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  Meet Me At the Castle

  Denise A. Agnew

  Published 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62210-105-4

  Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © Published 2014, Denise A. Agnew. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Liquid Silver Books

  http://LSbooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Blurb

  Elizabeth Albright lives a simple life at Penham Manor under the watchful and disapproving eye of her father and stepmother. They think she’s odd for loving to paint Cromar Castle, a ruin on the hill. Even Elizabeth doesn’t understand why she insists on painting the structure over and over. Yet her compulsion demands it—there is something alive and beautiful about the castle that she cannot resist. When she meets the devilishly handsome Damian, more than her interest is piqued, for he engages her like no other has. But her stepmother has plans that will take her away from Cromar—and Damian—forever.

  Dedication

  To Fred and Vicky Griggs, who treated us like family when we lived in England. May they rest in peace always.

  To my dear friend Bev Kay, who now rests in the arms of angels. I miss your infectious laugh and hysterical sense of humor. But I know you are always looking out for me, good buddy.

  Acknowledgements

  To all those ancestors who came from Great Britain. I feel your love for the country in my bones.

  Chapter 1

  Near Ramsey, Huntingdonshire, England, September 1848

  Somehow he was alive.

  He felt the crisp air of a cold night, the hard stone beneath his feet, the scent of night-blooming flowers.

  How could this be so?

  How long had it been such?

  Perhaps a minute, an hour, a day. Was his new sentience a cruel jest? For so long he had remained but a sigh in the wind, a trail of fog on a dark night. A memory lost to time.

  He stood in the great hall, and around him life bloomed in achingly sharp detail. At first the sensations threatened to overwhelm, until his wits calmed and he accepted he had once again had become active and mortal.

  A needlelike pain rushed into his lungs.

  Relishing the moments, however more of them he might have, he walked to the huge, arched castle entrance and waited for her to come.

  * * * *

  Elizabeth Albright came to the castle ruins late at night, when the moon dropped low and the gray stone walls glowed with the silver of its light. This night, when she reached the high, craggy walls, she knew something was different. The usually cool wind that blew between the ancient stones was still, the air pungent with a flower scent, sweet yet refreshing. As she ascended the last few feet, she inhaled a pleasing, refreshing bouquet that settled her from the inside, bringing a peace so often missing from her life.

  She stood on the crest of the hill, her breath coming hard. She wished her skirts were not so heavy, and her corset not so restricting. Maybe next time she ascended to the castle she would leave the house without such confinements. After all, no one would know.

  She sighed, taking in the grand sight of the edifice before her; it never failed to inspire, to make her painting that much easier. Of course, painting at night here without light…impossible. But in the morning…

  In her thoughts she could hear her stepmother Anne’s whiny, ugly voice. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, how is it you can paint that awful place…”

  And her dear stepbrother George’s voice. At nineteen years of age, he had the zeal of youth but amazing maturity. “Elizabeth, that is the most beautiful painting I’ve ever seen.”

  She smiled in remembrance and turned to see the landscape below she had labored many times to paint from her mind’s eye. In the deep of the night, the land was a mass of dark mounds and shadowed valleys, the ground made sterling by the moon. A single cloud passed across the gray face of that faraway orb, and for a moment her world went dark. But not silent.

  Deep within the castle walls lay secrets deep and ancient. Void of warmth. Void of meaning.

  She held her breath.

  Felt everything around her with acute clarity.

  Painfully so.

  Her skirts under her hands, the whisper of a thousand voices in her ears.

  Voices that begged to be heard, but no one would listen.

  The cloud moved on, and she was relieved to have the light again. It was at these moments she sometimes wondered if she had gone insane. Mad.

  “Unreachable,” she had heard her stepmother murmur to one of her cronies just that day when the women did not realize Elizabeth listened around the corner. “She paints those bizarre pictures of that horrid castle on the hill. Never anything else.”

  Anne did not understand Elizabeth.

  Neither did anyone else.

  Reminding herself that it did not matter, she finally turned from the landscape and wandered toward the mouth of the castle. The dark maw of the structure remained almost intact, as did a good portion of the facade. Without fear she stepped through the arch and stopped.

  There it was again.

  A lingering scent. Not unpleasant. Unusual.

  Ignoring it as her imagination playing tricks, she wandered until she found the room she usually chose to rest in. She guessed it might have been the great hall at one time. Now the moon shone through where the roof had once been. And when she sat down on the cold stone floor, she let herself imagine the walls covered with tapestries, swords, shields, and—

  She thought she heard a noise.

  Almost like a sigh.

  No. It could not be.

  Ghosts?

  No ghosts had disturbed her in all the weeks…nay, months she had come here. Maybe the loneliness brought her here. The isolation from her stepmother’s insults and her father’s pointed disinterest. George was too young to defend her against them. Her mother a beloved, long-distant memory. Mother had died when Elizabeth was five, but she’d never forget her love and kindness.

