The Royal Secret Read online

  Arriving at Simon’s building, she pounded up the stairs as fast as she could. Wishing he was home, she bolted the door shut, before wedging a chair under the handle. Then she grabbed his cricket bat from the hallway cupboard and put that on the sofa bed.

  Much later, she fell into a troubled sleep, her grasp barely loosening on the bat.

  12

  Zoe had spent most of her first week in Norfolk kicking her heels with too much time to think. A lot of the outside location filming had been curtailed by the presence of a thick blanket of snow. Although pretty and atmospheric, it made the film’s continuity impossible. Instead, they’d done what they could in the old cottage the company had rented for the shoot. William Fielding, the actor playing Zoe’s character’s father, John Durbeyfield, was currently in a pantomime in Birmingham and would not join the set until next week. She’d contemplated going back to London, but given that Art had arranged for her to be picked up from here on the weekend anyway, it seemed a pointless journey.

  On Friday morning, Zoe woke suddenly, dripping in sweat, with a gut-wrenching fear gnawing at her. Gone were the rose-colored glasses, the sense of wonder that fate, after all this time, had drawn the two of them back together. She only felt utter disbelief that she had even allowed herself to consider the possibility of a new liaison with him.

  “Oh God,” she muttered, panic gripping her. “What about Jamie?”

  Zoe stumbled out of bed, pulled on her jeans and wellies, and went for a walk around the snow-covered village. She was so deep in her thoughts that its picturesque beauty was completely wasted on her. It was all very well declaring herself at last independent, free of the shackles that had previously bound her, but she had to be realistic. What she was about to do could affect the rest of Jamie’s life. How could she keep the secret from Art? Surely, once they talked, got to know each other better, he’d realize—if he hadn’t already. And then where would that leave the three of them?

  “Damn! Damn!” Zoe kicked hard at some icy slush in frustration. She’d lived with the secret for so long, but it was going to be one hell of a shock for others . . .

  If she and Art began a relationship again, and the truth about Jamie leaked out, could she really subject her precious child to the furor that would surround him?

  No.

  Never.

  What on earth was I thinking?

  That afternoon, Zoe packed her bags into her car and drove back to London. When she arrived home, she turned off her mobile and let the answering machine take all her calls, whether welcome or not. Then she uncharacteristically drank an entire bottle of wine and fell asleep on the sofa in front of a film that did not in any way match up to the drama of her own life.

  * * *

  Marcus had rented a Volkswagen Golf on his long-suffering credit card for the drive down to Dorset. Now, with Joanna beside him as he drove along the M3, he decided it was well worth the red statement in a month’s time. She smelled divine, he thought, of freshly plucked apples. He only hoped the key to Haycroft House was where he remembered it had always been. He’d tried to reach Zoe several times yesterday to ask permission to stay at the house, leaving messages on both her mobile and her answering machine, but she hadn’t got back to him. In the end, he’d decided that she couldn’t say he hadn’t tried, and had gone ahead with the weekend as planned.

  Joanna sat next to him quietly. She’d been genuinely surprised when Marcus had called yesterday to say they were all set for the weekend. She’d been convinced Zoe would refuse point-blank to let a reporter sift through her grandfather’s private life. She glanced at Marcus’s perfect profile and wondered whether Sir James had been as handsome when he was younger.

  Eventually, he turned off the motorway and Joanna gazed out of the window at the wide-open fields that gently rose and fell into the distance. The countryside wasn’t as dramatic as the Yorkshire moors, but she enjoyed not being hemmed in by tall buildings. The plants and animals were buried deep in their winter habitats, tucked beneath layers of snow that reflected the sunlight shining from a spectacular cloudless sky.

  Marcus drove through a series of narrow country lanes with high snow-topped hedges. Finally, he turned the car into a gated drive and the house came into view. It was a large and obviously ancient thatched house, two stories high, built in pale gray brick. Moss grew on the thatch—a sharp green among the patches of white snow—and icicles dripped gently under the eaves around the small lead-paned windows, glistening in the sun.

