Chapter 30
GRACE
Grace had fully intended to tackle Silas the moment she got back to the vicarage, but it didn’t quite work out that way.
As she pushed open the vicarage gate and headed down the path, she heard someone calling her name and turned to see Callie, who had evidently been just behind her. She was staring at Grace in amazement.
‘Good afternoon, Callie,’ Grace said courteously, noticing with pleasure the poppy the young woman had pinned to her coat lapel. ‘Such a pleasure to see you again. Are you here to see Silas or Amelia?’
Callie swallowed. ‘I’m actually here to see you and Silas.’
Grace gave a cautious smile, aware that something was bothering this young woman. ‘How lovely. A social call. I’m afraid I can’t offer you tea and biscuits, but perhaps Amelia will do so if she’s at home.’
Callie shook her head. ‘It really doesn’t matter. Grace, do you realise what you just did? You opened the gate!’
Grace blinked. ‘I’m sorry, my dear?’
‘You opened the garden gate. Just now. I saw you.’
Grace looked at the gate at the bottom of the path, which was still slightly open. Naughty of Callie. She really ought to have shut it behind her. She was just reproaching herself for not shutting it either when she suddenly realised what Callie meant.
‘Good heavens,’ she murmured. ‘So I did! I wasn’t even thinking about it. How did that happen? I thought ghosts couldn’t touch anything in the physical world?’
‘They can’t,’ Callie said flatly. ‘That’s what we thought anyway, but you and Charlotte seem to have set a new trend.’
‘I saw you through the window,’ came a voice, and they looked round to see Silas standing on the doorstep. ‘What’s going on?’
Knowing what she now knew about him, Grace realised that Silas did indeed sound a little impatient. Brusque even. He certainly wasn’t very welcoming to Callie.
‘Carrots,’ she said, ‘it appears that I can touch things. I’ve just opened the garden gate.’
‘Nonsense!’ He shook his head, flatly denying the possibility. ‘You must be mistaken.’
Grace adored her husband, but she was no doormat. She threw back her shoulders, lifted her chin, and gave him an indignant look. ‘I can assure you that it’s not nonsense. Callie here saw me do it, didn’t you, Callie?’
‘I did,’ Callie said. ‘Look, I really need to talk to you both. May I come in?’
‘That woman’s gone out,’ Silas said. ‘I’m afraid the door’s locked so you’ll have to talk to us out here.’
Grace stared at him in astonishment. That would never do, and well he knew it. Where were his manners?
‘I presume you’re referring to Amelia, our hostess? Perhaps,’ she suggested firmly, ‘we could adjourn to the teashop?’
‘There’s no need,’ Callie said. ‘I’ve already seen Amelia and she’s given me the key so I can sit and chat to you in private. This is really important.’
Grace began to move forwards. ‘In that case, let us make ourselves comfortable at once.’
She put her hands on Silas’s shoulders and turned him around, forcing him through the front door before he could protest. Grace followed him then they waited as Callie unlocked the door and entered the vicarage herself.
‘Shall we sit in the living room?’ Callie enquired. ‘Or would you prefer the study?’
Silas opened his mouth, but Grace jumped in with, ‘Oh, certainly not the study. Let’s sit in the living room where you will be more comfortable, my dear. What a pity I can’t offer you tea. I am a most dreadful hostess, I must say.’
‘Not at all,’ Callie assured her. ‘If I wanted tea, I could make one. Amelia’s a dear friend and has already said I can make myself at home.’
Grace noticed an angry look cross Silas’s face.
‘Our home,’ he muttered, and she wondered how she hadn’t noticed this change in him until now. Maybe she’d been so shocked by everything else she’d learned that it hadn’t registered. She felt unutterably sad at the thought that her dear Carrots had become so unsociable.
Callie led the way into the living room and sat down on the sofa, where Grace joined her. Silas sat in an armchair, his brow furrowed and his lips thin with disapproval.
‘What can we do for you, Callie?’ Grace enquired politely.
Callie fumbled in her pocket and brought out something which she held towards Grace in the palm of her hand.
‘Do you recognise this?’ she asked.
Grace gasped. ‘My brooch! Silas, look! It’s the brooch you bought me that day in Cambridge. The Whitby Mourning Brooch, made from jet, remember?’
‘How could I forget?’ he asked, sounding dazed. ‘But where did you get it, Callie?’
‘This is all very difficult,’ Callie admitted. ‘Would you mind if I held on to this for a while?’
‘Well, of course,’ Grace said. ‘It’s of no use to me now, is it? But what do you need it for?’
‘The thing is, what you just did – opening the garden gate – is part of a wider problem. Charlotte shares the same ability to touch things and move things and… throw things.’
