Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
ASHEWOOD HALL
Marco stared in open-mouthed horror at the pile of embers, ashes, and rubble which had once been Ashewood’s gatehouse. Mr. Stanley, the elderly gatekeeper, stood to his left, shaking and pale as a ghost.
“What happened? Are you all right?”
Marco’s voice sounded hoarse. His throat was tight with sadness and the weight of worry. Mr. Stanley shook his head.
“I heard the crash of a window breaking. That’s what woke me, my Lord.
When I stepped out of my quarters to investigate, I spotted a torch just beneath the shattered window in the sitting room.
The drapes had caught fire and were already blazing.
I rushed out to the water pump to fill the bucket, but by the time I’d done that, the whole gatehouse was completely engulfed in flames, and there was nothing I could do against a blaze like that, with just one bucket and the water pump. I’m sorry, my Lord.”
Marco gently patted the gatekeeper on the shoulder, shaking his head.
“There is no need to apologise, Stanley. The gate house can be rebuilt. I am just grateful that the noise of the shattering window woke you, and that you made it out of the house alive. I would have been much aggrieved to lose such a hardworking, faithful member of my staff.”
“I’m much obliged to you for your kindness, my Lord. What shall we do while the gatehouse is being rebuilt?”
“You will stay in Ashewood Hall until the gatehouse is rebuilt, of course.”
Stanley nodded, numb and at a loss for words.
“Thank the good Lord that Gertrude didn’t live to see all the things we’d accumulated in our life together burn to nothing in the space of just a few minutes. She would have been devastated, even more than I am.”
Marco’s throat grew painfully thick and tight at the quiet sorrow lacing Mr. Stanley’s words. He swallowed convulsively, working to clear the painful knot that choked him.
“I’m sorry that you lost so much, Stanley. Let’s get you into the carriage and settled in at the main house, shall we?”
Marco’s hoarse whisper came out raspy, choked with the tempest of thoughts and emotions building within him.
Whoever had summoned him back to Ashewood obviously wanted Marco to suffer.
Coming after him, personally, was all well and good, but endangering his staff and the people who depended on him for a living? That was a bridge too far.
Despite the dire and haunting circumstances, the thought of the dearly departed Mrs. Gertrude Stanley filled Marco’s mind.
If he closed his eyes, instead of smoke he could smell her fresh bread or rhubarb pie sitting on the window sill to cool.
She had been a dear sweet woman, always kind and full of joy.
Marco had spent many a stolen moment of his childhood days at Ashewood in her kitchen, eating one treat or another.
Although she always respected the difference in their stations, Gertrude had loved Marco like she loved her own children and grandchildren.
She had doted on him, and the gatehouse had always been a place of safe harbour for Marco on days when he’d needed to escape the main house because his father was in an ill temper for one reason or another.
He treasured those moments he’d spent with Mrs. Stanley when he was growing up.
Now, looking at the heap of ashes which had been the gatehouse, Marco was also glad that Gertrude was not here to see all the treasures she’d accumulated throughout her life, gone.
She had taken great pride in her home. Each drape had been carefully sewn, each pillow embroidered and lovingly displayed.
She’d had many little trinkets that Marco had brought her within those walls, from the simple rocks a child collects, to fine trinkets purchased for her on his travels.
She had loved bric-a-brac, and her husband, and those — such as Marco himself — who had held her dear, had loved those things she’d accumulated over the course of her life as well.
Marco set his hand on Stanley’s shoulder and guided him towards the carriage he’d arrived in.
As he helped Stanley up into the carriage, the Count’s hands shook with the force of his fury that someone would do this to his people.
The note containing the threat which had driven him back to Ashewood burned in his inside jacket pocket, where it was pressed against his chest, and Marco now knew that the threat — which he had half-hoped was just a way to lure him away from London for a while — was a very real danger.
It was bad enough that Marco’s debtors were an ever-present cloud of darkness hanging over his head, darkening both his doorstep and his family name.
He hated that his father’s declining mental capacity at the end of his life had created such vast debts so quickly.
Antonio Bianchi, the previous Count D’Asti, was delusional in his later years, and Marco was not home often enough to realise it until after his father’s death.
By then, it was already too late to turn things around financially.
