Nachtstürm Castle

• Chapter I
  
• Chapter II
  
• Chapter III
  
• Chapter IV
  
• Chapter V
  
• Chapter VI
  
• Chapter VII
  
• Chapter VIII
  
• Chapter IX
  
• Chapter X
  
• Chapter XI
  
• Chapter XII
  
• Chapter XIII
  
• Chapter XIV
  
• Chapter XV
  
• Chapter XVI
  
• Chapter XVII
  
• Chapter XVIII
  
• Chapter XIX
  
• Chapter XX
  
• Chapter XXI
  
• Chapter XXII
  
• Author’s Acknowledgments:
  
• About the Author
  
• Other Ebooks by Girlebooks
  

Mrs Catherine Tilney was a well–read girl, but not a stupid one. Perhaps at one time she had been given over to unbridled imagination that saw ghosts in every cupboard and skeletons in every shoe, but her visit to Northanger Abbey – the ancestral home of her husband – had cured her immensely, if the far more sinister Bath had not. Indeed, long ago last year, she had irrevocably put aside her childish fancies of Gothic windows and horrific closets along with her maiden name, and now was content to be the quiet wife of Henry Tilney – who sometimes liked to teaze his handsome bride about her youthful fears.

“Do you remember,” he would say, whilst reviewing the bills, “the japan closet?”

To which she would respond, “I remember
your
story, my love.”

“And was it a nice story?”

“Oh, very nice indeed! But nothing to the reality.”

Thus passed a happy month or two between muslin and greatcoats until the day that Henry seized upon a most excellent plan. They must tour Mrs Radcliffe’s country, and – if at all possible – stay one night in a dank and gloomy castle.

Catherine laughed, proclaiming this to be his finest jest yet, and then blushed as he pressed the programme, raising feeble objections such as, “But I am so happy here!” and “We have only just settled,” and “Nay – I have left all that behind me,” and “How shall we afford it?”

To which Henry could not help replying with a broad grin, “Oh!
That
does not signify!
 
We may apply to the Viscountess, or I may preach a popish sermon – ”

“ – So that the parishioners will fill the collection in the hopes of sending you far away to a popish country?”
 
Catherine countered.

“You perceive me very well!
 
Perhaps I shall laud the abilities of that Corsican rogue while I’m at it and we may earn enough to go to Paris.
 
But come, beloved, what do you think of such a scheme?
 
We have never had a proper honeymoon, for all that I promised you one, and – ”

But Catherine interrupted him, declaring that she’d had adventures quite enough when her husband had wooed her, and that no manner of supernatural soliciting would uproot her now from her sensible and happy – yes, perfectly happy, Henry! – home.

“Nor,” said she, “shall the Woodston ghost or any such visiting change my mind.”

The ghost to whom our heroine referred was, as the clever reader has no doubt already divined, none other than Henry himself – for it had delighted our hero this past year to teaze his young bride and her fanciful imagination with none of the mercy he regularly enjoined his parishioners to shew one another.
 
In their first month of marriage, Henry had contracted a somnambulation which manifested itself most terribly when Catherine had been too long reading in the parlour at night to satisfy an amorous bridegroom.
 

Later, it pleased Henry to devise curios for Catherine to find about the house: a child’s slipper, an engraved locket with a dark curl of hair, even a little chrysalis which Henry maintained all were gifts from the various ghosts that haunted Woodston and its environs.
 
“Nor shall they be satisfied, my love,” Henry had intoned, “until their curse is broken!”

“Curse?” our heroine had asked with, it must be admitted, one eyebrow raised.

“That Woodston shall be haunted ‘til life be brought again,” Henry had replied, taking his wife’s hand and leading her with his shoulders a–slump, resignation in his voice, and a twinkle in his eye.
 
“I’m afraid, my dear, that the parish must be peopled!”

“Well!” Catherine had laughed, “if the spectres will have it so!”

Little did it surprise Catherine, then, when a few days after Henry’s failed attempt to lure her abroad she was met one evening by a gypsy.
 
Very broad of face she was, stooped and swathed in fantastic shawls – several of which looked suspiciously like Catherine’s parlour curtains.
 
