Rose 4: Rose and the Silver Ghost (8 page)

Bella broke in mid-scream, the uncontrollable trembling giving way to coughs, and splutters, and a horrified whimper.

‘Get a bowl!’ Gus growled at Miss Fell, who was watching fixedly, the back of her hand pressed to her lips. ‘Oh, Rose, stop it, you have me doing it too!’ And he slunk over the side of the bed, and underneath, and could be heard coughing wretchedly into the chamber pot.

Miss Fell thrust a bowl of scented rose petals in front of Bella, and retired to a safe distance, looking pale. ‘A most effective hallucination,’ she murmured, sinking onto a chair.

Bella moaned weakly, and looked around her bedroom. ‘We were out at sea,’ she muttered. ‘Why is everyone here?’ Then she pressed her hand guiltily against her mouth. ‘Oh! The mirror. Did I scream?’

‘You did indeed,’ her father told her grimly. ‘I must go and reassure the servants. Thank you, Freddie, I can walk now.’ He wrapped his dressing gown around himself tightly, glared at Bella, and stalked out of the room.

Bella stared after him miserably, so much unhappiness floating out of her that even Freddie was moved to sit down on the bed and pat her hand. ‘What happened?’ he muttered.

‘The girls have stolen a mirror from my room, Frederick.’ Miss Fell’s voice had lost the coldness, but Freddie still gaped at her, and then swung round to stare at Rose and Bella. ‘Are you two mad?’

‘Indeed.’ Miss Fell sighed. ‘No. I am being unfair. Presumably, Rose, you felt you had no other choice.’

‘What?’ Freddie muttered, looking cross. ‘I shouldn’t get into a miff with you two. I miss things.’

Bella managed a wan smirk, but Rose hardly even heard him. ‘Will you tell us?’ she whispered, her eyes fixed beseechingly on Miss Fell.

‘I think I must.’ Miss Fell gazed unseeingly at the curtained window. ‘Yes. I think I must.’

Miss Fell turned back to look at them at last. ‘Give me the mirror, child,’ she half-whispered. ‘Please.’

Rose scrambled out from underneath Bella, and picked up the mirror, which she had dropped amongst the pillows. Shyly she padded across the rug and handed it to Miss Fell.

The old lady caught her wrist as she came close, pulling her gently towards her. ‘Sit with me,’ she begged, and Rose subsided onto the arm of the chair like a cloth doll. Miss Fell had the sort of voice that made one want to obey.

‘I have to apologise.’ Miss Fell still held Rose’s hand, and she patted it gently as she spoke. Rose nodded politely, unsure how to answer. She could see Bella and Freddie edging towards the side of Bella’s bed, wanting to be closer, to hear what was about to happen. Even Gus came crawling out from under the trailing bedclothes, his whiskers drooping. He sat at Miss Fell’s feet, washing furiously.

‘How much have you worked out?’ Miss Fell looked up at Rose, her dark eyes gentler than Rose had ever seen them.

‘Bella…’ Rose halted, unsure if Miss Fell would be angry again – she couldn’t face another bout of Bella’s hysterics.

‘Isabella is a clever little girl,’ Miss Fell said dryly. ‘Too clever for her own good. You remembered the rumours about Miranda, didn’t you?’

Bella nodded. ‘And you do look alike…’ she whispered. ‘Just every so often.’

‘I saw her picture in the mirror,’ Rose explained. ‘When you gave it to me to look at my frown lines. It wasn’t me in the glass, but it was so like me. After that…we had to take it. Steal it, I mean,’ she added shamefacedly. ‘I had to know who she was.’

Miss Fell nodded. ‘As anyone would, who had been left in such circumstances. Oh, dear Rose. I think Miranda must have been your mother. I can’t know, of course. I never saw her again, after that strange day when she gave me the painting. If only she had said! I would have helped. She never even sent word that she was safe. I suppose she was too afraid that the message would be traced.’

‘She was your sister?’ Rose’s tongue seemed to fumble over the words.

‘You flatter me, dear. My niece. Your mother was my brother’s child. Miranda Fell.’ She hooked a delicately pointed fingernail under the side of the glass, and pulled it out, revealing the painting. ‘Yes, she is so very like you.’

‘Did she run away with the gardener’s boy?’ Bella asked curiously. ‘Gus told us that was nonsense, but Aunt Fay said she did.’

