ever there was one.

Poacher-turned-gamekeeper springs to mind, and I never trusted him as far as I could throw him.

Nevertheless, it was clear that there was no choice.

No other villager possessed the gift. For some reason, fate had decreed that the Harling Estate was to pass into the hands of the Wyndhams.’

‘So what relation was Thomas to Aubrey?’ Callie asked.

‘Thomas was Aubrey’s father,’ Lawrie explained. He nodded gently at Agnes. ‘Do continue.’

Callie took the hint and shut up. Agnes cast her mind back to those days, when she’d been forced to share her home with the insufferable Wyndhams.

It was enough to make her shudder, even to this day.

‘Thomas had married just a few months before he purchased the estate for ten pounds. His wife was a common baggage and couldn’t believe her luck when she became lady of this house.’ She sniffed. ‘I say lady, but of course, she was anything but.’

‘Some would say I’m no lady either,’ Callie reminded her. ‘I don’t think I’d deserve to be called a common baggage because I’m not a member of the aristocracy, Agnes.’

‘That, my dear girl, had nothing to do with it. I had an open mind, believe me, but that woman… No, I’m sorry.

Janie Watson was no lady. She worked as a kitchen maid here at the Hall, and she was known to be coarse, crude and cruel.

Becoming the owner of the estate didn’t change her.

She treated her former friends, the other servants, abominably.

Made their lives a misery, if you must know. So, there you have it.’

‘Seriously? And she was Aubrey’s mother?’

Agnes nodded her head sorrowfully. ‘I’m afraid she was.

Mr Wyndham – Aubrey – arrived in 1820. I will say, I felt for Janie that day.

She suffered greatly in her labours and was unable to have any more children.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that would make them treat Mr – Aubrey – with more kindness, if anything.

After all, he was their only child. But instead, they showed him indifference at best, callousness at worst.’

‘Poor Aubrey,’ Callie breathed. ‘I never knew.’

‘No, well.’ Agnes nodded furiously. ‘ I knew. I watched it all. I sat with him when he was left alone in his crib to cry. It broke my heart that I couldn’t make myself heard to him, nor offer him any comfort.

His parents were determined to act like gentlefolk and sent him away to boarding school as soon as he was old enough.

You can imagine how he suffered there, having parents that had once been a gamekeeper and a kitchen maid. ’

‘When did Thomas and Janie find out that Aubrey didn’t have the gift?’ Callie asked, sounding almost afraid to know the answer.

‘By the time he was ten years old it had become evident that he wasn’t suddenly going to be blessed,’ Agnes explained.

‘They had barely tolerated him before, but now he became an object of hatred. As far as they were concerned, he’d been their meal ticket.

The guarantee that the Wyndham family would always own property and land.

Be respected. Deluded fools! They bullied and scorned poor Aubrey dreadfully, and he was beaten regularly. ’

‘Poor Aubrey,’ Callie whispered. ‘Gosh, I’ve already said that haven’t I? But I don’t know what else to say.’

‘His parents decided that their only hope of hanging onto their newly founded dynasty was for Aubrey to marry and give them a grandchild who possessed the ability of Thomas. In 1845 they selected The Honourable Elspeth Cook-Warren as a suitable candidate.’

‘She sounds posh,’ Callie observed. ‘Didn’t her parents mind about the Wyndhams’ background?’

‘Elspeth’s parents had died abroad,’ Agnes said. ‘She was the ward of her uncle, and he apparently had no concerns about her marrying into the Wyndham family. No doubt he was pleased to be rid of the responsibility for her. She, of course, had no choice in the matter.’

‘Sounds awful,’ Callie said. ‘Did she and Aubrey get on?’

Agnes shook her head. ‘He tried,’ she insisted.

‘He was nothing but kindness and politeness to her. What else would you expect of Mr Wyndham? But she was a cold fish, who treated him with contempt. She may have been forced into the marriage, but she gave no thought to the fact that he’d been forced into it, too.

She didn’t accept the Wyndhams as people of her own class.

She viewed them as peasants and was furious to find herself living with such a family. ’

‘Well,’ Callie said slowly, ‘you can’t really blame her, can you? Having no choice in who you marry. Can’t be fun.’

