I must have dozed. I saw a woman's face as I lay in bed. She was coming towards me. She had a look of disdain on her hard, cold features which turned to anger as she bent closer to me.
I awoke with a start. I sat up in bed. Just a nightmare. Foolish, but natural, I suppose. Lady Rosslyn had made a deep impression on me, and now here I was ... living under the same roof ... because she was so ill that she was unable to protest.
I felt I should never sleep. I was not sure I wanted to. I was afraid of the nightmares. It had been horrifying to see her face so close to mine, and dreams are like reality while they last.
It was to be expected that my first night in a house like this would be restless. It would have been different if I had been born here and had lived the whole of my life here. It would be my home. But that was not so. I was here because my mother had gone through a mock marriage, a practice indulged in by degenerate young men whose main occupation seemed to be to think of outrageous adventures. If they involved others, that was just bad luck for them.
I thought suddenly of the Duke of Monmouth and his friends shtting Sir John Coventry's nose and killing a beadle. That was the way they amused themselves.
I felt a sudden longing for Maggie's simple household where everyone seemed good and kind and wanted to help each other. I thought of the Dower House and Mistress Longton, and Christobel, and Featherston and Kirkwell close by, and suddenly I wanted to go on like that. I did not want to live in a grand house where ghosts seemed to be lurking in every corner.
Luke might be delighted to be here ... but was I?
I yawned. I would become accustomed to it, I supposed. It was interesting. Full of history, as I had heard. It was exciting. Oh yes, it was just that this was my first night in a new place.
I felt calmer after such consideration and in a short time I was asleep.
I awoke startled. The moonlight was streaming into the room. It was still night. Something had awakened me. What? I asked myself. Someone was in the room.
My heart was beating fast. I sat up in bed and said, rather hoarsely, "Who is there?"
There was silence in the room. I listened, but all I could hear was the heavy beating of my own heart.
I thought I heard a footstep. It was close.
I said again: "Who is it?"
There was no response. I got out of bed and looked around me. Then I noticed that the door was slightly ajar.
I knew I had shut it before I had got into the bed. I had made quite sure of it.
I went to it and looked out. I saw the spiral staircase at the other end of the corridor where there was another leading upwards. There was no sign of anyone.
But I knew someone had come into my room. The open door assured me of that.
Who? Why?
I thought immediately of Lady Rosslyn's cold, hard face, her look of contempt before she had forced it into one of indifference. Impossible. She was crippled ... unable to walk.
I went back into my room and firmly shut the door. I stood for a moment leaning against it. It was strange ... uncanny. Who had come into my room while I slept, and for what purpose?
I longed to be back in the Dower House. I wanted to talk to Christobel.
I went back to bed. I lay there, alert, listening for the sound of a step in the corridor, the slow cautious opening of the door.
No one came, and it was almost six of the clock before I fell at last into a doze.
Amy's tap at the door awoke me the next morning. I started up in panic. That experience last night was still with me.
"Good morning, Mistress," she said. "I trust you slept well."
I said: "Thank you, Amy." I could not tell her that I had scarcely slept at all.
She brought me hot water. I washed, put on a riding habit and went downstairs. One of the first things I would do would be to ride over to Christobel and tell her of my impressions and experience in the mansion.
Luke was already down in the dining room, sitting at the table eating.
"What a fantastic place!" he said, his eyes shining.
"Did you sleep well?" I asked.
"But of course. I had a wonderful room in one of the towers. Octagonal, an odd shape for a room, with slit-like windows. I suppose they used to pour down boiling oil from them on their enemies."
"That would surely have been from the battlements," I said.
I felt quite hungry, so I helped myself to bread and meat and a flagon of ale.
Sebastian came in. He told us that he was going to show us part of the house—the part we lived in. He could tell us quite a few facts about it.
"You cannot take it in all at once," he said. "It's vast, like a village, really. I do not yet know all those who serve us. There are so many. But I am learning much."
"It must be fascinating," said Luke enviously.
"I'll show you something of it this morning if you like. Had you plans?"
"I was hoping to go over to see Christobel, and perhaps go to Featherston."
"You can do those things this afternoon," said Sebastian.
"I am looking forward to getting to know the house," said Luke.
It was a long tour and very interesting. But I was thinking all the time of Lady Rosslyn, who was somewhere in this house, and wondering who it was who had come to my room last night.
I could not ask Sebastian. He would have no idea who it could have been. He would dismiss it as fancy, doubtless. I supposed many would. So I gave my attention to the house and learned of its history, how King Edward IV had stayed here with his mistress, Jane Shore, the goldsmith's wife, and other ladies at other times.
"He was a good king, but a little like our present Majesty, devoted to the ladies. Odd, is it not, how these kings live their rather—shall we say—dissolute lives, yet serve their country well. Whereas poor Henry VI was a real saint, and look where he led his country ... into war. And the same with His Majesty's father ... though perhaps we are too close to speak of these matters. Well, his present Majesty, for all that can be said, is hardly a virtuous man, as he would be the first to admit, yet he keeps us at peace, while his father, a faithful husband and a man bent on doing good, led us to war and lost his own head and brought to his family years of royal wandering in the wilderness—or rather on the Continent, living in exile, hoping to regain the throne."
And so we wandered through the house, up spiral staircases to the top of towers, looking right down to the ground, many feet below. We saw that spot where one lady of the noble house had thrown herself to her death because her husband no longer loved her, and looked across to the Devil's Tower, where another had been walled up because she had dallied with a lover.
In a house such as this, such legends lived on.
No wonder that the first night anyone spent in it was a restless one. The place was drenched in memories of past tragedies.
"That is the east wing of the house," Sebastian told me. "Lady Rosslyn has her apartments there. She always keeps to that part of the house. It is almost like separate households. And now she is there with her cousin. Mistress Galloway, who has been with her for years. I think she prefers to live apart from everyone. I dare say Lord Rosslyn visits her from time to time, but I have spoken with her only once or twice."
"It seems so strange. She is Lady Rosslyn, and yet there are two households."
Sebastian shrugged his shoulders.
"Perhaps it has been decided that it is better that way. Now Lady Rosslyn is confined to her couch. As I said, it is like a separate household, and, as you will have seen, this house is big enough to make that possible."
So we continued our tour of the house.
I thought: It is only the strangeness of it all that makes me feel uncertain.
Luke was different. There was no doubt that he was delighted to be here.