HartsLove (10 page)

As she left the yard, she called his name. He would be too busy eating to look over his door. But as she turned away, his dark outline appeared and she stopped short. ‘Oh!' she breathed. In the light of the yard lamp, he glowed as red as the horse on the de Granville standard. When she crossed the drawbridge, shaking the hayseeds out of her hair, she would have skipped had she been able.

That night, Daisy dreamed of The One, with herself in racing silks crouched on his back. She dreamed of the winner's enclosure and the astonishment of all when she whisked off her cap and revealed that she was no ordinary jockey, but the beautiful daughter of Sir Charles de Granville, with perfect legs. Then the dream got muddled, as she found herself not in jockeys silks but in her mother's wedding dress. She had done it up with The One's girth, and
her father was shouting at her while her mother, shaking her head, was being swallowed up in the crowd though Daisy was calling and calling for her to wait.

At the stables, Skelton was not dreaming. He was staring down at Charles, whom he had found slumped over two sacks of oats, his mouth open and an empty bottle by his side. Skelton, who had supplied the bottle, poked him with the toe of his boot. Charles grunted but did not move. ‘You and your fancy family,' Skelton said softly. ‘You think you own this place, but let me tell you, I've served my time here. I'm owed, Charlie-boy.' Charles snored. Skelton smiled sourly. ‘And what I'm owed, I'm going to get.' He contemplated leaving Charles where he was, but it was cold and Charles would be even more useless dead than he was alive so in the end the groom hoisted his employer over his shoulder, stamped over to the castle and dumped him under the Furious Boy.

The let-up in the weather brought another potential buyer, this time a widowed lady, still in mourning, and her agent. Charles went out to meet them. He was relieved to do so. Since the death of Gryffed, he could not face his children and they could not face him. The intruders would at least save them from each other.

The lady came in, raised her black lace veil and removed black kidskin gloves to reveal very white hands. She stood in front of one of the hall fires warming her feet and fluttering carefully darkened and thickened eyelashes. ‘An unusual welcoming party,' she observed, gesturing at the statues. ‘I like them.' She offered Charles her arm. ‘You must show me round.' With an awkward smile, Charles took the arm, and he and the lady crossed the hall and went through to the drawing room, leaving her agent under the silent scrutiny of Rose, Lily, Daisy, Garth, Columbine and Clover. The man viewed the blank-eyed statues with distaste, brushed
his hat and pointed a stubby finger at Rose. ‘You can take me round,' he said.

Rose was too dispirited to object. ‘What do you want to see?'

‘Everything.'

Rose shrugged helplessly. She made her way down the stairs to the kitchen. After a moment's pause, Daisy beckoned to the others and they all followed, almost treading on the agent's heels. Irritated, he turned round. The children bundled to a halt. When he walked again, there they were, right on top of him. Daisy actually trod on the back of his shoe with her callipers. ‘For the love of God!' the agent exclaimed to Rose. ‘Are these your siblings?' He bent to rub his ankle. ‘Tell them to get lost. I only need one guide.'

Rose nearly did as he asked. What did anything matter any more. But as she turned to obey, she saw the Dead Girl gazing at her from the top of the steps, a diamond teardrop in the corner of each eye. It was the first time Rose had ever seen the Dead Girl out of their father's passage. Rose breathed in, then out. She turned to the agent. ‘What siblings?' she asked sweetly. Lily, Garth, Daisy, Columbine and Clover were immediately alert as hounds. The agent threw back an arm. ‘These creatures – aren't they your sisters and brother?'

‘What creatures?' Rose asked, more sweetly still. Angry now, the man seized Columbine. With perfect timing she
became a rag doll in his arms and when he let go, sank to the floor, then rose again without a sound. ‘Stop this!' the man expostulated. Clover nearly giggled. Rose opened the kitchen door. ‘This is the kitchen,' she said. Mrs Snipper was banging pots about. Rose put a finger to her lips.

The agent was relieved to see a plump, ordinary looking creature, with a mobcap and an apron. He coughed and took a notebook from the pocket of his chequered jacket. ‘What's the capacity of the range?' he asked. Mrs Snipper said nothing. ‘Capacity, woman, capacity!' he repeated. Still nothing.

‘I don't know the capacity,' said Rose.