Agnes exchanged glances with Lawrie. He gave her a sympathetic smile.

‘No indeed,’ Agnes said heavily. ‘It cannot be much fun at all. Which was why I tried to understand her and like her. But I could not. Mr Wyndham didn’t deserve the treatment she gave him. She showed him no respect, no kindness.’

She shuddered at the memory. ‘A year after their marriage, their son James arrived. Elspeth promptly informed Mr Wyndham that she had done her duty and that he must never bother her again.’

‘Whoa!’ Callie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘And she got away with that? I thought women in those days did as they were told.’

‘Many unfortunate women indeed did as they were told,’ Agnes said, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘But not everyone had a husband like Mr Wyndham. He would no more force himself on a lady than he would shoot her. Surely you know him well enough by now, Callie?’

‘I do,’ Callie agreed. ‘You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.’

‘That’s quite all right, as long as we understand each other,’ Agnes said.

‘Now, James was the apple of Elspeth’s eye.

All the love she refused to give to Aubrey, she lavished on their son.

I hardly like to speak ill of the child, but he was a little beast. Spoilt, wilful, sly.

He had no time for Aubrey, of course, because Aubrey was always trying to make him behave himself and be kind and helpful to people.

A waste of time. Between Elspeth and Janie there was no chance of that. They ruined him.’

‘Wait, so Janie was actually nice to James?’

‘She was. She liked the fact that he had aristocratic blood on his mother’s side.

It made her respect him in a way she’d never respected her own child.

She pressured Mr Wyndham that he must have another son, but never Elspeth – which was, of course, nonsensical.

The two of them would sit together,’ she added bitterly, ‘spending many a merry hour listing all his imagined failings and discussing how weak and unmanly he was.’

Callie puffed out her cheeks. ‘No wonder you didn’t like them. They sound bloody awful.’

‘Quite.’ Agnes didn’t approve of Callie using such words, but she agreed with the sentiment.

‘Thomas died when James was twelve, and Janie blamed Mr Wyndham, saying his father had been killed by the stress of the situation that he had caused by not being able to see the ghosts. That he had caused! Can you imagine?

‘Oh, I was so angry! Poor Mr Wyndham tried his best to forge a relationship with James, but the pampered brat wanted nothing to do with him. Indeed, he laughed at him. Any other father would have beaten him black and blue for such insolence, but Mr Wyndham never laid a hand on him. Instead, he withdrew. He spent a lot of time alone, walking the grounds, working in his study. At least, he imagined he was alone, but he rarely was. I tried to keep him company.’

Agnes’s mind flew back to those dark days, when she’d sat with him as he worked, or walked beside him as he patrolled the parkland, finding comfort in conversations with the staff.

Sometimes, she’d watched him head out on business, away from the estate to Gloucester or Cirencester. Sometimes even to London. How she’d wished she could go with him. She’d longed to be beside him, wherever he went.

She couldn’t admit it to Callie and Lawrie, but she’d fallen in love with him even then.

He’d been twenty-six when Elspeth had rejected him, and despite Agnes being in her forties, she’d given her heart to him at that moment.

The pain of being so close to him but unable to make herself known had been almost unbearable.

‘That last Christmas before he passed…’ Agnes murmured, perhaps to herself.

Remembering where she was, she spoke directly to Callie.

‘James had become engaged to a young woman of some means called Frances Croft.

The Crofts invited the Wyndhams to spend Christmas with them at their country home in Hampshire.

James, Elspeth and Janie made it quite clear that Mr Wyndham would not be welcome.

‘There’d been a huge row, you see. Aubrey was desperately trying to find someone with the gift – someone who could take over the estate, since it was clear by then that James couldn’t.

His so-called family accused him of treachery and informed him they wanted nothing to do with him.

They took some of the servants with them to Hampshire and left him to spend Christmas without his family. ’

She rubbed her eyes as they misted over. ‘He didn’t even have a present to open! There was no roasted goose that year. He gave the remaining servants the day off and spent the day alone. I remember, he dined on leftovers and went to bed early. He…’ She shook her head, unable to continue.