‘You’ll need to let me know about the fire, M’Lord. Master Charles wanted it lit every day, no matter what the weather was like. This side of the house can be chilly, but it’s the room his mother always used. She felt the cold, you see. He never really got over losing her, and I think seeing the fire gave him some comfort.’
‘Yes, Benson, I can see that it might, but unless he still wants it lit then there’s no need really. Keep it laid ready to light if we need it, but apart from that save yourself the work,’ Harish replied.
‘Of course, M’Lord. You’re going to explore after breakfast?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’ll be in the estate office behind the stairs if you want anything. Please don’t hesitate to ask. I need to do some paperwork today, and I’m sure you would rather explore on your own anyway.’ He picked up a stack of envelopes from the dresser and left the room.
Harish and Delilah had just eaten in the large kitchen. Jessie the cook and general housekeeper fussed around them, delighted at the prospect of two young people in the house. The old range stood cold and unused, passed over in favour of an electric cooker, although Harish had been assured that it was both lit and used in the winter months.
‘Oh yes, M’Lord,’ she said, when he’d raised the question. ‘We use it all the time when it’s cold. It keeps the whole kitchen warm and the bread tastes so much better when baked in the old oven. Now, you must tell me what you like to eat, your favourite things, you know? I can make a pretty good curry, though I say it myself, but no doubt you’ll tell me otherwise!’
‘Well, all the cooking in Delhi is done by the chef, Kuku. He’s been with us since he was a boy and is part of the family. He lives in the house with us too. I’m sure he’d love to send recipes and things if you’d like him to, and no doubt he’d like some back? He’s particularly keen on baking cakes and pastries and things like that and has quite a reputation in the city.’
‘Oh, I’d love to. I love to bake. Do you really think he’d want to?’ Jessie asked, thrilled at the possibility of a cooking pen-pal and the sharing of recipes with someone in a foreign country, especially somewhere as exotic as India. Much to her shame and embarrassment she had never left England. She wanted to… Maybe now she would? She felt excitement fizzing up inside her. Harish’s arrival had brought much needed change, and they would all be the better for it, Master Charles too. It was about time!
‘He really would. No doubt whatsoever!’
‘Also, my Aunt Meera. She cooks all the time. Half of London is fed by her!’ Delilah laughed, suddenly homesick for the company of her aunt and uncle, Chandu, and the hardware store. That was odd in itself. Why wasn’t she homesick for India? The absolute truth was that she wasn’t, nor had been since she’d left there almost a year ago.
‘She sounds amazing. I can’t wait to meet her.’ Jessie disappeared out of the back door, leaving Harish and Delilah alone for a moment.
‘You look miles away,’ said Harish, noticing the distant look in her dark eyes.
‘Yes.’ She smiled and nodded her head. ‘Yes, I was many miles away, but not in India which you are probably thinking. I was with Auntie Meera, Uncle Vasu and Chandu, in the store. Oh, Harish, the smell…’
‘Yes, the smell. I know. Because of you and your description of it, it’s permanently etched on my brain. When I first smelt it, it was so familiar I felt like I’d come home!’
‘And here? Is there a smell that will remain in your mind forever, to remind you of your new home – the home of your ancestors?’ she asked, both intrigued and curious. Harish’s life had turned around quite literally overnight. Nothing would be the same for him, not ever. Whether he liked it or not he was now an earl and had to uphold his position in the appropriate manner. She had no doubt that he would, but did he want to? Had he been cornered and trapped by history and a few weak relatives who didn’t have the guts to correct the warp in time themselves whilst they had the chance? At twenty-one Harish had been left to pick up the pieces, then carry the load, whatever that might be.
He looked at her, taking in the genuine curiosity on her pretty face. ‘Well,’ he said, his brows furrowed as he thought. ‘The truth is no. There is no smell or sound that will always remind me of Wishanger Hall. There is something else though, although it’s an image, well, two in fact. The first was when we were in the library at Hope House with maps of this place on the floor. We were discussing everything, do you remember?’
‘How could I forget?’ she replied. ‘That moment is also etched on my brain.’ And on my heart, she might have added, but didn’t.