  Concentrating again on her fantasy of what the ancient hall must have looked like, she thought perhaps she would try drawing or painting this place as it may have looked hundreds of years ago. Before time and weather and neglect had worn it bare.

  Tears welled in her eyes.

  Maybe something similar would happen to her. She would never leave Penham Manor and would eventually be an old maiden aunt. At four and twenty she had never had a true suitor, not one who fired her imagination. She would end up dried up, dull, and as spiteful as her stepmother. A desolate shell of what she might have been. If only…

  If only what?

  Hope welled in her breast. What if she ran away? Left her home here in England and ran to France or America, where fields of flowers and beautiful monuments would serve as her inspiration. Not the drab, eerie light of the full moon on this forgotten monstrosity.

  But she knew that would not be. She could see her future. Every month, when the full disc of the moon emerged, she would return to this promontory and yearn for something she did not understand. A single tear rolled down her cheek. She wandered to the center of the great hall and found a large slab of stone in the middle of the room. She sat down.

  “Are you well, mistress?”

  Startled, s
he whirled, scrambling to her feet. A man stood at the entrance to the room. He was nothing more than a shadow.

  She licked her parched lips. “Who is there?”

  The man moved into the room, walking with a smooth gait. When she could see him, surprise kept her still.

  He was devilishly handsome. More handsome than any man she had seen. No angel could be so noble, she thought feverishly. So he must be a devil.

  “I am Damian.” His voice was a deep, mellow baritone, pleasing to her ears.

  Cautious, she looked from side to side and noted two points of egress along the walls. She looked at him again. “Good evening, Mr. Damian.”

  “Please, just call me Damian, mistress.”

  Though she deemed it inappropriate to call a man by his first name, the night, she thought, cloaked many things with special intimacy.

  The tall man stepped closer, and she stepped back. He smiled, his grin wide and stunning. In the half-light she could not see the color of his eyes, but she imagined their darkness. His black hair hung thick about his shoulders.

  “Do not be afraid. I mean you no harm.”

  “I’m Elizabeth Albright.” She offered her hand and he took it. Cool and dry, the press of his hand felt strong. He brought her hand toward his lips. For a moment she was mortified that she had offered her hand to a stranger. She had no gloves. He bowed over her hand, and yet she did not feel the brush of his lips against her skin. She withdrew her hand hastily.

  He walked toward another large stone slab that jutted from the uneven floor. As she observed him, she noted the old-fashioned cut of his clothing. No one wore breeches like he did, nor did they wear white shirts with such deep lace cuffs. Silver buckles adorned his black shoes.

  “What brings you here every moon?” he asked, sitting on the stone slab.

  Fear overcame her. “How did you know I come here every full moon?”

  “Because I do also. For longer than you have.”

  “I have never seen you here before.”

  He stood up and walked toward her again, and she allowed him to stand much closer to her than any man should to a woman he had just met. She felt no threat from him or desire to hurt her. The fear she’d felt just seconds ago had vanished on the wind.

  “Perhaps you have never needed to before,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will when the time is right.”

  She suddenly wondered if Damian had been spying on her all this time, and the idea he had been watching her both frightened and excited her. It was a wholly unreasonable excitement.

  “Do you not think this a beautiful place?” he asked.

  “Yes. I have always thought so.”

  “And why do you come here?”

  Did he enjoy keeping her off balance with unexpected questions? She reached up to pat the secure mass of curls at the back of her head. “That, sir, is none of your affair.”

  He frowned, and the sharp angles of his face seemed to deepen, to take on sadness. Instant remorse twisted her gut.

  “I apologize. I’m not accustomed to such familiarity,” she said.

  His brows rose. “This place breeds comfort. I think when one comes here all convention loses meaning. With me, there is no reason to hold back what you feel.”

  His voice curled around her like warm wool, a dark inky sound that inspired strange sensations. Something odd in his tone, in his way of speaking nagged at her. Begged her to be cautious and to take note.

  Yet she found herself leaning toward him. Her gaze linked with his. A cool wind drifted around her, ruffling through her skirts and her hair. It was icy and abrupt and broke her from the trance of her thoughts.

  As soon as the wind had come, it departed.

  “I should go,” she whispered and turned to leave.

  “Wait.”

  She stopped but kept her back to him.

  “Will you come again?” The tone of his voice was almost a plea.

  She turned slowly to look at him. “When the moon is again full.”

  As she ran from the castle, she paused and realized he was no longer there.

  * * * *

  “She will never get a husband at this rate if she does not attend more parties and balls,” Lady Anne Albright told her husband, Clive, as they sat in the large drawing room of Penham Manor. “All she does is paint, paint, paint. She refused to attend the last ball we held here. She attended only one party this spring. Now it is almost fall and not one invitation has come for her. She has no friends and no prospects for a husband. And where does she get those horrid ideas for her paintings?”

