In the Lonely Hours

by Shannon Morgan

Genres: Ghost; Occult & Supernatural; Gothic; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

In a bewitchingly melancholy, thrillingly modern ghost story for readers of Eve Chase, Megan Shepherd, and Lisa Jewell, the new inhabitants of a centuries-old castle perched on a remote island in northwest Scotland must confront its tragic and terrifying history...

On a small island in a remote corner of northwest Scotland lies Maundrell castle, owned by its wealthy namesake family for centuries—until now. Edwina Nunn is shocked to learn a relative she never heard of has bequeathed the castle and its land to her. What awaits Edie and her teenage daughter, Neve, is even more startling, for the castle is home to a multitude of ghosts.

Yet there’s a strange beauty in the austere architecture and the eerie, bloody waters of Loch na Scáthanna, the Lake of Shadows. Beguiled by a frightened ghost who gazes longingly out of the castle’s windows, Edie and Neve are drawn to the legends shrouding the island and the mystery of the Maundrell Red—a priceless diamond that disappeared decades before.

Is the gem really cursed, and the cause of the family tragedies that have all occurred on Samhain—Scottish Halloween? As Samhain approaches once more, Edie and Neve race to peel back the dark secrets entwining the living and the dead—a twisted story of bitter cruelty and hidden love—or they will become another Maundrell tragedy trapped in the lonely hours . . .

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Release date: July 23, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Mr. MacDonald was old. Neve was not wrong when, on entering his office, she had muttered, “He looks like a crumbly vampire.”

It was the quintessential solicitor’s office, seen in a hundred movies. Dry, stuffy and too much brown, from coffee-hued legal tomes along the walls to the taupe Persian carpet that was probably worth a small fortune but looked like an incontinent dog had been let loose on it. The vampire sat behind acres of desk, a vastness of rich walnut, what any self-respecting tree yearned to be when felled.

“This has to be a joke,” said Edie, not for the first time, putting a calming hand on Neve’s arm, who fidgeted beside her on an uncomfortable high-backed chair. “When I got your emails and letters I thought they were spam.”

“It is no joke, I assure you, Mrs. Nunn,” said Mr. MacDonald, his Scottish burr barely discernible. “The contents of the will are quite clear.”

“You have the wrong person. I don’t know this Percy. I’ve never met a Percy in my life!” It was a plea for sanity as Edie’s carefully reconstructed world lurched sideways with the dry words of a dead stranger.

Mr. MacDonald cleared his throat, his eyes sliding back to the sheath of legal documents in front of him. “You are Edwina Nunn, née Standish? Raised in St. Jerome’s Orphanage of Hammersmith, London? Wife of the late Joshua Nunn?”

“Yes,” said Edie testily. The unexpected mention of her childhood residence raised a quick flash of images: the dark, turreted building squeezed between two factories, crying babies, childish laughter in the asphalt playground, the purposeful flat-slap of the nuns’ sturdy shoes echoing through huge dormitories crammed with beds. “But the nuns picked a random name and surname like they did for every other baby left on their doorstep. I am not the one you’re looking for. It’s all a dreadful mistake.”

The solicitor’s cool façade cracked slightly. “There is no error on our part. These are the known facts given to us by Lord Maundrell, and we, at MacDonald, MacDonald and MacDonald, have done our research most assiduously. If I may say, the Maundrell family went to great expense to find you. They would not have done so on a whim.”

“Why?” said Edie. “If they gave me away, why would they want to find me again?”

Mr. MacDonald pulled at his upper lip, thrust into deep water with emotional sharks swimming below him. “I cannot say.”

“Who cares?” whispered Neve, staring at her mum as though she’d grown a unicorn’s horn. “He wants to give us a castle. We should definitely let him give us a castle.”

“It’s not ours.” Edie’s stomach knotted with trapped anxiety, pinned to her seat by the solicitor’s emotionless gaze.

“I assure you, Mrs. Nunn, Maundrell Castle is legally yours. You are the last living Maundrell. You and—er—” He nodded at Neve with the glazed expression of an older generation confronted by the alien younger generation, especially one with bright pink hair.

“Neve—Neve Nunn,” said Edie, pitying the old man. Neve was not for the fainthearted in appearance or temperament.

