The Folly by M. C. Beaton

he said. He seized Beth’s hand. There was a window in the passage opposite the door. He pulled Beth into the embrasure and drew the curtains closed.
    He heard the door of Minerva’s room open and her brother George’s voice sounded clearly, “’Pon rep, sis, you are become over-exercised about a pair of spoilt brats. Marry Blackwood, send the boy packing to school, give the girl a strict governess, and then you need never have anything to do with them again.”
    “You forget”—Minerva’s voice—“he seems too interested in them to turn a blind eye to their affairs.”
    “You know how to make men love you, do you not? Get him in your wiles and the man will forget he even has children.”
    “I would like to get rid of that Trumble creature. I have an enemy there.”
    “Pooh, what can a faded old spinster like that do?”
    “More than you think. Have you noticed the way the general eyes her? If I do not play my cards right, then that old governess will be mistress at Mannerling and I will not!”
    “What are you going to do? Kill her?” George gave a great braying laugh.
    “Oh, go away,” snapped his sister, “and leave me to prepare for the great apology scene which is no doubt soon to take place.”
    The children waited, hearing George’s footsteps die away along the long corridor and then all was silent.
    They finally crept out. “Not now,” whispered Mark. “I could not face her now.”
    “I heard from the housekeeper at Mannerling that the place is haunted,” Mr. Cater was saying to Rachel.
    “It is not haunted. Someone tried to frighten the little boy by dressing up as the ghost of the late Mr. Judd.”
    “Are you sure it was not a ghost?”
    “Our servant, Barry, managed to strike the ghost on the head. His cudgel contacted a human head and not a ghostly one.”
    “You are unromantic, Miss Rachel. I, for one, am prepared to believe that Mannerling is haunted.”
    Rachel gave a laugh. “In all the time I lived there, I never saw even one ghost. There is nothing at Mannerling to frighten anyone.”
    The party finished with Gerrard, a local farmer’s boy, finding the treasure, which turned out to be a toy sword and a box of paints. The other children all received consolation prizes and went off happily in various gigs and carriages.
    Mark was taken by his father to Minerva’s apartment in the west wing, where he apologized most humbly. To his surprise, and then his dismay, instead of railing at him, Minerva drew him to her and hugged him and said, “I should have known such a story would upset a poor motherless child like you. There. We have both apologized and now we can be friends.”
    She smiled down at him and Mark felt himself trapped in that intense blue gaze. His father was looking at Minerva with a softened look on his normally harsh face.
    Mark repeated again in a dull, flat little voice that he was very, very sorry and then turned to his father and asked if he could leave. “Off with you,” said his father, “and consider yourself a lucky young man. Few ladies would have accepted an apology for such rank behaviour with such grace and charity as Miss Santerton.”
    When the Santertons and the Blackwoods had retired to their rooms to dress for dinner, Miss Trumble made her way through the suddenly quiethouse to go down to the hall and wait for the carriage to be brought round to take her home.
    She paused at the top of the staircase, listening to the quiet of the house. And then she realized it was not really quiet. There had always been many clocks at Mannerling and the general, who collected them, had added a great deal more.
    She became aware of the restless ticking and tocking, which seemed to be getting louder as if innumerable little voices were whispering away the time. “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” went the voices. “You are old, old, old, and time is running out for you.”
    She walked stiffly down the stairs, hearing all those time voices chattering away, feeling a sort