Harriet's Castle

By Nora Fountain

Harriet lives with her brother, Jamie, who was injured in the car crash that killed their parents. Their cottage was tied to their parents’ jobs as head gardener and housekeeper at the nearby castle. Hubert Cotterill, the elderly owner of Stoneham Castle, was at the wheel that fateful day and died of a massive heart attack.
To compound Harriet’s problems, the head mistress of the school where she teaches reveals plans to amalgamate local schools, possibly closing theirs.
On fine evenings, once Jamie has settled down to his music or reading, Harriet likes to go up to the castle to sit in a secluded courtyard and play her guitar. She is doing just that one evening in early autumn when a figure erupts through a door onto the walkway overlooking the courtyard. Has he escaped from one of the family portraits? Is he a ghost? There are already two resident ghosts, it is said.
No, it’s Greg Cotterill, the new owner of the castle. In the dim light, he thinks Harriet, in her long dress and flowing red hair, is a ghost.
Once they’ve decided they are both real, Greg introduces himself. Harriet has heard of him as the owner of a highly successful software company. She also acknowledges that he is a very attractive man.
He has come to look at an inheritance he neither expected nor wanted and must now decide what to do with it. Harriet hopes he won’t sell up but she fears that she and Jamie will in any case lose their home.
Greg drives her home, where Jamie is entertaining his pretty young physiotherapist, Rosemary, and Harriet senses an attraction between them. She is happy for them but feels excluded.
Greg insists that Jamie should claim compensation and offers to pay his medical expenses meanwhile. Rosemary organises treatment at a London hospital and arranges for him to stay with her sister’s family in Surrey, to be closer to the hospital.
While Jamie is away there is a storm. The electricity supply fails and the phone is cut off while Harriet is telling him about a tree crashing onto Jamie’s bed. He imagines the worst and drives straight down, which takes hours because of all the obstructions. As the cottage is uninhabitable, Greg invites Harriet to move into the castle while it is repaired and he will work from home.
Jamie makes excellent progress and tells Harriet he wants to resume his law degree.
Greg’s sister, Jane, arrives from Canada with her four children. She says she has left her husband, Ralph, but is so disagreeable that Harriet decides to move out and stay with a friend.
She packs all her belongings into her car, except her precious guitar. She doesn’t want to risk it being crushed under everything else. After she has gone, Jane’s twin boys find the guitar, fight over it and break it. Greg apologises and begs her to come back. His sister has taken the children to visit their grandma in Oxfordshire.
The following day Greg can’t get back and, for the first time, Harriet finds the castle spooky. She gets to sleep but is woken by the sound of an intruder. It is Jane’s husband who, unable to find a bell, climbed in through a window with a broken catch. Having established who he is, Harriet feels safer with him there. He thought Jane was just on a visit.
Harriet visits Jamie and realises how much she misses family life.
On her return the twins apologise. Jane seems to have had a personality transplant and confides to Harriet that she is pregnant again and has been feeling sick and worried about telling Ralph. When she does he is delighted and full of plans to enlarge their woodland home in Canada.
Harriet is pleased they are all sorting out their lives but what about her? What does the future hold for her?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nora Fountain
• Release date: Nov 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301763610

Nora Fountain

I was born in Derby but after a few years we moved to Bristol. My five children were all born there but by the time they reached their teens we had settled in darkest Dorset. What an inspiration the county is and what wonderful characters live there. As a setting it can hardly be bettered for romantic novels, contemporary or historical.I fitted in various kinds of work while the children were growing up. I've been an Avon lady, done market research, taught English to foreign students and coached English students in French and Spanish. Once it was possible I resumed my education and eventually became a freelance legal translator. I still enjoy learning languages. I have a smattering of German and Russian as well as the languages I translate. Currently I am listening to Italian CDs in the car in an attempt to catch up with my six-year-old granddaughter who is effortlessly fluent.I love to travel. Italy is a frequent destination as that's where my youngest son and his two gorgeous children live. My favourite city is probably Paris, though, closely followed by Venice. At seventeen I went on a study course in Paris and fell in love with the place. Several of my short romances begin, quite unintentionally, in that beautiful city.Every new place sparks ideas for writing. I haven't written my Venice novel yet, nor my Prague one. The mind teems with ideas. If only there were twice the hours in the day. I still wear my translator's hat some of the time and I like to paint in oils but writing is what I enjoy doing the most.

Book preview

Harriet's Castle

By

Nora Fountain

Published by Nora Fountain

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2012 Nora Fountain

Cover Art by Nora Fountain

Formatted by Bas Fountain

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Index

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Bonus Read

More books by Nora Fountain

Chapter 1

Harriet went under the flower-encrusted archway that led to a shadowy little courtyard at the rear of the ancient castle. She paused, taking a deep breath, to savour the mingled scents of the honeysuckle and rose that clung to the stonework, perfuming the evening air.

As she moved on, a thorny rose branch reached out, clawing at her long skirt and she paused again, this time to free herself. Across the courtyard, its flagged surface criss-crossed by pebbled paths, a stone bench caught the dying rays of the early autumn sun. Harriet crossed towards it.

Strictly speaking she shouldn’t be here, but she loved the castle and found it hard to keep away. Her parents had worked here as housekeeper and gardener, before the fatal accident that changed her life and her brother Jamie’s for ever. It was a second home to her and, after a stressful day teaching six and seven-year-olds and looking after Jamie, she enjoyed this brief respite.

