The wind gusted suddenly, blowing her long hair across her face, and she had to take a hand out of her coat pocket to push it away again, her gaze darting up to one of the upper diamond-leaded windows when she thought she’d caught a glimpse of a face there. But there was no one. Could it be haunted? Her eyes skimmed the upper windows once again but saw nothing, and her smile went awry. She always could think herself into a state of high drama for no other reason than because she enjoyed it.
No self-respecting ghost would even want to haunt this house in the state it was in now!
She began walking down the drive, eyeing with some deep inner pleasure she had never been able to explain the small-framed leaded windows with their thick black-painted wooden lintels above and below them. The front porch had a new shiny coat of black paint on it, its high-pitched slate-covered roof built at the same steep angle as the main roof to the house. It was supposed to be empty, and there were signs that major work was still in progress in the several types of heavy machinery standing idle in the drive, but she could just make out what appeared to be curtains hanging at some of the windows, and whoever had bought the place was obviously very close to moving in.
Hands dug deep into her coat pockets, she moved closer until she was standing in front of the deep porch, and let her curious gaze skim slowly over the downstairs windows before she decided that, since she had come this far, it couldn’t hurt to take a tiny peek inside a few of them. Moving cautiously, tentatively almost, she stepped on to the newly turned flowerbed just below the closest window and peered inside.
It was impossible to tell what kind of room it was since the light today was not very good and the tiny windows had not been designed to let much light in, but there was just enough light to tell her that, far from being ready for habitation, the inside of Courtney Manor had a long way to go yet.
Stepping back, she began walking slowly around the house, pausing to peer into each window as she reached it. Around the back, the garden was still overgrown and wild. Once upon a time there would have been a well stocked kitchen garden here, then the orchard beyond it leading right down to the edge of the river, but it had all become so badly overgrown now that it was impossible to tell where garden finished and the orchard began.
The old coach house and stable block appeared barely touched as yet, and she guessed by the huge padlock chained to the doors that the builders must be using them as storerooms for now.
The back door was big and old, reached by several cracked and very worn steps, to one side of which were the moss-covered steps to the basement. The windows here were too high for her to see through, so after a wistful scan of the rear view of the house she made her way around the front again, feeling an odd heaviness of heart as she paused there for a final long look.
‘Try the door if you like. It is unlocked.’
Madeline yelped, fright rippling along her spine as she spun around to stare in the direction the voice had come from.
Dom stood just a few yards away from her, his dark hair blowing in the strong wind.
‘What a stupid thing to do!’ she cried, anger flaring with the sudden rush of adrenalin to her system.
‘Did you think I was the major’s ghost?’ he grinned, not in the least bit penitent.
‘Where did you come from?’ she asked, glancing around in search of his car.
‘It isn’t here,’ he murmured, correctly guessing what she was looking for.
It was only as her eyes came back to him that she realised that he was not wearing a coat. In fact, he was standing there in just black trousers and a thin white shirt. It hit her then with a disturbing thud.
‘It’s your house, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You’re the one who’s bought this place.’
He sent her a mocking little smile then let his eyes drift away from hers to run over the improved frontage of his latest purchase. The wind was getting stronger, rippling the thin fabric of his shirt against his chest, disturbing the cluster of black hair at the open V where the buttons were left casually undone.
He looked oddly very alone standing there like that, with his shoulders hunched slightly against the cold and his hands pushed into the pockets of his trousers. The cold was etching out the strong bone-structure of his face, paling his skin a little, making his hair appear blacker, his eyes darker.
‘It looks like rain,’ he murmured suddenly, returning his gaze to her. Then slowly, uncertainly almost, he lifted a hand towards her. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he suggested gruffly, ‘and I’ll show you around.’
A fleeting vision of how that outstretched hand had last touched her came shuddering into her mind and she had to close her eyes on the violent upsurge of feeling she experienced, her own hands clenching tightly in the pockets of her sheepskin coat, shame at her own wanton behaviour drawing in the corners of her downturned mouth.
‘Come on.’ Suddenly he was beside her, the hand gentle on her arm, and she opened her eyes to find him standing right in front of her, his taut expression telling her that he knew exactly where her thoughts had taken her off to. ‘Come on,’ he repeated, low and gruff, and the hand slid up to her shoulders, drawing her close into the side of his body as he turned them towards the front door of the house.
They entered together, Dom moving only slightly away from her so that he could close the door behind them, shutting the sharp cold wind outside—and closing them in.
Met by the sudden silence, Madeline stood very still with Dom’s arm warm about her shoulders. She was barely breathing, her senses tuned exclusively in to him, and she had to force herself to take in her surroundings.
They were standing in a large square hallway on a very old stone-flagged floor w
hich would probably once have been the main room of the house where an Elizabethan family would have eaten off a huge refectory table, and sat in the evening by a blazing log fire set in the grate of an enormous stone and timber fireplace which almost completely dominated the central wall of the house.
It would have been cold and draughty, and, with the wind blowing from a certain direction, probably engulfed in smoke from the fire. But it was all here in this big almost ugly reception hall—the history, the sheer romantic excitement of wild and wicked Elizabethan living. And Madeline knew that if she closed her eyes she would be able to summon up the ghostly apparitions of swashbuckling men, and women draped in velvet and ermine laughing and joking, uncaring of the discomfort of their surroundings, their voices ringing against the solid stone walls and up the heavy wooden staircase which hugged another wall, curving up to the galleried landing above.
‘There is a crystal chandelier to go back up there,’ Dominic said beside her, noting the way she was staring up at the age-blackened beams of solid oak which spanned the crudely plastered ceiling. ‘It was so filthy that we didn’t know what a treasure we had until we got it down. Superb thing,’ he murmured with quiet satisfaction. ‘It’s being professionally cleaned and restored at the moment—along with a whole lot of other old treasures we discovered beneath the centuries of dust once we began looking.’
‘Poor major,’ Madeline murmured sadly. ‘If everything was in such a poor state—how did he live with it?’
‘Sheer cussedness, I should imagine,’ Dom said with a wry smile, then, ‘Actually, the few rooms he seemed to use in the house were all kept in a surprisingly pristine condition. The library, for instance.’ He moved away from Madeline to go and open a door to their left. ‘He seemed to live, eat and sleep in here, poring over his old books and papers—most of them military. They, like everything else in the house, have been taken away to be restored and valued.’