The Legend of Nimway Hall: 1940-Josie Read online

  Josie had shoved her list into the pocket of her dungarees, now retrieved it because she couldn’t recall the remaining items until she consulted the smeared pencil markings. “The children. You must remember that we are host to four evacuee children who have the run of the estate. They are curious and inventive and fearless in their play. They get into everything. Their health and safety is my prime concern and should be yours as well. You must not leave dangerous items where they can find them, because they will.”

  He frowned deeply, seemed to be considering this carefully. “Define dangerous.”

  “Guns, ammunition, hammers, saws, vehicles, construction material for your anti-tank islands. Come, Colonel, you were a boy once. You must have put yourself in danger more times than your mother would care to have known.”

  His wry smile was answer enough, before he added, “Thankfully, she still doesn’t know.”

  “You just think she doesn’t.”

  “Point made, Miss Stirling. Next item on your list.”

  Distracted again, she straightened the damp and crumpled list. “Chickens? Ah, yes! Please make it clear to your staff and visitors that Nimway is home to a wide variety of living things that need as much care as the people. Dairy cows, new calves, horses, free ranging chickens, active beehives located at the margins of fields, hedgerows that provide homes to badgers, rabbits, birds, voles, hedgehogs—”

  “What are you saying? Are we to feed them? Milk them?”

  “No. Just don’t run them over with your vehicles or poison them with your—”

  “With what? Our mustard gas?”

  “Dear God, you’re storing mustard gas? Here at Nimway Hall?”

  “Are you mad, woman? This is a farm, not a military reservation. And why the bloody hell would you think we’d be in possession of chemical weapons? They were banned by international law twenty years ago.”

  “Of course I don’t think that. I was just—just mind the welfare of the animals and the children. They don’t understand the danger they’re in.”

  “Miss Stirling,” he said, leaning close and whispering as though a secret, “I know just how they feel.”

  Josie’s pulse set off like a rabbit, her heart racing alongside. He smelled so good, of wood smoke and leather. “How do you mean, Colonel? Are we in danger after all?”

  He made a soft sound in his throat then straightened. “Not if we keep careful watch, Miss Stirling. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” she said, not entirely sure what she was agreeing to.

  “And to that end, I have a proposal.”

  “A proposal?” The bloody man had dashed her logic to pieces, was now walking toward the library door.

  He stopped at the drinks table, picked up something as he turned back to her. “May I suggest that you and I meet every night—”

  “Where?” She felt suddenly bereft of his circle of warmth, a chilly reminder that her clothes were damp through.

  “Here, in the library. Say ten o’clock?”

  Another night like this one? Sparring, speaking their minds, warming their hands by the fire? Well, now there was a danger! “Why, Colonel?”

  “To compare our schedules for the following day and, as you say, to avoid conflicts as best we can.” The lamplight from the reading table could barely reach him from that distance. Yet, its glow planed his face, broadened his shoulders, rendering her without words. “While you think on it, Miss Stirling, I’ll fetch our ration books. Where shall I deliver them?”

  “I’ll wait for you here. And yes, Colonel, a nightly meeting with you would be lov—” good grief, she’d been about to say a meeting with him would be lovely “—logical. Quite logical. Though I insist on half-ten.”

  “Half-ten it is.”

  The library door clicked behind him and she was left shivering in the cold.

  Chapter 4

  Josie turned off the pair of sconce lights above the map, and the library went dark as a cave, the fire in the hearth reduced to the red glow of embers. She turned her back to gather its remaining warmth as she waited for Fletcher to return with the ration books and looked out into the darkness that shadowed the rest of the library.

  She loved it here in her fairytale forest, a magical place where all the characters danced and played when the lights were out and the Hall was asleep, like tonight, with the world locked away behind the tall shutters and thick blackout curtains.

  Except for an odd glow coming from the turret corner where her father had placed his boxes from Stirling House. A pale, ethereal shimmer rising like a mist in the darkest reaches of the room. A will-o’the-wisp that had slipped through the shutters and into the library.

