The Shivering Sands by Victoria Holt Page B

proceeded up the stairs. There was an air of resignation about her and I pictured her first as a young woman, then as a middle-aged one and an old one—not of the family and not belonging to the servants’ hall, called upon in moments of crisis in the family. Little Alice at everyone’s beck and call, of no account except when some unpleasant task had to be performed.
    She turned suddenly and smiled at me. “It is after all what I want.” She lifted her shoulders. “I love this house. There are so many interesting things in it.”
    “I’m sure there are.”
    “Yes,” she said almost breathlessly. “There is a room where a King is supposed to have lodged. I think it was Charles I during the Civil War. I suppose he was afraid to go to Dover Castle, so he came here. It’s the bridal suite now. It’s supposed to be haunted, but Mr. Napier doesn’t care about that. Most people would. Edith does. Edith’s terrified …but then she’s often terrified. But Napier believes that it’s all for her own good to face up to what she’s frightened of. She has to learn to be brave.”
    “Tell me about it,” I said, hoping to hear more of Napier and his bride, but she merely went on to describe the room.
    “It’s one of the largest in the house. They would give the largest to the King, wouldn’t they? There’s a brick fireplace which the vicar says has a chambered arch and jambs. The vicar is very keen on anything that’s old…old houses, old furniture…old anything.”
    We had walked along a gallery similar to the one below and here Alice paused to open a door.
    “This is the room my mother selected for you. It’s called the yellow room because of the yellow curtains and the rugs. The counterpane is yellow too. Look.”
    She threw open the door. I saw my bags standing on the parquet floor and was immediately aware of the yellow curtains at the big window and the rugs and the counterpane on the four-poster bed. The ceiling was high and a chandelier hung from it, but there were dark shadows in the room for like most windows in the house, this one had leaded panes which shut out a good deal of the light. It was very grand, I thought, for someone who had merely come to teach music; and I wondered what the room was like which was occupied by Napier—the one which had once sheltered a King.
    “There’s a powder closet—only a little one. But it will be your dressing room. Would you like me to help you unpack?”
    I thanked her and said that I could manage by myself.
    “Your view is lovely,” she said. She went to the window. I crossed the room and stood beside her. I looked over the lawns to a copse of fir trees and beyond that the sea was breaking about the white cliffs.
    “There!” She stood back watching me. “Do you like it, Mrs. Verlaine?”
    “I think it is enchanting.”
    “It is beautiful—all of it. But they do say hereabouts that this is an unlucky house.”
    “Why? Because a young woman mysteriously disappeared when…?”
    “You mean the woman at the excavations. She wasn’t really anything to do with the house.”
    “But you knew her and she had been working on the estate close to this house.”
    “I wasn’t thinking of her.”
    “Then there is something else?”
    Alice nodded. “When Sir William’s eldest son died everyone said it was…unlucky.”
    “But there is Napier.”
    “Napier was his brother. This was Beaumont. They called him Beau. It suited him, you see, because he was so beautiful. Then he died…and Napier was sent away and he stayed away until he came back to marry Edith. Sir William never got over it nor did Lady Stacy.”
    “How did he die? Was it an accident?”
    “It could have been an accident. But then it might not have been.” She put her fingers to her lips. “Mother says I am never to speak of it.”
    I could not prompt her then, but she added: “I suppose that’s why they call it an unhappy house. It’s haunted they say…by Beau. But whether they mean