“Er—yes, Miss Nunn, of course.” His attention slid back to Edie. “We were fortunate to discover the orphanage had not discarded a couple of your belongings after you left at sixteen, and we were able to take the precaution of running DNA tests. Now if I may continue?” His thin, dry lips creased into the approximation of a gentling smile when Edie gave no further protest. He shuffled the papers on the desk into a neater rectangle. “As the question of your illegitimacy has been cleared up sufficiently by Lord Maundrell, I see no other impediment, legal or otherwise, to you taking your inheritance. Although sadly the castle does not come with much in the way of funds.”

“Illegitimacy?” said Neve, perking up from the slouch of boredom she had lapsed into. “Why was Mum sent to an orphanage in London if she was born in Scotland? Aren’t there orphanages here? It kind of feels like spite, sending a baby away as far as they could.”

“I cannot say, Miss Nunn.” The solicitor bent his head towards the will quickly to discourage further interruptions from Neve.

As his dry words flowed over her, Edie swallowed against the scream building in her throat. It came straight from her aching orphan heart. It didn’t matter where she’d been sent. These Maundrells hadn’t wanted her was all she needed to know. Being illegitimate didn’t bother her; it was one of the many theories she had spun over the years.

With a stern self-admonishment of do not cry! she pulled the tattered threads of her customary common sense together and focused when Mr. MacDonald cleared his throat, hesitant.

“Finally,” he said. “Lord Maundrell’s last codicil involves the Maundrell Red.”

Edie stared at him blankly.

“You have heard of the Maundrell Red?” His hesitancy slipped into uncertainty.

“No.”

“I have,” said Neve, surprising both Edie and the solicitor. “Tik-Tok,” she added with adolescent defensiveness. “It’s a cursed diamond. Like the Koh-i-Noor and the Black Orlov.”

“That is correct, Miss Nunn,” said Mr. MacDonald, nodding at Neve with grudging approval. “However, unlike the two you mentioned, the Maundrell Red was discovered in the Kimberley diamond fields of South Africa, not India, by your ancestor, Lord Ernest Maundrell. It has, however, been missing for many years.”

“Yeah, I heard that too,” said Neve. “Looks like the curse followed us too if we are Maundrells as you say.” She slumped back in her chair again, slipped her phone out of the pocket of her jeans and glanced down at its screen.

A hunted expression navigated Mr. MacDonald’s long, lined face at another potential emotional pit opening in front of him. “We did, of course, learn of your husband’s tragic accident two years ago. You have our deepest condolences from everyone here at MacDonald, MacDonald and MacDonald.”

Edie nodded, weary of condolences though kindly meant. Joshua. God, she missed him. He would have pissed himself laughing at all this absurdity. Her throat tightened with unshed tears, his death was still a crushing ache, gaining the family she’d never believed possible, then torn away too soon by a cruel flick of fate, leaving Neve and herself behind like the punch line to a sick joke.

“As I was saying,” said Mr. MacDonald, “though it is missing, Lord Maundrell was quite insistent that should the Maundrell Red ever be recovered your legal claim to it could not be disputed.”

That got Neve’s attention. “Who else has a legal claim?”

“There was an instance, many years ago,” said Mr. MacDonald in careful tones, “where an unverified claim was made. It was resolved by the Maundrells themselves.”

“Oh,” said Neve, losing interest.

He paused, eyeing her uncertainly in case she interrupted again, then continued with, “Lord Maundrell has left a personal note he asked be conveyed to you at the reading of his will.” He pushed his spectacles farther up his nose and read, “My dear Edwina. I wish we could have met, but time has a way of catching up with one and mine has run out. I would that I could atone for my—our—family’s cruel abandonment of you, but an apology will need to suffice. No words can make up for what you have lost, and I can only hope you, unlike most of our family, have found some modicum of happiness.

“I have left what remains of my fortune to my husband, who gave me immeasurable joy in my life, but even if I could legally have given him Maundrell Castle, I would not. Though you will inherit the castle, I urge you to sell it as quickly as possible. It is cursed. It will only bring you pain and tragedy as it has to every member of the Maundrell family. Signed Lord Percy, Archibald Maundrell, on 21 March 2021, Santorini, Greece.”

