A House of Lost Wives

by Rebecca Hardy

Genres: Gothic; Mystery

Synopsis

 

The truth lies in the walls of Ambletye Manor . . .

A thrilling regency tale - filled with mystery, romance and secrets - for fans of Eve Chase, Louise Douglas and Tracy Rees.
..............................................................................

 

Secrets. Lies.
And four missing wives.

1800. Lizzie's beloved older sister Esme is sold in marriage to the aging Lord Blountford to settle their father's debts.

One year later, Esme is dead, and Lizzie is sent to take her place as Lord Blountford's next wife.

Arriving at Ambletye Manor, Lizzie uncovers a twisted web of secrets, not least that she is to be the fifth mistress of this house.

Marisa. Anne. Pansy. Esme.

What happened to the four wives who came before her?

In possession of a unique gift, only Lizzie can hear their stories, and try to find a way to save herself from sharing the same fate.

Release date: October 13, 2022

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 368

Sample

The bell rang.

Only later did I find that odd.

I didn’t expect their kind to ring the doorbell and announce their arrival. The sort of people who wore crinkled suits and carried cudgels in mallet-sized fists. The men who came to call in a debt, or beat their debtors into senselessness when they couldn’t pay.

Two of them marched into our house as though they owned it, and thinking about it now, they almost did, considering the amount of money my father owed them.

I sat at the pianoforte in the front room, my sister at the harp, while the men crashed through the house searching for my father. It wasn’t the first time, but it was certainly the worst. Footsteps sounded past the door and up the stairs, the assailants somehow knowing that their quarry was up there rather than in the parlour. I looked at my sister uncertainly, but she only raised her eyes to the patch of damp on the ceiling, her lips moving as she prayed soundlessly.

He couldn’t pay them. We knew he couldn’t. We’d been scrounging lunch from the tea room for the past week because Father hadn’t paid for groceries, having gambled a month’s wages on a very, very bad horse.

Esme was a year older than me and far better at getting free food from unsuspecting tea room managers. All it took was one of her disarming smiles, a little charm and her renowned humour to acquire us sandwiches and hot tea with heaps of sugar. That she could do the same thing the next day, and the next, was a miracle. By contrast, no one looked too closely at me, or talked to me for long. I had a tendency to speak my mind in a way that displeased people – not that it bothered me. Esme was put in charge of finding us things to do, sneaking us into museums and finding new places to venture on foot during the warmer months. She had even convinced the local bookseller’s son to allow us hours of uninterrupted browsing on afternoons when his father was out, in exchange for the elusive promise of a kiss from her that would never come to pass. That we had not been turned out on the street by him time and time again was a miracle, but I imagined he found the view of her devouring books, bundled up in her winter coat and tucked into the corner between shelves, too alluring to turn away.

‘It will only be like this for a little while,’ Esme had continued to reassure me as we went hungry for weeks. ‘Father will think of something.’ She was never wrong.

There was a resounding thunk from the floor above. I cleared my throat gently as the light fixture swung precariously. ‘Whatever you do, don’t say anything,’ Esme urged as the men now tore through the upstairs floors where my father was no doubt hiding in his study.

I glanced from my sister to Brisley, the house ghost, who stood in the corner in his usual tatty attire. I didn’t know why I could see him and no one else could, but he had been there for as long as I could remember. As soon as I had realised he was invisible to all but me, I had kept him a secret – not that he was particularly thankful for it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a pleasant companion at the best of times, and at that moment he had a particularly worried look on his face.

‘Don’t let that mouth of yours get the better of you,’ he said unhelpfully, adding to my sister’s sentiments. ‘You’ll only make things worse.’

I glared at him, then looked back at my sister, hoping she hadn’t noticed.

Her cheeks were hollowed, like mine, through not quite eating enough, her arms and frame wiry where before she had been fuller, but she still held herself as though she was completely in control.

My mother wailed from somewhere in the back of the house. The door to the parlour where we sat burst open, and she threw herself on the floor and beat it with her fists. She was drunk, as usual, and didn’t seem to understand what was happening, or if she did, she was handling it very poorly.

