Northanger Abbey

26

The man who appeared in the stairway looked almost as shaken as Cat herself. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he demanded.

‘Henry!’ Cat yelped, her legs giving way.

He covered the steps between them in no time, pulling her unceremoniously to her feet. ‘What are you doing, Cat?’

‘How did you get here? How come you came up those stairs?’

‘How come I came up those stairs? The lower flight is the quickest way from the back door to my room. Then I saw the light up here. Plus, I live here. Why shouldn’t I come up any stair I want to?’ He sounded angry, but he took a deep breath and managed to cool his temper a little. ‘But you still haven’t told me what the hell you think you’re up to, prowling round my home in the dark like Harriet the bloody spy.’

Cat had never blushed so deeply. She was glad of the dimness of the light so he could not see how guilty she looked. He stared intently at her, as if her face held the answer. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here before you get yourself in even more trouble.’ He stopped to listen for a moment, then hustled her down the stairs and back along the hallway. He opened the double doors and let go her wrist. ‘Run along to our sitting room and I’ll join you in a minute.’

She didn’t need to be told twice. Her feet barely touched the ground as she sprinted for safety and she didn’t stop till she was curled in a corner of the sofa. Henry followed soon after. He threw his briefcase on the floor and crossed the room to stand in front of her. She couldn’t avoid the inappropriate thought that he looked ridiculously handsome. He was wearing a charcoal pin-striped suit that seemed designed to make him look impossibly fit. His white shirt was still crisp. Even as she watched, he loosened his burgundy tie and undid the top button of his shirt. Cat thought it was possibly the sexiest thing she’d ever seen; and she knew that was the last thing she should be thinking.

‘So, what were you up to, Cat?’ Henry did not look pleased.

Cat studied the carpet. ‘I’ve been to see your mother’s room,’ she mumbled.

‘If I was in court, I’d ask the witness to speak up,’ he said sternly. She flicked a quick look upwards to see if his face showed any lightening. It did not.

‘I said, I’ve been to see your mother’s room.’

‘My mother’s room? What in the name of God did you think you’d see there? And why were you sneaking around in the turret afterwards?’

‘I wanted to picture her in her own room, not just as a portrait on Ellie’s wall.’ It was the best she could manage at short notice.

‘You could have asked Ellie to show you.’ He threw his hands up in a gesture of frustration. ‘It’s not nice, skulking around in other people’s houses in the middle of the night.’

‘I was trying not to disturb anyone,’ she said, gaining a little confidence.

‘And the turret? What did you think you were going to find there?’

‘I was curious,’ Cat mumbled. Torture would not have dragged the humiliating truth from her at that point. Realising she needed to get off the back foot, she raised her eyes to meet his dark stare. ‘And why are you here, anyway? I thought you were going straight to Glasgow to try a case.’

He tutted impatiently and threw himself into a chair. She couldn’t help admiring the sprawl of his long legs. ‘The case was postponed for a day. I thought if I worked late and got all the papers ready, I could come back to Northanger and have a day with you and Ellie tomorrow.’

Her spirits lifted a fraction – he’d come back to see her! – then sank again. Because she’d blown it, comprehensively. ‘That would be cool,’ she said in a small voice. Then she remembered his dislike of the word. ‘I mean, delightful. Fun. A nice surprise.’

He burst out laughing. ‘Cat, you’re impossible. So, did you like my mother’s room? I’ve always thought it the best bedroom in the house. I’ve suggested to Ellie that she should move into it, but she just shudders and looks at me like I’ve said something disgusting. I suppose she sent you to give it the once-over?’

‘Not exactly. She was going to show me, but the General called her away before we could go inside.’

‘Still, I’m surprised by your fascination for my mother’s room. It’s not as if you knew her. We know how special she was, but it’s touching that a complete stranger is so fascinated by her. I suppose it’s Ellie. She doesn’t have much chance to make close friends round here, with being away at school and then this place being so isolated. So she doesn’t get much chance to talk about Mother. Has she been going on about her?’