“God, that’s cheery,” muttered Neve.

Edie ignored her and said, “That’s it?”

“I fear so, though Lord Maundrell was most insistent I convey his feelings to you.” Mr. MacDonald placed his folded hands over the neat pile of papers in front of him. “You will both have questions. I shall endeavor to answer them as best I can.”

“Who were my biological parents?” Edie asked hoarsely.

The solicitor’s dry expression puckered with discomfort. “Unfortunately, everyone who might have given you the answer is now deceased.”

“You don’t know?” said Neve, straightening from her slouch.

“I fear not.”

“Was Percy my father?”

“To the best of my knowledge, no.” The admission was wrenched from the solicitor, who, like all of his profession, refrained from absolutes if they could. “It is my understanding that Lord Maundrell left the castle when he was seventeen and never returned.”

“So I was born in the castle?”

“As far as I am aware.”

“Where is it?” asked Neve.

“It is in an area called Sutherland in the western Highlands. A most beautiful area I am led to believe, though I have not been there myself.”

“Who is living there now?” asked Edie.

“The caretaker, Mr. Fergus MacKenzie, has been retained by the Maundrell estate as a presence on the island.”

“Wait, what island?” said Neve, with an excited glance at her mother.

“Ah yes, of course. Maundrell Castle is situated on an island in Loch na Scáthanna. The loch, island and surrounding area are all part of your estate.” Mr. MacDonald slid a thick folder across the vast desk. “I have enclosed copies of the various deeds and entitlements to the Maundrell estate for perusal at your leisure. We will retain the originals if you wish to extend use of our services. We have served the Maundrell family for centuries since Lord Henry Maundrell acquired the castle and land in 1750. We do hope we will continue to serve you faithfully into the future.” There was a well-mannered request in the solicitor’s voice.

Edie nodded helplessly, picking up the folder with excessive caution as though it were laced with poison, then sat in a stupor of mixed emotions as Neve asked questions until she ran out of steam.

Mr. MacDonald hid his relief well as he ushered the Nunns out into the gray October day.

Edie and Neve loitered on the pavement outside the offices of MacDonald, MacDonald and MacDonald. Edinburgh felt like a different world from their little house in Hampshire, as far south in England they could get in a straight line. St. Giles’ Cathedral loomed solid and lovely opposite them, oblivious to the flocks of tourists flowing up and down the Royal Mile.

Clutching the folder to her chest, Edie shook her head, dazed. She had traveled all the steps leading to this moment, but none of them made sense. How was it possible she had inherited a Scottish castle from a family she hadn’t heard of a couple of hours ago? Family. An alien word with the bittersweet aftertaste of grapefruit from the little she had learnt of the Maundrells.

Watching the tourists, Neve said, “So some rich uncle you’ve never met—”

“Or heard of,” said Edie, needing to stress this fact. “And I’m not sure he was an uncle either. He could’ve been a cousin or a brother. The vampire didn’t say.”

“So a relative you’ve never heard of,” Neve continued blithely, “pops his clogs and gives you a Scottish castle. This sort of shit doesn’t happen except in movies.”

“Language,” Edie reproved with absentminded mildness. “But you’re not wrong.”

“Are you all right?” Neve didn’t look at her mother, still in that awkward stage where showing concern was a sign of weirdness or weakness or both.

Of course she wasn’t all right. Edie felt oddly numb. She longed to hug Neve and be hugged but resisted the urge, knowing it wouldn’t be reciprocated. She hadn’t adjusted to this almost-adult Neve had morphed into these past couple of years. No longer the little girl who had considered Edie the center of her world, now a startling, sometimes frightening stranger, with a will far stronger than her own. Neve looked so much like Joshua it sometimes stunned Edie with such intense heartache she needed to sit down. Thick brown hair—which Neve had recently dyed bright pink, despite threats of losing her mobile until the color grew out—and quick brown eyes above high cheekbones. Edie wasn’t sure where Neve’s lips came from, the upper plumper than the lower, giving her a sensuous pout. She had inherited none of Edie’s freckles, fair skin and fairer hair.

“I’ll be fine,” said Edie gruffly.

Silence yawned between them, awkward with too much unsaid.

