Sommersgate House by Kristen Ashley
“Aye, aye, captain,” Carter grumbled but he did it genially while Mrs. K poured the water into the freshly ground coffee in the cafetière.
“I was reading about The Master and Mistress last night,” Julia told her as she got up to grab mugs, sugar bowl, teaspoons and the jug of milk out of the fridge. “There are a couple books about the Barony in the library and in one, there’s quite a bit about them.”
Mrs. K pressed down the cafetière.
“Learn anything?” she asked as she sat down at the bench across the table from Julia, something she’d done every day this week so far, something she’d never have done, ever, with Douglas or Monique Ashton. But then, both of them rarely came into the kitchen.
“Their names, Archibald or ‘Archie’ as he was known and get this…” she paused for effect, “Ruby! I bet that’s why Tamsin named Ruby-girl that.”
Mrs. K nodded, looking fondly at the other woman’s glowing face. “It’s likely. Miss Tamsin was taken with that story, always was from the first moment she saw The Master and felt his lady.”
Julia took a sip of her coffee. “Did you know there are portraits of the two of them amongst the others in the stairwell?”
Mrs. K leaned forward in a small rush of excitement because she didn’t know. In all her years there, she’d never had the time to go sorting through the Sommersgate library (nor did she wish to get caught) to find information about the ghosts.
“Which ones?” she asked.
“Come on, I’ll show you,” Julia invited conspiratorially, grabbed her mug, they went out to the stairway, walked up to the landing and Julia pointed, “Those two.”
Mrs. K stared at two paintings she’d seen nearly all her life, even twice, in that time, had ordered taken down and cleaned.
They stood alone, the only portraits on the wall at the landing, while all the other walls were stuffed full of them, higgledy-piggledy arranged to get as many in the space allowed. They were also the grandest of them all, twice as big as any other painting. The man stood tall, looking a bit like Douglas, or at least he had a similar way about him even if the features were only a touch the same. The woman was dark-haired, fair skinned and lovely. He looked arrogant and haughty. She looked, as Mrs. K always thought, happy. She had a bit of what Mrs. K thought of as a Mona Lisa smile, as if she was content and had a secret.
“That portrait, according to one of the books, was finished only two weeks before her death,” Julia mentioned, indicating Lady Ruby Ashton’s portrait. “She doesn’t look like a woman who had an unhappy marriage, do you think?”
Mrs. K considered it. “I always thought, of all these portraits with their grim faces that she looked the happiest.”
At that point, Mrs. K and Julia could talk no more as the kids rushed through loudly, their voices ringing happily through the halls. Another change that Mrs. K welcomed but also caused great relief for it said the children too were adjusting to the changes Julia Fairfax was causing and, Lord knew, those beautiful children needed, finally, to adjust.
It was time for their homework and for her to start dinner and hopefully a quick apple crumble.
But later, when she walked around to put the house to bed, Mrs. K found Julia again on the landing looking up at Lady Ruby with a wondering gaze.
* * * * *
Julia sat at her writing desk going through her lists. Or, she was supposed to be going through her lists, but instead, she was thinking about him.
He’d done it again, left without a word or warning and now it had been a week since Douglas left.
This time, however, he’d called. Just once, but he’d called. Last night, when the kids were asleep, Ronnie and Mrs. K gone, the phone rang.
For a second, she didn’t know what to do. She was told by Mrs. K that the staff answered the phone unless it was in the study. In the study, no one touched it except Douglas. There was a complicated system of inter-comming via the phone, which meant you had to memorise which number rang to which person (which meant the phone rang everywhere with a specific ring that the member of staff knew meant them) or room. One was Mrs. K, two Carter, three rang only in the kitchen, four was Veronika and it went on.
Patricia always phoned when the kids were awake and not out at one of their scheduled classes so she could talk to them as well, so if it was her mother, it was an emergency.
Late Thanksgiving evening, her mother had the full briefing about Trevor Fairfax and Monique (not to mention Douglas’s actions, which elicited a “You’re joking! Well, well, who knew the boy had it in him?” and Julia thought only Patricia Fairfax would refer to Lord Douglas Ashton as “the boy”). Patricia had made her usual threats of arriving at Sommersgate House imminently to save the day and had been talked down by Julia at the last minute.
If it wasn’t Patricia, then who would be calling, Julia couldn’t imagine and how she should answer the phone, she didn’t know.
She was in her room, the phone on her writing desk (which could be called by dialling number nine) ringing insistently. She grabbed it nervously and said, “Sommersgate House,” as she suspected the staff would do.
“Julia?” It was Douglas.
She felt a rush of warmth in her belly at the sound of his deep voice and just stopped from letting out a little, happy sigh.
Then she shook some sense into herself. What was wrong with her? For goodness sake, he’d just said her name!
She tried to make her voice sound detached when she replied, “Douglas. Where are you?”
She assessed her tone and thought it sounded aloof and was somewhat pleased with it.
“How are the children?” He, she noticed, didn’t answer her question.
“Fine, in bed, asleep. It’s late, is something wrong?” It wasn’t late, it was nine thirty but she was trying to strike a mood.
