Chapter Twenty-Four

WINTER

‘I’m getting married,’ Elodie told Cori. ‘Have I mentioned it?’

‘Only once or twice.’ Cori grinned as she opened the door to the Kensington mews house. ‘I have a bridesmaid here you can use, if you’re short of any. Thing is, she’s a bit short.’ She indicated Kitty who was balanced on her hip and grinning as well. Kitty had a couple of new teeth and was clearly enjoying showing them off.

Elodie laughed and tickled Kitty under the chin, and the baby stretched out her arms to come to her. Elodie took her from Cori and jiggled her around a bit, which she seemed to like.

‘I’ve never had much to do with babies,’ said Elodie. ‘I tended to disregard any talk of them when I was with Piers. Odd that, isn’t it? Neither of us were bothered.’

‘And now?’ Cori asked, leading the way into her lovely big kitchen to the right of the hallway and flicking the kettle on. The kitchen smelled of coffee and hot mince pies and Elodie immediately felt welcome. She always did at Cori’s house. ‘A brood of mini-Aldrichs might be expected of you, you know.’ She reached up to the cupboard for two mugs. ‘What with you being Lady of the manor and all that.’

‘An heir and a spare. That’s what they usually suggest. One step at a time I think, though. But I have to say, the idea is growing on me.’ Cori’s eyes lit up and Elodie knew she would be in touch with Becky up in Whitby and Lissy over in Italy, and all of their other friends as well, and they’d all start speculating about how long it would be before Elodie caved in and went for it. ‘Anyway, you are definitely coming up for the wedding, aren’t you? Just with it being on Christmas Eve. Perhaps I didn’t think it through properly. It’s only a couple of weeks away. I can’t quite believe it. It’s come around so quickly!’

‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ Cori said with a smile. ‘Santa is well-prepared, don’t you fret. And shouldn’t you be worrying about it all coming together instead of dashing down here in amongst the Christmas shoppers? Anyway, it’s not like little lady here will know much different this year. She’s not going to be worrying about anything, especially not about being tucked up in bed for Santa coming. Becky thinks Grace will be shattered from the journey and she should go straight to sleep. She says you’re doing them a favour, really.’

Grace was their friend Becky’s five-year-old.

‘True.’ Elodie settled Kitty into her highchair and watched her pulverise a biscuit before eating it. ‘I’m pleased you can all come. The church should look lovely. The repairs are all done, the insurance approved and the ladies are decorating it traditionally, with holly and garlands and candles. It’ll be pretty.’ She grinned, remembering the marquee. ‘And we have blue and white fairy lights strung around too.’

‘Won’t it be a bit weird having another wedding in the same place as your first?’ Cori put a mug in front of her and sat down.

‘Maybe.’ Elodie shrugged her shoulders and wrapped her hands around the mug. ‘But it’s different this time.’

‘Maybe it’s the right man this time.’

‘I know it’s the right man. I was stupid to ignore it for so long. We both were.’

‘Good. Simon and I saw old Piers the other week at some dreary Christmas party. He had a brunette on his arm. She was dressed in black. She looked like a stick of liquorice. A strong wind would have snapped her.’ Cori wrinkled her pretty nose at, in her opinion, such an abject failure of womanhood. ‘And she was so hard-faced. She never cracked a smile all night. I think she thought it would make her face look fat.’ She sucked in her cheeks experimentally and pouted, then pulled a face again. ‘Although I suppose the perma-pout and the false eyelashes might have impeded her facial expression.’

Elodie found herself mirroring Cori’s pout and sucked-in-cheeks expression. Then she too frowned. ‘That’s not his usual type of woman. I doubt it’ll last. He goes for silicone mostly.’

‘Maybe she was hoping he would pay for the op. Anyway.’ Cori nudged Elodie. ‘Let’s not talk about her. Let’s talk about this beauty. She’s who you came down for, after all.’ Cori slid off the seat and scurried away into the boot room across the corridor. Elodie had a momentary panic – as did Kitty – when they realised they were alone with each other, but it didn’t last long. And when Cori came back, she was reverently carrying a small rectangle in front of her.

Cori laid it on the table, took one look at Kitty’s stretching curious, crumby little fingers and moved the package to the other side of Elodie, well out of the child’s way. ‘Here she is. What do you think?’ She carefully opened the bubble wrap.