‘Get up, Mother,’ Esme said through gritted teeth, just as the men shouldered in behind her, gripping my father’s arms, dragging him into the room. The two of them were roughly the same height, with scars on their faces and hands from so many beatings inflicted. Their heads were shaved under their caps, which were askew but still firmly affixed to their heads, and both had red-brown eyes that reminded me of foxes.

‘You say you have no money, Mr Dawson, and yet this pretty little lady sits at a perfectly good pianoforte that would easily cover a quarter of the debt you owe Mr Canfield.’ His accent was coarse, with no consideration for consonants.

‘No,’ I blurted before my father could answer, splaying my hands across the keys as if that would protect them. ‘Please, no.’ Esme shot me a warning look. Brisley muttered something that even I couldn’t quite make out but that was disapproving enough.

I watched my father’s stricken face, his head already bleeding from being dragged down the stairs, his suit now as rumpled as his assailants’. ‘Lizzie, I’m sorry, but they have to take it. I have no other way to pay.’ No sooner did he say it than he was thrown onto our last remaining rug, arms flailing as he landed next to my mother, who was slipping in and out of consciousness, her eyes trying to focus on what was going on around her.

‘Take this,’ Esme said, getting up from the harp and waving an arm over it as though she were a hawker in the market. I wanted to tell her not to. The music was the only part of us that hadn’t been taken away or sold to pay off debts. She couldn’t let the harp go. But before I could protest, she shook her head at me, as though knowing what I would say. ‘It’s worth almost as much as the pianoforte and will be far easier to carry.’

‘This one is clever, Mr Dawson,’ one of the men said as he walked over to the harp to inspect it. ‘She understands the value of loyalty, don’t you, my dear?’ he added, standing uncomfortably close to Esme and running a finger down her arm. I imagined his breath hot on her face, smelling stale and rancid. She hid her revulsion well, and only I, and perhaps our ghost, noticed the flicker of distaste in her eyes.

‘Take the harp. That should buy him some time,’ Esme offered.

How much time we didn’t know, but it would keep them off our backs for hopefully another month.

They manoeuvred it out of the house with difficulty and loaded it onto their cart outside before coming back in to beat my father in front of us. As a small reminder, they said as something snapped in his jaw, echoing in the near-empty room. We watched, too afraid to look away. My mother threw up unhelpfully on the floorboards.

When they finally left, Esme tended to his split lip, cuts and bruises, while I bundled my mother onto the downstairs settee and wrapped her in a rough-spun blanket, propping her up so that she wouldn’t choke on her own vomit, then cleaned the floor.

Two weeks later, a letter arrived. Lord Blountford of Sussex, distant cousin to my grandfather, had asked for Esme’s hand in marriage. That he was older than our father didn’t seem to matter to her.

‘What are you doing, Esme? You can’t marry a man old enough to be our grandfather,’ I admonished her as we sat in her bedroom, packing what few things she had left. Brisley avoided Esme’s room whenever he could, but now he watched from the corner with interest.

‘I can and I will. He’s ridiculously rich.’ She smiled at me craftily. I rolled my eyes and Brisley snorted, trying to cover his laugh with a feigned coughing fit.

‘Money isn’t everything, you know. What are you going to do with your life all those miles away from London?’ From me? I didn’t add. I knew I sounded desperate, and I hated it, but I couldn’t imagine surviving in the city without her.

‘I will host extravagant parties and run the household. I shall take long walks in the countryside and have a dozen children to keep me busy,’ she answered. ‘The country air will do me good, and being surrounded by all that farmland, I imagine the food will be superb.’

I sighed and nodded, allowing my mind to wander to three meals a day, high tea with scones and sandwiches; things we hadn’t enjoyed in an awfully long time. I told myself that she would be happy out there, away from the life my parents had created for us here. I just wished I could go with her.

‘I’m pleased for you,’ I managed. ‘You deserve a better life than this.’

‘We both do, Lizzie. And as soon as I’ve established myself at the house, I will invite you to stay, I promise.’

That was the end of the matter as far as we were concerned. She was bundled into a carriage and took a piece of my heart with her as it turned at the end of our street and disappeared from sight.

