‘And that she had converted to Catholicism.’
Sighing he leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling. Behind him Joss was conscious of Luke standing silently by the window. No one had turned on the lights and the only illumination came from the dying fire and the slight tinge of pale light still showing in the sky out of the window. ‘I am not a religious man. I did not encourage her in this – either the marriage or the lessons with the curé – this came from inside her. I asked her to marry me of course, when she came to France, but she did not want it and here no one minded – no one asked. We were both free – I think, as I told you, that perhaps she enjoyed the – how you call – naughtiness of it? She had been for so long a respectable lady in England.’ He gave a huge warm smile, his eyes focusing on a distant memory. ‘Then at the end, when she became ill, I think she became a little afraid.’ He frowned. ‘Do not misunderstand. She was very brave, your mother. So brave. When the pain came she did not complain ever. But there was something – something out there –’ he gestured towards the sky outside the window. ‘Something which had always haunted her; the thing she had fought with her visit to Sacré Coeur. For a while it was held at bay. She did not think of it. Then one day, I came home and found her sitting by the fire in the dark, much as you were doing just now. And she was crying and she told me that the ghosts had followed her to France. That first they had come in her dreams, and that now she thought they were growing stronger.’
‘No.’ Luke stepped forward suddenly. ‘I’m sorry, Paul, but I think we’ve had enough of these ghosts. They were the reason we came to France in the first place.’
Paul turned in his seat. ‘Put on the lights my friend. Pull the curtains. Let us see what we are doing.’ He turned back to Joss. ‘Do you wish to talk of this now?’
She nodded. ‘Luke. It’s important. Paul, I have to know. Did she say who was haunting her?’
‘The ghost of her lover.’
Joss stared at him, completely shocked. ‘Her lover?’
‘That is what she said.’
‘She had a lover!’
‘Why not. She was a beautiful woman.’
‘But I thought –’ she shook her head as though trying to dislodge her thoughts. ‘I thought that it was a ghost. A real ghost. From the past.’
He smiled again. ‘All ghosts are from the past, Jocelyn.’
Her thoughts were whirling. ‘Did she mention anyone else to you? Anyone else who came here. A woman called Katherine?’
He nodded. ‘At the end. It upset her very much. I do not know how she came in – the nurse said she had opened the door to no one, but somehow she came to see Laura.’
‘Did you see her?’
‘Non.’
‘Who was she, do you know?’
‘She had been this man’s lover too. And he had left her, that much I understood. She was very bitter that Laura had stolen him. I was so angry when Laura told me. Not about the lover, although she had never told me about him either,’ he shrugged gallantly, ‘but this woman was apparently young and beautiful, and my Laura was so ravaged by the disease. It was an obscenity for this Katherine to come here. It was only a day or so later that your mother died.’
Katherine
The word seemed to fill the silence in the room.
Luke came and sat down near Joss. ‘That’s a terrible story. What happened to her? Did she ever come back?’
Paul shrugged. ‘No. If she had she would have regretted it. All my rage and misery and grief was directed at that woman. To come to a dying woman and taunt her with her own beauty. Laura kept talking about her beautiful, long dark hair. And then she brought some roses. The roses which Laura hated most in the whole world.’
‘White roses,’ Joss whispered.
‘Exactement! White roses. I threw them from the window. It was as if she knew, Laura said, that it would kill her to bring them here.’
‘How did she know where Laura was?’ Joss was still frowning, trying to rearrange her thoughts.
Paul shrugged once more. ‘Who knows? She probably hired a detective. I do not make a secret of my home. I have this house for thirty years. Everyone knows me. We had nothing to hide.’
There were several seconds of silence, then Luke cleared his throat. ‘Why don’t I go and put on the kettle.’
When he returned with a tray and three mugs of tea and a saucer full of lemon slices for Paul, they were both still sitting there, staring at the fire, each preoccupied with his own thoughts.
‘Were there two Katherines then?’ Joss said at last. ‘The Katherine who died in 1482, whose presence fills the house at home; and now this other. I never thought – I never ever guessed, that mother had a lover.’
Paul got up to throw a log onto the fire. ‘She had me!’
‘I know.’ Joss smiled fondly. ‘But that was different. One expects everything to do with the French to be decadent and shocking.’ She was teasing now. ‘The thought that my mother had a lover – an English lover – at Belheddon – that is somehow wrong.’
Paul clicked his teeth. ‘You English are not logical. Not at all. Ever.’
‘I know.’
‘Your father died over thirty years ago, Jocelyn. Would you expect your mother to be without love for so long? Surely you would not have condemned her to that.’
Joss shook her head. ‘No. Of course I wouldn’t. No one should have to live without love.’ She held out her hand towards Luke, who came and took it. He put his arm round her.
‘It is all a little bewildering for us, Paul,’ he said slowly. ‘We have been imagining the house full of ghosts from the past – the distant past – and now it seems that they come as well from the living present.’