she closed the book, Honor sat back in her chair. Herbalism had come a long way since its early days, but its principles were still the same as they had always been—to heal the sick.
In the high-pressure world of modern drugs the race was on to comb the most remote tracts of land searching for the plant that would give the world a panacea that would cure mankind of all his ills and give him eternal youth.
Personally, Honor felt that their efforts would be better employed in preserving the rain forests instead of letting them be destroyed. Surely the increasing incidence of childhood asthma and eczemas was proof enough of what polluting the earth’s atmosphere was doing. Trees cleaned the air. Without them …
Already she had plans to plant a new grove of trees on her rented land. She knew that her views, her beliefs, often exasperated Ellen who, as a biologist, took a somewhat different view of things, whereas Abigail, an accountant, tended to view everything in terms of profit and loss.
It often amazed her that she had produced two such practical daughters—or was it that the hand-to-mouth peripatetic existence they had all had to live when the girls were young had made them overly cautious?
As she got up to fill the kettle and make herself a cup of coffee, the black cat, who had appeared from out of nowhere the first week she moved in and adopted her, strolled through the door.
None of Honor’s enquiries had brought forward an owner for the cat, who had now fine-tuned her timetable to such a precise degree that Honor knew without having to look at the kitchen clock that it must be three o’clock.
The cat, she assumed, must have found its way to the house along the old bridle-way that passed in front of it, leading from Haslewich to Chester across her cousin’s land.
She frowned as she glanced towards the kitchen door. Like the rest of the house, it was very much in need of repair if not replacement. She was going to have to renew her efforts in finding someone to work on the place soon.
The two large building firms she contacted had given her what she considered to be extortionate quotes and the three small ‘one-man’ businesses she tried had all turned her down with a variety of excuses.
Thoroughly exasperated when the third man who had been recommended to her claimed to be ‘too busy’, she challenged him, ‘Don’t tell me that people around here still actually believe those idiotic stories about the place being haunted?’
The man had flushed but stood his ground. ‘They ain’t just stories,’ he had told her grimly. ‘Uncle of mine broke his leg working here. Aye, and had to have it cut off—infection set in.’
‘An accident,’ Honor had responded. ‘They do happen.’
‘Aye, they do, and this house has had more than its fair share of them,’ he had answered bluntly.
‘I can’t believe that people are actually refusing to work on the house because of some silly story of its being haunted,’ Honor had complained to her cousin a few days later when he invited her up to Fitzburgh Place to have dinner. ‘I mean … it’s just so … so … ridiculous.’
‘Not as far as the Cooke family are concerned,’ he had retorted. ‘They’re closely related to the gypsy tribe the girl was supposed to have come from, and in a small town such things aren’t easily forgotten.’
‘Oh, I’m not saying that there wasn’t an affair nor that it didn’t end tragically. It’s just this silly idea of the house being haunted.’
‘Mmm … well, the Cookes are a stubborn lot, a law unto themselves in many ways. You could try bringing someone in from Chester.’
‘I could try paying nearly double what I should be paying to a high-priced fancy builder, as well,’ Honor retorted drily, adding with a twinkle in her eye, ‘I’m beginning to think my “bargain” home with its peppercorn rent wasn’t quite the bargain I first supposed.’
‘Ah well, my dear, you know what they say,’ Lord Astlegh told her jovially. ‘Caveat emptor.’
‘Let the buyer beware,’ she translated.
REMEMBERING the pleasant evening she had spent with her cousin, Honor smiled. He was a kind man, well-read and interesting to talk with. A widower now without any children to inherit from him, he was determined to do everything he could to safeguard the estate from being broken up when it eventually passed into the hands of the next in line. It was to that end that he was trying to make the estate as self-supporting as possible, using a variety of innovative means.
The outbuildings that he had converted into small, self-contained working units for a variety of local craftspeople were now in such demand that he had a waiting list of eager tenants. The antiques fairs and other events that the estate hosted brought in not just extra income but visitors to the working units and to the house and gardens and its tea and gift shops.
He was now talking about renovating the orangery and getting it licenced for weddings, and Honor had to admit it would make a perfect setting for them. Large enough to hold even the most lavish of receptions, the orangery ran along one wall of the enclosed kitchen garden. Enthusiastically, he had described to her how he planned to have the garden subtly altered with the addition of bowers of white climbing roses and a fountain.
As she listened to him, Honor had discovered that most of his ideas came originally from the man who was responsible for organising the antiques fairs—Guy Cooke.
‘Nice chap,’ he had told Honor. ‘Must introduce you to him and his wife. Pretty girl. One of the Crightons but on the wrong side of the blanket. Still, can’t say too much about that with our colourful family history, can we?’
THE CAT MIAOWED demandingly and to oblige it Honor went to get some food. Tomorrow she would make a concerted effort to find herself a builder—unless fate was kind enough to send her one.
‘A HERBALIST! I can’t see Gramps … Do you think that’s a good idea?’ Max Crighton asked his wife dubiously. ‘He’s bad enough about conventional medicine and I don’t think—’
‘We don’t have to tell him that she’s a herbalist,’ Maddy said gently. ‘I don’t want to deceive him, but I’m so worried about him, Max. He looks so weak and frail even the children are beginning to notice.’
‘Mmm. I know what you mean,’ Max agreed absently, picking up one of the fresh scones Maddy had just placed on a wire rack to cool and then shaking his fingers as it burned them.
‘Wait until they’re cool,’ Maddy scolded him. ‘You know they’ll give you indigestion if you don’t.’
‘Indigestion.’ Max’s eyes danced with laughter. ‘That’s what marriage does for you. The woman you love stops seeing you as someone who is sexually exciting and thinks of you instead as someone with indigestion.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Maddy responded with a small smile.
‘No?’ Max questioned, his voice muffled as he took her in his arms and buried his mouth in the warm, soft, creamy, cooking-scented curve of her throat.
‘Nooooo …’ Maddy sighed.
The truth was that it would be hard to find a man who was more sexually attractive than her husband. Max wore his sexuality with very much the same panache and air of self-mockery with which he wore his barrister’s robes, a kind of dangerously sexy tongue-in-cheek, wry amusement at the reaction he was causing, coupled with a subtle but oh so sexy unspoken invitation to share in his amusement at it.
‘Why is that lady looking at my daddy?’ Emma had once asked Maddy as Max had met them both on their way home from school. He had stopped his car and got out, causing all the other mothers to gawp at him with varying degrees of bemused appreciation.
‘The lady’ in question had been almost as stunningly attractive as Max was himself, but for all the notice he had taken of her she might as well have been the same age as his aunt Ruth.