“So we’re going to see our castle,” said Neve. It wasn’t a question.

Her new castle-owning situation made Edie hesitate. Though the hunger to discover her family bit marrow-deep, her orphan’s dream in reach, the idea of traveling up to this castle terrified her, feeding into her fear of rejection. She needed time to process a whole world of unresolved pain, to peel away the numbness cushioning her core, in a safe place, a known place.

“Perhaps another time,” she said warily, stomach clenching in anticipation of an argument she knew she would lose.

“No! We go see our castle. It’s a castle, Mum! A genuine, holy fuck castle!”

“Neve! Language! God, anyone would think I’m raising a savage.”

“We’ve been given a castle! Aren’t you the least bit curious to see it?”

“Of course, but we were only up here for the night. The October break isn’t long enough for more. You have to be back at school in a week.”

“That’s still loads of time.”

“And I only have two days off work. I can’t afford to take off more time.”

“Stop being so practical, Mum!”

“What’s wrong with being practical? One of us has to be.”

“It’s boring. You can phone the agency and tell them you need more time . . .” Neve grabbed Edie’s mobile held loosely in her hand.

“Neve!” cried Edie. “What are you doing? Give that back!”

Neve ignored her, tapping at the screen in a blur of thumbs, and handed the phone back.

Edie’s heart sank at the curt text Neve had sent:

“I get a say in this too,” said Neve, “and I say we go see our castle. I googled it while you were talking to the vampire. The nearest town is called Lochinver, about a five hour drive from here. If we leave now we can get there before dark.”

Three dots bobbled on the screen as Edie’s employer composed a message. Then:

“Hah!” said Neve, reading the message upside-down. She walked down the steps into the flow of tourists, not waiting to see if her mother followed.

Edie didn’t count to ten as she usually did when confronted with the stubbornness Neve had inherited from Joshua, doing everything as though they might not be here tomorrow. She hurried after her daughter, not wanting to lose her in the crowd.

Neve’s five hours turned into seven and counting. The roads from Edinburgh started off well, dual carriageways that gradually got narrower and twistier the farther north they drove. Those whittled down to potholed single-track lanes meandering through tight glens between heather-clad mountains reflected eternally in deep, secret lochs and over zigzagging passes dodging sheep that strayed wherever they felt like it. Towns became villages so small Google Maps couldn’t find them. Farmhouses gave way to occasional ruins of old crofts and forgotten churches with overgrown graveyards of long-buried Highlanders. Then only vast moors remained with spindly, wind-worn birch growing in unlikely places and moss colonizing every rock and tree, giving the barren beauty a false, green softness.

Neve spent the first half of the journey going through Mr. MacDonald’s folder, exclaiming out loud, “Loch na Scáthanna means ‘Lake of Shadows’!” And, “There’s more than one island, but our castle is on the biggest.” And, “Our castle was built by the Macleods of Haggs.” And, “Our castle is really old, Mum. Like really old, a thousand years and more . . . There’s some touristy crap here about our castle.”

Edie lost count of the times Neve said “our castle” as though saying it often enough cemented their ownership.

As the miles passed, Neve lapsed into silence after her initial excited chatter. Entranced by the increasingly remote Highland scenery, she hadn’t turned to her mobile for entertainment except to put AirPods in her ears and listen to music.

The silence gnawed at Edie, allowing unwelcome thoughts. She gripped the steering wheel so hard her fingers cramped as they headed towards the reality of childhood dreams, long squashed for their impossibility. Why had she been discarded like a dirty rag? It hadn’t been for a lack of finances if these Maundrells had Scottish castles lying about. And there had been that almost throwaway comment by the solicitor of her illegitimacy being sorted out. Was that really such a big thing in 1970? Or had her biological parents simply not wanted her? After living with the possibility for half a century, it still hurt. It was one thing to be given up for financial reasons or something equally pressing, quite another to know she had been born a regret, a mistake.

Tears slid down her cheeks. She brushed them away angrily. It was ridiculous. She hadn’t known the two people who had created her. Why should she care that they hadn’t wanted her? Yet she did. And her childhood could’ve been worse; she hadn’t experienced abuse or unkindness at the hands of the nuns. No love exactly, but regulated care by industrious, well-intentioned women in white, prayers and saint days. She hadn’t rebelled against her fate, too reserved and fearful of repercussions, mostly of a divine nature.