There was noise in the background, people talking, just one or two and then they were muffled. When the muffling was gone, she could hear no more voices.
“Nothing wrong,” he replied belatedly and didn’t deign to explain the delay in answer.
“Then why are you calling?”
“Did you start your consultancy?”
She wanted to growl with frustration. Again, he didn’t answer her.
“Yes, I did –” Before she could finish, he went on.
“How is it?”
“It’s good, fine. They’re in a pretty serious muddle but we think we can pull them through without any loss of staff,” she answered, trying to be short and to the point but really she wanted to talk about it. In fact, she was dying to talk about it. It was something entirely different than what she was used to doing and even though it was all familiar, everything was new. It was like starting from the beginning but instead of it being frustrating, it was a fascinating challenge and she was loving every minute of it.
But she didn’t tell him that (as much as she wanted to), instead she said, “I’m fine, the children are fine, the house is fine, everything is fine. When are you coming home?”
There was another pause, this one felt heavy with meaning but she couldn’t put her finger on what that meaning was.
“Home?” he asked and his voice was strangely husky.
Julia reacted to the strange tone in his voice and queried, “Are you all right?” And she couldn’t, even though she wanted to, completely hide the concern.
“No,” he answered, to her surprise and further to her surprise, continued. “I’m shattered and things aren’t going well here.”
“Is there…” she didn’t know why she said what she did, but she felt compelled at this unprecedented sharing of feelings and his announcement of being “shattered”. The very idea of Douglas shattered was incomprehensible. “Anything I can do?”
Again, he didn’t answer her question. “I’ll be back sometime during the weekend.”
“Okay,” was the only way she could think to reply.
“Sleep well,” he bid in a strangely gentle and equally strangely sweet, low tone
But that was then, and now it was the next night, much, much later than nine thirty and Julia was making lists. Tomorrow she wasn’t supposed to go to work but she’d been looking through the charity’s budgets for the last few years and she’d hit on a few places they could cut back so she thought she’d go in for a couple of hours. She was also making lists of Christmas presents she wanted to buy. And she was also delaying when she would go to sleep because to sleep was to dream and to dream was to dream of Douglas and she didn’t want to dream of Douglas anymore because she liked it too much.
She’d never dreamed so much in her life. Before Sommersgate, she would have the odd nightmare or wake up with a strange feeling and vaguely remember some images. Every once in awhile she’d recall dreaming of disjointed events that made no sense but weren’t entirely unpleasant.
But now her dreams were vivid and they were always about Douglas. Not things that had happened, not memories, but fantasy scenarios. Full-blown, romantic-movie-type fantasy scenarios that were ridiculous in the extreme but, at the same time, very much not.
Douglas walking toward her smiling, lifting her off her feet and whirling her around with his face in her neck whispering words she never could really hear. Or chasing her through the house, but not threateningly, playfully. She’d always be running from him, throwing smiles over her shoulder and laughing right before he caught her and pushed her against the wall and kissed her until she was dazed and shaking.
And then there were the ones where they were in bed. After those, Julia would wake up smouldering, her breath uneven, her body tingling.
She should let it go and enjoy it, since she wouldn’t allow herself to enjoy it in real life. It didn’t hurt to dream. But it was different, dreaming about movie stars or daydreaming about attractive acquaintances you know you’d never make any advances to, they were safe, because you didn’t live with them or see them all the time.
Dreaming about Douglas wasn’t safe. It was very unsafe because she could get mixed up, she could allow her defences to go down and then where would she be?
And where would she be? Married to a man who didn’t love her, who said she could just move on when Ruby was gone, just… like… that. A man who could have any woman he wanted and would most likely go looking for them once he tired of Julia. He said there would be fidelity but she’d known him long enough (and she knew men-at-large well enough) to know that wasn’t likely. And why did he want Julia in the first place? It just didn’t make sense.
The problem was, she was beginning to like him. She was seeing things about him that she thought were funny or sweet or kind or (the worst) damned sexy.
Douglas and all these things (except the last) were incomprehensible.
She shook her head again. She could like him but if she found herself sleeping with him, married to him, attached to him, then he could find his way into her heart and break it and she was simply not going to let that happen. Not again.
She had been glad, at first, that Douglas was gone. Her defences had gone down and she’d allowed herself to enjoy his presence a bit too much. Now she had time to get them back up again and she felt strong enough for him to come home. She would allow herself to like him, even for them to become friends, but the rest, well, the rest she had to put a stop to it.
It was on that thought that she heard the scratching and her head shot up.
The Master was back!
He’d been gone for days, no scratching, no nothing. Mrs. K said that even Ruby had not seen him. The Mistress also seemed to disappear. Mrs. K, Ronnie and Julia had spent some time that day over coffee speculating about this absence, deciding Sommersgate itself felt more settled with Monique gone. But now, the scratching had returned.
She got up from the desk and wondered if he’d show himself, wondered if he’d come through the glass at her, wondered what he’d do if she said, “Archie, don’t be a naughty boy, just go away.”
She tentatively pulled back the draperies and looked for the spectre.