  “This is it,” he said. “Haycroft House.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

  “Yes. Sir Jim bequeathed it to Zoe’s son, Jamie. Lucky old him,” Marcus added, rather bitterly, Joanna thought. “Stay there while I get the key.” He jumped out of the car and headed for the water barrel that stood at the back of the house. Digging underneath the left side of the barrel, Marcus’s fingers had to break through solid ice before he felt the large, old-fashioned key that would gain them access to the front door. “Thank God for that,” he muttered, blowing on his numbed fingers and returning to the front of the house.

  Joanna was already out of the car, peeping through the mullioned windows.

  “Got it.” He smiled as he put the key in the lock of the solid oak door and turned it.

  They entered a dark, beamed hall that smelled of wood smoke. Marcus switched the light on and Joanna was startled by a fierce bear’s head glaring down from above her on the wall.

  “Sorry, I should have warned you about Mr. West,” Marcus said, and reached up to pet the bear’s straggly fur.

  “Mr. West?” she repeated, shivering—the house was possibly colder inside than it was out.

  “Yeah, Zo named him after one of her scary teachers at school. Don’t worry, it wasn’t shot locally,” he teased her. “Come on, it’s freezing. We’ll light a fire in the sitting room. Could be a case of body heat to prevent hypothermia, you know,” he quipped.

  Purposely ignoring his comment, Joanna followed Marcus into a cozy sitting room, full of old sofas piled high with cushions. One wall was lined with shelves that held leather-bound books and family pictures. As Marcus searched for firelighters, Joanna studied the photographs more closely. She recognized Zoe Harrison as a little girl, beaming in the arms of Sir James Harrison. There were numerous shots of her at different ages, in her navy school uniform, or sitting on the back of a large chestnut horse, then others of her with Jamie, her son, grinning from ear to ear. Joanna searched for a picture of young Marcus, but found none. Before she could turn to ask, she heard him shout triumphantly.

  “Let there be warmth!” he decreed as the firelighters he had thrown into the grate flared up, sending shadows dancing up the rough lath-and-plaster walls. He added some tinder, then placed a couple of logs on top. “Right, that’ll soon warm the place up. Now for the heating.”

  Joanna followed Marcus through to a heavily beamed kitchen, complete with gray-flagged floors and an ancient range. Marcus opened one of the heavy iron doors and stuffed some newspaper inside, then threw in coal from the bucket and lit it.

  “It may not look impressive and I can assure you it isn’t.” He grinned. “Oh, for good old gas central heating. Dad went on at Sir Jim for years to install a proper system, and he refused. I think he rather enjoyed freezing his nuts off. I’ll just go and brave the cold once more and get the supplies from the car.”

  Joanna wandered around the kitchen, enjoying its original rustic charm. An old airer was suspended above the range and an herb rack hung from the ceiling, still full of dry, cracked bay leaves, rosemary, and lavender. The pitted oak table had clearly seen years of use, and the assorted open-fronted cupboards were crammed with a jumbled mix of tins, glass jars, and china.

  Marcus arrived with a cardboard box full of food. Joanna noticed two bottles of champagne, and delicacies such as smoked salmon, which she loathed, and caviar, which she loathed even more, and wondered whether she’d either starve or freeze to death this weekend
. From the amount of alcohol Marcus had brought, at least she could do it drunk. Joanna helped him unpack, then retreated to the relative warmth of the range.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” he remarked, as he stowed the cold foods in the refrigerator. “Is there something I can do? I know it must be a bit odd, staying with a man you hardly know . . .”

  “It’s all right, Marcus, I’ve just had a lot on my mind. Work stuff,” she clarified. “I really appreciate you taking the weekend to help me with my research.”

  “As much as I’d like to have you believe it, I’m not completely altruistic,” he said. “I was hoping to have some fun with you this weekend.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, Jo,” he said, mock-shock on his face. “I meant sparkling conversation, and maybe a trip to the pub. Now, how about we go up to the attic and get out some of the boxes? The best thing is to bring them down and work through them in front of the fire.”