  More likely a very real shaft of moonlight that had thwarted her every effort to mask the light. Which would mean that any light from the library, including the fire could be seen from without by their nearly fanatical local Air Raid Protection Warden. Which could mean a court appearance and a hefty fine.

  Despite the darkness, Josie easily dodged the familiar clusters of chairs and tables and book carrels, the dictionary stand with the large bust of Samuel Johnson as the base, feeling her way past the map table and the pair of Chesterfield sofas toward the odd glow in the corner.

  She went directly to the window opposite the light, pulled aside the curtain and searched the edges of the shutters where they met in the center. Finding no spill of light, she opened one of the panels and peered outside, assuming she would find the full moon bathing the landscape. The night was dark as ink beyond the glass pane. Because, of course, the moon was in its first quarter, fully hidden inside the earth’s shadow.

  Then where was the damn light coming from? She closed up and fastened the shutters, pulled the curtain and turned back to the room, hoping the glow had vanished.

  But it hadn’t. The light seemed to be tucked into the jumbled pile of her father’s belongings on the round table in the turret nook. The source could be most anything. The Stirling family had owned that same house since the time of Shakespeare, as Tudorish today as it had been when it was built of crucked beams, wattle and daub, with a roof of lichen-gray slate. The place was an endless warren of twisting hallways connecting cozy rooms with low ceilings and uneven floors. Generations of theatrical keepsakes filled every nook and cranny—and there were hundreds of nooks and crannies, from cellar to attic.

  Father must have left an electric torch burning inside one of the boxes when they closed it up. Rather than letting the batteries drain — and curious as to how it had managed to remain burning all these hours since packing the box last night in London, she homed in on the glow and began moving the boxes and cases out of the way. But the more she moved the more deeply the glow settled into the pile.

  Until one box at the very back of the table seemed to tip over on its own and spill out into the narrow slot between adjacent boxes. The contents shimmered as she parted the boxes and reached into the cascade of items from her father’s life at Stirling House, felt the fringe of a wool lap robe, then the cool brass of a bowl, a small picture frame, a wooden cigar box, other odds and ends she remembered hastily packing the night before, the blue-white glow of the electric torch still stubbornly buried somewhere within.

  “Come here, you!” Frustrated, she finally reached deeply into the pile with both hands, and pulled the entangled mess toward her, grateful when the glow at last came forward. The torch had managed to ball itself up inside a lap blanket, its light source radiating through the rose and green plaid of the weave.

  No, it couldn’t be an electric torch. The shape inside the blanket was all wrong: oblong instead of tubular, cool instead of warm, weighted in the palm of her hand like a large stone.

  She peeled away the final fold of wool and found herself holding in her bare palm, not an electric torch, but a perfectly oval stone, silky cool, and silvery white, reflecting its pale glow from inside the fierce golden claw of an eagle, or a dragon, or some other mythical beast.

  “What the devil—?” She smo
othed her other hand across the surface, peering into its flickering depths, wondering how a stone could capture the rays of the moon and reflect them outward into a completely dark room. Making her feel… a bit breathless, warm and, and almost ‘swoony.’ Making her conjure the face of—”

  “Is that a moonstone?”

  Josie startled at the voice that came from above and behind her shoulder. His voice!

  “I brought the ration books, as promised.” He reached around her and set the stack of books on the table in front of her. “What have you got there?”

  “It’s a— Oh, damn!” The warm scent of his aftershave caught her off guard, made her fumble crazily with the orb and caused her to lurch sideways into his shoulder to keep from dropping the bloody thing. But it seemed to wrench itself out of her grasp an instant later, landed on the hardwood floor and bounced once before it began rolling toward the settee.

  “Sorry, I’ll get it!” Fletcher was only a fast-moving shadow against the soft glow of the orb.

  “Let me!” Josie dove after it, had it in her hand for an instant, but must have struck it because it went shooting out from under the table, rolling between Fletcher’s boots as he was squatting to pick it up from the opposite side. Josie caught the briefest glimpse of his face as the orb rolled wildly past him, was struck dumb by his strong, chiseled jaw, the straight bridge of his nose.