Tonight Jamie seemed particularly low. He had good cause to be depressed but he usually managed to put on a cheerful face – if only for her sake. Once she had fed him, cleaned and tidied the place and asked him for the umpteenth time if there was anything else she could do for him, his response came as quite a shock.

‘For goodness’ sake, go and visit your ghosts. They’ll be a darn sight more lively company than I am!’

‘Jamie?’

‘Just go – please.’

At that, she had hurried out, holding back the tears till she was well away from the cottage. She thought she heard him call after her but decided to ignore him. She could understand his frustration but she was doing her best. What else could she do?

She had walked up the long drive to the castle, in need of fresh air, exercise and time to think. Now was not the time to tell Jamie her job was at risk from the threatened closure of the school. It had come as a total shock to all the staff when the headmistress had called them into her study at morning break and advised them that there were plans afoot to amalgamate local primary schools and possibly close one of them.

‘What will you do, if they close our school?’ Maggie, the head, asked Harriet, as the others filed out, well aware of her circumstances.

‘Good question, Mags. I honestly don’t know. Jamie and I depend on my job here and also on the cottage, which was tied to Dad’s job. Our life has suddenly become rather precarious.’

‘Well, try not to worry. It may not happen and, if it does, I’m sure something will turn up.’

Not to worry! It was hard not to.

On fine evenings Harriet often came here to the castle, enjoying the timeless serenity of the place, sometimes bringing her guitar and strumming quietly to herself. Tonight, she sank down on the familiar bench. Tonight, she felt not in the least serene. It wasn’t exactly cold but little gusts of wind snatched at foliage and rustled through every gap and crevice. She felt ill at ease and, for the first time, sensed the presence of unfriendly ghosts she had always considered benign, if they existed at all.

Within the confines of old Stoneham castle, she could forget her woes and let her fertile imagination run riot. Tonight was different. There was a spookiness in the atmosphere. It was almost possible to imagine the grey lady drifting across the walkway at first-floor level, overlooking the courtyard, in medieval garb. Or the mad monk of some centuries later, escaping his persecutors. She was as certain as she could be that she had seen the grey lady a few times - she wasn’t so sure about the monk. Visitations were always somewhat illusory and no-one could swear they had actually seen either of them.

Here you could barely hear the traffic hurtling along the lower road. Time stood still in this solid Sussex castle with its centuries of history.

When she came here early in the morning and at week-ends, Harriet wore jeans, but for this gentle time of day, when twilight cast soft shadows, and mist crept up from the valley, the empty place belonged to Harriet, and, fanciful though that may be, she dressed accordingly, in a lacy blouse, long skirt and thonged sandals, with a shawl about her shoulders. She removed the comb restricting her long red hair and let it riot about her shoulders. Did girls of yesteryear have worries such as hers? Probably not, but they would have had different ones, no doubt.

Autumn was beginning to bite and Harriet shivered as the stone of the bench struck chill through her thin skirt. Standing up, she made for the stone steps leading up to the walkway. From there a splendid view could be enjoyed across the parkland to the valley below. As she reached the top step the fine mist thickened, muffling traffic noises, and lending a ghostly aura to the scene.

What a waste. No-one else ever came here nowadays. Since old Hubert Cotterell had crashed his car, ending his own life, killing Harriet’s parents, and leaving Jamie with severe injuries, the place had been deserted. Despite his age - he had been in his early eighties - Hubert Cotterell had insisted on driving the Rolls to the agricultural show himself. The post-mortem discovered he had suffered a heart attack at the wheel.

In life she had liked him well enough. In death, well, in addition to her parents being killed in the accident, he had left her beloved brother, Jamie, concussed and injured, and she couldn’t help but harbour a residual, smouldering anger towards the old man.

Her father, once head gardener at the castle, and latterly the only gardener, had kept the place immaculate: lawns, shrubberies, kitchen garden. Of course, he had had the latest equipment, provided by old Cotterell.

Harriet had inherited her father’s gift for gardening and she loved it. He had taught her how to use the sit-on mower, so, for sheer love of the place, she had continued to keep the lawns neat and did her best with the rest whenever she found the time. No gardening tonight, though. It was too dark, she wasn’t dressed for it, and anyway, she couldn’t spare the time. She wouldn’t stay long, with Jamie so depressed. He had virtually dismissed her, but she knew he needed her, and he was her first priority.

The sun, a brilliant vermilion disk, was slowly sinking into thick ribbons of cloud. After watching the spectacle she turned to start back down the stone steps when a loud crash made her jump. It seemed to come from the castle. Intruders? Now she could hear heavy footsteps, growing closer, and Harriet watched, transfixed, as the door at the far end of the walkway creaked slowly open.

A giant of a man filled the arched doorway, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, and dark as the devil. Standing as still as Harriet, he stared at her. She stared back, and felt the blood drain from her face. He appeared to have walked straight out of that eighteenth-century portrait in the hall. His thick black hair was far too long by today’s standards. Equally dark brows shielded deep, magnetic eyes, lit to the unique Cotterell hazel by the last rays of the sun. In an uncompromising, hard-boned face, only the lips hinted at softness, sensuality even, but right now they were as bloodless as the rest