The Lost Treasure of Lorne

Chapter Four

Caitlin spent a restless night ignoring the ghosts, which was becoming more and more difficult. She was in the kitchen and had already stoked the fire to toast a slice of bread when the cook arrived from the village, trailed by several kitchen maids.

"A bad night, was it?" Mrs McTavish asked.

Caitlin nodded, threading a slice of bread onto her toasting fork.

Mrs McTavish shook her head. "I can't say I blame them. Just a week till the young master's birthday and the end of the three hundred years. Sad, that. I can't say but that the villagers will be pleased to see the castle free of its haunting, but it seems tough on the poor ghosties. If only there was someone to help young Master John fulfill the prophecy. Have a care, Mrs Morgan. You'll have the toast in the fire."

Caitlin jerked her head back to the toasting fork, and returned it to the proper distance from the flame. "Just a week?" she repeated.

"Why, yes. Fourteen hundred and eighty-five it was that the Fourth Marquis of Lorne killed his daughter and her lover, and the boy's father and mother for good measure. On the last day of August, so the old stories say, Lady Normington prayed to God for vengeance, and paid with her blood for the justice she sought."

So Mrs McTavish was of the school that held the Normington woman to be a prophesying saint, rather than a cursing witch. And no wonder the ghosts were growing so agitated. But wait. "Master John is a Normington, Mrs McTavish," she pointed out.

"Half Lorimer and living in Castle Lorne. That's been enough to doom someone as a ghost afore now. He is Lorimer enough to find the treasure. But it is too late. Two, the lady said, and he the last Lorimer of Lorne."

This time, the toast caught alight before she noticed. It was not just what Mrs McTavish had said that distracted her, but the reaction of the ghosts. Crowding into the kitchen, row on row, even standing in the fireplace itself, they were cheering and clapping.

John counted as a Lorimer? She had known that two were required, but-like the cook-she had believed only one remained. The King's heralds had hunted down all branches of the Lorimer family tree and so had the Duke of Kendal, looking for one surviving twig, and coming up empty. They were wrong.

Caitlin knew, as no other living person knew, that Caitlin Morag Lorimer, granddaughter of the last marquis, had not died in an unseasonable storm twenty years ago, the night after his niece died; the night that he carried his great nephew out into the howling rain to perish on the hillside.

Her grandfather scowled at her from behind the celebrating wraiths. She resisted the urge to make a rude face at him, contenting herself with a broad smile. The devil could have the sour old buzzard-him and the others of his line who had sacrificed a daughter to the continuing feud. But perhaps she and John could save the others.

She made a fresh piece of toast, buttered it and spread it with preserve, kept up a conversation with Mrs McTavish, wrote the shopping list that one of the senior maids would take to the village shop, and sent the parlour and chamber maids off about their work in the rest of the castle, all the while thinking about where the treasure might be, and how to tell John who she really was.

Michael-that is-the duke had searched high and low and discovered nothing. And he, at least, knew he was looking for a silver casket, but Caitlin had no idea what the lost treasure might be, or how large a space would be needed to hide it.

She took John's breakfast up to him herself, over the protests of the valet. No time like the present to begin. He was awake, and sitting up in bed, but pulled his blankets up to cover his bare shoulders. "Morgie!"

Caitlin ignored his embarrassment. "Put on your robe, Master John, and come sit at the table. There is something I need to tell you." She glared at the ghosts who emerged from the floor, having followed her from the kitchen. "And you lot can all take yourselves off. You are not invited to this conversation." She put the trolley with the breakfast next to the table by the window, and turned to see him still sitting clutching his covers.

She raised her eyebrows and he heaved a sigh. "Very well. But wait in the hall while I put some clothes on. Please, Morgie. I'm not five any more."

Michael found her standing in the hall outside John's door, tapping one foot while she waited, ignoring the few spectres who had braved her wrath to wait with her. He looked barbarously regal in a scarlet banyan embroidered with gold and silver dragons over a silk shirt with a lace jabot. Under it, he wore his usual kilt, with knee-high silk stocking and soft indoor slippers. Would this be the last time he looked at her with such warmth? She could not expect-she would not ask John to keep her identity secret.

He sounded amused when he said, "Will the young scoundrel not let you in, Mrs Morgan? Shall I wake him for you?" He did not wait for a reply, but opened the door, and John choked his startled protest when he realised it was his father, and not Caitlin, that had burst in.

A murmur of voices, a long silence, then Michael opened the door. John was now wearing a banyan too, a garish concoction in purple with large orange flowers that bore no resemblance to anything found in nature. Beneath, she could see his breeches and stockings, and the frill of his shirt. Undoubtedly, he had not thought it proper to entertain her without dressing.

"May I join you for breakfast, Mrs Morgan?" Michael asked. "Or is this a private meeting?"

Caitlin hesitated a bare fraction of a moment. He would find out anyway, and there was no time to waste. And his search had made him as familiar with the castle as anyone on earth. Perhaps he could help. "Very well. Fetch yourself a chair and a cup for your coffee."

The three organised themselves: Caitlin pouring coffee for Michael and his son, and tea for herself; Michael and John filling three plates with bread rolls, bacon, eggs, sardines in mustard sauce, slices of cold pie, mashed potatoes and spreads from the trolley. All the time, Caitlin thought about what she needed to say.

"This is nice," John said, "but what did you need to tell me, Morgie, that could not be said in front of the servants?"

Caitlin avoided Michael's eyes. "Mrs McTavish has just informed me that the three hundred years of the curse ends on John's birthday."

Both men froze, and then put their forks back on their plates, the better to consider this news.

"This is good, is it not?" Michael ventured. "Isn't the haunting meant to end with the three centuries?"

"But what of the ghosts?" John demanded.

"I suppose they will get their rest at last," Michael said, soothingly, "and not before time, poor souls."

"That's not what the legend says!" John turned to Caitlin. "Is it, Morgie? Don't they all go to hell?"

"No!" Michael turned to Caitlin too. "That's not fair, is it? All of them?"

"That was Lady Normington's curse. Or her prophecy." It occurred to Caitlin that she'd not heard the story from any of the castle servants. Indeed, until this morning, none of them had mentioned the Normington-Lorimer feud or the curse. "What do you know of the legend, John?"

"Very little," John admitted. "Just what I've overheard. The servants won't speak of it to me."

Caitlin queried Michael with her eyebrows, and he shook his head. "Me neither. I am still the Normington interloper."

"The feud, then. Do you know how the feud began?"

Michael shook his head. "I did not even know there was a feud until Fiona said her uncle would never consent to our marriage because I was a Normington. Perhaps my cousins knew, but mine was not the senior line, Caitlin, as you know. What have you heard?

Caitlin took a deep breath. She would tell the story as she had heard it from her great aunt; as it had been passed down through the generations.