Chapter One
The Star Castle, St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly. 16th April 1809
… It is said that in the year of our Lord 1600 a gallant young man left St Mary’s Isle and took ship to the mainland to serve his Queen and Country as a soldier. When his betrothed clung to him, begging him to stay, he vowed to return to her, even through the flames of hell itself.
In a great storm the ship on which he sailed was sunk with the loss of all aboard and his beloved, the daughter of the captain of the castle guard, was left to pine and dwindle away until she too died. Then the women living in the castle began to speak of a tall and handsome man walking the battlements on moonlit nights, his cloak swirling around him in the wind.
Some unearthly power drew them to him, into his ghostly embrace, where they experienced sensual bliss beyond their wildest imaginings – before they woke in the cold dawn, alone. Each confessed that they would have believed the soldier from the sea to be a demon-sent dream if it were not that their night attire was wet with seawater when they woke and a trail of boot prints would be slowly drying in the dawn light.
He seeks his love, it is said, but she lies in consecrated ground where he, a lost, unshriven soul, cannot reach her, so he takes what comfort he may with the bodies of those still living…
Of all the foolish things to be reading in the castle itself on a moonlit midnight! Emily Heywood dropped the old book onto the bedcovers with a shiver. The silence had not worried her before, but now it reminded her that she was sleeping on the top floor of this strange little Elizabethan fortress, alone save for an elderly cook and the scullery boy, both doubtless snoring in the basement.
‘It is all nonsense,’ she said out loud for the sake of hearing some familiar sound. Her voice echoed faintly in the stone-walled chamber. When she arrived that evening she had thought the room snug enough with a fire in the grate, the old four-poster bed with crimson drapes, a thick rug over the wide boards and hot water in a jug on the dresser. Now it seemed the perfect setting for Gothick tales of horror.
Last night she had been tucked up in a well-appointed room in the Governor’s own residence, sheltered against the lea of the Garrison Hill. The book Janey, her hostess and the Governor’s sister, had pressed into her hands for entertainment proved to be a collection of island ghost stories.
She had laughed about it at breakfast. ‘You hoped to scare me into nightmares,’ she accused her friend. ‘I am not such a poor honey to be frightened by such nonsense.’
‘Really?’ Janey had teased. ‘It is easy to dismiss ghostly tales in a brightly lit, modern room in a house full of people, but I wager my new silk shawl to your Brussels lace collar that you would not dare spend a night in the Star Castle.’
And so, of course, she had to accept the challenge. ‘You truly do not mind ghosts?’ Janey had asked as they packed Emily’s bag that evening.
‘I have no objection to ghosts whatsoever, provided they do not keep me awake with clanking chains or cold draughts,’ Emily replied with a confidence that was proving misplaced. Janey had been right: bravado in the big house was one thing, it was less easy here in the silent moonlight with a candle to create weird shadows in every corner.
And, of course, this story would have to be about a soldier who left his love. Not that she was Blake’s love, exactly, simply his wife of eight weeks. She supposed she was his wife, although she rather thought that marriages had to be consummated before they were legal. Or was that simply an old wives’ tale?
Emily turned her mind to more positive thoughts. So far as she knew Blake was alive, even if, since her wedding day, she had not had so much as a word from him. From wherever he was, which of course, he had not told her. Perhaps he could not tell her. It might be a secret, or communications might be bad. Silence did not mean she was a widow before she had even become a wife, she told herself stoutly.
She was a soldier’s wife now, which meant that she must not so much as acknowledge the sick ache of anxiety in her stomach; she must be as brave as her husband. And to hope that he would give up his commission and leave the army to be with her was unreasonable. However kind Blake was to her, he did not love her, so why should he change his whole way of life on her account?
It had raised her spirits to accept Janey’s pressing invitation to leave Blake’s mouldering Hampshire estate and come here to the Isles of Scilly, and she had even been sleeping a little better. Now some wretched antiquarian ghost-hunter had succeeded in putting thoughts of gallant soldiers, lost on their way to fight, firmly in the forefront of her mind.
The candle guttered and went out. The shadows became deeper, darker. Boards creaked in the old house.
Emily sought for something to distract herself. This ghost brought sensual bliss, apparently. She lay down, wriggled, punched the pillow, then tried to settle again. Sensual bliss was something guaranteed to distract her jittery thoughts.
She had experienced a hint of what it might be during the days of her short courtship. Reprehensibly, rather more than a hint in fact, despite her aunt’s strict chaperonage and her own shyness. Blake’s eyes had held messages that had made her breath come short and her pulse flutter, his touch brought a heat that tingled along every nerve. When he had kissed her, the day that he proposed, she had found herself twined around his tall, lean body like ivy on a tree, dizzily unsure of how she had come to be so bold, unless his mouth could work magic.
And then there had been the jolting journey down to Hampshire when his attempts to embrace her had resulted in them tumbling to the floor of the chaise, helpless with mingled laughter and desire. When they arrived he had swept her up in his arms and strode across the drive, up the steps, through the open front door – only to be greeted by the ancient butler with a message from Horse Guards. Blake was needed in London, with all speed.
He had his duty, she knew that, even as she clung to him, pressing kisses onto his mouth and feeling the desire that shook him. Emily longed to be swept away on a wave of uncontrollable passion, just once, before Blake left her. But she must not distract him, she told herself as she stepped back and waved him goodbye with the bravest smile she could muster.
