The Secret of Quarry House

by Claire Lorrimer

Genres: Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

At twenty-four Kate marries her first love, Campbell Rivers. She becomes mistress of Quarry House, a Jacobean mansion set brooding and isolated on the Yorkshire moors. Kate is blissfully happy, but gradually, fuelled by rumours of the fate of Campbell?s first two wives, she begins to sense the menace that surrounds the house. As her anxiety becomes more acute, she realises that her life is at stake. For her very survival she must unearth the sinister secret of Quarry House ? before it is too late.

Release date: January 30, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

‘Joanne, tonight I’ve met the man I want to marry!’

I’d been waiting all evening for my flatmate to return from the theatre to make my announcement and I was so excited, the words came out in a near squeak.

Jo, my best friend since our school days, flopped into the nearest armchair and kicking off her high-heeled shoes, stared at me with appropriate astonishment.

‘But I thought …’

‘Yes, I know …’ I broke in. ‘Tim was coming round.’

Tim was my most recent boyfriend whom I liked but certainly did not love and although I’d written to him he refused to believe I wanted to end the relationship unless I told him so to his face. Joanne had advised me to let Tim come round to the flat and get it over with. It hadn’t been easy and I hated having to hurt him. He was convinced that there was another man in my life; and I had been trying to convince him otherwise when the doorbell rang.

‘And there he was … the man I want to marry, Jo!’ I told her breathlessly. ‘Just the way it happens in books—love at first sight!’

Jo grinned.

‘Well, I suppose it had to happen eventually,’ she said, ‘although I’d about given up hope.’

I threw a cushion at her.

‘I’m hardly on the shelf at twenty-four!’ I protested, laughing.

‘Okay! But all the same, Tim was far from the first to get the cold shoulder. You invariably find something wrong with all your boyfriends …’

I sat down beside her and felt a rush of affection for this plump motherly friend of mine. In many ways, she really had ‘mothered’ me although she was only three years older than I. I had lost both my parents when I was eleven and my only living relatives were an elderly uncle and his equally elderly wife. Already retired, my uncle had been a bank manager and was one of my father’s trustees. Neither he nor his wife were unkind to me; they did their ‘duty’, overseeing my education, health, upbringing. But they had not really wanted a young girl foisted upon them and were relieved when Jo’s family invited me to spend my holidays with them. Jo was a senior at the private boarding school my uncle sent me to and had obviously felt sorry for me. As I grew up, we became friends and when I left school, we decided to share a flat together in London. It was Jo who found me a job at the Berman School of Languages after I had got my degree at college.

‘You’re looking for a father figure!’ she told me more than once when I’d explained that most boys of my own age seemed far too young; that I was only at ease with older people. It was true that I had adored my father and perhaps I was trying to find someone I could love and respect as much as I had him. Now, miraculously, he’d appeared on the doorstep!

‘Are you or are you not going to tell me what happened!’ Jo said with pretended exasperation. ‘Who is this miracle man?’

I drew a deep breath, excitement still holding me in its grip.

‘His name is Campbell Rivers. He is thirtyish and a widower. His home is in Yorkshire but he has a flat in London where he works. He’s tall, dark and terribly handsome—distinguished looking …’

I broke off, remembering that first sight of Campbell when I opened the door. I’d noticed his eyes—dark, compelling; and the way he dressed—elegant but not stuffy! We’d stared at one another for one long minute and then Tim, whom I’d momentarily forgotten, came up behind me.

‘So there is someone else!’ he said, jumping to a wild conclusion that could not have been further from the truth at that moment. ‘You could at least have admitted it, Kate …’

And he’d stormed out, brushing shoulders with the stranger who was looking from one to the other of us in complete bewilderment. I know it was unkind when Tim was so obviously hurt as well as angry, but I couldn’t help smiling at his dramatic exit as he rushed down the stairs and out of my life.

‘At that time,’ I explained to Joanne, ‘I thought Campbell had come to see you, so I invited him in. “This is Flat 2a, isn’t it?” he asked, at which point I realised he wasn’t a friend of yours. He wanted those people in 2a which I explained was, oddly enough, on the next landing.’

‘Well, go on, Kate,’ Jo said as I paused.