As the wrapping peeled away, Elodie realised that someone had framed Georgiana’s portrait. ‘Oh, Cori! Who did this?’ The frame was all carved and gilded and Rococo-ed; if that was even a word.

‘Don’t you like it?’ Her face fell. ‘Simon thought—’

‘Shhh.’ Elodie laid a hand on Cori’s arm. ‘I love it! But the frame – it’s practically an exact match to the ones in the Hall. She’s got a proper family portrait now!’

‘Oh, that’s a relief!’ Cori hugged Elodie. ‘God, how awful if you’d hated it! No, what happened was Simon said he’d come across this style of frame so often for that period that he knew the original would have been like that. He could tell she was Georgian by her clothes and obviously what you said about Georgiana confirmed it – and her name kind of gives it away anyway. Those fancy frames would have been like wall art for the eighteenth century. This one is a replica, of course, but he managed to get it from someone he knows at Camden Market.’

‘It’s beautiful. And this is Georgiana, finally. My word.’ Elodie looked up at Cori. ‘I can’t thank you two enough. You have to let me pay.’

‘We won’t hear of it. Don’t be so silly. Here.’ She pushed the picture closer to Elodie. ‘It might not even be her. But Simon enjoyed the project. Any more work like that,’ she smiled brightly, ‘just sling it our way. I enjoyed seeing her come to life as much as he did.’

Elodie nodded and leaned over the picture. ‘Alex will know if it’s her. I think it is, though. She looks like the statue on the tomb.’

And she looks like the girl in the portrait Ben painted, the one that he gave her when they ran away …

‘I think she looks a bit like you,’ said Cori. ‘Maybe it’s the eyes and the hair colour?’

‘Maybe.’

‘But tell me about the mystery woman under the tree – any news?’

‘Oh, Alex thinks he’s got some idea who the skeleton might be – she wasn’t Georgiana, and she died from a close-range shot, but he says there’s an aunt that fell off the radar around that time. Alex suggested to the forensics team it might have been a suicide, because of where she was buried.’ It wasn’t a lie. He had spun a jolly good tale, pretending it had been an aunt rather than the Countess; the family didn’t need any more Hartsford-related scandal. It was ironic, he’d said, that he was the one now trying to cover up their misdemeanours.

‘In those days,’ continued Elodie, ‘they buried suicides and witches at crossroads, so their spirits got confused when they wandered. Where she was found, forms a crossroad where the drovers’ routes meet. Anyway. I’m not going to talk about her. I want to look at Georgiana. I recognise the locket from the tomb.’ Elodie was quite glad that the portrait was protected by a layer of bright, shiny glass. She had a huge compulsion to run her hand over the locket around the girl’s neck and knew she’d probably ruin Simon’s work if she started poking around. She contented herself with running a fingertip across the glass, then guiltily rubbed the resulting greasy smear off with her sleeve.

‘Hasn’t she come to tell you exactly what happened then?’ asked Cori.

Elodie laughed. ‘Not exactly. But I’m fairly sure this is her.’ Cori knew all about her gift – they’d both seen a ghost the very first time they’d met at the National Theatre. It had been shortly after that when things had finally cracked with Piers, and she’d made the decision to go back to Hartsford. Cori had supported her completely.

Elodie also knew that the essence of Georgiana, the real Georgiana was the girl in this portrait, the girl wearing the white dress and the silver locket. The girl with the blonde hair that tumbled in ringlets from her topknot and the hint of mischief in her eyes and the slight smile on her rosy lips that looked perhaps a little bruised from a recent kiss.

Elodie studied the portrait a moment longer. ‘Oh, Georgiana. What really happened to you? Do you think we’ll ever know?’ But of course, there was no answer.

It was difficult trying to stick to the speed limit on her way back to Suffolk. She just wanted to hurry back there and show Alex the portrait and—

Elodie’s foot faltered a little on the accelerator and a car behind her tooted loudly as she dropped about fifteen miles an hour and recovered it as quickly as she could. She acknowledged the driver with a little wave, but he overtook her anyway with another loud paaaaaaarp on the horn. Elodie was glad he had sped past and not stopped. She hadn’t considered what Alex’s reaction might be about the portrait and she couldn’t think about a road rage incident as well as that. She really hoped he’d like it.

