Something emanating from Jack captured Belle’s attention and her eyes moved to him.
She saw he was studying her grandmother contemplatively. Belle remembered that he owned one of her pieces and he likely was interested in her grandmother’s remark.
It was then Belle decided she’d show him the pictures. She never showed them to anyone, unless her friends came to the cottage and most of her friends had no idea they were in the presence of famous but secret masterpieces and Belle didn’t tell them.
Jack, Belle guessed, would know.
And Jack, Belle guessed again, would appreciate the opportunity of a viewing.
“All right then, I’ll try to tell it with no embellishment,” Joy said, not sounding at all happy and pulling at Belle’s attention.
Belle looked from Jack to Jack’s mother as she began.
“Over two hundred years ago, I think it was 1798, or something like that, the master of this castle was named Joshua Bennett,” Joy started. “He was known to be very clever, somewhat forbidding, quite accomplished, shockingly handsome and a complete womaniser.”
“Is this necessary to the story?” Jack asked, though it wasn’t a question, as such, more a demand for his mother to move along to the important stuff.
“I have to give the back story,” Joy protested.
“No you don’t,” Jack retorted.
“The back story is the best part!” Yasmin repeated (almost) her words of minutes before. Jack’s gaze swung to her and she clamped her mouth shut under the heat of it.
“I’m giving the back story,” Joy declared mutinously. Jack shook his head with frustration and Joy carried on, “Meanwhile, living in the village, was a woman named Brenna Addison. Brenna was known to be very sweet and very pretty but also quite quiet. Brenna had made a bad marriage. Not that her husband wasn’t well-to-do, he was a wealthy merchant, but that he didn’t treat her very well.”
“What do you mean, he didn’t treat her very well?” Rachel asked.
“He beat her and you have to know it had to be bad because that was likely very hush-hush at the time and probably not entirely frowned upon but everyone knows it happened. It’s an integral part of the story,” Joy answered, throwing an obstinate glare at Jack as if daring him to challenge this fact.
Jack stayed silent and Mom and Gram’s eyes moved to Belle.
She didn’t see them, she felt them but she ignored them and kept her own gaze glued to Joy who continued telling the story.
“Brenna and Joshua didn’t meet until after Brenna’s husband had taken some voyage and his ship had wrecked. Everyone assumed he was dead. The story goes that no one was sad to hear it because Brenna was a lovely girl and everyone in the village liked her,” Joy recounted. “Joshua and Brenna did meet, however, at a ball in the drawing room of this very castle. They say they fell in love the minute their eyes met and they were virtually inseparable from that moment on. Within mere months of meeting, they were married and quickly thereafter had two children, Lewis first, then Myrtle. Lewis was the vision of Joshua, Myrtle the exact same of Brenna. They were all very happy, Joshua settled down, Brenna blossomed under his devotion and the children grew up in a house of love.”
Yasmin moved, lifting her feet up to the edge of the chair, wrapping her arms around her calves and resting her chin on her knees, obviously settling in for the good part.
Belle felt a tiny shiver slide through her because, she suspected, since the child ghosts were, firstly, children and, secondly, ghosts, the good part was really the bad part.
Joy went on with the story. “The problem was, Caleb Caldwell, Brenna’s first husband, had not died in the shipwreck. He survived. Without his health then, after he recovered, without any money or papers and being a long, long way away, it took him years to get home but he finally did. Needless to say, he was not happy to find that his wife had married another in his absence and bore him two children. They say what made him even more incensed was that Brenna was happy, delightfully happy with her new family, far happier than she ever was with him.”
Joy drew in a breath and continued.
“He didn’t look himself, older, thinner and with significant scars, no one recognised him. He came back to the village and learned what he learned but he never shared who he was. Instead, he plotted against Joshua, Brenna and their children.”
“I don’t think I like this,” Belle whispered and realised she was pressing herself into Jack’s side and his arm was tighter around her shoulders.
Even though she realised this and normally she would move away, she absolutely did not even consider such an action.
Instead, she too, lifted her feet so her heels were in the couch and dropped her knees so her legs were resting on Jack’s thigh. She turned into him and put one arm around his stomach, the other one she burrowed so it could wrap around his back. Then she put her cheek on his shoulder and held on.
As she was doing this, Jack gave her a squeeze and said softly, “Poppet, it’s just a story. It’s a sad one but it happened a long time ago.”
Belle nodded against his shoulder even though she didn’t feel the least bit better at what he said.
“I’ll hurry through the sad part, darling,” Joy assured her and then, as promised, swiftly went on. “Obviously, he killed them. He waited until Joshua was away on some business trip, he snuck into the castle, suffocated the children in their beds, dragged Brenna to the cliffs and threw her into the sea.”
“Oh my God,” Rachel breathed.