The Shadow of Sin

Chapter One ~ 1821-2

It was over a year ago and she was not quite seventeen. She learnt that there was no question of her joining the party that evening or appearing at any other meals.

“You are too young,” Giles explained. “Besides, it is going to be a very sophisticated party, the sort his Lordship enjoys.”

“Who is this new friend of yours?” Celesta had asked him.

“Well, he is not exactly a friend,” Giles replied with a grin, “except that I like to think so. He is much older than I am and very important. I cannot tell you, Celesta, how kind he has been to me.”

“In what way?” Celesta had wanted to know.

“Well, he has shown me the ropes, introduced me to all the right Clubs and taught me how to gamble for that matter.”

“Gamble?”

“You don’t suppose I am going to lead a life like Papa’s, do you?” Giles asked. “For one thing this estate is not big enough to keep a man occupied and anyway I have no use for the country when I might be in London.”

“But, Giles, you have always been so fond of the – country,” Celesta protested. “You always said you would rather have a good day’s hunting than go to a hundred parties.”

“That was before I knew what parties, real parties, were like,” Giles said with an almost ecstatic expression on his face. “You should see some of the places I have been to with his Lordship!”

Then he laughed.

“No, you should not. It is the last thing you should see! But I can tell you, Celesta, I felt a real greenhorn when I first arrived in London. Now I am becoming what they call a very ‘Tulip of Fashion’!”

“Does that make you – happy?” Celesta queried.

“It makes me enjoy myself. I only wish to God I had more money! That is the only snag.”

For a moment he was silent and then he had sighed,

“My luck must change and when it does – ”

“Oh, Giles, do be careful,” Celesta had begged him, but even as she spoke she sensed that he was not listening to her.

She had peeped at the party through the banisters when they arrived in the oak-panelled hall and she watched them for a little while from behind the oak screen in the Minstrels’ Gallery while they were at dinner.

They had sat down thirty that night and never had Celesta imagined women could be so alluringly beautiful or wear such décolleté evening gowns.

She had blushed when she realised how revealing the gowns were. Then she told herself that high above them in the Minstrels’ Gallery was not the right way to judge their appearance but at ground level.

As course succeeded course and the wine Giles had brought from London flowed very freely, it seemed to her that the party was growing very noisy.

Then Nana had dragged her away from the Minstrels’ Gallery.

“It’s not a sight I want you to see, Miss Celesta,” she had said. “Master Giles should be ashamed of himself bringin’ women like that to his home!”

“What is wrong with them?” Celesta had asked.

But Nana had only pressed her lips together and looked so disapproving that Celesta had been awed into silence.

She had not seen Lord Crawthorne because Giles had seated him at the end of the table so that he had his back to Celesta peeping down from the Minstrels’ Gallery,

She did notice, however, that his hair was growing a little thin on top and even at that distance she could see that there were threads of grey amongst the neatly arranged curls.

She had hoped that she might get a sight of his Lordship the following day, but he had left early, not Giles hastened to add, because he had not enjoyed himself, but because he had a horse running at Epsom and wished to attend the Race Meeting.

The rest of the party had stayed on until, before Celesta had expected them to do so, they all returned to London.

“When will you be coming back, Giles?” she had asked her brother.

“When I have nowhere better to go,” he had replied. “I am going to Newmarket next week to stay with Hubert and the week after that to York where Freddie has tremendous plans to amuse us.”

“I am so glad you are enjoying yourself,” Celesta said with all sincerity.

“I have never had so much fun in my life!” Giles declared. “It is only – ”

He stopped.

“It is only what?” Celesta enquired.

“So damned expensive!” he answered. “But his Lordship tells me that fortune favours the brave and I believe him.”

*

Celesta had not seen Giles again for six months.

Then he had come down to The Priory, removed nearly all the pictures, and told her that he was shutting up the house.

“How you can spend so much money, I don’t know!” he exclaimed angrily when she had shown him the housekeeping bills.

“We got rid of all the young servants when you wrote to us three months ago,” Celesta said, her eyes worried. “You cannot turn off old Bateson and Mrs. Hopkins. They have both been with us – for over forty years.”

“I am not a charitable institution,” Giles snarled.

Celesta looked at him in consternation. He seemed to have altered in the last year.

His features had sharpened and there was something almost unpleasant about his eyes and the line of his mouth.

“Are you very hard-up, Giles?” she asked with some perception.

“I am practically below hatches,” he snapped. “However the pictures ought to bring in something.”

“You are selling them?”

“Of course I am! I have to get some money from somewhere.”

“But, Giles – they are a part of our history – Papa always said so. They have been handed down from father to son for generations. You cannot sell them.”

“For God’s sake stop nagging, Celesta,” Giles shouted at her. “I have enough worries without you nattering on about some mouldy old canvasses that have been hanging on the walls where no one ever notices them. I want money, I tell you. I want to enjoy myself! Is there nothing else in this dump I can sell?”

He had walked round the house, looking into every room and disparaging everything he saw.

The Priory was beautiful, to Celesta, the most beautiful building in the world, but her father had left it very much as he had inherited it and the furniture was ancient but not particularly valuable.

