Yesterday's Sun (20 page)

“You let Paul believe his father was the innocent party.” Holly shook her head and tried to suppress her anger.

“When the gatehouse was cleared out, Paul found the letter I’d written to Harry. I was officially divorced by that point so had no rights to the property; everything went to Paul. As soon as he was old enough, he left me and left the village. He joined the army and traveled the world, traveled anywhere that would take him as far away from me as possible.”

“It must have been hard for both of you, but you’re all right together now?”

Jocelyn shook her head and a tear trickled down her face. “I tried. For years I tried to get back in touch with him, but he was intent on wiping me out of his life as surely as if I had been the one that had died. Every single letter or card I sent to him was returned unopened. Up until last month, I’d not managed to speak to him for years.”

“I just assumed you went to visit him regularly. You did stay with him, didn’t you? You were away for a few weeks,” Holly asked, confusion adding to the raft of emotions brewing up inside her.

“You gave me the jolt I needed to try one last time. I tracked him down through an army friend who’s also from Fincross. I practically took up roost on Paul’s doorstep until he couldn’t ignore me any longer.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I didn’t tell him about the moondial, if that’s what you mean. I think that would have been a step too far. But I told him his father had driven me to the point of suicide. I told him that I’d left Harry to protect him, as much as for my own sake.”

“Did he listen?”

Jocelyn smiled and the weary lines on her face softened. “He listened enough, I think. We’ve not mended all our fences, but some.”

Jocelyn smiled as her tears dried, but the ghost of those tears remained and Holly knew the old lady wouldn’t let go of the guilt she had carried with her for thirty years.

The clouds gathering overhead were leaching the color from the sky and the warm breeze had developed a sharpness. The gloriously overgrown gardens that surrounded them had lost their luster and Holly needed no persuading when Jocelyn suggested they head home.

“I don’t think this picnic was a very good idea, was it?” sighed Jocelyn. “We’ve both lost our appetites and, I hate to say this, but I think my joints have seized up. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get up off the ground.”

Holly smiled as she picked herself up and put her arms out to help pull Jocelyn to her feet. “Well, I can’t leave you here and I can’t make it back without you.”

This was Holly’s way of reaching out for help and Jocelyn found enough determination to make it to her feet and give Holly a hug. “I won’t leave you to face this on your own,” she assured her.

The journey home was slower and it was also darker. The dappled light that had lit their way to Hardmonton Hall had been replaced by a cold murkiness. Holly’s journey to the ruins had been undertaken with a mixture of fear and hope, but on her return she carried back with her only the fear and a sense of emptiness that had seeped into her body once her tears had been spent.

“What if there’s an exception to the rule?” she asked Jocelyn as they neared the gatehouse. It was the first time they had spoken on their bleak journey home, other than the occasional expletive from Jocelyn as her hip joints failed her.

“There’s no bargaining with the moondial,” Jocelyn warned. She stopped and turned to look at Holly. It was hard to tell if the grimace on the old woman’s face was from the pain or from the thought of Holly taking risks with her future.

“So why use it!” Holly blurted out, not sure if her sudden anger was directed at Jocelyn or the moondial. “Why didn’t you destroy it, or at least the mechanism? Why did you leave it so some poor fool like me would come along and start putting it back together again?”

Fresh guilt weighed down heavily on Jocelyn’s shoulders and she suddenly looked very frail and old. “I don’t know why, Holly. I really don’t. Just like Mr. Andrews, I suppose I didn’t think I had the right to destroy the moondial. I hid the box in one of the walls in Harry’s workshop and I thought it would be safe there. It was certainly the last place Harry would ever look. And I kept the journal with me, remember. I didn’t think anyone would be able to work out how to put the mechanism together on their own.”

As soon as Holly saw the pain in Jocelyn’s face she immediately regretted her outburst and her anger vanished as quickly as it had arrived. She knew she was being unfair and besides, she couldn’t ignore the fact that the dial would be instrumental in avoiding her death in childbirth. “I’m so sorry, Jocelyn. I shouldn’t have said that. You’re as much a victim of the moondial as I am.” She slipped her arm into Jocelyn’s and started walking once more toward home. “So tell me everything you know about the journal,” she said, easing the conversation away from her ill-conceived accusation.

“It was written by Edward Hardmonton and it describes in harrowing detail how he resurrected the dial and the decisions he was forced to make. He knew tragedy was coming, but there was still only so much he could do to change future events.”

“Like a drop of rain on glass, the choice of path may not be free,”
Holly recited.

“You’ve remembered the poem perfectly.”

“It’s not something I’m likely to forget,” sighed Holly. “It’s the only thing I have to get me through this nightmare.”

“Not the only thing. I’m here to help you … unless you’re ready to talk to Tom about it?”

It was Holly’s turn to feel guilty. She was coming to realize that she was going to have to make some life-changing decisions and Tom had a right to be involved. “I need to have everything clear in my own mind first. I will tell him, one day.”

“Just not today,” suggested Jocelyn.

“Or tomorrow,” added Holly. “Perhaps not until all of this is over and there are no decisions left to make.”

The trees started to thin out and Holly sensed Jocelyn’s relief as the gatehouse came into view.

“I’ll drive you back home,” insisted Holly.

“I’ve told you before; I won’t give in to these joints,” Jocelyn said with a warning glare.

“Then at least let me escort you home. No arguing.”

“Who’s arguing?” asked Jocelyn with a pained smile.