‘Well, it’s the moment when we were both imagining what it would be like to be here. In my mind I was at the top of the big field in front of the house, looking down like we were yesterday. Smoke came from one chimney and Uncle Charles was riding his horse towards the woods. That’s what I saw, and I won’t ever forget it.’
‘I saw the same, Harish Hope, Earl of Wishanger Hall and all the land around it. The exact same thing!’
‘Yes, I suppose you did. The second image is the one from yesterday when we sat on the ridge and looked down at the house. It couldn’t have been any closer to the daydream apart from there being no horse.’
‘I also have that image but for me there was a horse, a black one with you on its back, running so fast you were almost flying.’
They were both quiet for a moment, reflecting on dreams from the past and the reality of the day. What did the future hold? One could only guess. Harish hoped that he would live up to the expectations of others, including his dead father and grandfather, and the long line of ancestors who gazed out from their gilt frames watching his every move.
Delilah wondered about her future too, both as an archaeologist and friend to an earl, knowing well enough that she wanted far more than that. She wanted to love and be loved with a passion that quite literally swept her off her feet! Before she had a chance to consider this further, she was brought round by a painful thump on the arm.
‘C’mon, dreamer. We’ve a house to explore. Let’s hope we don’t discover any skeletons in the closet.’
‘It would be foolish to think there are none,’ replied Delilah sensibly, getting up from her chair. ‘There will be many, and the sooner they are found the better.’
Two hours later they had been through the top three floors, leaving only the ground floor left to explore. The third floor had been used as staff quarters and appeared to have been abandoned a long time ago. There was little up there apart from windowsills filled with dead flies and huge cobwebs across the corners of room after empty room, with nothing else in them apart from rusted metal bedsteads and stained lumpy mattresses.
‘These must go,’ said Harish. ‘Even if the rooms are left empty, and to be honest, I can’t see that they will ever be used, then at least they should be kept clean and aired. I’ll talk to Jessie and see if she can arrange it.’
The floor below that was also unused and consisted of more seemingly endless bedrooms, one after the other in a variety of colours with curtains and carpets to match. Everything was old fashioned, but the rooms were at least clean and reasonably well furnished, which was something. Many of them had interconnecting doors with a bathroom between them, also woefully dated, but some rather attractive in style with ornate taps and black and white tiled floors. One room still had a lady’s dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, and in the bathroom an array of toiletries stood on the glass shelf above the basin.
‘It looks like someone has only just left! It’s rather creepy and like time has stood still since then, waiting for them to come back! I wonder who the stuff belongs to? I’ll ask Benson. He might remember.’ He continued along the corridor and into each room. Delilah lagged behind, wanting to examine everything in more detail, intrigued and interested in who had been there last, and why.
The first floor was the one where both he and Delilah had spent the night. Harish had been given the room that each earl always slept in, and likely died in, too. He had wondered about that when he was shown it, but the thought didn’t bother him in the slightest. He would get a new mattress, but apart from that he was quite happy with how it was. There was a huge, ornately carved, four-poster bed, with chests of drawers and wardrobes to match. What might have seemed heavy and old fashioned looked rather beautiful, the rich glossy wood reflecting light from the large windows and shining with years of polish.
The old floorboards were covered with worn Persian rugss, which despite probably being hundreds of years old, were still vibrant with a rich variety of colours. The paintings on the walls were mostly seascapes, which was bizarre considering how far inland they were. Harish decided that one of the earls must have been a seafarer, or if not, a lover of the sea. He liked them and thought they looked just right; soft and dreamy, wistful even, and like the rest of the room, rather lovely. He decided to look up the artists if he could find a reference book on the subject, and once again decided to ask Benson for any information he might have.
Delilah was now sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for Harish to finish his inspection. She had slept deeply the previous night, better than she had for a long time, waking only once with a start, confused for a moment about where she was, then settling back down when she remembered. The room was also large and beautifully furnished and, according to Benson, was known as the blue room. Aptly named, the windows were dressed in long curtains of rich blue silk, which had also been used to cover the thick feather eiderdown on the bed. Faded floral rugs lay on the floor, and on the dressing-table was a collection of blue glass jars, once full of creams, potions, and perfume, but now empty. Despite this, the air was still fragrant with the scent of bluebells, which she had seen and smelt a few times in the park near the hardware store. Maybe they grew locally, and the lady who had last used the room had picked them and brought them inside? Maybe it was a perfume she’d used, the fragrance lingering on even if she could not? Either way, to Delilah it was as though the lady was still present, and like Harish, she minded not one bit. The previous evening, Benson had told her that the room had once been used by the wife of one of the earls, and the jars belonged to her. No one had slept in it since then, although it had always been cleaned and kept aired, which had apparently been her dying wish.