When she married him she had hope
d – dreamed – that he loved her, even though he had not said the words, even though theirs was a marriage that had been arranged for the mutual benefit of both parties. But then, men were more reticent about these things, so she thought. And she, of course, was too shy to say it first. Surely Blake had not married her only for her money?
As the sole heiress of a wealthy merchant she was used to fortune hunters, of course. But Captain Blake Heywood, Lord Greystoke, had returned from the battlefield with no such reputation, only one for courage and dashing leadership. Her elderly trustees were impressed by the fact that he had just inherited a barony and a large country estate. They were taken aback when he confessed that along with the title he had acquired a mountain of debts and an estate in ruins.
But by then Emily had fallen in love with his charismatic presence, his dry humour, his modesty in the face of the lionisers who wanted to fawn on a handsome hero. She would have Blake, debts or no debts. A month later she was Lady Greystoke.
She loved Blake and she wanted Blake here, now, in her bed, every night, so she could learn more about this mystery of lovemaking and start to build their marriage. And that was selfish because he was only doing his duty.
Emily turned over onto her other side. The bed was perfectly comfortable, it was her mind that was so unrestful. If only that message had come just a day later, then she would have been truly his wife. The thought that their parting should have been the perfect moment for him to tell her he loved her niggled in the back of her mind and she tried to ignore it. Love had not been part of the arrangement.
Goodness knows where he had gone and how dangerous it was. The cold knot of fear in her stomach that was never very far away came back to add to her misery. Blake was alive, she told herself now, as she did every night. She had to believe it because her heart would break for certain if he was not.
Restless, she ran her hands down over her body, down over her nipples, peaking hard against her palms, down to cup the aching mound where the insistent little pulse beat out its sensual demands. Blake had taught her how to need him, how to yearn for him, but he had not taught her what those yearnings meant, how to live without him, in bed and out of it.
There was light in the room now, she could sense it through her closed lids. Jerked into full wakefulness Emily opened her eyes wide to find a shaft of silver moonlight lancing through the open curtains. When she had arrived she had not been able to drag the heavy old brocade across the deep casement, one ring was jammed too high to reach, so she had left it. She slid from the high bed and went to the window.
The cloud that had obscured the night sky had blown away and the terrace was as clear as day in the cold light. She could even see every detail of the stonework on the little guard house at the point of one of the defensive angles.
Emily had been intrigued as soon as she had seen the little castle from the sea when her ship had arrived, not least because of its strange design. It was as though someone had taken a giant cake, carved it into an eight-pointed star, armoured it with granite, topped it with battlements and guard posts and then cut a great square hole in the middle into which they dropped an incongruously domestic Elizabethan house, its roof and upper stories emerging from above the broad terrace of battlements that surrounded it.
A winding passage led from the portcullis and gate to the house door at ground level. On the floor Emily occupied, at the level of the battlements, there were two miniature bridges to give access to the terrace that lay over the great thickness of the surrounding walls. Within them, she supposed, were steps, storerooms and passages.
The view from her window now was magical, touched with silver, atmospheric, almost eerie. Janey had told her there were wide views out over the sea towards the islands of Samson and St Agnes. In the moonlight it would be beautiful: better to look at that than toss and turn in bed.
Emily pulled on her robe over her night gown and opened her chamber door. She had noticed when she arrived that there was another, heavier, door at the end of the passage: it must surely open onto the battlements.
The heavy old ironwork was stiff, but the door was unlocked. She was momentarily surprised, then realised that anyone on the other side of it would already have had to run the gauntlet of the castle’s formidable gate. The little fortress was secure against invaders: she and the two servants were alone here.
It was warmer now than it had been when she had climbed up the hill from the Governor’s house. The wind had dropped to a teasing breeze that fluttered her white muslin robe, flirted with the hem of her nightgown and blew her loose hair across her face as she stepped out onto the wooden bridge. On either side the drop to the cobbled path between bastion and house was shrouded in blackness, but the handrails were secure enough. Emily paused at the end of the wooden structure, her bare toes curling over the final plank: the flags would be cold, she should have put on her slippers.
Movement flickered in the corner of her vision. For a second she thought it merely a flag, caught in the breeze, then she saw it was a man walking close to the battlements. His feet made no sound, his black cloak swirled around his ankles with each stride, his hair, unfashionably long, lifted and stirred as he came. In the shadows his face was indistinct, smudged with dark stubble. Then he stopped, the cloak settled around him, caught up a little on the left side by his sword. There was a glint of metal at his throat.
Emily stared at him across perhaps ten yards. A soldier? The soldier from the sea? She must have moved, made some small sound, for his head turned so that he looked directly at her from eyes that were shielded by the brim of his hat.
Emily felt her legs tremble. Her breath came short and then she realised it was not only fear she was feeling through the shock and disbelief, it was an aching longing for the dark figure, an elemental recognition. Her lips parted, she knew she ran her tongue across them. Her body felt hot and her palms, as she clenched her fingers tightly into them, were damp. A dream… But her nails cut painfully into her skin, she could smell the salt from the sea on the breeze, hear the distant call of the sentry down by the Governor’s house. She was awake.