Sommersgate House (3 page)

His
disappearance was never explained and, as for the rest, it was
simply none of her business.

Mrs.
Kilpatrick knew Samantha Thornton, Lord Ashton’s personal
assistant, had been keeping in close contact with Julia and Julia
and her mother called the children once or twice a week since the
accident. Julia was no fool; she knew that the children had been
left in the servants’ care.

“We’re all
well, we’re just happy you’re here,” Mrs. Kilpatrick answered,
loyal to the last to her employers who kept her and her husband fed
and housed in the Groundskeeper’s Cottage up the lane.

Julia looked
like she didn’t share Mrs. K’s sentiments but she was discreet
enough not to say so.

She looked
down at Ruby. “Well, we’ll get things sorted soon enough,” she said
with considerable feeling, leaving Mrs. K to wonder what she
meant.

“
Er…
well, as you know, Lady Ashton has been called away…”
On a
cruise
, Mrs. K thought
but did not say. She was as shocked as she was certain Julia and
Patricia had been when they heard that Lady Monique would accept an
invitation to cruise the Mediterranean rather than welcome a member
of the family who was to move into their home. “And Lord Ashton
wanted me to tell you he had unexpected business in London and
won’t be home until late tonight, but I have a nice welcome dinner
planned for you and the children…”

“You’re a gem,
Mrs. K.” Julia smiled a smile that did not reach her eyes and then
turned to her niece.

Mrs. K
inclined her head in an acknowledgement. “Once Veronika has
unpacked your bags, I’ll show you to your rooms.”

On that, she
left, hearing Ruby chatter away to Julia while she walked away.

The children
adored their Auntie Jewel, who came to visit often and would meet
Tamsin, Gavin and the children for holidays. Mrs. K had to believe
that Julia would find a way to heal the raw wounds of a family torn
asunder.

As for
Sommersgate and its master, Mrs. K could only hope.

Fervently
hope.

Mr. Kilpatrick
thought his wife was slightly mad but Mrs. K had been at
Sommersgate long enough to love it. The house, too, had wounds to
heal and those were a great deal older and more imbedded than the
three Fairfax children’s.

What
Sommersgate needed was love, laughter and happiness and, for over
one hundred years, the house had lacked all three. It was a tall
order, to think this headstrong American woman could soothe the
overwhelming grief of three young children and cure a century of
sorrow that clung to a pile of stone, glass and iron.

Her biggest
challenge was to melt the heart of the dangerously cold Douglas
Ashton who was the key to it all.

Mrs. Margaret
Kilpatrick had been neither seen nor heard in that house for
thirty-seven years. That did not mean she neither saw nor heard.
And she knew that there was something between Ms. Julia Elizabeth
Fairfax and Lord Douglas Ashton, Baron Blackbourne. Something even
they didn’t know was there and now there were no husbands or
siblings to get in the way.

Mrs.
Kilpatrick had to admit she was tense, but, still, she had
hope.

The Chill and
the Scream

“I’m on the
archery team and next year, I might get to play polo.”

Willie was
chatting on the phone with Patricia, who had taken the day off work
to wait for Julia’s call to say she was at Sommersgate, safely
ensconced in the freakishly strange Gothic Victorian mansion with
the children firmly tucked under her wing. Being thus in the evil
clutches of the evil Ashtons who never really welcomed Patricia’s
beloved son (or at least Monique hadn’t) and to whom, Patty
maintained, Tamsin had been the result of an unfortunate mix up in
the nursery at the hospital.

That
afternoon, Willie and Lizzie had come home from Tancote Boarding
School, a posh “public school” located forty-five minutes away
where they were day students rather than being boarded there. They
used to be at the local community school but Monique had quickly
taken care of that. She’d not liked the idea that they would be
partaking of government funded schooling and had not had a problem
telling anyone who would listen to her displeasure.

Julia was
annoyed when she’d heard from Sam, Douglas’s PA, that the kids had
been enrolled in a new school so soon after their parents had died.
However, thousands of miles away and powerless to do anything,
she’d simply gritted her teeth and waited.