‘Don’t look so forlorn,’ said Brisley, brushing an imaginary speck of dirt from his threadbare smoking jacket. ‘At least you still have me.’

A week later, Esme was married. A fortnight after that, my father received a large sum of money and paid Mr Canfield every last penny he owed him. Where the money had come from, I didn’t ask, but I suspected Lord Blountford of Sussex had a large part to play in it.

Letters came from Esme every few weeks telling me of her exploits as Lady Blountford, yet still I waited for the invitation to visit her manor. Twelve months to be exact. And then what arrived was something quite different.

An invitation to her funeral.

‘Lizzie, we must tighten that corset. No man will want a sloppy wife with a wide waist. Besides, Lord Blountford won’t wish to see you untidy,’ my mother chided as she fussed over me in my once-shared bedroom. It was an hour before noon but I could already smell the sherry on her breath, and her eyes in the reflection of the mirror we both stared into were glassy and withdrawn.

I wanted to tell her that Lord Blountford wouldn’t care if I wore a potato sack. He was probably too old to notice the difference, and I wasn’t trying to impress him anyway. Corsets were also out of fashion, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.

‘And that hair,’ she tutted, after stringing me up until I could barely breathe. ‘It requires more attention than I can give it. I don’t know how you ended up with a knot of curls like this. Your sister—’ She stopped herself short, the words catching in her throat. My sister had thick hair, dark as coal and straight as a poker. You could do anything you wanted with it and she often allowed me to brush it, plaiting or weaving it through my fingers. The softest hair I’d ever touched.

I glanced at my mother’s reflection as her cheeks tinged pink with the threat of tears. She chewed the inside of her mouth as if to bite back what she was about to say. I turned towards her and wrapped my hands around hers, the comb still clasped firmly in her grip.

‘She had beautiful hair, Mother,’ I said softly, prising the comb from her and beginning to detangle my hair as best I could. It was about as sentimental as we would ever be.

She cleared her throat and left, no doubt to strengthen her courage with another glass of sherry. I managed to clasp my wayward curls into some semblance of a style and straightened out my dress. With the powders Esme had left behind I dabbed my cheeks and reddened my lips, hoping that I hadn’t gone over the top. I stared at myself in the mirror and attempted to look a little more confident, but failed miserably.

‘You look melancholy,’ said Brisley, stepping out from the wardrobe as if he’d just gone in to have a look around and had conveniently finished his tour as my mother left. Brisley did not much like my mother, but neither did I, so we had that in common.

‘How astute of you to notice,’ I replied acerbically as I dabbed some lavender water behind my ears and on my wrists. Maybe it would cover the scent of nervous sweat. Perhaps not.

‘It is your birthday after all, Lizzie. Surely there must be some cause to celebrate?’ Brisley feigned concern as he perched himself on the trunk at the end of my bed and pretended to inspect his nails, removing some invisible dirt from underneath them.

I sighed heavily, regretting it as soon as I felt the corset tighten around my ribs. I was fairly sure that one of my bones would stab me in the lung if I breathed too hard. I stared again at my reflection in the mirror; at the bitterness behind my eyes that only I knew to look for.

The last time I had allowed myself to be dressed up like this, I was wearing red. It had been one of Esme’s old dresses that she’d passed along to me when she went away, with lace cuffs, and tiny pearl buttons running up the back. An image of another party pressed at my mind.

The echo of tiny pearls clattering to the floorboards, of stale breath on my neck and hands on my waist turned my stomach to acid.

‘It’s too much of a reminder, Brisley. Of . . .’ I closed my eyes and swallowed. Now was not the time to get emotional. If nothing else, I’d pass out from the tightness of the corset.

‘Are we referring to young Lord Darleston’s twenty-first-birthday festivities?’ Brisley enquired, knowing full well that was exactly what I was referring to. I flopped back onto the dresser stool, resting my elbows on the table and pinching the bridge of my nose.

‘I cannot do this,’ I said quietly, feeling a wave of anguish rise up, threatening to consume me. Perhaps I could lock my door and stay in my room all afternoon. My parents could entertain the guests; most of them were only coming to see if we were still poor, after all.

‘I think you should go down there,’ said Brisley, with a secretive grin. ‘Just to prove to them that nothing can break you.’