Elodie acknowledged to herself that she’d been swept up in congratulations and diamond engagement rings and excited phone calls to her parents involving wedding plans, and the Delilah-and-Margaret hugs had made her partially forget the fact she had borrowed the portrait so long ago. She really hoped he would like it. She’d called Cassie and enthusiastically told her all about it – and she, at least, was looking forward to seeing it. It had been difficult not to confess to Alex where the portrait was, the night she’d heard Blaze in the woods; the night she’d seen Ben give the portrait to Georgiana. That was why she’d glossed over the memories; but then, Alex had other things on his mind anyway; like a very real murder mystery on his estate and a skeleton that his sister had revealed.

Ah, well. She squared her shoulders. It was a good thing she’d done. The main aim was to surprise Alex and make him happy, and she was certain it would. Alex knew she was friendly with Simon and Cori; she just didn’t think he knew how good Simon was at what he did.

Anyway. She could see the lights of the village over the fields, glittering amongst the frosty countryside. One swing of the road on the right and down the dip and she would be off the bypass and into Hartsford. She was glad she had Georgiana’s picture back before Christmas though. The police hadn’t released the Countess’s body to Alex yet and it seemed right that Georgiana should return in a sort of triumph first.

Lucy’s evil little letter had been torn into tiny squares and tossed into the River Hartsford at twilight some weeks ago. Elodie had leaned on the Faerie Bridge and watched the fragments whirl and swirl away with the currents, and she was pleased. She could have sworn she felt a little hand touch hers, and she had smiled. She gazed across at the woods, and saw Alex and Hughie weaving their way through the trees, and she had blown a farewell kiss to Lucy and turned towards them.

It had been a perfect night.

Elodie grinned into the moonlight and pressed her foot on the accelerator just a little harder. For she knew that when she pulled up in front of the Hall, she’d be able to see the lights in the Christmas Room window, twinkling and sparkling and reminding her that Alex was waiting for her and she was almost Home.

Alex was waiting. He was in the Christmas Room, and it was all decked out for the festivities; they’d used some of the decorations he’d found in the marquee to bring it to life again.

But the huge, formal dining table wasn’t spread with food today – it was spread with his father’s genealogy papers. It was the biggest surface he could find and his father had an awful lot of papers. He’d never been interested enough to look at them properly and since he’d come back from Oxford, he’d never had the time or the inclination up until now.

The family tree went back generations and generations, to the cousin they’d found in France, Etienne Jasper Somersby Aldrich, and back again to the original Kerridge line, right the way past Alexander, first Earl of Hartsford – Mortuus in Gloria.

‘Jasper.’ Alex’s lips twitched into a half-smile. His father had always simply called him Etienne Aldrich, and Alex had wondered at the strange combination of a French Christian name with an English surname. But there was the family link, right there, along with Somersby; if you only knew where to look for it. Whoever these cousins were, they’d named their child after Jasper, perhaps in the hope of currying favour with the old Earl. They obviously hadn’t known about Jasper’s supposedly disgraceful death.

There were some complicated documents and notes that Alex skipped over, but he understood they were from George IV, when he was the Prince Regent, resurrecting the earldom in the name of Etienne Jasper Somersby Aldrich. He had created the young man the new Earl of Hartsford as a reward for his services to the crown at Waterloo, after the king’s people had discovered Etienne’s link to the Kerridges in Suffolk; but the most interesting thing that Alex found was a journal – the journal of George, Earl of Hartsford – the father of Georgiana.

The Earl had written pages and pages in cramped, crabbed handwriting, telling of his hatred for his children and his wife, obsessing over minutiae, years old. Accounts of his son’s gambling debts were nestled side by side with vitriol about his wife’s behaviour and lists detailing the whereabouts of her empty wine bottles. He heaped blame upon the Markwell family for allowing their unstable daughter, Jane, to become his Countess. The defects in their offspring were clearly Markwell traits and he wished Markwell blood had never diluted the Hartsford stock. The family was so wide-flung that he feared most of the families in the very county were related to Jane and therefore he lived within a seething mass of in-breeds and it was no surprise … etc etc.

