The Fitzwarren Inheritance Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Psychic’s Tale Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  The Soldier’s Tale Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  The Lord’s Tale Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About the Authors

  Dedication

  For Tray, Eva, Di, and Gayle, as always.

  Thank you for your support.

  From a book written in 1899: The History of Steeple Westford by the Rev. Horace Simpkins

  So in the autumn of the year 1644, Jonathan Curtess cursed Belvedere Fitzwarren, saying, “I curse you and your children’s children, that you shall all live out your allotted years, and that those years shall be filled with grief and loss and betrayal, even as you have betrayed and bereaved me.”

  Chapter One

  Mark finished reading the page, then closed the small leather-bound book and pushed it away from him.

  “Where did you find this?” he asked, interested despite the unease in his gut.

  “I found it in the Records and Resources section of Branches. It’s an online genealogy site,” his grandmother added helpfully. “It’s amazing what you can find on the Web.”

  “No argument there. Okay, so we’re descended from this Curtess bloke,” he said, taking off his glasses and dropping them into his shirt pocket. “But I don’t see what it’s supposed to do with us.” Alice didn’t say anything. Just pursed her lips and glared, a surprisingly effective tactic despite her round cheerful features framed by untidy curls of thick white hair. “I wish you’d never started this genealogy craze. Just let it go.”

  “I can’t. We can’t.” Her green eyes blazed with crusading zeal, and Mark groaned quietly to himself. “An injustice was done,” she continued, “and nothing can repair the damage it’s already caused. But it has to end. If I could walk farther than the end of the street, I’d do it myself. I can’t, so it’s up to you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Even as he said it, Mark knew he was wasting his breath. Once his grandmother got the bit between her teeth, she took off like a metaphorical racehorse—or in this case, a warhorse—and it would take an Act of God to deflect her. Sometimes he regretted introducing her to the Internet, especially when she started hunting down records of ancestors and discovering some interesting characters. The Renfrews, it seemed, were descended from an infamous warlock. Or witch. Or sorcerer…

  “I looked them up in the phone book. The Fitzwarrens still live in Steeple Westford, and the curse is still working. I found the archive site of the local paper, and Sir Charles Fitzwarren and his eldest son were killed in a car crash ten years ago. A tree fell on them in that terrible storm. No one found them until the next day. Poor souls.”

  “Gran, accidents happen. Uncle Harry died falling off a ladder. Dad was pissed as a newt and drove his car into a tree. No one had cursed them as far as I know.”

  She took no notice, just carried on over him. “Sir Charles left a wife, three sons and a daughter. Since then, the next eldest boy has died of leukaemia, and soon after that, their mother took an overdose. You have to do something, Mark.” Two pairs of green eyes locked gazes and glowered at each other. Mark looked away first, a wry amusement twitching his lips.

  “Yes, Gran,” he sighed, humouring her. “What, exactly? How am I supposed to break a centuries old curse that’s probably made up out of whole cloth by an enterprising yokel to impress the tourists?”

  “How would I know?” Alice snapped. “All I can do is interpret dreams and field the occasional premonition.

  You’re the high-powered psychic. You work it out!” She never referred to him as a medium, preferring the more general term for some reason she didn’t seem to feel obliged to properly explain. “Pass me my knitting and make me a cup of tea, there’s a dear. And help yourself to the fruit cake. You’re too skinny! Even your boyfriends say so.”

  That complaint reared its head every time he visited. “They do not!” Mark protested. “Paddy said I had interesting bones, that’s all, and I haven’t been with him for over a year.”

  “Exactly!” she said triumphantly.

  “He was talking about my face,” he reminded her. “He’s a professional photographer, so I’ll take it as a compliment.”

  “Too skinny,” Alice insisted. “If you ever relaxed and stayed still long enough to sunbathe, they could use your ribs as a xylophone, and I’m still waiting for that tea.”

  Muttering under his breath, Mark retreated to the small kitchen and busied himself with kettle and teapot. No teabags for Alice Renfrew. Oh, no. Had to be Twinings Darjeeling loose-leaf tea brewed in her Royal Doulton teapot and drunk from a mismatched Royal Doulton cup and saucer. He smiled affectionately as he waited for the kettle to boil. At eighty-six, Alice lived in a warden-assisted ground floor flat in Wilton and, on good days, tottered with her walker frame as far as the nearby post office. On bad days she used her Broomstick, the scarlet mobility scooter that had inspired the local kids to grant her the nickname of Hell’s Granny. But, frail though her plump body might often be, her mind and her wit were still sharp.

  Most of the time. He visited Alice once a month, staying for a few days to do any odd jobs she needed and driving her out to her favourite haunts. It was no hardship.

  Alice had been an anchor and safe harbour most of Mark’s life. For as far back as he could remember, his father had spent most of his waking hours in a whisky bottle. Edward Renfrew had died when Mark was ten, when Mark’s own psychic ability had begun to show up with unsettling frequency. His mother couldn’t cope with either event. By the time Mark reached fourteen, he’d become pretty sure he was gay, and that proved the final straw for Sally. She could not, would not, accept it. She had simply walked out of his life, married her long-term boy toy and moved to Spain. Twelve years on, the only times he had any contact from her were cards every Christmas.