‘It was before my time,’ he said, ‘but there’s a painting of her in the gallery. Remind me to show you. She was rather beautiful, and the earl was heartbroken when she died. He never remarried and handed over the estate to his son early, unable to bear the memories of her in the house. He went to live in Venice after that, and that was where he died.’
Ten minutes later they began their exploration of the ground floor. They already knew where the library was, as well as the sitting room that Charles had used, with the photographs on the mantelpiece and where they had drunk Champagne the previous evening. At the back of the huge hallway was a stone staircase that went down to the kitchen where they’d eaten breakfast that morning. To one side of this, a half-open door revealed a small room where Benson was sitting at an old, leather-topped desk with piles of papers and letters in front of him. Leaving him to it they continued to explore, eventually finding the long gallery mentioned the previous evening. The floor and walls were of pale stone which almost glowed in the light that flooded through the tall windows. Every few yards was a statue or a suit of armour, or a plinth with a bust on it, and there were paintings everywhere. Delilah walked up and down, searching the walls for the lady from the blue room who had been so loved that it had driven her husband to distraction, and even to another country, to escape the torment of her memory.
‘Harish… I think this must be her, the lady from my room.’
Harish stood by Delilah to study the large painting of a beautiful woman with fair hair and blue eyes that had a hint of mischief in them, the corners of her mouth just beginning to curve upwards as though she was about to laugh. Around her neck was a necklace of vivid blue sapphires, the matching earrings dangling almost to her shoulders. Did they still exist? He knew his mother had been given some of the family jewels. Perhaps the rest had been shared between other relatives over the years? He would find out.
Delilah was still gazing at the painting, transfixed by the beautiful image in front of her. The two women couldn’t have been more different, and Harish looked from one to the other to make a comparison. Everything that one was, the other was not, although sitting side by side they would have made a stunning, original, and wonderful study that any artist of note would long to paint.
‘M’Lord? Miss Delilah? How are you getting on?’ Benson asked, coming up behind them so quietly that neither knew he was there.
It reminded Harish of George, and his own sudden appearances that denied all explanation. He smiled, then turned to look at Benson who, like the lady in blue silk and Delilah, couldn’t have been any more different to his counterpart in India.
‘We’re doing fine and compiling a list of questions.’
‘Yes, there are many questions to ask,’ added Delilah. ‘I have one to ask now. Is this the lady from the blue room?’
‘Yes, that’s her, Lady Constance. The blue rather gives it away. Obviously, a favourite of hers…’
Delilah nodded, still mesmerised.
‘The sapphires have been in the family for hundreds of years. They’re in the bank vault now, along with most of the other valuables. You’ll need to see the list, M’Lord. There’s still quite a bit in the safe, but of much lower value. I’ll show you where the key is.’
‘Thank you. I wondered if they were still in the family. My mother has a few pieces given to her by my father who inherited them from Grandfather. She never takes the cross off.’
‘Well, the Hopes have always been a religious family. If you ask Master Charles, he’ll tell you more. He’s coming over later I believe?’
Harish nodded.
‘I’d like to show you something if I may. You probably wouldn’t find it on your own because the door is hidden. There are several like it around the house, including one in the earl’s room, and another in the blue room. These old houses are always full of hiding places. During the reformation the family continued to practise Catholicism, despite the king thinking otherwise. You’ll know them all in time; there’s a plan in the study.’
‘We haven’t even found that yet!’
‘You will. Follow me please…’ The butler led them through the long gallery and out the other end, into a small inner hallway with heavy oak panelling on two sides. A stained-glass window that looked like it had come from a church, shone onto the whitewashed wall opposite, its multi-coloured hues vivid as the bright sun outside filtered through. It was as though the wall had been covered with a vibrant gemstone mosaic. In its simplicity, the large cobalt-blue cross in the centre stood out, and overall, the effect was stunning. Delilah drew in her breath, overwhelmed by the richness of the reflected pattern, and the cross which was so unexpected.
