Authors: Kristen Ashley

Lucky Stars (31 page)

“Precisely,” Jack told Yasmin.

“Will someone please tell us something?” Lila demanded. “The weather is turning and I want to get to the hayloft to take some snapshots of The Point during a thunderstorm, if we get one, which it looks like we will.”

Everyone looked to the windows and saw that the sun was struggling against the thickening cloud cover. The clouds were no longer white but a threatening dark grey.

Belle loved sun and she loved snow and she loved rain but she especially loved thunderstorms.

She always had.

Belle so loved them, Lila always did one landscape in each series she painted during a thunderstorm or a fierce downpour. These she never sold but gave to Belle and most of them hung at the cottage while some of them Gram and Mom carted around from place to place because Belle’s cottage wasn’t that big.

They were even more famous than her other works because their existence was known but they weren’t sold, never viewed and, therefore, had acquired a mystique.

No one knew she painted them for Belle and no one knew Belle had most of them. Therefore no one knew they were, by far and away (in Belle’s mind), her grandmother’s best work.

Something emanating from Jack captured Belle’s attention and her eyes moved to him.

She saw he was studying her grandmother contemplatively. Belle remembered that he owned one of her pieces and he likely was interested in her grandmother’s remark.

It was then Belle decided she’d show him the pictures. She never showed them to anyone, unless her friends came to the cottage and most of her friends had no idea they were in the presence of famous but secret masterpieces and Belle didn’t tell them.

Jack, Belle guessed, would know.

And Jack, Belle guessed again, would appreciate the opportunity of a viewing.

“All right then, I’ll try to tell it with no embellishment,” Joy said, not sounding at all happy and pulling at Belle’s attention.

Belle looked from Jack to Jack’s mother as she began.

“Over two hundred years ago, I think it was 1798, or something like that, the master of this castle was named Joshua Bennett,” Joy started. “He was known to be very clever, somewhat forbidding, quite accomplished,
shockingly
handsome and a complete womaniser.”

“Is this necessary to the story?” Jack asked, though it wasn’t a question, as such, more a demand for his mother to move along to the important stuff.

“I have to give the back story,” Joy protested.

“No you don’t,” Jack retorted.

“The back story is the best part!” Yasmin repeated (almost) her words of minutes before. Jack’s gaze swung to her and she clamped her mouth shut under the heat of it.

“I’m giving the back story,” Joy declared mutinously. Jack shook his head with frustration and Joy carried on, “Meanwhile, living in the village, was a woman named Brenna Addison. Brenna was known to be very sweet and very pretty but also quite quiet. Brenna had made a bad marriage. Not that her husband wasn’t well-to-do, he was a wealthy merchant, but that he didn’t treat her very well.”

“What do you
mean,
he didn’t treat her very well?” Rachel asked.

“He beat her and you have to know it had to be bad because that was likely very hush-hush at the time and probably not entirely frowned upon but everyone knows it happened. It’s an integral part of the story,” Joy answered, throwing an obstinate glare at Jack as if daring him to challenge this fact.

Jack stayed silent and Mom and Gram’s eyes moved to Belle.

She didn’t see them, she felt them but she ignored them and kept her own gaze glued to Joy who continued telling the story.

“Brenna and Joshua didn’t meet until after Brenna’s husband had taken some voyage and his ship had wrecked. Everyone assumed he was dead. The story goes that no one was sad to hear it because Brenna was a lovely girl and everyone in the village liked her,” Joy recounted. “Joshua and Brenna
did
meet, however, at a ball in the drawing room of this very castle. They say they fell in love the minute their eyes met and they were virtually inseparable from that moment on. Within mere months of meeting, they were married and quickly thereafter had two children, Lewis first, then Myrtle. Lewis was the vision of Joshua, Myrtle the exact same of Brenna. They were all very happy, Joshua settled down, Brenna blossomed under his devotion and the children grew up in a house of love.”

Yasmin moved, lifting her feet up to the edge of the chair, wrapping her arms around her calves and resting her chin on her knees, obviously settling in for the good part.

Belle felt a tiny shiver slide through her because, she suspected, since the child ghosts were, firstly, children and, secondly, ghosts, the good part was really the
bad part
.

Joy went on with the story. “The problem was
,
Caleb Caldwell, Brenna’s first husband, had
not
died in the shipwreck. He survived. Without his health then, after he recovered, without any money or papers and being a long, long way away, it took him years to get home but he finally did. Needless to say, he was
not
happy to find that his wife had married another in his absence and bore him two children. They say what made him even more incensed was that Brenna was happy, delightfully happy with her new family, far happier than she ever was with him.”

Joy drew in a breath and continued.

“He didn’t look himself, older, thinner and with significant scars, no one recognised him. He came back to the village and learned what he learned but he never shared who he was. Instead, he plotted against Joshua, Brenna and their children.”

“I don’t think I like this,” Belle whispered and realised she was pressing herself into Jack’s side and his arm was tighter around her shoulders.

Even though she realised this and normally she would move away, she absolutely
did not
even
consider
such an action.

Instead, she too, lifted her feet so her heels were in the couch and dropped her knees so her legs were resting on Jack’s thigh. She turned into him and put one arm around his stomach, the other one she burrowed so it could wrap around his back. Then she put her cheek on his shoulder and held on.

As she was doing this, Jack gave her a squeeze and said softly, “Poppet, it’s just a story. It’s a sad one but it happened a long time ago.”