As she drove through one increasingly remote glen after another, her go-to reaction was still fear.

Fear was something she understood ever since she left the safety of the orphanage’s walls, armed with a small, mostly empty, suitcase, a little money and a letter of recommendation. There hadn’t been many opportunities for a sixteen-year-old girl with only GCSEs, so she took a job as a live-in carer for an old lady. On the peripheries of the old lady’s family, it had sunk in what family meant. The casual intimacy through long familiarity, the easy acceptance, the reliable support, the inside jokes that weren’t funny to anyone else, a sense of belonging, of being rooted in something bigger than herself, and mostly unconditional love.

Though she had been desperate for the anchor of kinship through blood, fear had prevented Edie from forming attachments. For who would want a girl who came with nothing, unmoored and alone?

Until Joshua.

She had been drawn to his warmth, his humor, his devil-may-care attitude, his confidence in himself. And for the first time in her life Edie hadn’t feared, not with Josh at her side, her safety net. Josh had been her undoing. Fear had not prepared her for the ringing of the doorbell, the solemn faces of the two police officers, their hollow words that Josh was dead, dead, dead.

She would never surrender her fear again.

Blaming hormones and tiredness and the fact that her arse was wedge shaped from sitting in the car too long, she dreaded Neve’s eye roll if she saw Edie crying. Breathing deeply to relieve the tightness in her chest, she focused on the serpentine road wending up yet another pass littered with tumbles of granite boulders like a giant child’s playground. She had every intention of stopping at the next sign of human habitation for the night.

“I think we’re on the wrong road,” said Neve, peering over the dashboard as far as the constraints of her seat belt allowed.

“Story of my life,” muttered Edie, readjusting her grip on the steering wheel. She ignored her daughter’s snort of disdain.

“And we haven’t had signal since we left Lochinver,” Neve added, looking at her mobile where the blue dot on the GPS had stalled on the outskirts of the little town.

Crowded silence filled the car as Edie concentrated on the road, her heart lurching over each blind rise and sharp switchback, her gaze forced down to another stark glen far below.

Not Neve. Her eyes glittered with excitement; Edie worried it was a sign her daughter would become one of those daredevil sorts who jumped off mountains on the end of a rope, or worse, out of an airplane tied to a piece of fabric.

“We’re definitely going the wrong way,” said Neve when the road shrank to two strips of tar snaking up another steep, heather-clad pass.

“We have another hour or so of daylight; we should go back to Lochinver. It wasn’t that far back,” said Edie, thankful for the longer twilight Scotland enjoyed, being so close to the Arctic.

“No, Mum! Don’t be such a wet fish. It can’t be much further. And there’s nowhere you can turn round. I haven’t seen one of those Passing Places signs for ages.”

Crowded silence returned as Edie slowed the car to a crawl. In the fading light, she felt the vast remoteness around her, like driving through a land the gods had forgotten.

“This is fucked up,” Neve muttered, peering out the window at the sheer drop on her side.

“Neve! Did I just hear what came out of your mouth? How many times do I have to tell you to mind your language?” It was a sad reality of parenthood that once a battle had been picked, she started to sound like a broken record.

“You swear all the time,” said Neve, not taking her attention off the tight bend of the next switchback.

“I’m an adult,” snapped Edie, “and I never swear in front of you!”

“Then I’ll be sure not to swear in front of you!” Neve snapped back.

“Wrong answer. You are not to swear at all! You’re only fifteen!”

Neve slouched back against her seat, arms crossed and scowling. But in seconds she was upright and watching the road again with that worrying sparkle.

Cursing under her breath, counting to ten, twenty, a hundred, Edie regained her composure, wishing she’d had a child in her twenties to avoid hitting her daughter’s adolescence during menopause. The two did not play nicely together, especially in poor light on a road that was no road, and with the creeping conviction they were very lost on a Scottish mountain with no end.

“Holy fu-ahhh—Father Christmas.” Neve caught Edie’s gimlet eye and herself in the nick of time, as they crested Haggs Pass.