In the wake of his father’s death, Marco had been forced to sell off so many things to keep the family’s floundering estates afloat.
Silver. Furnishings. The art that his beloved mother, Beatrice Bianchi, had adored so deeply.
There had been so few pieces left, after his father’s grief fuelled fit of getting rid of things which reminded him of his beloved, now departed wife, but still, even some of those, Marco had been forced to sell.
Marco’s gut twisted with the knowledge that he would now have to sell off another piece or two to keep the debtors at bay and pay the costs of rebuilding the gatehouse.
Worse than that, another, more melancholy, guilt nagged at Marco as he looked across the silent carriage at Mr. Stanley. Every shred of the life Stanley had shared with his late wife had been destroyed in that fire.
What else would they all have to lose if Marco didn’t work out who’d demanded that he return to Ashewood? Why was it so important that he come back here? Now that he had returned, would the destruction stop, or would it continue? And if it did, what would he have to do to stop it?
As the carriage bore them quietly towards Ashewood Hall, despite wishing that this was all a dreadful nightmare, and that he might soon wake to find himself back in London, dancing with lady Eugenia, Marco tried to be positive.
Someone had set this fire, but why. It was just a gatehouse?
The gatehouse could be replaced, as he had said to Stanley, but could it?
Did he actually have the wherewithal at present to achieve even that?
This was just one more thing which drove him towards desperate choices, of which only one possible option held any appeal, but he would have to make a decision soon, before it was too late to save his family’s legacy, his good name, and all of the estates and people his title supported, from irreparable ruin.
He set about making plans, at least for the next few days.
He would need to speak to his steward here, would need to examine what was left in the house, and decide which items he could bear to part with, that could easily and quickly be sold for a decent sum, and would need to discover the state of the fields – might this year bring a good harvest, or a bad one?
The thought which hung over everything, the thought which frightened him, was encapsulated in one simple question – what would he do, if there wasn’t enough?
And what would he do, if the arsonist struck again?
THISTLEWAYTE HALL
From within a haze of darkness and self-condemnation, a bone-deep shudder wracked Eugenia’s body, rousing her to semi-awareness.
The strange, awful dreams she’d been having clung to her like cobwebs.
Something unspeakably horrible had been chasing her, and no matter how fast she ran, Eugenia hadn’t been able to get away from the terror which was hot on her heels.
She’d been running towards Lord D’Asti, but she’d known, all the while, that the thing which chased her would catch her, before she ever reached him.
She blinked, clearing the sleep from her eyes, and looked around, taking in her surroundings.
Cold and dampness soaked into nearly every inch of her skin, save for her face.
Her cheeks and forehead burned like hot coals.
Worse than that, her head ached furiously, pounding with every panicked beat of her heart.
Clammy, pre-dawn fog swirled around her, and a sprinkling of dim, distant stars glowed in the blue-grey sky.
Eugenia shook her head and rubbed her eyes, wondering for a moment if she was still dreaming.
She pinched herself, to be sure, hoping that she would wake up still safe and warm in her own bed, but the scene around her remained the same. She stood deep in the garden’s hedge maze, her feet bare, dressed in nothing but her nightrail.
Her stomach knotted and her heart sank as she turned in a slow circle, trying to get her bearings.
She’d been sleepwalking, Eugenia realised, heaving a heavy sigh.
This hadn’t happened to her since she was a small child, but she well remembered the disorienting sensation which came with waking like this.
Reaching out her left hand, she trailed her fingers along the leaves of the maze wall on her left and wound her way out of the labyrinth.
Her chest tightened and another shiver took her.
She hurried back toward the house, her steps frantic until she reached the terrace and slipped back inside, praying that no one would see her as she padded back to her bedroom.
The sleepwalking had been embarrassing enough when she was a little girl.
Now, if anyone were to find out it was happening again, it would be worse.
She swiped a hand over her burning brow, wiping away the clammy sweat which clung there as she tip-toed up the stairs and slipped back into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Shivering so hard her teeth chattered, Eugenia rushed to her bed and lay down, pulling the covers over herself and huddling underneath them as she tried to will the chill away.
Soon, she drifted once again into an uneasy sleep plagued by nightmares.