Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

“I remember the last time I was here,” Daniel said. “You could tell she couldn’t wait until we were gone.”

“We brought in the real world,” Susannah agreed. “Life. She lived in that strange half-world of hers. I never understood why she wrote such bleak poetry. Well, not counting Wings of Fire, of course. Scent of Violets and Lucifer gave me the creeps, I can tell you! But then she was a cripple. They’re often dreary people anyway, suffering and wretched. I suppose her mind dwelt on such things.”

“She wasn’t dreary,” Rachel said suddenly. “And she wasn’t truly crippled. I think we bored her.”

“Don’t be silly,” Daniel said. “That’s ridiculous. Her family?”

“It’s true! For the past six or seven years I’ve had the feeling she didn’t need us. That her life was full, that she had all she wanted right here.”

“I don’t know how Nicholas put up with it all these years,” Susannah said, glaring at Rachel. “I’d have gone mad!”

“Livia told me once that he was paying a debt,” Stephen remembered out of nowhere. “Odd thing to say, wasn’t it? I asked what sort of debt, and she said a debt of blood.” He got up and limped over to the drinks table and poured himself another whiskey.

Cormac said, “Oh, for God’s sake!” And sat down again, impatient with the lot of them.

“I don’t want to stay the night here,” Susannah said, looking up at her husband as she changed the subject. “We’ll find rooms at The Three Bells.”

“Don’t be morbid!” Daniel told her. “Mrs. Trepol has already made up our rooms here.”

“I’m not morbid! This place is morbid! It’s like a hothouse where something unhealthy thrived. And it was never that way while Mother was alive.” She glanced up at the elegantly framed portrait over the hearth. Rosamund Beatrice Trevelyan, who’d had three husbands and children by each of them, loving them all with equal devotion, stared back at her with a half smile that captured both serenity and passion. The artist had found more than just beauty in the face he’d painted. “Mother had such life! Such warmth. There was always laughter, brightness, here. And that’s all disappeared, it-it drained away without our knowing it, after she died. I’ve come to hate the Hall. I never actually realized that until now. And after dinner we’re leaving.”

“I’ll go with you, if you don’t mind. I’d-rather not stay, either,” Rachel said, but for reasons of her own. There were ghosts here. She knew it now. She, who’d never believed in ghosts in her life, believed in them here. Not things in sheets that moaned and rattled chains. Those she could handle. These were… different.

“You haven’t decided-” Cormac began.

“Sell,” Susannah said, and Daniel nodded. After a moment, Rachel sighed and with a single movement of her head acknowledged her agreement.

“Over my dead body.” Stephen promised. “In the courts if need be, but I’ll fight you. This house ought to be preserved!”

“Selling is the soundest move you could make,” Cormac said. “Put it off, and you’ll find yourselves taking a loss. That’s a majority, then? When the wills are read tomorrow, you should instruct Chambers accordingly. As to the furniture, you might draw up lists of what you each want. And if there should be any conflict-”

“We’re not touching a stick of furniture until this has been settled,” Stephen said stubbornly, his jaw tight and his face flushed.

“Let Chambers work out a compromise. Agreed? What you don’t want personally, you should put up for sale. With the house, I think. It’ll bring far more that way. People with money enough to buy country houses these days don’t have the proper furnishings to put in them.” He looked around thoughtfully. “I’ve been considering a place in the country myself. I wonder…” With a shrug he let the thought die, then said, “I suppose it’s nostalgia. I spent a good part of my own life here too.”

“I want Mother’s portrait,” Susannah said immediately. “And there’s the Wedgwood coffee service. I’d like to have that as well. It was Grandmother FitzHugh’s.”

Her husband added, “I’d like to have the trophies for the horse races Rosamund’s stables won. Those ought to stay in the family anyway.”

Cormac said, “I haven’t any right to ask, but I’d like the guns. The ones that came from Ireland with my father. And his collection of walking sticks. They belonged to him before he married Rosamund, so in a sense I have some small claim on them.”

Susannah turned to Rachel. “Is there anything you particularly fancy?” Rosamund had loved Rachel like one of her own. They all had. Nicholas had been deeply fond of her, you could tell that, and they always said Richard-Susannah shivered and refused to think of Richard.

Rachel looked down at her hands, and the glass of sherry they were holding. “I don’t know. Yes, I do!” She lifted her eyes and regarded all of them. “I don’t have any claim on the Cheney side of the family. But, I’d like Nicholas’ collection of ships. The ones he carved. If no one else wishes for them?”

Her glance reached Stephen’s furious face and then she realized how callous it must sound to him, four people coolly coming to terms over the household goods of the newly dead. Her face flushed.

“They haven’t been decently buried for more than three hours!” Stephen said. “You’re ghouls! It’s revolting!”

“Practical, that’s all,” Daniel answered. “Just as well to have it all straight in our minds. What about you?”

“Nothing of mine is leaving here.” He gripped his glass tightly. “And nothing of Olivia’s is to be touched. Do you hear me? Nothing!”

“Then that’s settled,” Susannah said with satisfaction. “And very amicably.” She smiled up at Rosamund’s image again. “Mother would be proud of us, not quarreling.”

“Who’s left to quarrel?” Rachel said pensively. Except for you and Stephen, she added to herself. The youngest, the FitzHughs. I barely remember Anne-only that she and Olivia were so much alike that the adults couldn’t tell them apart. And I could. Now Olivia is dead as well. The end of the Marlowes. And both of the Cheneys are gone too, Richard… and Nicholas. Rachel threw off her deepening depression and pulled herself back to what Stephen was saying.

“Not yet, it isn’t settled!” Stephen fumed. “If Chambers won’t stop you, I’ll find my own lawyers. Bennet will act for me-”

“Don’t be an ass, Stephen,” Cormac said without rancor. “You’ll still lose. And more to the point, so will the family. The courts will agree with the majority-once the family’s dirty wash has been thoroughly aired in all the newspapers. Do any of us want that?”

Mrs. Trepol came to the door to say that dinner was waiting. She looked tired and sad.

Stephen put down his drink and made to follow her.

“Will they? Agree with you?” he asked over his shoulder. “She’s O. A. Manning, remember? That’s bound to count for something. And the fact that none of us is going hungry. You don’t destroy a national heritage as easily as you might a mere family estate.”

Putting down her glass on the small walnut table beside her chair, Rachel watched them walk out the door of the drawing room and across the hall to the dining room. She’d never seen Stephen so angry. Or so determined. She had a very uneasy feeling that it just might come down to a court matter. And in the end, he’d win. Stephen.

Somehow Stephen always seemed to win. Even as a child, he’d been the luckiest of them all. Cornish luck, Rosamund called it. He’d survived four years of bloody war with half a dozen medals for bravery and a reputation for wildly daring heroics. Devil FitzHugh, they’d called him at the Front. Lucky.