My eyes shot open. I stared at my spectral companion in the mirror, although his reflection was always little more than a faint outline of his true form. He rarely, if ever, tried to comfort me. I was used to his teasing, his jibes and his general indifference towards the only person who could actually communicate with him. This was something altogether different.

‘If I didn’t know better, Brisley, I’d say you want me to have an enjoyable birthday,’ I said, feeling better for drawing the attention away from myself.

‘Hmm, must be getting soft in my old age,’ he said non-committally, gesturing towards my hair. ‘You may wish to pin that up lest someone mistake it for a bird’s nest.’

I scowled, but it made me smile when my back was turned to him. It was easier when he mocked. Then I could forget that my only friend – if you could call him that – was actually dead.

A rap of knuckles at my door stirred me.

‘Lizzie, the guests are arriving,’ my father said through a crack in the door, with no further need for instruction. I pushed my nerves down and checked my face once more in the mirror. I was no Esme, but I would have to do.

As I crossed the room, I paused by the chest of drawers nearest the door.

‘You’re going to take the knife, aren’t you?’ Brisley asked rhetorically.

My fingers hovered over the open drawer, the glint of metal in amongst the bric-a-brac. The knife was a talisman, and although it was little more than a cheap piece I had acquired from an ironmonger, it would do the job or protecting me from those who might try to . . . take advantage. With a confirming glance at the ghost, I retrieved the weapon in its sheath and hid it in the pocket in the folds of my skirt. If nothing else, it would be a comforting weight. Reassurance. Nothing like that would ever happen to me again.

‘Lizzie?’ my father prompted, and I opened the door before he had a chance to rap his knuckles on the wood once more.

‘Thank you, Father,’ I said as he offered me his arm.

I studied him from the corner of my eye, the man who had caused his family so much pain. The lines in his face were deeper than I remembered, but he had made the effort to look the part: a banker and investor (although the horses he ‘invested’ in usually lost him more than they gained) wanting to prove to his colleagues from the bank that he was still of good repute. His favourite pastime was not only responsible for our near-destitution on multiple occasions, but I suspected it was not entirely within the confines of the law. There were legal games, of course, but so many had been banned after the players had lost their fortunes, and only the more mundane had been left behind. That did not stop the clubs from inventing new ways for people to squander their money, nor did it prevent the ill-fated patrons from playing. It was like a disease, a sickness that afflicted my father in the most unfathomable way.

Today he had cleaned himself up, trying to convince his so-called friends that he was still a gentleman – that he didn’t break the law at least once a week and fritter away his pay. But for all the effort he’d made, this party was supposed to be for me. My nineteenth birthday present. Find poor broken Lizzie a husband and take her mind off the fact that her sister is dead and the family fortune is being squandered away on gin, horses and debt.

I would have protested about my parents’ matchmaking if it hadn’t offered me an opportunity to escape this place. The knife in my pocket would see to it that no man laid his hands on me without my permission, and my temper would likely do the rest, but if I could only leave this house, I might have a chance at doing something with my life other than stopping my mother from killing herself with alcohol.

I had asked my father to press charges against Lord Darleston. It was explained to me, as though I was a child, that young Richard had an estate worth over forty thousand pounds. No one could argue with money like that, not even the police. Besides, my mother had added, no one would believe me. They would assume I made the whole sordid incident up in order to obtain some sort of payout, and our family’s reputation would be in ruins. There was also the small but significant fact that my father looked after Darleston’s investment accounts and might have borrowed money for a wager. Probably a drop in the ocean to Darleston, but it was enough to buy their silence.

My only consolation had to be that nobody else knew my secret.

I descended the stairs on my father’s arm, the entrance hall already filled with guests chatting and inspecting the state of the house when they thought no one was watching.

That was the good thing about being the invisible sister. I had learned years ago to study people without being noticed, and now I could see every meaningful glance, every whisper behind a lady’s fan, every snigger at the cracks in the ceiling, the age of the wallpaper or how the lampshades hadn’t been dusted recently.

We still had a maid and a cook, and had hired three more staff for the party, but our basic staff were already overworked. We were barely scraping the middle class.