Polo and archery, oh my,
Julia thought sardonically as she listened to
Willie chattering away to his grandmother while she watched Lizzie
studiously doing her homework and Julia tried to pretend that
everything was all right.

But
everything was most definitely
not
all right.

They’d come
home from school in the Bentley chauffeured by Carter, wearing posh
school uniforms and had been sat down immediately to “tea” of
cucumber sandwiches and a pot of fat free yogurt each.

“What on earth
are you feeding them?” she’d whispered to Mrs. K.

Mrs. K
shrugged and answered, “Lady Ashton doesn’t want them falling into
unhealthy eating habits. We’ve never stocked sweets, crisps or
puddings in this house, unless we’re entertaining, of course.”

“What about
those biscuits you gave me earlier?” Julia asked.

“I was
entertaining,” Mrs. K explained.

Of course.

Even
though Julia was sentenced to live in spooky Sommersgate for the
next twelve to thirteen years, she was still considered
a
guest
.

Monique Ashton
wasn’t worried about health; she was worried about the kids gaining
weight. Monique herself was ten pounds underweight and was of the
mind that fashionable, well-bred people emaciated themselves as
proof of their fine upbringing. This, too, had been something Julia
had heard Monique wax on about on more than one occasion, often
pointedly looking at Patricia, who very much liked chocolate,
potato chips and puddings of all kinds and looked the sort who did.
Tamsin had always had a kitchen full to the brim with food, from
grapes, apples and carrot sticks to chocolate covered malt balls
and bags of microwave popcorn.

“Okay, she’s
right here, Lizzie, Grammy wants to speak to you,” Willie called,
breaking into Julia’s thoughts.

Lizzie threw
her pencil down and slinked to the phone. She cast a brief glance
in Julia’s direction as she took the phone from her brother and
said, “Hello, Grandmother.”

Julia tried
not to grimace.

Grandmother.

Patricia
wouldn’t like that one bit. Monique was called “grandmother”.
Patricia was Grammy, Gramma or just plain old Gram.

Julia watched
Lizzie talking on the phone. The girl’s dark, normally lustrous,
thick hair was lank and needed a wash. Her face was pale and
lifeless.

Her dark blue
eyes were dead.

Julia knew
from her own conversations with the children over the last few
months, not to mention the last several hours, that Ruby was taking
the loss of her parents in stride. The child had always been a
little strange. However, as Julia never had any children or been
around any who had suffered such a tragedy, she couldn’t really
imagine how a four year old would react.

Willie, on the
other hand, was bearing up as any good Midwestern boy would, even
though he’d been born and raised in England. He looked and acted
exactly like Gavin at ten years old. Tall, straight, blond and
blue-eyed, he was a handsome young man and it broke Julia’s heart
to look at him, he so reminded her of her brother. Perhaps he had
his dark moments but he never let either sister see, just like Gav
would do. It was all teasing and light and any intense moments were
saved for his own company.

Lizzie was
remarkably different from both her brother and sister, not only in
colouring, she being so dark (like Tamsin and Douglas) to their
fair, but also in temperament.

The girl was
not bearing up nearly as well. She was not like Gavin, Tamsin or
Ruby. She was sensitive, stubborn and dramatic, quite like Julia
herself. Normally quick-witted (and equally quick-tempered), smart
and brimming with affection, the loss of her mother, who she
adored, but perhaps most especially her father, who she was beloved
by and loved herself (to distraction) had been a terrible blow. The
twelve year old was having troubles and she had nothing familiar
around her, her school and old school friends were gone and so was
her home… and her parents.

She chatted to
her grandmother for a bit, her heart obviously not in it, and then
said, “She wants to talk to you again, Auntie Jewel.”

While taking
the receiver Julia made certain to give her a loud, lip-smacking
kiss on the top of her head in the hopes of gaining a familiar
giggle but Lizzie just scuttled out from under the embrace and went
back to her studies.

“Hi Mom,”
Julia greeted.