I spun out my story, happy to relive it as I did so. Campbell Rivers had followed me into the flat and I’d closed the door before we had discovered the mistake. He started to apologise but I explained that his surprise visit had turned out to be fortuitous since it had the effect of ridding me of Tim’s persistent presence. Relieved he hadn’t embarrassed me after all he’d smiled.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world for us both to sit down and start talking. Cam introduced himself and explained that he did not know the tenant in Flat 2a but was delivering the bottle of champagne for a friend, as our building was on his way home.

By the time he left, we’d consumed the champagne between us—and I was in love.

I did not then know Cam’s exact age. His face, long and thin, already a little lined, struck me as sensitive and beautiful. His voice was deep and soft and perfectly modulated. I loved the way he laughed and the intense direct way he stared at me when he was talking—as if what I said really mattered to him.

Jo put an arm round my shoulders and hugged me.

‘So that’s why you’re on cloud nine!’ she said. ‘And when are you seeing this paragon of all the virtues again?’

‘We’re lunching tomorrow!’ I said. ‘Can I borrow your red skirt, Jo? I want Cam to see me looking a bit more sophisticated than I did tonight.’ I glanced down at my faded jeans and old T-shirt and wondered what on earth someone like Campbell Rivers could have found attractive about me. But he must have liked me to invite me out to lunch.

‘Don’t be such a goof!’ Joanne said. ‘You underestimate yourself, Kate. You’d look fantastic in an old potato sack. Lucky old you with that size ten figure and those fabulous green eyes. And sometimes, you can even sound intelligent!’

I threw another cushion at her and then we made tea and turned in since both of us had jobs to go to in the morning and it was growing late.

Our lunch next day—at a smart French restaurant where Cam was obviously well-known to the headwaiter—was an extension of the previous evening. I did something I had never done before and played hookey so that I could spend the afternoon with him. We were still discovering each other at dinner time and it was two o’clock in the morning before he took me back to the flat and kissed me goodnight.

The more I learned, the deeper I fell in love. But a week later, my radiant happiness had given way to a deep depression. I was afraid—not of what was to happen later, of anything positive—but of the negative fact that while he seemed as eager for my company as I was for his, Cam showed not the least sign of falling in love with me. I was terrified he would leave London for his home in Yorkshire before I had any chance to implant myself sufficiently deeply in his mind and heart. I was afraid that once away from me, he would instantly forget all about me.

Joanne thought I was crazy, not just because I’d fallen so quickly in love with a total stranger, but because I doubted that Cam was in love with me.

‘My dear girl, of course he’s crazy about you. I never saw a man more obviously smitten. But the whole affair is ridiculous; he must be twice your age!’

‘What if he is!’ I said, annoyed and as touchy as anyone suffering the pangs and glories of first love. ‘I don’t care how old he is. I love him!’

I was terrified he’d walk out of my life as mysteriously as he’d walked into it. I knew he was rich and with his looks, I felt sure he must have a dozen or more beautiful, sophisticated women chasing him.

I found that Cam had a great many other people in his life. I was shaken to discover that he was, at the comparatively young age of thirty-eight, already twice a widower. He had first married at twenty-two, a woman several years older than himself, who had a small daughter. His wife had died four years later in tragic circumstances he did not describe and left him with a stepdaughter of six. Partly for the child’s sake, since his business interests often took him to Europe, Cam quickly remarried his stepdaughter’s nanny. In the subsequent five years they had three little girls, now aged eight, ten, and eleven. His stepdaughter was eighteen. His second wife had died three years ago.

Until I met Cam, I imagined that I had had a sadder life than most people, losing the parents I had loved when I was still a child. Fate had seemed very cruel. Now Cam’s past life seemed even sadder.

He told me he had never really loved his second wife. He was fond of her, and she was good to him and to the children. He had not been unhappy. She had given him three little girls whom he adored, and between them and the building up of his business abroad, his life had been full enough. Or so he had thought until he met me. Then, he told me, he realised for the first time how empty it had been of the most necessary ingredient of all—love! He was, he told me, head over heels in love with me. I was delirious with happiness. We behaved like every pair of lovers, walking, talking, holding hands beneath the dinner table of our favourite restaurant, telephoning each other for hour-long calls if we were unable to meet each day. I wrote love poems to him. He sent me flowers. When he went home for the Easter holidays, I was so restless and miserable that I nearly drove poor Joanne mad.

But Cam, too, was suffering from our separation, and when he returned to London, on our first night out together, he finally asked me to marry him.

