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House Of Shadows: Discover the thrilling untold story of the Winter Queen
Nicola Cornick
For fans of Barbara Erskine and Kate Morton comes an unforgettable novel about three women and the power one lie can have over history.London, 1662:There was something the Winter Queen needed to tell him. She fought for the strength to speak.‘The crystal mirror is a danger. It must be destroyed – ‘He replied instantly. ‘It will’.Ashdown, Oxfordshire, present day: Ben Ansell is researching his family tree when he disappears. As his sister Holly begins a desperate search, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to an ornate antique mirror and to the diary of Lavinia, a 19th century courtesan who was living at Ashdown House when it burned to the ground over 200 years ago.Intrigued, and determined to find out more about the tragedy at Ashdown, Holly’s only hope is that uncovering the truth about the past will lead her to Ben.‘Fans of Kate Morton will enjoy this gripping tale.‘– Candis
NICOLA CORNICK is a historian and author. She studied at London University and Ruskin College Oxford and works for the National Trust as a guide at the seventeenth century hunting lodge Ashdown House in Oxfordshire. Her award-winning books are international bestsellers and have been translated into 26 languages.
ISBN: 978-1-474-03808-9
HOUSE OF SHADOWS
© 2015 Nicola Cornick
Published in Great Britain 2015
by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
Version: 2018-06-29
To Andrew, who has lived with my obsession with Ashdown House and William Craven for many years.
All my love as always.
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time.
Rabindranath Tagore
Acknowledgements (#ulink_88c16fea-7f37-5756-8f21-4d933bed68f2)
All my thanks go to my wonderful editor Sally Williamson who had faith in me to write this book and who gave me endless encouragement and support. I’m also hugely grateful to all my writing friends, especially the Word Wenches and the lovely Sarah Morgan for giving me the confidence finally to write the book of my heart.
I am very fortunate to work as part of a great team of volunteers at Ashdown House. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge and for being so much fun to work with. Special thanks go to Maureen Dawson and to Richard Henderson at the National Trust.
I’d also like to thank Denny Andrews for showing me the site of Coleshill House and Neil Fraser for being so generous in sharing his archive on the Ashdown Estate.
I would like to pay tribute to the late Keith Blaxhall, for many years the Estate Manager at Ashdown Park. His enthusiasm and encouragement was inspiring to me and it was a great privilege to have known him.
Finally a big thank you to Julie Carr for allowing me to ‘borrow’ her lovely dog Bonnie for this story, and to Bonnie herself for graciously agreeing to star in House of Shadows.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u06e74c17-b31d-53d7-83e2-fb4d7f7789ec)
About the Author (#u110cb157-68ae-5957-b362-f599102432ce)
Title Page (#ubb91d28a-868e-5aee-a4ed-e6a0f8e500bd)
Copyright (#uc8f36ce3-31f5-5ca5-b588-399e118e1cdb)
Dedication (#u18018a90-63d4-5324-9554-7b5b2d35c8e6)
Epigraph (#u8eb7ac93-b553-5782-89f1-2c8cf6d7207d)
Acknowledgements (#uc60519fa-22ad-5390-9f9c-6dc941e1f984)
Prologue (#ufff634ef-c8b1-542f-993f-854dc54388a8)
Chapter 1 (#u4ca2de71-007e-5322-8327-0382baeac7d4)
Chapter 2 (#ub68a13c6-f95b-57ba-9a40-09600be8c0ea)
Chapter 3 (#ua0944154-93a7-547e-a64b-e9269b0b4cea)
Chapter 4 (#u53fc19dd-da95-5a55-be1f-aae95af4cff2)
Chapter 5 (#u950e416c-aae0-5bf9-95ed-3c4d3edf11e8)
Chapter 6 (#u5efdd78d-9d5c-5d23-afa6-dd7294d2c7fe)
Chapter 7 (#ua87795c5-f9a2-5f67-acd1-3bace4494427)
Chapter 8 (#u03109c46-e0d3-5d8d-9aca-f4f500881430)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract from The Woman in the Lake (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_73408c36-cc75-5f48-b905-26d1455bbcb5)
London, February 1662
She dreamed about the house on the night before she died. In the dream she felt as insignificant as a child; a miniature queen clad in a cream silk gown embroidered with gold. The collar prickled the nape of her neck as she craned her head to gaze up, up at the dazzling white stone of the house against the blue of the sky. It made her dizzy. Her head spun and the golden ball that adorned the roof seemed to plunge like a shooting star falling to earth.
Beyond the walls of her bedchamber crouched the city; filthy, noisy and seething with life. But in her dreams she was far from London; she had followed the wide ribbon of the Thames upriver, past the hunting ground at Richmond, and the great grey walls of Windsor, to a place where two rivers met. She took the narrower path through drowsy meadows thick with daisies and the hum of bees, for in her dream she was a summer princess, not a winter queen. The river became a chalk stream that bubbled up from springs deep in the dappled woods until finally she burst out of the shade and onto the highlands, and there was the house in a hollow of the hills, a little white palace fit for a queen.
Her lips moved. One of her women, weary, anxious, attentive, bent to catch the whisper. It could not be long now.
‘William.’
It caused consternation. She had sent him away, her cavalier, told her servants to bar the door against him.
‘Madam …’ The woman was uncertain. ‘I don’t think—’
The queen’s eyelashes flickered. Her eyes, blue-grey, were clear, imperious.
‘At once.’
‘Majesty.’ The woman curtsied, ran.
The room was hot, windows and doors closed, fire roaring. She drifted between sleep and waking, on the fringes of shadow. Outside, dawn was breaking over the river, the water rippling with a silver wake. It was unseasonably mild for February and the air felt heavy, waiting.
He came.
She heard the stir, felt the cool shift of the air before the door closed again, sealing them in.
‘Leave us.’
No one argued, which was good because she was too tired for arguments now. Her eyes would not open. In the silence she could hear everything though; the hiss of the fire as a log settled deeper in the grate, the creak of the floorboards beneath his boots as he crossed the room to her side.
‘Sit. Please.’ It was an effort to speak. There was no time for discussion now, or apologies, even if she had wished to make them, which she did not.
He sat. Now that he was close she could smell on him the night cold and the scent of the city. She could not see him but she did not need to. She knew every plane of his face, each line, each curve. It was as though they were written on her heart, an indelible picture.
There was something she needed to tell him. She fought for the strength to speak.
‘The crystal mirror—’
‘I will get it back. I swear it,’ he replied instantly. A second later his hand grasped hers, warm and reassuring but still she shook her head. She knew it was too late.
‘It will elude you,’ she said.