‘I wasn't asking you,' said the agent. ‘I was asking the cook.'

‘What cook?' asked Rose. Mrs Snipper's cheeks twitched and she banged the pots even harder.

The agent looked at Rose in a fury. ‘Are you simpleminded or is this a silly game?' he barked.

‘I don't know what you mean,' said Rose, turning the full force of her cornflower eyes on to him. ‘Are you saying you can see a cook?'

‘There
is
a cook.'

‘If we could afford a cook, we'd hardly be selling the castle,' Rose responded gravely.

The agent ran to Mrs Snipper, but as he made to seize her, a cloud of ash gusted from the range and he caught a glimpse of a flame-coloured coxcomb. In seconds, Snipe
had retreated, though the clouds of ash remained. The agent gasped and choked, seized Rose by the elbow and hurried her out of the kitchen, back up the steps and into the hall, the others following hard on his heels. Thoroughly disconcerted, the man gazed wildly about, trying to fix on something reassuring. But there was nothing to reassure, for surely, when he last looked, the Furious Boy had not had a pair of crutches stuck under his arms? In the doorway, Garth turned himself right over so that his head stuck out between his legs. ‘Oh! Horrible!' the agent cried.

At once, Rose was all consternation. ‘You look terrible! You should sit down!'

The man swivelled round and round. The children, the cook, the ash – it was a monstrous trick. He knew it, and yet still his neck prickled. ‘Sit down?' he cried. ‘Of course I don't want to sit down. How do I know the chairs are real?'

Rose laughed. ‘Oh, the chairs are quite real.' She pulled one to the fire and pushed him into it. When the agent next looked, Rose was perched on the fender, and they seemed to be alone. ‘I shouldn't really say this,' Rose said confidentially, ‘but you probably did see other children. I never see the walking dead myself, but others apparently do.' She contemplated him. ‘It's usually a bad omen, I'm afraid.'The man gasped.

‘Oh, don't worry!' Rose was all soft concern. ‘I'm sure whatever happens to you won't be painful, at least not
very. Or perhaps it'll happen to your mistress.' She leaned forward. ‘You've both probably got until the next full moon.' ‘The full moon?' said the agent faintly.

Rose patted his knee. ‘Don't worry. Your mistress need never know until she's parted with her money. No need for you to say anything. Would you like a cup of tea?'

The man clutched his hat so hard he broke the rim and, when his mistress arrived, shot up as though the chair had bitten him. The lady was laughing, her arm more closely folded into Charles's. Charles himself looked dazed. He could not look at Gryffed's empty basket. He would not meet Rose's eye. ‘You really are so charming,' the lady said. Charles grimaced. The agent ran over and pulled his mistress away. ‘We must leave,' he said.

‘Leave? What nonsense,' the lady said haughtily, ‘I like this place.' She tossed her head, hoping that Charles was as conscious of her pretty hair as she was.

The agent tried to regain some composure. ‘The place is unsuitable,' he declared.

His mistress glared. ‘I like it, I tell you.'

‘It's not – I saw –'

‘I'm afraid he saw the rats,' Rose said smoothly.

‘Rats?' The lady looked sharply at Charles. ‘In the castle itself? You never said.'

‘Rats? I don't think so,' mumbled Charles.

‘Not rats!' cried the agent, losing the battle with his composure. ‘Ghosts, ghouls, quantities of dead children.'

Charles smiled quite gently. ‘Not quantities of dead children, possibly one Dead Girl—'

Rose interrupted. ‘No ghosts at all,' she said, and patted Charles's arm in an exaggerated show of support. He was surprised into silence. ‘Absolutely not a one.' Rose made her smile as wide as it was false. Now the widow got a prickle up her neck.

‘Look here,' the agent said. He did not like being shown up as a coward. ‘Do you have other children?'

‘Other than Rose?' asked Charles. ‘Yes, I do.'

‘That's right. You tell him, Pa,' Rose said. ‘And don't forget to tell him we also have a cook.'

‘We don't really have a cook,' Charles said. ‘We only—'

‘No need to go into all that, Pa,' said Rose, with a meaningful glance at the agent. ‘You can tell them everything once the money's on the table.'

The agent took his mistress's arm and chivvied her out of the door. She objected. He whispered in her ear. Once in the courtyard, she laughed. ‘What a lot of nonsense,' she began to say. A raven flew from the top of the keep and landed on the ground right in front of her.