  “Isn’t that the damnedest thing?” she heard him say as they watched it skitter under the sofa, the gold of its embracing claw glittering madly as it wobbled along in its progress, the only light in the room.

  “I’ll stop it from this direction.” Feeling as though she had somehow released a demon into their midst, Josie crawled out from under the atlas table, glad of her dungarees, wet as they were, stood and felt her way around the back of the Chesterfield, only to watch the streak of blue-white keep rolling across the room through the darkness and actually launch itself up onto the Aubusson carpet, leaving a trail of moonlight in its wake.

  “The floor must be badly slanted, Miss Stirling,” Fletcher said from the shadows.

  “It isn’t at all, Colonel, I assure you.” But the orb and its claw just kept rolling about, bouncing off the base of the Chinese vase with a clang, ricocheting off the wheel of the tea cart before finally coming to rest under the long, library table as though it had grown tired, or was waiting for them to catch up.

  Not trusting that the errant thing was finished with its feints, Josie scurried toward the pulsing glow, dropped to her knees, ducked her shoulders and head underneath the tall legged table and reached for the orb just as Fletcher did the same from the opposite side. His large, hot hand covered hers, shaping her palm against the smooth stone, sending a thrill up her arm to the center of her chest. She was breathless and felt as though she were falling headlong toward him.

  “I’ve got it!” They both said at the same time, lifting the orb between them, its radiance lighting the chiseled lines of Fletcher’s face, revealing that his eyes were the azure of ice and indigo, his lashes thick, his dark hair now mussed and rumpled from their tussle with the bizarre object that seemed to pulse in their shared grasp.

  Those piercing blue eyes warmed as he looked at her, his mouth canting into a smile. “Hiding a secret weapon in your library, Miss Stirling?”

  “No! I— I’ve never seen it before. I have no idea where it—” Josie gazed deeply into the stone for the first time, felt a throb of heat deep inside her chest— oh, no! The sudden shock of recognition struck her breathless. She drew back quickly, bumped her head on the underside edge of the table— “Ouch!” —leaving the orb to fend for itself in Fletcher’s hands. “No, Colonel! I have no idea what it is.”

  A lie. Because she did know! At least, she suspected! But no! It couldn’t be! Not Aunt Freddy’s fanciful Orb of True Love! Couldn’t be!

  Her head aching, she scrambled backward from under the table like a crab, stood up and closed her eyes against the stinging stars, rubbing her head where she’d whacked it. Hoping she was wrong.

  “Are you all right, Miss Stirling?” That voice again, tender now, his breath breaking against the nape of her neck, his hand replacing her own on the back of her head. “You’ll have a bump here for a few days. But there’s no blood.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Embarrassed to the marrow and shaken to the core at the idea of standing so near this man in the presence of the orb, Josie pulled away from his gentle tending and snatched the orb out of his other hand. The bloody thing continued to glow brighter than before, so bright that she used its light to march it back to the box on the table where she’d discovered it. “My father must have brought this with him from London. Probably one of his theatrical effects.”

  “If so, the War Office needs to talk with the Stirling’s effects master,” he said from the darkness at the center of the library.

  “That’s absurd, Colonel.” If it was truly Auntie’s orb, it was so much more powerful, more significant than the War Office could ever understand.

  “I’m an engineer, Miss Stirling. I know the laws of physics, and that, that thing—what ever mechanism causes it to glow like that—shouldn’t be able to do what it was and is still doing. Not on its own.”

  “I agree completely, Colonel!” It surely should not be doing what it was doing! Glowing at the two of them like an oracle, a gypsy fortune teller! Their fates sealed together. Pointing its white hot finger at their mutual hearts, probing where it oughtn’t be allowed.

  She finally located the lap robe on the table and wrapped the orb tightly inside, righted the box that had tipped itself, stuffed the lot back inside, and stacked another box on top. The glow was gone, leaving a chill that settled across her shoulders.

  “There,” she said, with a sigh of relief as she turned to the darkness at the center of the library, “whatever the glow was, Colonel, it’s burned itself out. Forever. Thank goodness.”