The track meandered between the arms of mountains folding away into the haze of distance, washed blue by the deepening twilight. At the far end of the glen lights of a small village twinkled beside a long loch, its waters black with the approach of night, dotted with islands. Beyond that the sea rolled steadily over the curvature of the earth. And on one of the islands rose—“Our castle!” cried Neve, grabbing Edie’s arm excitedly. “I can see our castle!”

“You’d best be about yourself and find the wee man,” said Mrs. Macleod when Lottie walked into the castle’s vast kitchen.

Lottie snapped out of her daydream. “Why? What’s Mungo done this time?”

“Not a thing, bless him. The doctor’s here.”

Lottie’s face fell. “Again? But he was here only a couple of days ago.”

“Aye, so he was. But it isnae for the likes of us to wonder at the goings on above.” Mrs. Macleod was a well-nourished woman with a blaze of red hair tied in a messy bun under the stupid cap Lottie’s grandmother insisted the housekeeper wore. She nodded at the ceiling, lips tight with disapproval, then picked up a fearsome knife and took out her uncharacteristic anger on a pile of harmless carrots. “Now be off, lass, and find the wee man afore herself upstairs has something to say about it.”

The kitchen was a sprawl of tables and ovens. The walls were lined with dressers and doors leading to the cellars, the buttery, and bakery. A pile of turnips sat on a table at the far end; Mungo must’ve been here earlier, for some of the turnips had been badly carved with faces in preparation for Samhain at the end of the month. Mungo loved Samhain.

Samhain was celebrated differently upstairs, following the traditions of Halloween her American grandmother insisted on: carved pumpkins, the halls decorated with fake skeletons, and the recording of a terrible witch’s laugh that always frightened Lottie when she entered the Baronial Hall. But downstairs Mrs. Macleod ruled, and the older, darker Samhain was followed with turnips and apple dooking and guising and—

“Be about yourself, lass!” said Mrs. Macleod again.

“But—”

“Nae buts! You ken what’ll happen if herself upstairs finds you here and not searching for the wee man.”

Lottie sighed and did as she was told, thinking she would be searching for Mungo even in death, for it was all she seemed to do. Stepping out into the walled garden the kitchen faced on to, she sighed again. Her parents sat in the orchard where the old apple trees grew like petrified goblins.

Were other families as complicated as hers? she wondered. Jasper and Vida Maundrell sat on facing benches; two black Labradors lay at their feet. Her parents were stiff and distant, neither looking at the other, the shadow of Mungo’s mother between them.

Lottie knew all about Uncle Theodore’s scandalous marriage to the housekeeper’s daughter, Greer Macleod, eloping to Gretna Green, then Theodore going off to war and getting himself killed and leaving Greer pregnant with Mungo. It was an open secret her father had been in love with Greer too, and her mother could not compete with the remembered perfection of a dead woman.

The ill-fated marriage had been short, but its effects were still felt twenty years later and complicated the already-complicated relationships of her family. There was Mrs. Macleod the housekeeper, who was Mungo’s grandmother, but also loosely related to Lottie through Greer Macleod’s marriage to Uncle Theodore. There was “herself upstairs,” Lady Elizabeth Maundrell, or Bitsie to those who were in favor. Bitsie was the matriarch of the Maundrell family who also happened to be both Mungo’s and Lottie’s grandmother.

Families were too complicated, Lottie decided. She avoided her parents, quietly stepping through the arched gate leading to the Nine Hags, a circle of nine mishappen stones. She knew she was supposed to love everyone in her family equally, but some were harder to love than others. If pressed to decide whom she loved most the answer would come easily: Mungo.

She passed Mr. Macleod, groundskeeper, and husband to Mrs. Macleod and as equally distantly related to Lottie.

“Keep going, lass,” he muttered. “I saw the wee man head into the grotto not a half hour back to have his chatter with the Witch. He could still be there.”

Lottie smiled vaguely, not surprised he knew she was looking for Mungo, and wandered down to the rose gardens. She dawdled amidst the late roses, their fragrance clinging to the last of the year’s heat. She loved Mr. and Mrs. Macleod most next she decided, although there was her brother Percy. But no, she definitely loved Mr. and Mrs. Ma. . .