her decision not to go to Switzerland following in her mother’s footsteps and attending an exclusive finishing school but instead to study medicine had shocked and confused her parents, then the way she had ultimately lived her life, the man she had married, the friends she had made had earned her their wholehearted disapproval. But as she sometimes pithily had to remind the more conventional members of her large family, their aristocratic forebears, of whom they were so proud, had received their lands and titles for acts that had been little short of outright theft and barbarism.
Her parents had tried their best, poor darlings. No one could have been more true to stereotype than her father. His family, although not quite as noble as her mother’s, was nonetheless extremely respectably provenanced. No doubt the Victorian son of the Jessop family, who had so providentially married the only daughter of an extremely wealthy mill owner, had been more than happy to exchange his upper-class connections for her wealth. Honor’s mother’s family had always managed to marry well, which was, of course, the main reason why her second cousin, unlike so many of his peers, could afford to be paternally benevolent towards his tenants and keep his large estate in tiptop condition.
Apart, of course, from her house.
What she had not told her daughters, and moreover had no intention of telling them, was that the main reason the house was so dilapidated was because of the history appertaining to it.
Local legend had it that originally it had been built on the instructions of the younger brother of the then Lord Astlegh to accommodate his mistress. He would visit her there, often spending several days with her much to the disapproval of his elder brother and the rest of his family who had arranged a profitable marriage for him with the daughter of another landowner.
The young man refused to do their bidding. The only woman he wanted, the only one he could love, was his mistress, the wild gypsy girl for whom he had built the house but whom he would often find wandering barefoot through the woods scorning the comforts of the home he had given her.
‘Come with me,’ she was supposed to have begged him when he told her of his family’s plans for his future. ‘We can go away together … be together….’
He had shaken his head. He loved fine food, fine wines, fine books.
‘I can’t stay here,’ the gypsy girl had told him. ‘It hems me in. I need to travel, to be free. Come with me.’
‘I cannot,’ he had told her sorrowfully.
‘You are a coward,’ she had returned contemptuously. ‘You have no fire, no passion. You are weak. You are not a true man, not like a Romany man. A Romany man would kill for the woman he loved.’
Her voice had been scornful, her eyes flashing, and in the darkness of the small copse where they had argued, he had mistaken her tears for a gleam of taunting mockery.
It had been said later when the bodies were found that she had bewitched him and that only by killing her and then killing himself had he been able to break free of her spell.
He came from a powerful family, the most powerful family in the area. James, his elder brother, the then Lord Astlegh, used his position to have the affair hushed up, but news of what had happened quickly spread amongst the local population and with it claims that the copse and the house itself were haunted. Tenants who pooh-poohed the warnings and moved sturdily into it very quickly decided to move out again!
It was a reasonably sized house, a well-built, pretty Georgian red brick building with its own small porticoes and elegant sash windows, the kind of house that the upper-class women Honor had grown up with would drool over as the ideal country retreat, but her cousin was unable to successfully find a tenant. It was he who told Honor of the legend surrounding it.
‘Have you ever seen a ghost there?’ she had asked him, intrigued.
Immediately, he had shaken his head. ‘Dashed nonsense if you ask me,’ he told her gruffly. ‘But wouldn’t want you not to know about it. Give it to you rent-free. Can’t sell it—part of the estate. Have to do your own restoration work on it … local workforce shun the place.’
Honor who had fallen in love with the house the moment she saw it had been delighted.
Her chance visit to her second cousin had really been a duty visit since she had heard on the family grapevine that he was suffering badly from a colicky stomach disorder that the doctors seemed unable to relieve. She had guessed that she was being subtly asked if she could do anything to help, but the visit had had the most advantageous outcome. She had been looking for a new home for some time.
Rourke’s inheritance meant that she could actually afford to completely renovate the place and fulfil the ambition she had been harbouring, not just to prepare her herbal remedies but to grow the herbs themselves, as well. Foxdean, with its surrounding land, was perfect for her purposes. Why, she might even be able to persuade her cousin to allow her to erect a glass house where she could grow some of the more tender, vulnerable herbs.
A visit to Haslewich’s excellent health-food shop and a long chat over lunch with its owner had resulted in her being contacted by so many potential patients that her diary was becoming quite full. This was why, as she listened to Maddy Crighton outlining her grandfather-in-law’s problems, she had to tell her, ‘I can’t do anything for Mr Crighton until I have seen him, of course, and unfortunately, my first free appointment is not for a few weeks.’
There was a small pause at the other end of the telephone line, then she heard Maddy saying, ‘Oh dear. Well, in that case we shall just have to wait until then.’
As she pencilled the appointment into her diary, Honor asked Maddy several questions about her grandfather-in-law.
‘He’s had two hip operations in the past few years, but he’s still complaining about the pain he’s suffering,’ Maddy informed her. ‘But it isn’t just his pain that’s concerning us. Just lately he seems to have lost interest in life. He’s always been rather dour and a little bit tetchy, but these past few months …’
‘If he’s in constant pain, it will be having a debilitating effect on him,’ Honor responded, ‘if his GP hasn’t prescribed some painkillers.’
‘Oh, he has, but Gramps threw them away. He isn’t very good about taking medicine … he doesn’t have a very high opinion of the medical profession.’
‘Oh dear,’ Honor sympathised, guessing that Ben Crighton was the kind of patient who made most doctors’ hearts sink.
‘I’m afraid I must be painting a rather gloomy picture,’ Maddy apologised. ‘Gramps can be a little bit difficult at times, but I hate to see him in so much discomfort. He isn’t so old after all, only in his early eighties. I know it must be frustrating for him not being able to get about as much as he used to. He doesn’t drive any more and he can’t walk very far.’
‘Try to persuade him to take the painkillers his doctor has prescribed,’ Honor advised her.
‘Do you think you’ll be able to do something to help him?’ Maddy asked tentatively.
‘Hopefully, yes. You’d be amazed at the difference even the smallest fine-tuning of someone’s diet can make where joint pain is concerned. Then there are poultices that can be applied to the damaged joints and a variety of herbal medicines that can help. I’ll be better placed to discuss these with you, though, once I’ve seen Mr Crighton.’
After she had finished speaking, Honor went through to the old-fashioned back kitchen that she was in the process of turning into her still-room. In the passage that led from the kitchen proper to this room, she had put up bookshelves and she looked quickly along them, extracting a volume that she carried back with her to the kitchen proper. She sat down in a chair whilst she looked for what she wanted.
The book was one she had found tucked away amongst a pile of fusty documents at the back of a little bookshop in the cathedral town of Wells. As it was entitled A Medieval Herbal, she had pounced on it straight away. Now as she turned the pages, she