Page 34 of Christmas Spirits at Honeywell House (Ghosts of Rowan Vale #3)

Aubrey rubbed his chin, utterly confused. If it wasn’t Silas, why were they virtual prisoners in their own home?

‘Go on,’ he urged.

Agnes got to her feet and turned away from him. Her voice, shaky but resolute, drifted through the darkness towards him.

‘I kept you here because you have family in Rowan Vale. A great-great-great-great-granddaughter, to be exact. And I didn’t want you to meet her, so I lied and said it was because of Silas’s vicious slurs that we must remain behind the gates. So now you know the truth.’

Aubrey gaped at her. She still didn’t turn around and he didn’t know what to make of anything she’d just told him.

‘A – a descendant of mine is in Rowan Vale?’ he asked incredulously. ‘But, who? When? How?’

‘She is descended from James,’ Agnes said. ‘Her name is Clara and she’s been living in this village for around fifteen years. She came here because she met a man on holiday and fell in love with him, and he was a resident here.’

She gave a little cry of despair and dropped back onto the bench. ‘I’m so sorry!’

‘I can’t take any of this in,’ Aubrey admitted. ‘A Wyndham in Rowan Vale! But the rules…’

‘Lawrie knows,’ she told him. ‘He allowed her to remain in the village, providing she never told her husband or anyone else about the family connection, and?—’

She shook her head and Aubrey frowned.

‘And what? And what , Agnes?’

‘And that she never approached you ,’ she whispered.

Aubrey’s thoughts were racing so far ahead of him he couldn’t keep up. Then suddenly, a memory pierced through the jumble of images, and he said sharply, ‘This woman. Is she married to Jack Milsom?’

Agnes started. ‘Why, yes. She is. How on earth did you know?’

‘He’s my family,’ he murmured. ‘The little boy with the red hair. I knew he could see me!’

‘What did you say?’ she demanded, sounding almost like her old self again.

Aubrey barely heard her. He had seen his own great-grandchild. Forget all the generations that divided them. He would think of the child as his great-grandson and this Clara as his granddaughter. He had seen the boy, and the boy had seen him, and all the time they were related, and he hadn’t known.

All that time. Fifteen years Clara had been in Rowan Vale. His flesh and blood. And Agnes had known. Lawrie had known. Why?

‘I don’t understand,’ he said, feeling utterly wretched. ‘Why would you and Lawrie keep us apart?’

‘She’s a descendant of James,’ Agnes repeated.

‘You know how badly he treated you. Who’s to say she won’t be just as awful?

James scorned you and mocked you, and after you passed away, he stole from the Hall and was utterly shameless.

You know that, Mr Wyndham. I didn’t want you to suffer like that again. I was protecting you.’

‘And Clara definitely knows I am at Harling Hall?’

‘Yes – yes, she knows. She saw you and me one day just after she arrived and followed us. That’s when she realised who you were.

I saw her, but you didn’t notice her watching, and of course, she couldn’t see me.

I told Lawrie because I knew what it must mean, and he visited her at Honeywell House and explained the situation to her. ’

‘Explained what situation, exactly?’

‘Well, that a member of a family that has formerly owned the estate should not return. She already knew that yet she chose to ignore the rule and come here anyway. Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know?’

‘You said she came here because she fell in love with Jack?’

‘Well – yes. But it’s a bit convenient, isn’t it? Anyway, Lawrie and she made a deal that she could stay on his terms.’

‘And she just accepted that? She didn’t argue?’

‘No,’ Agnes said. ‘She accepted it. She wanted to stay.’

‘Right.’ Aubrey couldn’t deny he was hurt. Clara had clearly had no desire to see him. Maybe his entire family had despised him through the generations. ‘I see.’

Agnes gave a sob. ‘Oh no, Mr Wyndham! Don’t be downhearted. It’s not what you think.’

‘Well,’ he said with a bitter laugh, ‘clearly, it’s exactly what I think. She has no more interest in me than James had. I was a fool to think otherwise. You know, for a moment there… Ah well.’

‘No!’ Agnes reached for his hand and clasped it tightly in hers. ‘You mustn’t think such things. I-I must explain. Clara was told…’

She put her hand to her mouth, shaking her head frantically.

‘What?’ Aubrey asked roughly. ‘What was she told? Agnes! What was she told?’