Miss Fell’s eyebrows drew together haughtily. ‘Your Aunt Fay, Isabella Fountain, is a gossip, and a hoyden, and gallivants with her footmen. And I’m quite certain that story wasn’t meant for your ears, miss.’ Then she nodded, very slightly. ‘Unfortunately, in this instance, she had the story right. Except that he was one of the under-gardeners. A most handsome young man, and a good worker. John Garnet, he was called.’

‘You didn’t know?’ Rose murmured.
John Garnet
. Her father. The name sounded…good. A solid, honest name.

‘No. They must have been so careful. I suppose she knew even at the start that it would never have been permitted. Oh, I knew something was different, and I suspected that she might be pining for someone, but I assumed it was one of the boys she had met in London – she had been presented for her first season, you see.’

Rose nodded, although she had very little idea what that really meant.

Miss Fell was staring at her again, searching her face. ‘Seeing you in Venice, I told myself it was just a chance resemblance. Some strange quirk of nature. But then, when I heard your history, I couldn’t help but wonder. Perhaps I should have said something then, but I wasn’t sure, not at all. And you seemed contented, Rose, I wondered if you were better off without the truth – such as it is.’

‘I wanted to be.’ Rose picked at the lace cuff of her nightgown. ‘I’d always thought I
was
happy not knowing, but the magic seemed to make everything different. I wanted to know where it had come from, all this strangeness.’

‘When I gave you that painting of Fell Hall…’ Miss Fell closed her eyes. ‘It was a test. My curiosity got the better of me, Rose, I couldn’t resist seeing what would happen. I thought almost certainly nothing. You had never been there, after all, why should you react? And then you painted her. Miranda loved those peacocks. She would wander up and down the lawn for hours, slipping them crumbs. She called that wrap her peacock shawl, and swore they were feather patterns.’ She sighed. ‘I still don’t know how you did it.’

‘I didn’t,’ Rose muttered. ‘It just happened.’

‘Unconscious magic can be the strongest of all. At any rate, it proved to me who you were. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did, but then I never went back, you see. I haven’t been to Fell Hall in eleven years.’

‘Why ever not?’ Freddie demanded in surprise, and then looked guilty. ‘Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean…’

Miss Fell gave him a very small smile. ‘I quarrelled with my brother, Frederick.’ She patted Rose’s hand again, but this time it felt almost like a warning. ‘When your grandfather, my brother, found out that Miranda had run away with a servant, he disowned her. He changed his will, and left everything to a charity that provides meat for stray cats.’

Gus coughed appreciatively. Miss Fell nodded. ‘Quite. But this was not in a spirit of generosity, or out of any love for your race, my dear. He was purely furious. He was ashamed that a daughter of his should have done such a thing, and then that she had the gall to hide so well that he couldn’t find her and drag her back. I tried to dissuade him, and he made it very clear that Miranda would not be welcome there ever again, and that if I persisted in taking her side, neither would I.’ She sighed. ‘And so I left. I had my own money, from my mother, so I came to live in London, and I travelled, and I looked for her wherever I went. I was almost grateful to Miranda, when I wasn’t furious with her for disappearing without telling me. I had always longed to go abroad, but Fell Hall… Well, it has some strange magic of its own. Leaving it can be very difficult. Which only proves, Rose, how much your mother must have loved that boy.’

Rose nodded. ‘I wish I knew what had happened. It must all have gone wrong.’

‘Horribly wrong.’ Miss Fell sighed. ‘I had always hoped I might find her again, you know. Even that she might find me. But Miranda wasn’t the sort of person to abandon a child, Rose. That’s why it was so strange for me to see you – I was so excited to think that you might be Miranda’s daughter. But at the same time, you were an orphan, and it meant that Miranda was dead, and somehow I’d never quite brought myself to believe that before. I was sure I would have known, or felt it somehow. Instead I’d always convinced myself that she was just living hidden away somewhere, and one day she would come back.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rose murmured, feeling stricken.

‘Oh, Rose! None of this is your fault – and I feel as if I have Miranda reincarnated, which is an amazing gift.’ She smiled, and stroked Rose’s hair. ‘Even your grandfather would have relented, seeing you, I think.’

‘Would have?’ Freddie asked, before Rose could. He was lying on Bella’s bed now, with his chin on his hands, listening avidly, as if this were some exciting bedtime story.