  Sir Clive Albright sighed and rose from his chair by the fireplace. He stopped at a sideboard and poured a glass of brandy. He turned to look at his second wife. Anne sat stiff as a board on the settee by the window.

  Anne had once been beautiful, but the years had seen her turn wrinkled and skinny. Her disposition seemed to have contributed to the lines on her face. No amount of money or clothes seemed to please her. He often wondered why he had married her, until he remembered she had seduced him in the gardens of Penham Manor and had insisted he marry her to save her reputation. Twenty times over he’d regretted marrying Anne, who was coldness personified. His first wife Mary had been all softness and sweetness. Perhaps Anne was more like him, but at least Mary had always been more pliable and less likely to argue.

  He sipped his drink. “You are correct, of course. She doesn’t seem inclined to marry. But there is still time.”

  Anne made a disgusted sound. “There isn’t much time left before she will be completely on the shelf.”

  Clive realized his daughter’s age put her past the prime for marriage. At sixteen she had turned down a proposal from a much older gentleman. Yet Basil Fench, a viscount with money and title, had not impressed her. Esteem and a chance for more riches than her father could ever have given her had not swayed her adamant refusal to marry.

  Clive imagined that with the right incentive another man might be willing to marry her. She was not plain. In fact, her beauty was much remarked upon, her wavy hair a deep brown with attractive red highlights, her features even and finely molded. Men had commented on her fine, striking blue eyes. Tall for a woman, she had a good figure.

  “There is time.” Clive another took a swig of his brandy. “But it is running away quickly.”

  Anne put down her needlework and pinned her husband with a long-suffering look. “I think we should send her to your sister’s in London. Perhaps there she will meet with someone willing to marry her. An older man who will appreciate her dowry. Or perhaps a poor man of good breeding who would see marrying her as a social improvement.”

  His interest heightened. “There is great promise in that.”

  “You may have to entice her to go.” Anne flicked him a calculating smile.

  He looked out the window, gazing past the fields and toward the castle known as Cromar. In the morning sun the gray walls impressed him, their massive size recalling a feudal age. Their lines looked stark and bleak. He would never admit it, but the sight always gave him an inexplicable shudder of dread.

  “I may have an idea, my dear.” He turned to gaze upon his wife’s imperial expression. “Something must be done about her obsession with that ruin.”

  “I agree. It is not healthy.”

  He took another swallow of the mellow brandy to see if it would obliterate the guilt he felt at what he planned to do. “It will be harsh. But it must be done.”

  * * * *

  Elizabeth sat in the field on her stool, her easel in front of her, her paints alongside. Bright sun warmed the earth, high clouds scuttling in the sky as a cool breeze threatened to overturn her easel.

  In the distance the castle rose on the hill like a sentinel above the fenlands, the only commanding position among miles of flat farmland.

  Today the object of her portrait was inevitable. The castle.

  Cromar.

  The word was solid. Dependab
le.

  And it never disappeared. For that she was eternally grateful.

  As she brought her brush up to the canvas to make her first stroke, something stopped her.

  When would she paint something else?

  The words rang in her head, startling her into putting the brush down.

  For years she had painted and drawn the castle, and yet somehow she had not captured everything about it. She knew she must continue to paint Cromar until she had given every angle, each nuance an opportunity to be shown. Until she painted the right portrait, the one that explained Cromar in totality, its secrets would languish. Like a person, it would dry up from misuse, neglect, apathy.

  Sometimes she felt she was the castle.

  A weary, ancient structure with no heart left.

  Yet when she looked at the castle, especially during the full moon, she often experienced a renewal. A spurt of meaning that came at no other time or event in her days and nights. Cromar, despite its facade of ruin, felt more alive than anything she had ever known.

  It was this life that brought her back to Cromar again and again. She had explored Cromar usually at night, but sometimes during the day she wandered among the ruins and listened for the voice of inspiration. With her paints or pencil she would sit down the next day and create what she saw and heard the day or evening before. Many years ago, as a little girl, she had walked to Cromar but had never gone inside. While other children had been frightened by the place and claimed it to be haunted, she had always revered the castle.

  Throughout the trials of her life the castle had remained as a steadfast friend. When Elizabeth was five her mother died, and shortly thereafter her father had married Anne. A year later George had been born. When Elizabeth turned fifteen, her favorite aunt, her mother’s sister Victoria, had died, bequeathing money to her niece. Elizabeth’s father had been delighted. It would be a bonus to the amount he had assembled for her dowry.

  Even that dreadful viscount had not been able to take her away from here. She also knew if she married, her painting career, for want of a better word, would likely have to end. What husband would understand, and accept, her need to come here, day after day?