The Jacobean chests of drawers, refectory tables and carved oak chairs, were all in perfect keeping with the ancient mullioned windows, the oak panelling and the plasterwork on the ceilings, but they were not of fine enough workmanship to be worth much money.

The velvet curtains, damask-covered chairs and carved four-posters would, Celesta knew all too well, fetch very little away from the background that they blended into so harmoniously.

In the end Giles had departed with the pictures and a few gold ornaments that Celesta could remember her father and mother using on very special occasions.

He also took the silver dishes made in the reign of King Charles II that bore the Wroxley Coat of Arms. They were seldom used because there had not been enough servants to clean them.

Giles had also given specific instructions before he left. The gardeners were to be dismissed and old Bloss was to retire to a small cottage at the end of the village.

Mrs. Hopkins and Bateson were given small pensions and Celesta and Nana were to move into the Garden Cottage.

Since that time Celesta had not heard from him again.

She fortunately had a minute income of her own. Her grandmother on her death had left a small sum to both her grandchildren and Celesta’s share brought her in approximately fifty pounds a year.

It was just enough for her and Nana to live on, if they were not extravagant, as they did not have to pay rent. But it left very little for luxuries such as gowns, hats, shoes and other clothes.

‘Fortunately I need very little,’ Celesta professed to herself.

It was Nana who minded most that she was not fashionably dressed.

“For whom should I wear – the latest fashion?” Celesta had often asked her.

And for once Nana had no ready answer to that question.

As she finished her luncheon, Celesta wondered what could be upsetting Nana.

She had thought to tell her about the stranger who had behaved so badly in the peach house, but then knew that she could not explain her own reprehensible behaviour and therefore it would be better to say nothing.

Nana came back into the room.

“I’ve brought you a cup of coffee, Miss Celesta, and I thought you could have a peach to end the meal. Where did you put them?”

“I left them in the peach house,” Celesta said quickly. “I had not quite finished picking them.”

“Oh, well, you can have one for your supper,” Nana suggested.

She put the cup of coffee down beside Celesta and then stood, her hands crossed over each other on her white apron.

“Now what is it, Nana?” Celesta asked gently.

“It’s somethin’ Mr. Copple told me just half an hour ago,” Nana answered, “when he delivered the newspaper.”

Celesta waited with a faint smile on her lips.

Mr. Copple, the village postman, was an inveterate gossip. There was nothing that went on in Wroxley village that he not only knew but was also ready to repeat almost before it happened.

Although Nana had claimed that it was extravagant for Celesta to go on taking The Morning Post as her father had always done, it would have been a sad day if there had been no excuse for Mr. Copple to knock at the cottage door.

“What dramatic crisis can have happened in the village?” Celesta asked as Nana did not speak.

“I can’t believe it’s true, but Mr. Copple says that a Nobleman with a whole carriage load of servants has arrived at The Priory and it’s said that the estate now belongs to him!”

“A Nobleman?” Celesta repeated in a very low voice. “Who is he? And how can he own The Priory?”

“Mr. Copple says,” Nana answered, and her voice was low, “that Master Giles has lost it gamin’.”

“I don’t believe it!”

Celesta rose to her feet as she spoke.

“It cannot be true! It cannot, Nana!”

“That’s what I said, Miss Celesta, but there’s no doubt that the gentleman is there and Mr. Copple tells me there are more servants comin’ this afternoon.”

Celesta put her hand up to her forehead.

She could not believe it and yet something at the back of her mind told her that she had known all along that Giles would dispose of The Priory if he had nothing else left.

‘How could he? How could he?” she whispered to herself.

The Priory where the Wroxleys had lived for over five hundred years had always seemed to Celesta the most beautiful place in the world. It was her home and it was Giles’s as well.

How could he have thrown it away at the turn of a card? How could he have thought so little of his inheritance that having stripped the walls he had now dispossessed himself of The Priory itself?

“There must be some mistake,” she said aloud.

“I hope so, I very much hope so,” Nana remarked.

“What is the name of the gentleman – who now owns it?” Celesta asked.

She thought even as she spoke the words that she knew the answer.

“Mr. Copple’s not certain,” Nana answered, “but he thinks – ”

She was interrupted by a sudden loud rat-tat on the front door.

The knocker was being applied forcefully, so forcefully that the whole cottage seemed to vibrate to it.

“Now who could that be?” Nana asked. “If it be one of them pestilential boys, who knows that they should come to the back door, I’ll give him a piece of my mind!”

She hurried from the dining room and across the tiny hall.

Celesta sat down in the chair she had just vacated, her legs feeling curiously weak.

She knew that she had already met the new owner of The Priory, who, mistaking her for a labourer’s daughter, had treated her with the familiarity that her appearance had invited.

She could hear Nana speaking at the door.

When she came back to the dining room, she was holding in her hand the basket of peaches that Celesta had left in the peach house.

“I don’t understand it, Miss Celesta, and that’s a fact,” Nana burbled.

“Who was that?” Celesta asked.

“’Twas a groom from The Priory. He hands me the peaches, says his Lordship’s compliments and he hopes he may have the honour of callin’ on Miss Celesta Wroxley at three o’clock this afternoon.”

Celesta drew in her breath.

“No! No! I cannot see him!”