I was so happy, excited, and relieved that I burst into tears. I cried all the way to the restaurant, Cam hugging me and looking quite desperate because he had actually believed I was going to refuse him! When I calmed down, he told me he had been trying for months to pluck up courage to ask me to marry him—as if courage were necessary! I would have said yes that first weekend. But he had quite naturally imagined that a girl of my age would shy away from the thought of four stepdaughters, one only six years younger than myself. Moreover his home was in a remote part of Yorkshire, with little or no social life, and marriage to him would automatically mean I would have to give up the career which I had described to him in such enthusiastic terms.

My darling Cam—it showed how little he really knew or understood me that he could doubt I would give up twenty careers to be with him. I would have taken on twenty stepchildren, too! Besides, I had always thought that one day I would like a large family. I loved children and, being an only child, a large, happy family represented security and the companionship I had lacked.

Joanne’s reactions to the news that Cam and I were going to get married as soon as possible were strange and, to me, perturbing. She accepted that we were both genuinely in love, and yet she showed no enthusiasm of any kind when I talked of our marriage. She agreed that Cam was nice, kind, generous, as well as charming, attractive and rich. She agreed that we seemed ideally suited: accepted that the age difference didn’t seem to matter much to either of us and that I’d always preferred older men anyway.

I really had to put pressure on her to admit the real reasons for her misgivings. When she told me what was in her mind, I felt an enormous surge of relief.

‘Call me superstitious if you like, Kate,’ she said, kneeling in front of the electric fire drying her beautiful long chestnut hair, ‘But I just don’t like it—both Cam’s former wives died in tragic accidents. Aren’t you scared out of your wits that you may be number three?’

I laughed. But Joanne refused to laugh with me.

‘But third time is lucky!’ I said, throwing a hairbrush at her. ‘You are not seriously trying to make me see my beloved Cam as a Bluebeard, are you?’

She turned her head slowly and looked up at me, her eyes so serious that the laughter faded from mine. She ignored my last frivolous remark. ‘I still think you ought to go up to Yorkshire—see the house, meet the children, look around, find out more about everything—before you get married. Honestly, darling, it’s crazy not to do so.’

‘But why?’ I asked, shrugging my shoulders. I couldn’t take Joanne’s remarks seriously, but it was so seldom she got maternal with me, that I was forced to listen.

‘I don’t know.’ Joanne said with a flat honesty that impressed me more than wild surmises might have done. ‘Say I’m silly if you like. I just have a feeling—here!’ She put her hand to her head. Then suddenly she gave a nervous laugh, as if she were ashamed of what she was about to say … Joanne who always spoke first and thought afterwards. ‘I’m the seventh child of a seventh child, and Irish to boot. Call it a premonition, if you like.’

My laugh came out a little louder than I had intended. ‘Are you claiming second sight?’ I asked sarcastically. To my surprise, Joanne did not answer. Usually she was sharp and quick with a comeback when I teased her. I relied a lot on Joanne’s intelligence. She was a highly successful career woman, independent, resourceful and down-to-earth. She had a wonderful sense of humour, and was not superstitious.

‘I think you must have been reading Rebecca!’ I said, turning away with a strange feeling of apprehension. The book was a favourite of mine, and I knew Joanne had read it, too. In a way, my circumstances and those of the heroine were not dissimilar, both of us marrying older men, widowers, whose wives had died tragically.

I found myself thinking about it later that night in bed, but then I knew I was being silly. Cam had not been in love with his second wife, Jennifer. Unlike Rebecca, she wasn’t in the least attractive, judging by the photo Cam had shown me, although she had a nice, friendly face—the sort of woman who knitted and baked and turned the sheets sides to middle—ordinary, domesticated, plump, and kindly.

Cam didn’t tell me much about his first wife. On our honeymoon in Majorca, he said he preferred not to remember her. She had married him for his money, and he had been deeply scarred by discovering, a few months after their wedding, that she had no love to give him. Money was the only thing in the world that mattered to her. Nevertheless, it had been a terrible shock when she had slipped on a craggy path on one of the mountains behind the house and fallen to her death on the rocks below. He had been in Europe at the time and had flown home for the inquest. A kindly Yorkshire woman had taken the little girl, Muriel, into her home, and Cam’s main preoccupation at the time had been to see that the child did not suffer too greatly from her mother’s death.

He had tried to give the little girl as much love and attention as he could, but she had a strange, reserved nature which barred any of the usual physical demonstrations of affection. She didn’t care to be hugged or cuddled, and after a while he found it easier to leave Muriel in the care of the woman with whom she seemed perfectly content.. . .