‘Good Lord!' cried Charles.

Rose curtsied deeply and pulled the widow down too. ‘You must curtsey. You see, there's a myth – just a myth, I'm sure –' The widow ended up on her knees. She looked in vain to Charles to help her up. Charles was transfixed by the raven. ‘I've never seen a raven here before,' he said.

‘Raven, raven, no safe haven,' intoned Rose. ‘And the person it touches will not last very, er, very muches.' She winced at the rhyme.

The raven squawked and hopped over to the widow. The widow, loudly declaring that she was not superstitious, nevertheless hopped away. The raven rose and tried to land on her shoulder. She shrieked and scrambled back into the trap. It was really very easy to frighten people, Rose realised with some surprise as the agent whipped their horses into a smart trot. Rose herself thought nothing of the appearance of the raven – or only that Daisy was right: Hartslove really did know how to help when help was needed.

High above, Snipe hoisted a cage over his shoulder, crossed the roof and slithered down the back ivy. He would have smiled if smiling had been in his nature.

Once the carriage had gone, Rose and Charles stood awkwardly together. Rose spoke first. ‘We should never have gone into Ma's room,' she said. ‘I'm so sorry, and about Gryffed –' She could not go on.

Charles shuffled his narrow feet. He wished the slug that had killed Gryffed had lodged in his own heart. He felt it there anyway. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the pistol slowly revolving, killing each of his children. Brandy was the only thing that dulled the pain. Rose took his arm and walked him back up the steps. He knew she was trying to comfort him, but though Rose could not know it, she actually made him feel worse than Garth, worse than Daisy
with her crippled legs, worse even than Lily, who, to him, looked even more like his wife than Rose did. It was not that Rose said hurtful things; Garth said far more hurtful things than Rose. Rose hurt him without words. She hurt him without even meaning to. She hurt him by being dressed in brown serge and in love with Arthur Rose when she should have been dressed in silk and in love with a curly-headed duke. She hurt him when she sat at dinner and tried to make everything normal. When he was with Rose, Charles needed a drink most of all.

Rose was aware that her father wanted to get away from her, but now she had started to speak she would finish. ‘Pa,' she said, her heart hammering, for she had never before spoken to her father as though they were equals, ‘we can't undo what's done, but couldn't we make a new start?'

‘Rose,' he said. ‘Rose, Rose, Rose.' For a moment, he allowed himself to see this new start. He saw the ‘for sale' sign torn down. He sensed the bustle of happy servants. He heard his wife's gentle voice calling him in for lunch. But even as he saw and sensed and heard, the hole in his heart broadened and widened and darkened. It was too late, much too late. ‘All over,' he said, and turned away.

His tone frightened Rose. It was the tone of a dead man, and for all his shortcomings, she – they – needed their father alive. She seized his arm more firmly. ‘Not while we have The One,' she insisted. ‘We drank a toast. Don't you remember?' Charles shook his head. Rose could not bear it.
‘Don't shake your head,' she cried. ‘Don't you dare. Daisy believes in the horse, even if you don't any more. Please, Pa. Can't you pretend? After all, that's what the rest of us are doing.' Charles scuffed the toes of his boots. Rose pulled his arm more gently. ‘Come,' she coaxed. ‘Come with me to the stables. Come. Come.' He did not have the strength to resist her.

They heard the row before they arrived. The One was tied up. Daisy had put the saddle on but Skelton dangled the girth. ‘The saddle's one thing but doing up the girth's a different matter. ‘The horse is ticklish. He'll kick out, and with all due respect, Miss Daisy,' Skelton was saying with offensive care, ‘you're hardly going to be able to nip out of the way.'

The One glared sullenly from behind his forelock. Skelton buckled the girth to the saddle and let it drop, then moved to the other side of the horse, picked up the girth and tried to fasten it. A twist, a grunt, a curse: the saddle hit the cobbles with a resounding thump. Daisy's lips were so tightly compressed they almost vanished, her face so anguished that Charles was at last jolted out of his stupor. He wrenched himself away from Rose. ‘Let her do it, Skelton.'

‘I'm telling you—'

‘Let her do it.'

Skelton held on to the girth. ‘Sir Charles, she'll never be able to get out of the way.'