Harish looked around him. ‘Wow! Wow! We have a plain glass window in the prayer room at home and it’s lovely when the sun shines through, but it’s nothing like this. The window must have been made to fit this small hallway.’
‘Most likely the other way round, M’Lord. The window came from the abbey that was on this site before the house. It was found in the old basement under the kitchen, wrapped in sacks and covered with soil. The abbey was known for its rare, stained-glass windows, and it’s tragic that only this one appears to have survived. Either that, or the others just haven’t been found yet! One of the earls actually became a monk a few hundred years ago. His painting is about halfway up the staircase. Brother John…’
‘Really? You know I was raised by two priests?’ Harish shook his head. ‘Of course, you do.’ He turned away, his eyes filling with tears as he remembered Fathers Ryan and Malachy, the two men who had dedicated much of their lives to raising the young boy who had come into their lives so unexpectedly.
‘I shall go to look for the other rooms. You stay here,’ said Delilah. ‘You can show me later.’
‘No, it’s OK. Stay.’
Delilah shook her head. ‘I have shared your journey, Harish, but this is for you alone. You can show me tomorrow.’ She turned to leave.
‘Show you what?’ He looked around him, unsure of what she meant.
‘You will see,’ she replied, and without another word, walked away.
‘I think the young lady is very observant, M’Lord, and is probably right. You should see this alone.’ He walked across the small vestibule. ‘You might want to watch this closely so you can open it yourself next time.’ He pressed his hand against one of the panels which appeared to release a small lever, and with a quick flick of his wrist, the whole thing slid backwards to reveal a large opening. A long flight of stone steps led downwards, although Harish had no idea where to because it was pitch black.
‘It wasn’t this simple in times past. The king’s men were all rather adept at finding sliding doors and such like. Almost the whole wall was stone back then, and they had to pull out a few thinner blocks to get in. One moment, whilst I switch on the lights…’
A minute later Harish stepped from the flight of worn stone steps into the softly lit room, the cool air against his warm face making him shiver. The floor was of the same smooth stone slabs, no doubt made so by the many people who had trodden on them over the centuries, or those in need of a hiding place to evade persecution or even death. The room was devoid of any natural light, and to his amazement he realised that he was in a chapel. There were several rows of pews on each side, and a domed apse at the front, which was quite remarkable considering it was underground. There were the usual transepts of a Christian church, north and south, to create a symbolic Christian cross.
Tall stone pillars supported the timbered ceiling, and the simple stone altar was unadulterated by any cloth covering. Jewelled brass candlesticks stood to either side with a matching crucifix at the centre, and from the ceiling hung another cross, this one of beautifully carved wood, the man upon it gazing downwards with blue eyes, rather like the one in the prayer room at Hope House. Harish breathed deeply, the hint of incense in the air another haunting reminder of his home in India.
He could quite understand why his mother had gone to the abbey in London to find solace, her inner turmoil too great to bear, despite the lure of a son waiting for her and the safety of her home. By now Benson had left, although this had gone unnoticed by Harish. He slowly walked up the aisle noting the various Saint’s statues to either side, then sat on the front pew. The walls were whitewashed except for the dome, which was beautifully painted with a scene of The Last Supper, the colours preserved perfectly in their original condition due to the lack of light.
So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Everything seemed unreal, distant, and disconnected, his thoughts equally scattered and fragmented with the many sudden changes and the vast amount of information that had come his way. The silence in the chapel was absolute, the only thing to be heard his own breathing and the rhythmic thump of his beating heart. How many others had sat here before him, pondering upon their lives and duty to others, or hiding whilst soldiers rampaged through the building looking for dissenters from the King’s new ‘Church of England?’ How terrifying that must have been!
He took in a deep breath, holding it for a moment before slowly letting it out again. Well, the dice had been cast. The future was unknown, but he was here now, alive and kicking, with no one baying for his blood or forcing him to change his beliefs. The earls whose images hung on the staircase wall had no doubt all had their day and made their mark in one way or another. He had no idea how he would make his, or even if he would make any mark at all. Time alone would tell.
He slowly dropped to his knees, and leaning on the wooden rail in front of him, head in his hands, began to pray…