Belle nodded against his shoulder even though she didn’t feel the least bit better at what he said.

“I’ll hurry through the sad part, darling,” Joy assured her and then, as promised, swiftly went on. “Obviously, he killed them. He waited until Joshua was away on some business
trip,
he snuck into the castle, suffocated the children in their beds, dragged Brenna to the cliffs and threw her into the sea.”

“Oh my God,” Rachel breathed.

At the same time Belle whispered, “Oh my goodness gracious.”

At the same time Lila murmured, “That jackass.”

Joy continued.

“Joshua returned, learned his family was dead and he went mad, as anyone would. He stopped at nothing until he hunted down Caldwell. He brought him back, Caldwell was tried, found guilty and they strung him up,” Joy told them then looked at Belle. “It doesn’t have a happy ending for Brenna, Lewis and Myrtle but Joshua did find love again. He remarried and had three more children. Though,” her eyes moved away from Belle, “they say he was never again as happy as he was with Brenna.”

“You skipped over the part where Joshua found Caleb, played with him a little while, until Caleb was mad as a hatter then Joshua got sick of the game, ended up beating the crap out of Caleb and then brought him back barely alive,” Yasmin informed Joy then she looked at Mom. “That’s one of my favourite parts.”

“I can see why,” Mom muttered.

Belle ignored this exchange and asked Joy, “The children have been haunting the castle ever since?”

Joy gave Belle a small smile. “Yes, my dear, ever since. But, most important for you to know, until they were murdered, they lived here happily. And they live here happily now. They spend their days playing, probably just like they did when they were alive. They’ve never done anything mean or that first thing to harm anyone. They’ve even had some mortal friends along the way who they’ve talked to a little bit.”

“This is where the story gets good,” Yasmin told them
happily,
apparently unaware that she’d given away the fact that she thought
every
bit of the story was good.

“They talked to people?” Belle asked.

“Oh yes, not many, but they did it,” Joy answered.

“What did they say?” Lila enquired.

Belle felt Jack’s body still against hers and Joy’s eyes moved to her son.

She bit her lip
nervously,
Belle did not read this as a good sign and then Joy’s gaze swung to Gram. “They’d just tell stories of the masters and the mistresses of the castle.”

“They’d do more than that,” Yasmin put in. “They explained what had to happen to release them.”

“Really?”
Mom asked, leaning forward.

“I think that’s enough,” Jack interrupted, he gave Belle another squeeze and she looked up at him. “As you can see, even if they do exist, they’re nothing to worry about.”

Belle nodded, thinking of those children stuck for hundreds of years in this house without their Mom or Dad and she felt that fact was even sadder than the fact that they’d been murdered.

She looked to Joy and asked, “What will release them?”

Joy’s eyes flashed to Jack before they went to Belle. “Well, they don’t exactly know.”

“But they
think
that their Mum has to come back,” Yasmin explained. “They think that the master of this house, not any master, but one that’s
exactly
like their
father,
has to fall in love with another woman, who’s
exactly
like their mother. Once that happens, something else has to happen, they aren’t sure what, and their Mum will come back and sweep them away to heaven.”

As Yasmin spoke, the air in the room took a funny turn.

And not, Belle
knew,
a good funny.

And Belle also knew exactly why.

It was not lost on her that she shared the same initials as Brenna Addison, Jack shared the same initials as Joshua Bennett and Calvin shared the same initials as Caleb Caldwell.

It was also not lost on her that the back story (not including the shipwreck, but instead a divorce, and not including the ball, but instead a birthday party) sounded more than a little bit familiar.

“Holy crap,” Mom breathed, her wide eyes locked on Jack and Belle.

“Rachel,” Gram said with soft warning.

“Holy crap,” Mom repeated.

“Rachel!” Gram snapped and Mom jumped.

“What?” Yasmin asked, looking between the two.

“Oh, nothing,” Lila explained. “Rachel always gets a little freaked out about ghost stories. We lived in a haunted mansion once and both Belle and Rachel were a total mess.”

“That wasn’t a haunted mansion,” Belle said, desperately latching onto something that had nothing to do with the fact that her and Jack’s story so closely resembled Brenna and Joshua’s. “You’d angered the neighbours, Gram.” Belle twisted around to look at Jack and added, “They were not very nice, by the way, wild parties at all hours and they let their dogs do not good things in our front yard and never cleaned it up. They definitely deserved Gram having a word with them.” Belle looked back to the room and carried on, “She just didn’t stop at a word and painted about twelve of them, none of them nice, on the side of their house.” She turned back to Jack. “After that, they kept playing tricks on us, nasty tricks that made Mom and I think the place was haunted.” Belle twisted back to the room and finished, “We left shortly after that.”

“You painted words on their house?” Yasmin asked Gram, grinning.

“Yep,” Gram answered.

“She not only painted them, she stayed up all night. It was practically a mural,” Mom put in. “It was awesome. Too bad they painted over it.”

“What were they?” Yasmin queried further.

Gram opened her mouth to answer but Belle got there before her and suggested, “Why don’t you share that later?”

Belle’s words said later. Belle’s face said
never
.

Gram threw Belle a smile and closed her mouth.

“Now
that
I find sad.
A Cavendish mural painted over. Tragic,” Jack stated dryly and everyone burst out laughing.

Except Belle, who turned to him and smiled.

Jack smiled back.

Belle felt his smile in lots of places, the best being her heart.

“Feel better about Myrtle and Lewis, poppet?” he asked softly.