‘But that’s not possible,’ Silas protested. ‘How can it be?’
‘I don’t know, Silas,’ Callie said heavily. ‘But it is. We’re having awful trouble with Charlotte at the Hall. She’s got quite the temper on her, and I’m afraid she struck my daughter with her riding crop and cut her face. She also hurled a vase at me although, luckily, she missed.’
‘She did what?’ Silas was clearly outraged, and Grace had to agree with him that such behaviour was unacceptable. ‘And what did Lawrie say about that, eh? I hope he chastised her.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Callie said, ‘that Lawrie is just so glad to see his mother again that he’s putty in her hands.
He did tell her off a bit, but she took no notice.
She’s not taking any notice of what anyone says.
She’s driving Agnes and Aubrey insane, and she clearly doesn’t approve of me – a mere, common woman – owning the Harling Estate. ’
‘Oh,’ Grace said knowingly. ‘She’s one of those women, is she? Not a woman’s woman at all. All for the men. Where is the sense of sisterhood in such females, I should like to know? These women set our cause back when they should be helping us to obtain full equality.’
Callie smiled. ‘Well exactly. I’m glad you see it, too.’
‘I do, my dear. It’s why I was so thrilled to discover you were in residence at the Hall, and that Amelia was the new vicar of All Souls. How marvellous it all is. I’m so happy I came back to see such a thing had happened.’
Callie stared at the carpet, clearly ill at ease. ‘I’m glad you got to see it, too,’ she said quietly. ‘But I have to tell you…’ She paused, glancing from Grace to a worried looking Silas, ‘I have to tell you that we don’t think you should stay here. The fact is, you don’t belong here.’
‘Ah,’ Grace said sadly. ‘I see.’
‘That’s preposterous!’ Silas cried. ‘She has every right to stay here.’
‘But that’s not what you said when we thought it was only Charlotte who’d come back,’ Callie pointed out. ‘You were the one telling us that in no circumstances could she remain here. Remember?’
Silas clearly did remember, as he shrank back in his chair, his eyes large and staring and a stricken expression on his face.
Grace sighed. ‘I understand your point of view, Callie. I shall be very sad to leave this place, but clearly something has gone very wrong. If this Charlotte is a danger to you, which it seems she is, then of course she must go, and I must go with her since I possess the same abilities.’
‘You would never hit someone or throw things at them,’ Silas burst out.
‘I don’t doubt that for a minute,’ Callie said bleakly.
‘Nevertheless, it’s clear that neither woman should be here.
They passed over when they died. They went somewhere…
Well, we don’t know where, but the point is they didn’t remain on earth as ghosts.
They should never have been brought back, and who knows what other abilities they may develop?
It’s very unsettling for the other ghosts, and it’s pretty scary for us living people. ’
‘Quite right,’ Grace said. She sat up straight and slapped her thighs determinedly. ‘Well, if that’s how it must be then that’s how it must be. How do you propose to send us back to wherever we came from?’
‘We’ve contacted the woman we believe was responsible for all this,’ Callie told her, looking genuinely unhappy about the whole thing, which Grace thought was extremely kind of her.
‘It’s a bit complicated, but we think that this brooch, and a teacup belonging to Charlotte, were instrumental in your return.
Verity’s coming back tomorrow to try to put this right. ’
‘Very well,’ Grace said. ‘Then I shall make the most of the rest of today, since I may not be here much longer.’
She glanced at Silas, but he was staring at the floor and appeared to have nothing much to say.
‘I really am sorry, Silas,’ Callie murmured as she got to her feet.
Grace gave her a reassuring smile and herded her into the hallway, where Callie opened the front door.
‘I can only tell you how sorry I am that we have to do this, Grace,’ Callie told her, tears gleaming in her eyes.
‘It was Silas himself who pointed out how wrong this turn of events was, and we hoped he was just being – well – Silas. But with these new abilities you and Charlotte possess, it’s clear that you’re not just everyday ghosts, and we can only think that it’s a warning that you really shouldn’t be here. ’
‘Think nothing of it,’ Grace assured her.
‘I’m so glad I got to see Carrots again, and to learn how well Rowan Vale – and women’s rights – have progressed.
It has been a pleasure, my dear. I just wish I could have spent more time getting to know you all a little better, but there we are.
We must face these things with courage and fortitude, must we not? ’
‘You’re an amazing woman, Grace,’ Callie said. ‘I know it wasn’t for long, but I’m so pleased and proud to have known you.’
She closed the door behind her, and Grace heard the keys in the lock, then footsteps as Callie headed back down the path. The garden gate clicked and Grace nodded in satisfaction, then she drew herself up and headed back into the living room to face Silas.