  She followed him up the creaking wooden stairs to the galleried landing. Marcus took an iron rod that was leaning against the wall and hooked it into a handle above him. A set of dusty metal steps appeared as he pulled on the rod. He climbed up and pulled a piece of string that immediately flooded the attic above them with light.

  He offered her his hand. “Want to come and see just what we’ve decided to take on?”

  She gripped his hand and climbed the steps behind him. Stepping out onto the hardboard floor of the attic, she gasped. The entire space, which must have run from one end of the house to the other, was filled with tea chests and cardboard boxes.

  “Told you he was a hoarder,” said Marcus. “There’s enough stuff to fill an entire museum up here.”

  “Have you any idea if there’s any chronological order to all this?”

  “No, but I’d presume the stuff nearest us, the most accessible, is also the most recent.”

  “Well, I really need to start from the beginning, as far back as we can possibly find.”

  “Very good, milady.” Marcus pretended to doff his cap. “You have a wander and point out the boxes you want taken down first.”

  Joanna picked her way through the boxes, choosing to start with one of the corners furthest away from the steps. Twenty minutes later, she had settled for three boxes whose cracked yellow newspaper cuttings suggested their age, as well as a battered suitcase.

  Back downstairs, she sat on the hearth trying to grab what warmth there was. “I’m fre-freezing!” She laughed as she shivered uncontrollably.

  “Shall we head to the pub first? I could murder a pint of foaming ale. We could warm up with some bowls of soup.”

  “No thanks.” She headed for the old suitcase. “I want to get started.”

  “Right. If you don’t mind, before my fingers drop off from frostbite, I’ll pop off to the local. Sure you don’t want to come?”

  “Marcus, we haven’t even started! I’ll stay here,” she said firmly.

  “Okay. Well, don’t secrete anything you find on your person, or I might have to find it later,” he said as he left the sitting room. As he drove out of the gates, he noticed a gray car parked on the grass verge a few yards past the house. He glanced in and saw two men sitting inside, dressed in Barbours and ostentatiously poring over a walking map. Marcus wondered whether he should call the police. They might be casing the house for a robbery.

  Joanna, in spite of the now-leaping flames of the fire, still felt chilled to the bone. She could not chance sitting too close because of the fragile paper she was handling. She had so far discovered absolutely nothing that she had not already gleaned from the four biographies.

  She skimmed through the notes she’d been keeping as she’d read them. Born in 1900, Sir James had begun to make a name for himself as an actor in the late twenties, starring in a string of Noël Coward plays in the West End. In 1929, he’d married his wife, Grace, and become a widower in 1937 when she had died tragically abroad from pneumonia. According to the newspaper cuttings and interviews with friends in his various biographies, the death of Grace was something from which James had never fully recovered. She had been the love of his life and he’d never married again.

  Joanna had also noted that there wasn’t a single photograph of him as a child or a young man. The biographer had attributed this to a fire at James’s parents’ house—apparently somewhere near here—destroying everything they owned. The first photograph on record was of James and his young wife, Grace, on their wedding day in 1929. From what she could tell from the black-and-white photograph of the wedding party, Grace had been a slight woman, her new husband towering over her, and Joanna saw how tightly she gripped his arm.

  After her death, James had been left to care for Charles, his five-year-old son. One biographer had noted that the child had been put in the care of a nanny, and then sent to boarding school at the age of seven. Father and son had apparently never been close, a fact that James had later blamed on his son’s resemblance to his wife. “It pained me to even see Charles,” he’d admitted. “I kept him at a distance. I know I was an absent father, and it’s caused me great heartache in my later years.”

  In the thirties, James had made a number of successful films for J. Arthur Rank in England, and it was this that had really brought him to the public’s attention. He’d had a brief fling with Hollywood, then, when war gripped Europe, James had gone abroad as part of ENSA, the entertainment branch of the British war movement, visiting British troops and boosting morale.