Patty
immediately went on the offensive. “All right, that’s it. His Lord
and Master doesn’t even show up to dinner on your first night
and
she’s
off on a
yacht somewhere –”

Julia cut in.
“Mom –”

Patty was
having none of it and interrupted in return, “That’s simply not
good manners. Forget it. Find out how to get those kids back home.”
By “home” Patty meant their little farm town, fifteen miles west of
Indianapolis, this topic being a recurring theme of their
conversations these last months. “We’ll take care of them, you and
me. We’ll give them a loving, happy home with big Christmases and
pink frosting on their birthday cakes. Those two obviously have no
interest.”

Julia had
inherited the drama gene from her mother but never had quite
eclipsed Patricia’s flair for it. Her mother was right, of course,
but the kids had been through enough without throwing an ugly
custody battle at them. Julia had to find some way to make this
impossible situation work.

And impossible
it was. With over a decade of the not-very-nice (to say the least)
Monique Ashton yawning in front of her, without any family or
friends of her own nearby and with everything familiar to her so
far away, it was not only impossible, it was inconceivable.

And that was
without taking Douglas into consideration.

Julia walked
out to the doorway of the room and whispered, “I’ve been here a few
hours, please give me time, let me see how it goes.”

“I’m coming
for Thanksgiving. I can’t wait until spring term or whatever they
call it. I want to see my babies,” Patty returned.

Julia’s mother
wanted to be close to her baby’s babies. Gavin had been her pride
and joy. She was using her drama to cover her grief and Julia was
glad of it. This kind of Patricia she could handle, grand
statements, dire threats she never intended to carry out, Julia was
used to that. If her mother gave way to the mourning she was
covering, Julia would lose it herself and she couldn’t, not now.
She had to be strong.

“We stick with
the plan, Mom. I need a chance to settle in here and the kids need
it too. No more upheavals. No more drama. Please, please, let me
handle it.”

Patricia
hesitated for a moment and then sighed extravagantly. “Thank God
you have Mrs. K, she at least, even through that English reserve,
has got a heart in her chest. Okay, call me tomorrow. Love you,
miss you already my Doll Baby.” And she hung up, not letting Julia
say her own good-byes.

Julia walked
back into the room and replaced the phone. She took a moment to
study the kids; Willie and Lizzie doing their homework and Ruby
playing some game by herself.

Julia was
tired. No, not tired, exhausted. And she knew it wasn’t jetlag.
Since the phone rang in the deep of the night five months ago, she
hadn’t had a full night’s sleep. That same, awful night, she and
her mother had rushed to the airport and then spent the next two
weeks dealing with their own grief and the grief of the three
children.

A car
accident.

Gavin, Julia
knew, drove too fast. It was raining. They were coming home from
having dinner together at some country pub on one of England’s
dangerously winding roads. It was dark. Gavin might have driven
fast but the driver of the other car was driving faster, he’d lost
control and gone over the centre line on a curve. Gavin had died at
the scene, so had the other driver. Tamsin had lived for three days
and thirteen hours but never woke from her coma.

She just
quietly slipped away.

One summer,
many years ago, while Julia was in England for a visit, they were
in the garden, drinking Pimm’s and lemonade and watching Lizzie and
Willie run through the hose that Gavin was pointing at them. It was
then that they had asked her to be guardian to the kids if anything
ever happened to them.

She’d said,
“Of course!” In the way someone says when they’re honoured but they
know they’re answering a question that pertains to an event that
will never, in any darkest imaginings, ever happen. Ruby hadn’t
even been born yet and Julia was still married to Sean.

Of course,
she
thought now as she watched the kids.

She hadn’t
known that she’d be sharing custody with Douglas but they had told
her they wanted her to move to England and she’d agreed to that as
well. It wouldn’t happen anyway, so why should she worry?

Sean, as
usual, had been angry. “It’s fucking cold there. I’m not moving
there,” he’d ranted (even though it was colder in Indiana than it
was in Somerset).

“It’s not
going to happen so there’s no need to get angry about it,” Julia
responded, as always, trying to soothe his foul temper (and, as
always, failing miserably).