Garth of Tregillis by Henrietta Reid Read Free Book Online

misery and joy. It was not hard to believe that it could be haunted.
    It was as I was passing a narrow dark passage that lay off the main corridor that I had got the fright that made me sleepless and nervous for the rest of the night. It was a short narrow passage that I was to learn later led to an unused staircase. I had been almost past it when I felt a bony hand grasp my arm. I gave a loud scream of alarm, for a tall, angular woman stood in the shadows, grasping me in a vice-like grip.
    She clicked her tongue. ‘Really, girl, must you kick up such a racket? Anyone would think you were being murdered, or at least had seen a ghost.’
    ‘I thought you were one,’ I had said at last, laughing shakily.
    ‘Then you’re a fool,’ she had replied shortly. ‘Although, if I did hold with such superstitious nonsense, I’d believe that poor Giles was wandering around Tregillis looking for justice.’ She had moved forward into the corridor still holding me firmly and I saw she was a tall, ungainly woman, her grey hair chopped roughly in an untidy bob. Her large-boned figure was draped in an unbecoming cardigan and tweed skirt. She was remarkably plain with features that seemed too big and irregular and she gave the impression of glorying in her ugliness and deliberately accentuating it by the drabness of her clothes.
    ‘You’re the new governess, aren’t you?’ she asked abruptly. ‘I saw you arriving: my room overlooks the front of the house.’
    I had nodded. ‘I’m to be tutor to a French child.’
    ‘Tutor—governess! What odds does it make?’ she said irritably.
    I had smiled shakily. ‘Well, governess sounds so dismal—don’t you agree?’
    She nodded. ‘Yes, I agree. You see, I was a governess myself for years. Then Giles offered me a home here. It was like heaven to get my freedom again.’
    ‘You must be Cousin Eunice,’ I had said with a feeling of discovery.
    She nodded, and said with bitter derision, ‘Yes, I’m poor dear Cousin Eunice who’s a bit odd and lives in Tregillis like a mouse in the wainscoting. Although actually I’m not a cousin—just a far-out relation of poor Giles. But he was such a good, wonderful person. I owe him everything, for even now that he’s dead Garth won’t fling me out. He daren’t. I know too much,’ she had added, then stared frowningly ahead, and I had realized that for the moment she had forgotten my presence.
    Gently I had eased my arm from her claw-like grasp.
    Hastily she withdrew her hand. ‘Sorry,’ she said abruptly, ‘but at first I thought it was that little fiend Melinda. If I’d found her sneaking around I intended to box her ears. She’d play havoc with my work if she could lay hands on it.’
    ‘Your work?’
    She nodded. ‘I’m writing a history of the Seaton family. It’s to be a sort of posthumous tribute to poor Giles.’ Then, almost wistfully, she had added, ‘You wouldn’t care to look at it, would you?’
    I had hesitated, then as I saw her gaze fixed on me eagerly, nodded. There must be so few who would bear with her oddities.
    ‘Yes, I’d like to, thanks—’ I hesitated, not knowing what to call her.
    ‘You must call me Eunice,’ she had said. ‘Everyone else does,’
    and she had led the way along the narrow passage and up a flight of twisting uncarpeted stairs.
    The room she led me into had been a sort of attic which I saw she had converted into a makeshift study. Piles of books lay on the floor and at a small table at the window there was a bundle of manuscript. ‘I’m at the Civil War now,’ she had told me.
    ‘Oh yes, Paul Newsom was explaining to me how the S’s were reversed to show Stuart sympathy.’
    ‘Paul Newsom! A nice boy, but much deeper than he appears!
    Don’t be deceived by that boyish air of his. I shouldn’t be surprised, if all were known, that there is not much love lost between himself and Garth. But perhaps I’m just being suspicious.’ While she spoke she crossed to the table at the