  Silence. Darkness.

  “Colonel?” She listened for the rustle of his presence, the leather of his belt, the stalking of his boot heels, even the closing of the door. “Hello?” But nothing.

  “Valiant try, oh Orb of True Love. You’ve met your match in the Colonel and Josie Stirling. We’ll not fall to your assault on our hearts, no matter how hard you batter us. Might as well give up now and keep your bloody glow to yourself.”

  Dismissing the entire incident as a shared madness, she grabbed the stack of ration books Fletcher had left on the table, banked the fire in the hearth then headed off to her office where she locked the books in the safe for the night.

  She dropped into her desk chair and went to work on tomorrow’s list of chores, projects, meetings and responsibilities, and finalized her strategy for defeating the timber inspectors. It was nearly midnight when she fell into bed, exhausted, expecting sleep to overtake her immediately.

  But try as she might to banish the incident between her and Fletcher and the bloody moonstone orb, its moments danced in her head, his blue eyes reflecting the moon, the heat of his touch, his breath against her neck, the white glow leaving traces like starlight.

  Plagued by a niggling sense that the orb was still glowing in the corner of the library, waiting to be discovered by some innocent—Mrs. Lamb or one of the curious housemaids, Josie finally jumped out of bed, stuck her arms through the sleeves of her dressing gown as she ran through her office, hurried down the hallway and burst into the dark library.

  She’d been right to worry. The box was glowing away in the corner like a searchlight! Damnation! She hurried through the darkness, fully expecting to carry the pesky box back to her office and store it in the wardrobe until she could sort out the problem in the morning. But the orb wasn’t in the box where she’d left it, wasn’t even wrapped in the lap robe. It was resting at the edge of the table, the golden claw clutching the radiant moonstone as though it was waiting on the roadside, thumb extended, for her to stop and pick it up.

  This bloody figment of her imagination that was g
lowing like a delirious beacon, a poison-tipped arrow pointing right at her future. She rolled the orb inside the blanket, hid the bundle in the folds of her dressing gown and ran for her office, feeling safe only when she’d at last locked it in her desk drawer and stuffed the key inside her pillow case.

  The last thing she needed was to plunge headlong into a romance with a soldier. Especially this soldier, a man who set her teeth on edge and her heart to racing.

  “Sir, are you sure you don’t want me to drive to the village post office instead of you?” Sapper Mullins was squinting at Gideon through the open driver’s window of the idling Austin staff car. “Not much for me to do during the day, with Miss Stirling ordering me to stand down this morning.”

  “You will absolutely not stand down entirely, Mullins.” The young man’s eyes brightened, his shoulders straightened. “Use your judgment, go easy. If you recognize someone trying to gain entrance during daylight hours, go ahead and nod them through the gate. You’ll make more allies using honey—”

  “—than vinegar, as my mother says. You mean ‘easy’ like this, sir?” Mullins leaned back against the stone gatepost, in an overly casual at-ease pose, the butt of his rifle resting on the ground, his hand gripping the muzzle.

  “Brilliant, Mullins! Carry on, soldier!” Gideon put the Austin in gear and motored down the quarter-mile drive toward his clandestine business in the village, pleased that no one dared ask him the reason he was driving into the village on his own, instead of walking.

  Nimway Hall itself was less than a half-mile from the outskirts of the village as the crow flies, an easy stroll on a lovely morning like this, but nearly twice that by car on the narrow hedged lanes. With petrol rationing in full swing, even for the military, every journey by vehicle, railway, cycle or horse was scrutinized for its necessity and logged into daily reports.

  Fortunately he had the perfect cover this morning: that of introducing himself to the postmaster and delivering an important package to be registered and mailed. More importantly, according to the map of Balesborough village drawn up for him by MI4, his route would take him past the location of the dead drop signal site—a chalk mark on the drystone wall abutting the right side of the lych gate of St. Æthelgar’s Church. If all went to plan, the mark would signal that the first drop had been made by Agent Arcturus and was ready for him to safely collect at the secret, previously agreed upon spot in the churchyard.