  Once the war had ended, Sir James had worked at the Old Vic, taking on some of the big classic roles. His portrayal of Hamlet, followed two years later by Henry V, had moved him into the elite ranks of the great. It was then he’d bought the Dorset house, preferring to spend time alone there rather than circulate among the glitterati of the London theatrical scene.

  In 1955, James had moved to Hollywood on a permanent basis. He’d spent fifteen years making some good and some—according to one reviewer—“frighteningly bad” pictures. Then he’d returned to the UK stage in 1970, and in 1976 had played King Lear with the RSC—his swan song, as he’d announced to the media. After that, he had devoted himself to his family, especially his granddaughter, Zoe, who had recently lost her mother. Perhaps, a biographer had suggested, he had been trying to pay penance for the earlier neglect of his own son.

  Joanna sighed. Her lap and the floor were covered in aging newspaper, photographs, letters . . . none of which bore any further illuminating information. Although “Siam” was most definitely confirmed as Sir James’s nickname, as it was used regularly throughout the mass of correspondence he had kept. Having read through every word of the letters at first, about people with nicknames like “Bunty” and “Boo,” she had grown bored at the descriptions of the roles he was playing, general theater gossip, and the weather. Nothing incriminating there.

  She glanced at her watch. It was ten to three already and she was only halfway through the suitcase.

  “What am I really looking for?” she asked the dusty cold air.

  Cursing the lack of time, she continued working her way through to the bottom of the suitcase and was just about to dump all the papers back in when she noticed a photograph sticking out of an old program. Pulling it out, she saw the familiar faces of Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence—the famous actress—and, standing next to them, a man she also recognized.

  She rummaged through the pile for the photograph of James Harrison on his wedding day, and put it side by side with the one she’d just found. With his black hair and trademark moustache, James Harrison was instantly recognizable as he stood next to his bride. But surely the man standing next to Noël Coward, despite his blond hair and clean-shaven face, was also James Harrison? Joanna compared the nose, the mouth, the smile, and—yes!—it was the eyes that gave him away. She was sure it was him.

  Perhaps, she mused, James had dyed his hair blond and removed his moustache for a role in one of Coward’s plays?
r />   She hastily put the photo to one side as she heard the key in the lock.

  “Hello.” Marcus entered the sitting room, bent down, and massaged her shoulders. “Find anything interesting for the article yet?”

  “Lots, thanks. It’s been absolutely fascinating.”

  “Good. Fancy some smoked salmon sandwiches? You must be starving, and beer always gives me an appetite.” He wandered toward the door.

  “No smoked salmon for me,” she called after him. “Just some of that lovely bread you brought, and a nice hot cup of tea would be wonderful.”

  “I have caviar too. Want some of that?”

  “No! Thanks, though.”

  Joanna went back to the piles of photographs and papers, then ten minutes later Marcus put down a tray with a plate of generously buttered bread and a pot of steaming tea onto the coffee table. He gave her a sweet smile.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Not really, no. I mean, thanks, but I know what I’m looking for.”

  “Okay.” Marcus yawned and lay down on the sofa. “Wake me up when you’re done, okay?”

  Revived by the tea, Joanna continued sifting until the darkness had long since lengthened the shadows in the quiet room. She stretched her aching limbs and gave a groan. “Oh God, I need a nice hot bath,” she murmured, shivering as she saw the fire had gone out.

  Marcus’s head popped up from the sofa and he stretched languidly. “Yep, the range may have roused itself to produce at least half a tub of lukewarm water. Come on, I’ll show you the bathroom and where you’re sleeping tonight.”

  Upstairs, Marcus took her into the large but rather shabby bedroom that would be hers for the night. A big brass bed smothered in an old patchwork quilt stood in the center of the low-ceilinged room, and an oriental rug covered the wood floor, which was liberally peppered with mouse-sized holes. Marcus dropped her holdall on the rickety chair next to the door, then tugged her along the corridor to another room. In it stood an impressive mahogany four-poster bed.