Hobbling up on a twisted cane, the gypsy put forth her hand and cackled, “Farthing for your fortune, miss?
 
Hm, hm.
 
Farthing for your fortune?”

Having just visited her dear friend Mrs. Sullivan in the village, and having just avoided the garrulous Mrs. Bates, Catherine felt disposed to part with a farthing and extend her own hand.

The gypsy minced and mewled, doing a little jig to rattle the coins and bits of wood that Catherine saw with some dismay had been tatted to her beloved poplin drapes.

“Great fortune, I see for you, young miss!
 
Great fortune indeed!
 
Hm, hm.
 
A voyage I see for you, with a man – no,
two
men – and a puppy.”

“We are not travelling with the puppies, Henry.”

“Henry?
 
Henry?
” the gypsy cried indignantly, skipping back and forth without aid of cane.
 
“Do you mistake Donna Fortuna for a man?
 
Hm?
 
Hm!
 
But ah!
 
Young miss has the sight herself, does she not?
 
For here,” grasping her hand and pointing to some line or other, “yes, hm,
here
I see that very name.
 
In the line that leads to young miss’s heart, hm?
 
Yes?”

“Oh, I should think so!” our heroine laughed.
 
The air held the warm smells of meadowlawn and honeysuckle, and everything was her delight.

“And yet,” the gypsy droned, “and yet, hm, hm, and yet I see you do
not
love him as well as you ought.
 
I see he grieves.
 
This line here, hm?
 
Where the lines split.
 
Grave danger, miss.
 
Hm, hm.
 
Donna Fortuna knows all.
 
God give you good even, miss.
 
Hm, hm.”

With which direful words, the gypsy hobbled down the road and out of Catherine’s sight.
 
Our heroine lingered for a little while in the garden, the night being too fine to go indoors, particularly with the will–o–whisps dancing through the grass, but when the last of the mild twilight fell, she pushed open the door and turned the corner, completely unastonished to find Henry sitting in his favourite chair, neatly dressed as though just from service, a book of sermons in his hand, with one foot on a cushion and the puppy on his other.
 

He looked up to receive her kiss as she entered and hung her bonnet from its place.
 
And for a while it pleased her to speak of nothing but how Mrs. Sullivan was getting on, about recipes she had learnt and about little Jenny Wren’s cough, until it near looked as though Henry would burst.
 
So, smiling, Catherine settled herself in her husband’s lap and after just
one
more story about the cleverest knitting stitch Mrs. Allen had written to her about, she kissed her husband firmly on the lips and said, “Oh!
 
I nearly forgot to mention.
 
I met the strangest woman today.”

Henry released his breath of the last half hour but then caught it again as his bride stood and began carelessly removing the pins from her hair.

“What woman?” he asked.

“Some foreign woman, I’d hardly know.”

“And did she,” Henry prompted when it seemed Catherine had finished the entirety of her discourse, “perhaps say anything worth noting?
 
I only ask,” he amended, “because you mentioned her so particularly.”

“Did I?”

“Indeed, my love, you did.”

“How extraordinary of me,” Catherine yawned.
 
“I cannot think why.
 
Hm, hm.”
 
With which conclusion she might have gone to bed, except that something seemed to cross her mind and returning to her thoroughly bewildered husband, she said, “Oh, but there is one thing, Henry.
 
I nearly forgot to ask.”

“Ask away, my heart,” came his reply.

“What
does
one wear in Italy?”

To which Henry made no reply at all but to swoop his lady to himself to rival any ardent Valancourt.

One argument relinquished, all others must likewise surrender, and so a month passed in bantering over carriages and clothing, acquaintances and itineraries, novels and notepaper, and every other necessity whose import rests solely in the home, and becomes inevitably burdensome abroad. For Henry must have at least one flintlock, and Catherine her trusty Radcliffe, and although the former grudgingly agreed to leave the dogs at Woodston, ‘twas far more difficult to convince Catherine that her writing desk was redundant. But at last the happy couple were packed and off – and no amount of pleasant foreboding could convince either that they were bound for an adventure which would be the envy of every Cecelia, Belinda and Emily.