‘Oh, Mr Wyndham. I’m so sorry.’ She released him from her grasp, no doubt due to the harsh tone of his voice. He felt a fleeting shame for that until she continued, ‘She was told that you had no interest in seeing her and wanted her to stay well away from you and from the Hall.’

Aubrey put his head in his hands. Bad enough that he’d had family in the village all this time, but that Agnes and Lawrie had conspired to keep Clara from him and had lied not only to Aubrey, but to his granddaughter, too, was almost too much to bear. What must she think of him?

‘You never did think much of my family, did you?’ he said at last.

‘I did not,’ she admitted. ‘But can you blame me? They were dreadful people. Liars, thieves, opportunists. They clung to the estate long after they should have left and would have remained if Ambrose Davenport hadn’t bought them off.

Even then, they stole from the Hall and took things that never belonged to them – no doubt to sell for a tidy profit. ’

‘And that’s why you wanted to keep Clara and me apart?’

‘Indeed. She came here despite knowing the rules. She admitted as much to Lawrie. What is that, if not deceitful? Wilful. Selfish. A sure sign that she had inherited the ways of James and your parents, if ever there was one. Bad blood will out, will it not, Mr Wyndham?’

Aubrey got to his feet and ran a hand through his hair, feeling sick with grief.

‘All these years you have kept me here under false pretences,’ he said, the pain searing through him as he realised the full depths of her deception.

‘You have made decisions on my behalf. You have lied to me. You have lied to Clara. You have alienated us from each other. You have colluded with Lawrie to deceive me and my granddaughter. You have deprived me of getting to know her, and my great-grandchildren. You have made me worry and grieve for you, believing as I did that you were wounded by Silas Alexander’s ramblings. ’

He shook his head, bewildered at how blind he had been. ‘In short, you have behaved despicably, and I have no words to express how disappointed I am in you.’

Agnes gave an anguished sob, but Aubrey made no attempt to comfort her. He paced up and down, trying to make sense of this new reality he found himself in: a reality where the woman he’d loved and trusted more than anyone he’d ever known had betrayed him so completely.

‘Does Callie know about this?’ he asked. ‘You said she had made you see that you’d done me a grave injustice.’

‘She does,’ Agnes said, guiltily. ‘Clara told her the truth and Callie sought me out. Oh, Mr Wyndham, she said some dreadful things to me and to Lawrie.’

‘But she still didn’t tell me ?’ Had even Callie betrayed him? He’d expect it of Lawrie, but Callie ?

‘She said she would discuss it with Brodie, and then she told me this morning that she couldn’t in all conscience live with this, and that if I didn’t tell you the truth she would, so?—’

‘So you were forced to come clean,’ he said, feeling some relief that at least someone had been on his side. ‘And if she hadn’t given you that ultimatum?’

Agnes stared at him dumbly.

‘Well,’ he said heavily, ‘I should not be surprised. Nothing is as I imagined it to be, and I cannot say I would expect you to behave any differently.’

‘I did it for you,’ Agnes wailed, grabbing his arm. ‘You were always too good for that family! I couldn’t let them get their claws into you again and hurt you.’

Aubrey shook off her hand. ‘You forget yourself, Mrs Ashcroft. It wasn’t your decision to make.’

Agnes sank back against the picnic table, and Aubrey was suddenly very glad he couldn’t see her expression clearly. He didn’t want to feel pity for her. He didn’t want to feel obliged to tell her it was all right and he understood and everything she’d done could be forgiven.

It was bad enough that Lawrie had deceived him, but he knew Lawrie had always been on Agnes’s side, no matter what. Look how they’d colluded to keep Mia and Florence apart. One would have thought they’d have learned from that mistake.

But no, they’d taken it upon themselves to play God yet again, and he wondered if he could ever forgive them for it.

He could hear Elspeth’s voice in his head, telling him how stupid and gullible he was, and how pathetic and unmanly.

He heard his mother mocking him, saying what a disappointment he’d turned out to be.

His father’s scornful declaration that he was no Wyndham, and that if only he’d never been born, they might have had the chance of a real son, who had the gift and would have saved the Harling Estate for them.

Now Lawrie and his own dear Agnes had humiliated him, and he felt the pain of that betrayal deeper than anything even his own parents and wife had inflicted upon him.

Without another word he headed back to the house, leaving Agnes alone in the garden.

He simply had nothing more to say to her.