  Saccharinely pious, religious cards.

  “I’m serious, you know,” Alice called, jolting him out of his reverie. “You have the Renfrew Talent, even stronger than your dad—”

  “And he drank himself to death because of it,” Mark interrupted.

  “Only because he wouldn’t use it! Poor Ed…” She heaved a sigh loud enough to be audible even in the kitchen. “He fought it. You don’t.”

  He didn’t respond to that. He used the uncomfortable gift, yes, but from deep cover. He was a research assistant for the Bristol-based Goldstream Media and its main product, the highly successful and critically slated, The Dominic Waldron Experience. The paranormal reality show would descend on a given setting with phenomena-detecting gizmos and cameras, and Waldron would reveal the ghostly apparitions and their stories to an awestruck audience. Contrary to his publicity, Waldron was about as psychic as a wet paper bag. Mark wasn’t. He found the sites, found the names and dates from the restless dead, did the conventional research and passed it on to his immediate boss, who presented it to the star and got together with the script writers to produce the scripts for him. And none of them knew why or how Mark was so very good at rooting out all the obscure informat
ion.

  Exactly the way Mark liked it.

  The kettle whistled, and he warmed the pot before spooning in the leaves and filling it up. Letting it stand for the requisite four minutes, he thought about the Reverend Simpkins’ old book. Steeple Westford was about fifty-five miles away from his home-base in Bristol, and a ten-minute drive from here in Wilton. If the story had some basis in fact, it might make a good venue for a future show. He could kill two birds with one stone. So to speak. It wouldn’t be that far out of his way to do an initial reconnaissance while heading back home tomorrow, and it wasn’t as if he had anyone to go home to these days. Mark pushed his fingers through hair as thick and untidily curling as his grandmother’s. He had inherited the Renfrew mane, that wouldn’t answer to styling, and the chestnut colour, more than brown and not quite auburn. He probably wouldn’t go bald with age, but he would almost certainly be prematurely grey. Just like Alice.

  “So this is one of your premonitions?” he asked.

  “Yes. A strong one.”

  Mark gave in to the inevitable. “Okay, Gran, I’ll look into it,” he said. “But I’m promising nothing.”

  * * * *

  Steeple Westford turned out to be a large village just on the Wiltshire side of the Wiltshire/Dorset border.

  Once it had been centred around St. Michael’s, an elegant country church in a pleasantly refined blending of Decorated and Perpendicular architecture, and the older shops were still there, along with the post office. But the construction of a council estate in the fifties had formed another centre around a small supermarket, a modern pub called the Slug and Lettuce, a hair salon and a fish and chip shop. There were two more inns, one at each end of the High Street—the Highwayman and the Red Lion.

  Mark chose to try for lunch at the Red Lion, it being the oldest by several centuries, and more likely to have ghostly happenings that might be useful fodder for Waldron’s TV show. The structure was from the fifteenth century, while the other had a Georgian facade. Inside, the main saloon lived up to its promise of age. Black timbers stretched across the ceilings, patterned the pale yellow walls and framed the crooked windows. The only level line in the place was formed by the bar itself, a Victorian affair in rich mahogany. Even the massive stone mantel over the huge hearth had a slight angle. Though still summer-warm outside, a faint smell of wood smoke drifted over the scents of beer and furniture polish, and he could easily imagine logs burning in the wide grate during autumn and winter.

  Mark leaned on the bar and inspected the menu, finally opting for chicken and chips, then retreated with his beer to a table by the window. At the next table along sat a man of about his own age, poring over large photographs spread across his table. His long black hair hung forward, partially screening his profile, and he hummed quietly to himself as he scribbled in a dog-eared shorthand notebook.

  Incurably curious, Mark craned his neck to see what the photos were, but could make nothing of them. They looked like something downloaded from Google Earth.

  Then the man glanced around, and Mark found himself caught by silver eyes with a dark ring around the edge of their irises, eyes that crinkled at the corners and were set in a lean, deeply tanned face with a mischievous smile. That smile and the light in the man’s gaze sank deep into Mark’s consciousness and resonated through his blood.

  That the stranger had wide shoulders and powerful arms, both displayed well by his blue tee-shirt, was an added bonus. Not even the white logo Archaeologists do it in trenches dampened Mark’s interest. If they were in the bar of the Chartreuse Room, one of the gathering places for gays in Bristol, he would have done his damnedest to connect with him.

  “Um,” Mark fumbled for words, unaccountably short of breath. “Sorry, just being nosy. About the photos.”

  “It’s okay.” The man pushed a couple closer to the edge and nearer to Mark. “They’re aerial shots of the local farms.”

  “Oh.” And because he wanted to keep the man talking, he blurted out the first thing that came into his head. “Surveying?”

  “Well…” He considered that with his head tilted to one side, mouth slightly pursed. “Not quite. But close.” He sat up straight and held out his hand. “Jack Faulkner.”

  “Mark Renfrew,” he replied, taking the hand and shaking it.