‘He died. A few years ago, and your grandmother too, Rose. I’m sorry. I’m afraid I must be your only close relative.’

‘My – my great-aunt?’ Rose stammered, hardly sure if she dared to suggest it.

‘Yes.’ Miss Fell smiled at her.

‘So who lives at Fell Hall now?’ Freddie asked, breaking into the strange little silence.

Miss Fell shook her head. ‘No one. There was a huge fight about the inheritance. Some distant cousins objected to the cats’ meat people, and contested the will. They thought they should have Fell Hall.’ She gave a grim little smile. ‘The court agreed that your grandfather had behaved out of spite, but the case didn’t turn out the way they expected. I had been gone long enough that Cousin Magnus had forgotten I existed. The court ruled that the house belonged to me.’

‘But you’ve still never been back?’ Freddie gawped at her.

‘Close your mouth, boy, you’ll catch flies,’ Miss Fell told him tartly.

Freddie shut his mouth with a snap, but he was still staring at her, and she sighed. ‘I would always be thinking of Miranda. I didn’t want to go back. I have a steward there, and he keeps the house with a skeleton staff, but I am afraid the old place is probably rather ramshackle now.’

Rose smiled to herself over Miss Fell’s head. She was willing to bet that a skeleton staff meant at least twenty people, and ramshackle just that they weren’t keeping all the silver polished.

‘You should have this, Rose.’ Miss Fell stroked the roses around the edge of the mirror, then closed her eyes for a second, and handed it quickly to Rose.

Rose held it, wide-eyed. ‘It’s yours…’

‘It was your mother’s first. I gave it to her, in fact. For her twelfth birthday, with a jewellery box to match. She loved it.’

‘But didn’t she take it with her? Could she not take anything at all?’ Rose imagined her heading out into the night – somehow she was sure she had gone at night – with only the clothes she stood up in.

‘They decided she must have had a small bag, but she couldn’t pack properly, it would have been too obvious. And oddly enough, Rose, she did take this mirror with her. She left the jewellery box. That’s in my room too, but you missed it on your little spying mission, my dears.’ Miss Fell’s eyes glinted as Rose tensed beside her, but then Rose saw that it was the brightness of tears. ‘It was brought back to me, by a friend, who saw it in a jeweller’s shop. He recognised the Fell emblem on the back, you see?’ Miss Fell turned the mirror over in Rose’s hands to show them, and Rose frowned. She hadn’t noticed a crest or a coat of arms. But Miss Fell was pointing to the engraved rose garlands. Cleverly twisted into one of them was a tiny mouse, its tail wrapped around a rose stem, and the little sharp-eyed face peering out from between the thorns. ‘The mouse in the roses is the sign of the Fells. Some strange dream that one of our ancestors had long ago, I think.’

Rose ran her finger over the little mouse, smiling. It seemed a more suitable emblem for her family than a proud lion, or a gryphon or some such fabled beast. She felt at home with a mouse.

‘I knew that things must be very wrong, when he handed it to me.’ Miss Fell’s voice was threadlike. ‘She wouldn’t have given it up easily.’ She struggled up out of the chair, looking suddenly exhausted. ‘I am going back to bed. I would appreciate it, dear ones, if you could manage not to produce any more disasters until late morning. Perhaps even after lunch.’

Rose and Bella nodded guiltily, and then Rose suddenly had to strangle the most enormous yawn. Miss Fell had very strict ideas on young ladies yawning. One simply didn’t.

‘I am coming to sleep on your bed, Rose,’ Gus announced. ‘I approve of your new bedroom, very much, although I wouldn’t personally have chosen that odd violet shade for the curtains. But in general a much more fitting place for me to sleep.’ He wove himself around her ankles as she walked wearily to the door. ‘I will guard the mirror for you, if you like. Or are you going to sleep holding it?’ He stared up at her, his mismatched eyes bright and knowing, and Rose blushed scarlet.

‘If ever I fight with you again, Rose, you must just remind me of all this,’ Freddie muttered.

They were sitting in the workroom with a plate of toast that Rose had begged from Mrs Jones, since they had all slept through breakfast. Bella and Rose were explaining everything that had happened since they found the painting to Freddie. Gus was apparently asleep in front of the fire, but his tail twitched irritably every time he disagreed with the girls’ storytelling.