I’d said repeatedly that I didn’t want the expense of a birthday party, or any celebration for that matter, but it fell upon deaf ears. You should be grateful. My mother used that line on me whenever I acted up. If she had any idea how much it stung, I doubt she’d use it so often.

Or maybe she would use it more. She could be spiteful like that.

‘Smile, Lizzie,’ my father said through gritted teeth as he squeezed my hand on his arm. I wished for a moment that the party was a masquerade, allowing me to scowl at the gawkers from the comfort of a false face.

I knew that my parents wanted me out from under their feet as soon as possible, so that I was no longer a burden to them, but I had to pretend, even if just for a few hours, that they really did have my best interests at heart. So I wandered the rooms smiling, thanking the guests for attending, greeting my father’s colleagues and their bumbling sons who were destined to one day be bankers themselves. I pretended to enjoy conversation with the daughters, who were busy making eyes at the bumbling boys, and tried to laugh at the terrible jokes, all the while forcing myself not to flinch at the touch of strangers.

A buxom girl with dusty blonde hair put a hand on my arm and wished me many happy returns.

‘Thank you.’ I gritted my teeth and smiled politely.

‘Miss Dawson, I’m Jenny,’ she said, still holding on to me. Even though my intention had been to continue threading my way through the crowd, something about her expression made me stop. She looked younger than me by perhaps two years, but there was a fierceness to her that gave me pause.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Jenny,’ I said, studying her. The downturned mouth, the anger in her eyes, all while she attempted to look friendly.

‘You may have heard of me,’ she said quietly. ‘Jenny Miller.’

My heart pounded. I had heard of her. Jenny Miller had been the elite of the elite before becoming another unfortunate casualty of Richard Darleston’s inability to keep his trousers on. A true socialite, rivalling my sister in charm and wit but beating us hands-down in wealth. That this girl had once had three separate proposals and now stood before me with unspeakable pain in her eyes only filled me with more hatred for Darleston. You aren’t the first, you won’t be the last. Buck up. That was what my mother had said one night in a useless attempt to console me. Needless to say, it hadn’t worked.

I looked up to find that the other guests had put distance between themselves and us, the subtle meaning behind it causing my blood to sizzle in my veins.

‘How . . . how can I help you, Jenny?’ I asked, leaning my head towards her so that no one could eavesdrop.

‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to know . . .’ She frowned and looked away, searching for the words. ‘I wanted to know how you stay strong. How you manage to look as though you own the room, even though you’ve suffered such . . . tragedy.’ The words came out in a stream of frightened whispers, as though she was worried she might stop herself before she had the chance to say her piece. Her voice was high and querulous, and I worried she might burst into tears right there and then.

‘Tragedy?’ I said, knowing that my smile had faltered.

Nobody is supposed to know. That was my first thought. No one was meant to speak the unspeakable. Again I glanced around at the guests. The room became stifling. I knew people spoke about my family behind our backs, but was that night at Lord Darleston’s party common knowledge?

A banker’s daughter whispered something to one of her friends, and their eyes trained on the two of us as though they were hunting and we were the prey.

They knew? They knew. Panic rose in my chest like a wave.

I managed a weak grimace, but only for show, as I gently guided Jenny to the window, as though to point out to her something of interest outside.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, hurriedly. ‘I only wanted to pass along my condolences.’

‘Your condolences?’

‘For losing your sister.’

I would have slouched against the nearest wall if my corset weren’t holding me upright. She didn’t know, and perhaps neither did anyone else. I calmed my breathing and smiled wanly at her.

‘That’s very kind of you, Jenny,’ I replied a little breathlessly. The room really was awfully hot.

‘There you are, Lizzie.’ My mother had appeared out of nowhere. ‘Lord Blountford is here, and you really must see him,’ she slurred, pulling at my free arm. I wondered if she hadn’t stopped drinking since before the party.

I gave Jenny Miller an apologetic smile and a short curtsey, relieved to have some excuse to leave the conversation, but she gripped my hand before I could go.

‘I also wanted to say . . . I’m so sorry for what happened to the both of us.’