Reams of notes were also available, should anyone wish to read them, about his youngest daughter’s fragile mental state. He painted an unsympathetic picture of a young girl trapped in her own world, fighting demons that were beyond the average adult’s ken, never mind a little child’s. The greatest diatribe, however, was reserved for his ungrateful whore of a daughter, Georgiana. He speculated on murder and suicide and gleefully said that they had ‘hanged a man, known to be the cur that defiled her’. Even more joyfully, he acknowledged that the girl had disappeared, along with a pistol from the family collection and his greatest hope was ‘that the corpse is found with a hole in the skull.’

It was nothing Alex didn’t already know, but he was sickened by seeing it all there, written down by someone who was supposed to care for and protect his family.

He felt no sympathy when he found the last entry:

‘I find that I am cursed to leave this life without issue. The lunatic has died from a fever and my bloodline hath ended. Is this what was destined for me? This? For a man who has only ever had the greatness of this family at the forefront of his being?’

‘No,’ growled Alex. ‘Your destiny is that the world will know how vile you were, because by God I’ll make it known!’ He read down the self-pitying rhetoric, disgusted, until he came to the last few lines. Then he read them again and his heart began to pound.

‘A letter arrived today. A most unfortunate letter. The whore is abroad with the bastard who defiled her, and they have sent for the lunatic. The devil take them all to Hell – the child they urge to follow them is already there, and so too shall they be when God sees it fit. The letter has been burned and that, I pray, is an end to them all. I find myself torn – but even the continuation of my bloodline is too precious a price to pay to acknowledge them. No. It is best the world believes them dead. They are, and have been, dead to me since the night it happened. I shall marry again and father more children and they shall be my heirs.’

The entry was dated the fifth of February 1800. Lucy had died on the second. And the Earl himself had died, according to the records, quite suddenly the following month. The devilish part of Alex hoped it had been the result of an apoplexy, after he discovered his daughter had survived. Whatever it was, there was never any time for him to carry out his plan – and the title had, so it seemed, died with him. That was, until 1816, when, for services at Waterloo, the remote French cousin had been granted the Earldom and the valiant, heroic nineteen-year-old Etienne Aldrich had come to live at Hartsford Hall.

Alex stared at the papers again. He had to show Elodie this. It was proof that the experiences they’d had were real, and absolute proof that Ben had come back for Georgiana as he had promised. He put the journal and the documents to one side, and saw again the image of Georgiana as she had appeared to him in Ben’s memories. The likeness to his fiancée was still startling, and he was beginning to think he needed to cast his net a little wider in the genealogy field, just to check something out.

He rummaged through the papers again – there were, he knew, some tenants’ lists in amongst the documents; wages paid, rents due, that sort of thing. It wouldn’t take him long at all to find out the information he wanted, thanks to the internet and the wealth of genealogy websites that were available. It would be interesting reading.

‘Alex?’ The door opened and he turned. Elodie was standing in the doorway, still wearing her coat and boots. ‘I thought you might be in here. It looks beautiful, doesn’t it? I could see it all the way from the drive.’

‘We did a good job.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’m glad you came. I was going to search for you later anyway.’

‘I should hope you were!’ She walked over to him and he opened his arms. She fitted into them and rubbed her cold nose on his chest. ‘I wouldn’t have been far.’

He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘You’re cold. Was Cori okay?’

‘She’s great, thanks. Looking forward to the wedding. As am I.’

‘Me too. But this is what I wanted to show you today.’ He led her to the table and pointed to the book. ‘Georgiana’s father’s journal. It doesn’t make for pleasant reading, but you might like the last entry. Well – some of it. The very last bit.’

‘Oh?’ Elodie flicked through the book and turned to the last page. There was silence as she read it, and Alex watched her face carefully for a reaction.

He wasn’t disappointed; her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open slightly, then she looked up at him. ‘They survived! They sent for Lucy!’

‘They did. Our only mystery now is where did they go and did they ever come back?’

‘If they’re going to tell us, they’ll tell us. And if not, well.’ She shrugged and smiled up at him. ‘The most important thing is, they were together, wherever they ended up.’

‘What a way to end a love story,’ Alex said with a grin.

‘The only better way is to end it with a wedding.’

‘No.’ Alex shook his head. ‘A wedding is the beginning of the biggest part of the love story. Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I think, perhaps, I would.’

And they kissed, and the world beyond theirs faded until there was only Alex and Elodie in the whole universe and a promise of new beginnings.