‘A bit. But what she did say made me wish I’d known your mother. And with her death being so quick, and none of her children with her ... Such a sad story, Henry. And your father is so brusque about her ...’

The lawyer in him sprang to the fore again and he leaned forward, pinning her with his gaze. ‘And from these fragments of information, you’ve made up a whole story, haven’t you? A woman scorned in her final illness, or worse? Is that the way your mind’s going?’ She gave him a look of mute appeal, but his blood was up and his opening speech to the jury was under way. ‘It’s true that my mother’s death happened more suddenly than any of us anticipated. But the underlying cancer, the leukaemia, was terminal. My father took her to several leading specialists and they all said the same thing. We all saw her deterioration and her bravery. And she wanted for nothing in her final days. Nobody could have been more devoted or more devastated than my father.’

‘I didn’t see any signs of that in him,’ Cat said, snatching at any straw of defence.

‘Of course you didn’t. He’s a soldier. He’s trained to put his feelings to one side and get on with things. But to those of us who know him, his pain is as visible as a scar. It’s why he’s so brusque. So overbearing. He needs to control everything because the prospect of his life running out of control again is too terrible. I’ve never had a moment’s doubt that he loved her. Even though he was as shouty with her as he is with the rest of us, and sometimes he drove her to despair with his bloody-minded stubbornness. But he adored her. Don’t you dare doubt that, Cat.’

‘Believe me, Henry, nobody could be happier than me to hear it. Anything else would have been awful.’

‘You say awful, but that’s what you were thinking, isn’t it? Jeez, Cat, is this how you generally behave when you’re invited into people’s homes? Just think for a minute what you’ve been fantasising about. What kind of people do you think we are here? We’re not the kind of low-life heathens I find myself defending in court every week. I don’t know what life’s like in Dorset, but here in the Borders we don’t deal in the kind of atrocity you’ve been imagining. Besides, how do you think my father could get away with murder? Or, what? Keeping my mother locked up like a princess in a tower? We’ve got the Calmans following our lives as closely as the shadows on the walls. Do you really think they’d cover up murder out of a sense of loyalty to my father? Two hundred years ago, maybe, but not these days.’ He shook his head, reverting to the ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ mode. ‘I can’t believe you even considered such a thing. I’m disappointed, Cat. I’m really disappointed.’

She could barely swallow the lump in her throat. With tears pricking her eyes, she jumped to her feet, choked out, ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ and ran from the room, not pausing till she threw herself on the bed and began to sob.

The visions of romance were over. Henry’s words, brief though they had been, had such an impact that all she could see was the absurd extravagance of her recent imaginings. She had humiliated herself, shamed herself, abused her hosts. Sobs shook her shoulders; it wasn’t only that she despised herself. Henry too must hold her in total contempt now. Her terrible folly was laid bare before him. He tried really hard to treat it like a joke, but it had become clear to her that he was wounded at the notion she should think so badly of his father. She hated herself more than she could express.

Her imagination had taken liberties, and now she would have to pay the price. It was over with Henry. Nobody could forgive the absurdity of her curiosity and suspicions. Thank God she hadn’t said anything about her vampire convictions.

That thought brought her up short. However fanciful some of her thoughts had been since she came to Northanger, there was no escaping the hard fact of the family Bible with the bullet hole. That was not the sort of family heirloom that most people had, secreted away in a hiding place where casual eyes would not see it. For all Henry’s outrage, there were still secrets in Northanger Abbey.

But that was little consolation for a broken heart. Cat stripped off for bed, throwing her clothes on a chair. Not even bothering to clean her teeth, she curled up under the covers – including the tartan blanket Mrs Calman had delivered – and clutched her misery to her chest, certain she would never sleep again.