No shimmering Archie but, instead, there were headlights in the drive and what she could see with some alarm through the darkness were two men. One short and he was helping a stumbling tall one towards the front door, a tall man who looked, she peered closely, her nose nearly pressed against the glass, exactly like Douglas.
Feeling a sense of unexplained urgency, she turned around and fled her room. She met them in the long entry hall that led to the stairwell and what she saw through the darkness cut only by a small side lamp on a table made her skid to a halt.
Douglas was lurching awkwardly and had his arm around the short man who was holding him up. The other man’s arm was held out straight in front of him, pointing a gun… at Julia.
Her heart skipped a frantic beat and she threw her hands up in a reflex response that was the universal sign language for Don’t shoot!
“It’s okay, Nick,” Douglas muttered, “she’s my wife.”
“You’re what?” the man asked, his head jerking around to look at Douglas as he dropped his gun arm.
“I’m not his wife!” Julia cried.
“You’re going to be,” Douglas returned.
“No… I… am… not,” Julia retorted.
“He’s delirious,” the man named Nick put in.
“I’ll say he’s delirious!” Julia responded.
Nick decided their bizarre discussion was at an end. “No, woman, I mean, he’s really delirious. He’s been shot.”
Julia gasped, her heart skipping eleven frantic beats and then seemingly shuddering to a halt.
“Be quiet,” Nick warned. “I need to get him up to his room without being seen or heard.”
They were moving forward and she noticed that Douglas’s left arm was hanging limply at his side.
It was at this time she also noticed the wet looking stain on his coat.
Julia’s hand flew to her mouth, her heart kick started to drill in her chest as her eyes darted around the hall.
“My room,” she stated urgently, thinking quickly and Nick looked at her mutely. “You’ll wake the children. They can’t see him like this, take him to my room. It’s out of the way.” Then she ordered, “Follow me.”
She started ahead but obviously Nick hesitated because she heard Douglas’s deep voice say, “Follow her.”
They got Douglas to her room and Julia ran to the draperies she left open, closing them as Nick deposited Douglas on her bed.
She hustled to the bathroom and grabbed every towel she could see then back and saw Douglas gingerly stripping off a black, long-sleeved t-shirt. Nick already had Douglas’s overcoat off and had thrown it on the floor.
She saw the blood on his back, the bullet hole below his shoulder and rushed forward.
“Holy crap,” she whispered.
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Douglas noted sardonically. “I would say this was at least a ‘fucking hell’ moment.
“Don’t joke!” Julia snapped. “How on earth did you get shot?”
Nick and Douglas looked at each other as Julia began obsessively to lay towel after towel on the pillows as if their smoothed absorbing layer would make the difference and all would become right again in the world. She then pushed Douglas back against them gently, handing him a clean hand towel to press against the wound.
Neither man, she noted, answered.
She decided to let that go and announced, “I’m calling the police.”
Douglas caught her arm in a surprisingly firm, almost painful grip.
“No police,” he declared implacably.
“No police?” Julia asked, feeling her brows shoot up. “But you’ve been shot!”
“No police,” Douglas repeated.
“Listen, the doc is coming to fix him up,” Nick put in. “We’ll be okay now, can you go and find somewhere else to sleep?”
She looked in Douglas’s eyes and then her gaze dropped down to his wound. There was blood all over his chest… his very well-muscled chest, she noted vaguely. But the wound looked like it was no longer bleeding.
“We need to make sure he doesn’t lose any more blood,” Julia tried to pretend like she knew what she was doing, which she most certainly did not. “When’s the doctor coming?” she demanded to know from Nick.
“Girl, you need to leave this to me,” Nick returned, obviously losing patience.
She stood up to her full height, which, in bare feet, was five foot nine, at least two inches taller than him.
“When, I asked you,” she stated, her voice straining for calm and authoritative (and she felt she didn’t do half-badly), “is the doctor going to be here?”
Nick glanced at Douglas and Julia followed his gaze.
Douglas was lounging against the towel covered pillows holding the hand towel pressed firmly against the wound. He looked for all the world as if he was watching an only slightly entertaining play. When it became apparent that something was required of him, he just shrugged his good shoulder and Nick started to say something but Julia whirled on Douglas.
“You have two choices, Douglas Ashton,” she told him sharply, her temper flaring out-of-control. “Your first choice is to tell me when I can expect a doctor to arrive and your second choice is that I will first phone the police and second phone my mother so she can tell me how to treat you. You are not going to quietly bleed to death on my bed!”
“Calm yourself, Julia, I’m fine. It’s a flesh wound,” Douglas returned.
“It’s a fucking gunshot wound!” she shouted.
“Calm yourself!” Douglas roared in a voice she’d never heard before. He reared up and then gritted his teeth in pain and Julia stepped back, partially in fear, partially in surprise.
She’d seen his face of thunder and been awed and, maybe, a little thrilled by it. But that roar was something else. It was the roar of a man that expected to be obeyed, who was entitled to be obeyed and who didn’t, wouldn’t, maybe even couldn’t abide it when he wasn’t. It was his right, not only by birth and by accumulation but also because, she sensed, he’d earned it.