Although Jocelyn was relieved when they stopped in front of the tea shop, she was less eager to say good-bye to Holly. She didn’t want to leave her on her own to dwell on the future. They both knew there was only one path Holly could take if she was going to survive and that meant a future without Libby. Her daughter might not exist in the present time, might never exist at all, but Jocelyn could see the pain of loss in Holly’s eyes.

“I could always pack a bag and come stay with you until Tom gets back,” Jocelyn offered. She had taken the journal out of her basket, but she seemed reluctant to hand it over.

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” Holly assured her, reaching out and taking the journal from Jocelyn’s protective grasp. “I’ve got this to read and then there are lots of other things to keep me busy. The marble for Mrs. Bronson’s sculpture is finally being delivered next week and Billy has promised to come back and finish off the conservatory. Besides, you’re busy, too.”

“Yes, it’s always busy at harvest time in the village, but I’m sure they could do perfectly well without me.” Jocelyn still wasn’t making a move to go inside the tea shop.

“Jocelyn, am I going to have to drag you up the stairs to your flat?” warned Holly with a mischievous smile. Even though Jocelyn was the only person that she could talk to about the moondial, Holly desperately needed time on her own.

When Holly returned home, the gatehouse felt empty and barren. She had assumed that the moondial in its mystical benevolence had shown her the dangers that lay ahead so that she could avoid them, so that she could survive, so that they could all survive.

She put the journal down on the kitchen table and stared at it. It was bound in dark-brown leather with the monogram
E. H.
stamped in the top left corner. There was a leather strap tied tightly around it to keep in place ragged bits of paper that had been inserted between its unkempt pages. Holly was tempted to leave it unopened, especially now that Jocelyn had described its contents as harrowing; she had already heard enough harrowing stories for one day. But the journal demanded her attention and she knew she wouldn’t rest until she knew everything.

8

E
dward Hardmonton had been intrigued by the moondial ever since he was a small child. To the rest of his family, the dial was nothing more than a garden curiosity on the grounds of Hardmonton Hall, half forgotten for almost a century. But young Edward had been irresistibly drawn to the stone circle where it stood proud and glistening in the sunshine and he would spend endless summer days playing there. He knew every inch of the dial’s engraved surface and every word of the poem that encircled it, but without the mechanism to unlock its power, the moondial had kept its secrets from him.

When Edward left for university, he was too excited with the world that awaited him to give any thought to what he was leaving behind, and soon he forgot all about the moondial. After completing his degree in agriculture, Edward traveled the world to do what many of his peers were doing in the sixties: to find himself. He knew he was fortunate, not just because he had the financial means to flit from one country to the next, but also because his father wholeheartedly supported his wanderlust. They both knew that as an only child Edward would one day take over the running of the estate from his father. And while he fully acknowledged and accepted that duty, in the meantime Edward was intent on enjoying his freedom—with his father’s blessing.

Edward’s soul-searching came to an abrupt end when his father died unexpectedly from a heart attack. Edward was touring Italy at the time and the news was devastating. He deeply regretted not being there at his father’s side, and while there was no question that he would return home to Hardmonton Hall, it wasn’t a decision he found as easy to make as he had expected. He had met someone. She was a young woman from a small village in Italy, more beautiful than anyone Edward had ever met before, with olive skin and the darkest brown eyes. He had known her for barely a month but he already knew that Isabella was the one. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her behind, so he took a leap of faith and asked her to marry him on the eve of his return to England. They would never be parted again.

It was five years later when Edward’s attention was drawn once again to the moondial by a twist of fate. By this time Edward and Isabella had a two-year-old son, Lucas, and with his family’s future established for the next generation, Edward had turned his thoughts to the past. Trawling through the family archives, he came across a collection of handwritten notes and drawings in the inky scrawl of the eighth Lord Hardmonton. The records documented his great-great-grandfather’s explorations of the ancient worlds, and Edward was finally able to piece together the history of the dial and its link to the infamous Moon Stone.

Edward’s renewed interest in the dial took on a life of its own and he started the journal to keep track of his findings. As well as his own notes, Edward included extracts from the original archives. His research proved, among other things, that the rumors about his predecessor had been correct. Charles Hardmonton had been ostracized by the scientific community on suspicion of stealing a precious artifact, and the evidence Edward uncovered showed that on the face of it, at least, his punishment had been deserved.

The missing item was the Moon Stone, a sacred altar that was the centerpiece of an Aztec temple honoring the moon goddess Coyolxauhqui. Charles had already made public his disapproval of the systematic ransacking of ancient worlds and the Moon Stone proved to be the last straw. Charles secretly removed the Moon Stone from the cargo shipment and diverted it onto another ship.

After a lifetime committed to scientific discovery, Charles had been willing to sacrifice everything he’d worked for just to have that one treasure in his possession. Why? Because during the course of his last expedition he had not only uncovered the legend of the dial but he had come to believe in its power.

It was Charles Hardmonton who had transformed the Moon Stone into the dial. The process of engineering a mechanism that could harness the power of the full moon and bring the dial to life appeared to have taken him many years: drawings in the archives showed various incarnations of the brass cogs and claws and the orb at its center. Once the mechanism was perfected and the power of the Moon Stone had been harnessed, he had used it to see into his own future and, with the discipline of a seasoned scientist, he had collected the evidence that would establish the extent of the moondial’s power as well as its limitations. He had used his knowledge to write the poem that would eventually be etched into paths that surrounded it.

The poem had been his way of providing a user guide to the moondial for future generations, on display in the gardens for all to see. But Charles had then left instructions for the orb he created to be buried with him. The whereabouts of the rest of the mechanism were never recorded and so the dial fell into disrepair.