Midsummer at Eyre Hall: Book Three Eyre Hall Trilogy (26 page)

I could hear the thumping sound of the
children rushing up the staircase. “We’re playing hide and seek Helen,” said
James, with his forefinger against his lips. “Don’t tell Mummy we’re here.” He
slid under the bed with Beatrice, little Max, William and Ben, who were
giggling away.

Max stirred, pushing his face into the
pillow and covering his head with another larger cushion to block out the
noise.

“If you’re not quiet, you’ll wake up
Daddy and Granny will hear you and find you,” I warned my children.

“Has Mummy stopped counting yet?” asked
my brother, poking his head out from under the bed.

I hung my head out of the window and
looked down to the garden below. The sun was fiercely heating the grass. There
was no one in sight. Where had my mother and Michael gone?

I shook my head and smiled. “They’re
impossible.”

“What’s wrong, Mummy?” asked Beatrice.
“Is Granny coming?”

My mother was rolling on the grass under
the shade of a chestnut tree with Michael, who was tickling her mercilessly. I
knocked on the windowpane with my engagement ring. She looked over Michael’s
shoulder and waved.

I pushed the window to its full width
and shouted, “I just thought I’d let you know, there’s no one hiding up here,
Mummy.”

“I lost count,” she shouted back. “I’ll
start again. One, two, three…”

She stopped counting when Michael kissed
her, and I turned to the three giggling children under the bed. “Don’t worry,
Granny will never find you.”  

The End

.

All Hallows at Eyre Hall
,
Twelfth Night at Eyre Hall
and
Midsummer
at Eyre Hall
, are the three novels which make up the
The Eyre Hall
Trilogy
.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about
what might have happened to Jane Eyre after over twenty years of marriage to
Mr. Rochester.

Thank you for reading. Please consider
posting a review on
Amazon.co.uk
,
Amazon.com
or
Goodreads
,
and spreading the word on social media.

The trilogy is complete, but I still
have plenty of stories to tell you about Jane, Michael, John, Annette, Helen,
Max, and many of the other characters who have appeared throughout the trilogy.
If you’d like to find out more about what happened next, let me know, by
contacting me on Social Media. You never know, there could be a fourth volume,
if my readers are keen enough!

Visit my blog
Re–Reading Jane Eyre
and
Luccia Gray’s Facebook
for updates on The Eyre Hall Trilogy. You can also follow me on Twitter
@LucciaGray
,
or email me at
[email protected]

Luccia Gray was born in London where she
graduated in Modern Foreign Languages. She now lives in the south of Spain with
her husband. She has three children and three grandchildren. When she's not reading
or writing, she teaches English at an Adult Education Centre and is English
Language Tutor at the Spanish Distance University.

She has written three novels, which make
up
The Eyre Hall Trilogy.

All Hallows at Eyre Hall

Twelfth Night at Eyre Hall

Midsummer at Eyre Hall

Who thought writing was a solitary
endeavour? I could never have published this novel without the hundreds of
people who have been supporting me throughout the process.

Thank you to my generous and
irreplaceable beta readers: Antonio, Betty, Elizabeth, Karen, Kit, Sami, and Sofia,
without whose time, help, expertise, and encouragement, this novel would never
have been published.

Thank you to
Melody Simmons
for
the unique and beautiful cover art, which has been my novel’s distinctive
pictographic representation even before it was published.

Thank you
Alison Williams
, for
your advice and patience editing and proofreading my manuscript.

My gratitude to all my friends at
Goodreads
,
and to my friends and followers on my WordPress Blog,
Rereading Jane Eyre
, on
Twitter
, and on
Facebook
, for their generous
help and support.

Thank you to everybody who read and
especially those who took the time to review my first and second novels,
All
Hallows at Eyre Hall
and
Twelfth Night at Eyre Hall
. You
have all encouraged me to finish book 3,
Midsummer at Eyre Hall.

A big thank you to my family, friends,
and colleagues for believing in me.

Special thanks to my daughter, Sofia,
for her constant help and support in this project.

Last, but not least, thanks to Amazon
for making this venture possible.

I
would never have felt the power of prose, if I had not read
Jane Eyre
,
when I was an impressionable and romantic thirteen-year-old. On the other hand,
I would never have fully appreciated
Jane Eyre
, if I had not read
Wide
Sargasso Sea
thirty years later, when I was an active and overrun mother of
three teenage children. Finally, I would never have had the idea of writing
this novel, if I had not taught Postcolonial Literature in English to
undergraduates, whose lively discussions and thought-provoking questions
ignited my overactive imagination. As a result, both novels merged in my mind
to re-emerge by means of my audacious pen. My humble and sincere tribute to
both literary giants, who contributed to make me not only the writer I am, but
also the person I have become.

I
would also like to acknowledge that
Midsummer at Eyre Hall
would never
have been written without the inspiration of Daphne du Maurier’s novel,
Rebecca
.