My stomach plummeted. The conversation had felt as though someone were repeatedly holding a hot brand near my face and then pulling it away teasingly. With this final statement Jenny had slammed it into my cheek with the word ‘DAMAGED’ searing my skin. I felt the instant impulse to run away.

But this girl I had only just met had more in common with me than anyone else in the room. I didn’t wish to think about how she knew, or if anyone else was privy to this dark knowledge, but I felt I owed her something.

‘You asked how I stay strong. How I cope,’ I whispered as my mother continued to tug at me. ‘Honestly, some days I don’t. Oftentimes I can’t let anyone touch me beyond a handshake. But I also carry a knife. I promise myself every day I will never allow anything like that to happen to me again.’ Most of that was true. Some of it was a lie I told myself, and now Jenny, to make myself feel better.

‘You make it sound easy,’ she said, looking at me with watery eyes.

‘Not easy, Jenny, not at all. But if you let what he did ruin you, shred your soul and break your heart, then he’s won.’ She nodded, blinking away the tears and sipping her drink thoughtfully.

I wanted to tell her the truth. That every day was a struggle for me of fighting with painful memories. That losing my sister days after that party had nearly sent me over the edge. More than once I had wanted to lock myself away, never speak to anyone again or feel human companionship. I’d cried myself hoarse many nights and woken in a cold sweat from nightmares of leering women in saffron dresses and men smelling of stale elderflower wine. But that wasn’t what she needed to hear.

‘He’s already taken a part of us away that we’ll never get back,’ I said, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘Don’t let him take the rest.’

‘Lizzie!’ my mother brayed when she realised I wasn’t following her. ‘Stop standing there chatting and come now.’ I squeezed Jenny’s hand by way of goodbye and scanned the crowd.

Across the room, an elderly man with a walking stick glanced over the guests until his eyes rested on me. I forced another smile and made a beeline for him. I hadn’t seen Lord Blountford since Esme’s funeral, and he’d aged greatly, and poorly, in the past few months. The only entourage he had was a young man perhaps in his early thirties, who stood behind him with a faraway look on his face. My mind flashed back to the afternoon of the funeral, standing alongside my weeping parents at Esme’s graveside. Lord Blountford had been alone then, facing us as though on the other side of a battlefield. He hadn’t cried, but he wore a look that I couldn’t place at the time. It was only after I’d replayed the day in my head that I realised what it was: disappointment.

I hadn’t found it in me to forgive him for that, though in any case it wasn’t my place to offer him any sort of redemption. I plastered the smile on my face even harder as I approached, fighting my desire to slap him across the mouth.

There was a shadow of that same disappointed look even now, as he stared me down.

‘Lord Blountford, thank you for taking the time to travel all the way here for my birthday,’ I said, trying to sound as grateful as I could. I really didn’t know why my parents had invited him, or why he had agreed to come, but it didn’t seem right to tell him he shouldn’t have bothered.

‘Ah, I’m afraid my attendance is both business and pleasure, although I am grateful for the invitation to such a . . . quaint party,’ he replied, looking around the room with a slightly bemused expression on his face.

‘You’ll be wanting my father then,’ I said, piecing the puzzle together. Of course he wouldn’t have come all this way for a birthday party, I thought stupidly. ‘Would you like me to take you to him?’

‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ he replied, waving his walking stick at me. ‘I’ll find him myself. There aren’t too many rooms to get lost in here,’ he added, looking around, taking in our meagre trappings.

‘Indeed. I’m sure your country home is twice the size of our humble town house,’ I said, trying to sound polite.

‘Oh, three times the size I would say,’ he said without an ounce of irony.

He turned to the young man beside him before taking his leave. ‘Charlie, behave yourself while I’m gone.’

‘We haven’t been introduced,’ I said to Charlie, who looked at me intently.

‘No, we haven’t.’ He glanced down at my proffered hand warily, and I suppressed a laugh.

‘I don’t bite, you know.’ As soon as it came out of my mouth I felt foolish for saying it, but he took my hand anyway and bent to kiss it. At the last minute he seemed to think better of it, and it turned into something halfway between a brush of his lips on my knuckles and a handshake. Perhaps I was getting used to all these strangers touching me, but . . .