Newlyweds Of Convenience

But she hadn’t cried at all since Steve had left, and now was not the time to start.

‘This is cosy,’ she said as she huddled into her jacket and the wind and rain swirled down through the hole in the roof.

‘I’m glad you like it.’ Rather to her surprise, Mallory detected an undercurrent of amusement in Torr’s voice. It was too dark to read his expression, but he sounded as if he appreciated her sarcasm. But then, she thought bitterly, he might just have been enjoying how appalled she was by the conditions.

‘The kitchen is in rather better condition,’ he promised.

Mallory sighed. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘It’s down here.’ Torr set off towards a doorway in the far corner of the hall, and Mallory whistled nervously for Charlie. This was no time to get separated.

Charlie came bounding in to join them, and followed, happily sniffing, as Torr led the way down a dank passageway with a low, vaulted ceiling and all sorts of turns and unexpected steps that made Mallory stumble, although Torr never did.

He strode on for what seemed like miles, bending his head occasionally when the ceiling dipped but otherwise apparently oblivious to the potential horrors that might lurk around every twist in the passage.

Mallory’s earlier bravado had disappeared the moment Torr headed into the passageway, and her heart was thumping. Charlie was unperturbed by the darkness or fear of the unknown, and she wished passionately that she had his lack of imagination. As it was, she had to hurry to keep up with Torr, and when he paused briefly at a fork in the passageway, she threw pride to the winds and took hold of his jacket.

Torr glanced down at her. ‘Frightened?’

‘Of course I’m frightened!’ she snapped. ‘I’m stuck in a haunted castle in the pitch-dark, miles from anywhere, and the way my luck is going at the moment I’m heading straight for the dungeons!’

‘No, the dungeons are the other way,’ said Torr, but to Mallory’s secret relief he took her hand. ‘We’re almost there,’ he told her. ‘It just seems further in the dark when you don’t know where you’re going.’

His clasp was warm and firm and extraordinarily reassuring. Mallory immediately felt better, and tried not to clutch at him, although there was no way she was letting his hand go. ‘There aren’t really dungeons, are there?’ she said nervously.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. This is a medieval castle, after all.’

‘Great. They’re probably full of skeletons, too.’ Mallory shuddered. ‘This whole place is probably choc-a-bloc with ghosts!’

Torr tsked. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’

‘That’s what they always say at the beginning of a horror movie when they start exploring a ruined castle in the middle of nowhere!’

‘I always thought you were a sensible woman,’ said Torr disapprovingly. ‘Certainly not the kind to believe in that kind of nonsense.’

‘I didn’t used to be—but that was before I started hearing the sound of chains being rattled in the darkness!’

‘You won’t hear ghosts from the dungeons here, Mallory. This wing is modern.’

She stared at him. ‘Modern? In which csentury?’

‘The nineteenth,’ he conceded. ‘Long past the age of dungeons, anyway.’

‘Pity it wasn’t in the age of electricity!’

‘Electricity we have,’ Torr announced. ‘If you just give me a minute… Ah, here we are! Hold this a moment,’ he said, handing Mallory the torch.

Pushing open a door, he felt round for a switch inside and a couple of naked light bulbs wavered into life. The light they offered was pretty feeble, but after the pitch-blackness of the passage, Mallory blinked as if dazzled by searchlights.

‘This is the kitchen,’ he said.

She looked around the huge, stone-flagged room. At least this one had a ceiling that appeared to be intact, and at first glance there were no weeds or suits of armour, but otherwise it was dank and dirty and depressing.

‘Is that better?’ Torr asked her.

A little puzzled by his tone, Mallory glanced at him, only to see that he was looking down to where she was still clutching his hand. She dropped it as if scalded, appalled to feel a faint blush stealing up her cheeks.

‘I thought you said the dungeons were the other way,’ she said to cover her confusion, and Torr clicked his tongue.

‘You’ve got everything you need,’ he said, waving in the direction of an array of old-fashioned ranges. ‘Somewhere to cook. A sink. Even a fridge and freezer,’ he added, pointing at a grimy model of the kind she had once seen in a museum of everyday living. ‘All the mod cons.’

Mallory sighed. ‘I’ll have to get used to the fact that when you use the word “modern” you’re talking about a hundred and fifty years ago! Personally, I’ve never seen any cons less mod!’

‘Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. You’ve got electricity—and masses of storage space,’ Torr added, with a comprehensive sweep of his arm.

She couldn’t argue with that. There were not one but two huge pine dressers, an enormous kitchen table, worn from years of use, and old-fashioned cupboards running almost the length of the long room, and that was before she even started opening various doors to find larders and the like.

‘Shame that we haven’t got anything to store, then, isn’t it?’ she said to him a little tartly.

Almost everything had gone into storage, and they had only brought with them what could fit in the car and its tarpaulin-covered trailer. ‘We won’t need much to begin with,’ Torr had said. ‘Just bring the essentials.’

The ‘essentials’ would fill one cupboard if they were lucky.

‘Better to have too much space than too little,’ he pointed out.

There was certainly space. The ground floor of Mallory’s house in Ellsborough would have fitted easily into the room. At one end there was an enormous fireplace, with a couple of cracked and battered leather armchairs in front of it which made a separate living area.

‘My great-uncle pretty much lived in this room on his own for the last few years, before his son moved him to a nursing home,’ Torr said when Mallory commented on it. ‘He couldn’t afford to keep up the castle, but he refused to leave until he was in his nineties and they couldn’t find anyone prepared to come in and care for him here.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ Mallory murmured, with an ironic glance around the kitchen.

‘They put a bathroom in one of the old sculleries for him.’ Torr opened a couple of doors. ‘Yes, here it is.’

He stood back to let Mallory peer in. There was a rudimentary bath, half filled with droppings, dust and cobwebs, a grimy sink and an absolutely disgusting lavatory.

So much for her fantasy of a hot bath before falling into bed.

Charlie, who had been sniffing interestedly round the kitchen, put his paws on the loo seat and began slurping noisily at the water, obviously feeling right at home.

Look on the bright side, Mallory told herself. It can’t get any worse than this.

‘Where did your great-uncle sleep?’ she asked wearily.

‘I’ll show you.’

There was a short passage leading out of the kitchen, and Torr threw open another door. ‘I think this used to be a sitting room for the upper servants,’ he told Mallory, who had finally managed to drag Charlie out of the bathroom. ‘But, as you can see, it makes a perfectly adequate bedroom.’

That was a matter of opinion, thought Mallory.