  “Nice to meet you, Mark.” Jack didn’t seem to be in a hurry to let go of his hand. His smile widened a little, revealing a single dimple in his left cheek, and Mark’s heart jumped a beat. Was that interest or wishful thinking on his part? It unnerved him a little that he couldn’t be sure. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” Jack said, and Mark took his hand back with a jerk, feeling his colour rising.

  “Okay,” he said. “So what have you got here?”

  “Look at these,” Jack said, tapping the aerial photographs. They threatened to slide from the table to the floor, and he lunged to recapture the escapees. He anchored them with his empty beer glass and looked across at Mark.

  “These were taken during one of the hottest, driest summers in the last twenty years, and look at what they’re showing. See these?” Mark automatically took out his glasses and slipped them on. Jack pointed to a series of marks in a brown field. They showed as dark and light outlines of what might be the floor plan of a building. “This could be a second century AD corridor villa, and these,” he said, tracing curving lines that radiated away from and around the possible villa, “are probably ditches and banks that could signify an earlier British farming settlement. In case you didn’t guess, I’m an archaeologist.”

  His enthusiasm seemed genuine, and Mark found himself suddenly at ease with him. “Well, the tee-shirt was a clue,” he said. “So you’re going to excavate that?”

  “Nope. Not me, unfortunately. I’m a freelance.”

  “Indiana Jones?” Mark suggested slyly. Jack rolled his eyes.

  “If I had a pound for every Indie-joke, I’d be a bloody millionaire,” he grumbled, his smile widening to a grin. “I take on short-term contracts anywhere I’m wanted. For instance, I’ve just spent a season on Crete, second-in-command of the excavation of a fourteenth century BC Minoan palace, and now I’m on a contract to find suitable training digs for the University of Bristol. Which means my bank account is healthy, I’m driving around the English countryside in classic Indian summer weather, and I’m finding some of the best pub grub and beer available. All in all, life is pretty good.”

  “Footloose and fancy free,” Mark said lightly. That grin was blinding against the man’s deep tan and gave his already handsome features, a certain gypsy rover charm.

  The untidy mane of black hair falling around his shoulders added to the image, and Mark silently thanked God he was sitting down when his cock began to show an inordinate amount of interest in Jack Faulkner. Oh, please let him be gay…

  “Oh, yes. That’s me. Your turn.”

  “I’m a research assistant for a TV company in Bristol, but right now I’m doing some family research.”

  Which was no lie. His grandmother had given him a list of names as well as the curse-breaking assignment. He did not want it known he had connections to Goldstream or the very well known Waldron just yet. “My gran has been bitten by the genealogy bug, and as she’s virtually housebound, I’ve been tasked to check gravestones, parish records, talk to locals, and take as many photos as possible.”

  “Sounds like a good way to spend a day or two.”

  There was that dimple again.

  Mark cleared his throat. “Um, yes, it is, actually. So I’m planning to be here for a couple of days if I can book in somewhere,” he heard himself say.

  “No kidding?” Jack answered with pleased surprise, and Mark’s cheeks grew hotter. “Then later on we can update each other on our various projects.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Mark said weakly, and couldn’t think of anything else to say. Rescue came in the shape of his meal, which turned out to be half a roast bird, a mountain of chips, and a large portion of fres
h salad on a plate approximately the size of a dustbin lid.

  Jack scooped his photos into a sheaf and slid them into a folder. “So I’ll see you later,” he said cheerfully. “Ask at the bar about rooms. They do bed and breakfast here, and the breakfasts are great.”

  Did that mean Jack was staying at the inn? If so, all the more reason to book in. “Thanks, I will.” Mark watched him walk out, taking note of the long legs and strong thighs showing to good advantage in well-worn, close-fitting jeans. “Oh, God,” he sighed. “I need my head read.” While he wasn’t in the closet, neither did he broadcast his sexuality to the skies. He didn’t often indulge in random pickups, but his attraction to Jack had been immediate. He hastily reviewed his brief conversation with the archaeologist. Had Jack been flirting or was he deluding himself? He couldn’t decide. He would just have to play it by ear from now on, until he could be sure either way.

  * * * *

  There was a room available at the Red Lion. Like the saloon downstairs, level surfaces were in short supply.

  The floor had a slight tilt down towards the outside wall, and the double bed faced the window, its two end legs wedged up on shallow wooden blocks. The wardrobe and dressing table were similarly adapted to the eccentric flooring, and a comfortable-looking, high-backed armchair faced a small TV in the corner. Mark dumped his holdall on the bed and gazed out of the window at the view. The tower of the church soared above beech and oak trees not yet showing autumn colours, and beyond them the downs rose in smooth curves of patchwork fields, green and brown and stubble-gold. It was peaceful as well as beautiful, and he opened the window to breathe in the fresh air. Off in the distance he could hear a tractor chugging away. Close by, a dog barked, pigeons purred and cooed, and sparrows squabbled in the bushes below. All of it was a far cry from his second floor flat in Staple Hill, a suburb of Bristol. But at least his job allowed him to visit places like this right across the country.