But although it was restless and her dreams confused, sleep she did and when she woke, it was to another bright morning, the sun pouring in through curtains she had forgotten to close in her state of desolation. Her heart was still heavy with shame and self-disgust, but her stomach rumbled complaint that all this high-octane emotion had stripped her of available calories. Cat glanced at her watch, surprised to see it was just after seven. If she was quick, perhaps she could get in and out of breakfast before Henry appeared. She knew she couldn’t avoid him for ever, but she wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

She scrambled into clean clothes and ran downstairs, apparently the only inmate of the house stirring. But as soon as she crossed the threshold of the dining room, she realised her error. There, hollow-eyed and sipping a cup of tea, was Henry. He looked as if he’d barely slept. Unshaven and tousled, he was almost more attractive than ever, Cat thought hopelessly.

He gave her a wan smile. ‘Good morning.’

Cat nodded. ‘Morning, Henry.’ She turned her back and moved to the sideboard to pour herself some coffee.

He cleared his throat. ‘I think I was a bit rough on you last night,’ he said. ‘I should know by now how you girls love to dramatise every little incident in your lives. I know from Ellie how little it means in reality.’

Cat couldn’t quite believe her ears. Her heart soared in her chest. She turned to him, her face radiant. ‘I can’t believe you said that. Thank you, Henry. Thank you so much. You have no idea how crap I’ve been feeling.’

He shrugged. ‘Let’s just draw a line under it and move on. We don’t want one silly indiscretion to ruin your time here with us.’

Cat piled a bowl with cereal and sat down with him. ‘I won’t forget or defend what I did. But I am sorry. And I don’t want it to spoil things between the three of us.’ She knew she was remarkably lucky to have achieved this measure of clemency, given the alarming and insulting nature of her suspicions. Slowly, it was beginning to dawn on her that the books she had read and the dramas she had watched had brought her to Northanger Abbey determined to discover dark secrets, set on scaring herself silly.

She recalled the feelings she’d harboured before she even arrived. She’d been infatuated with the idea of Northanger, regardless of what the reality might be. Engrossing and enthralling though the Hebridean Harpies were, horrifying and heart-stopping though the fictional world of vampires was, they were not source books on the life and habits of the Scottish landed classes. There might be distant and exotic places where such things were commonplace, but here in the Borders, the chances were slim that life was going to imitate art.

It was time to let it go. Cat had to start seeing the world as it was, not as she dreamed it. People were not angels or devils. Even in her darkest imaginings, she had still been forced to consider the General’s magnanimity. And she must acknowledge to herself that, even with such paragons as Henry and Ellie, some slight imperfection might eventually appear. Everyone had shades of grey between the black and the white of their extreme characteristics. It was just that some, like the General, were less amiable than others.

Having now made her mind up on these points, Cat felt much less tremulous about the prospects for the rest of her stay. There was one point, however, on which she still sought reassurance. ‘You won’t tell them, will you? You won’t tell Ellie or your father what an ass I made of myself?’

Henry shook his head. ‘I think you’ve suffered enough, being lectured in the middle of the night by me. I won’t say a word, Cat. Now, since I’m here all day, what shall we do? Do you fancy a run out to Kelso? Or Coldstream? See some civilisation and check out your Facebook and Twitter? See what’s been happening in the world?’

Distracted by his mention of social media, she said, ‘Did you see anyone in Edinburgh? The Allens? Bella? My brother?’

Henry got up to fetch some food. With his back to her, he said, ‘I was working. Life still goes on for some of us, even during the festivals.’

‘So, no news? You didn’t even see your brother?’

He flashed a quick glance over his shoulder. ‘No. Nothing to report.’ He returned to the table just as Ellie came in. They soon hatched a plan to drive up to Kelso and on to Coldstream for lunch so Cat could see something of the small Borders towns whose identity had been forged generations before, when they were at the heart of the Debatable Lands constantly fought over by the English and the Scots. It was a prospect of far more delight than Cat could have imagined possible on waking. She was determined to make the most of it.