Ghost Wife, a chilling romantic suspense, is the contemporary retelling of Jane Eyre, a perfect winter read! And today is the last day it’s on Kindle KDP Free Promotion! Click on the image above to get your copy!

The Ghost Wife in Jane Eyre

Mr Rochester was a wealthy Yorkshire landowner’s second son, the spare, his father’s relatively luckless offspring, doomed to a life of insignificance. He would enjoy wealth and privilege while his father lived, but he would never inherit his father’s house, land, or fortune. Most spares came from well-established families who had enough connections to arrange the spare’s marriage to a wealthy heiress. There was usually a reason the said heiress was unable to secure a husband as wealthy as herself; maybe a physical fault? or the family’s skeleton in the closet? The spare’s family name would serve to make his wealthy wife’s family more respectable, and so, Edward Rochester was sent by his father to Jamaica to marry Bertha Antoinetta Mason.

Rochester’s father and older brother orchestrated the marriage to secure Bertha’s massive £30,000 dowry. Rochester, who tended to embellish his past to impress or fool Jane, claimed that the Mason family’s history of mental illness was kept a secret from him. Yet, at the same time, his description of her as a tall, dark, and majestic beauty who dazzled him in public social settings before their wedding, suggests her madness was most probably due to her inhumane incarceration in a damp, windowless attic for ten years, shortly after her marriage.

If you haven’t read Jane Eyre, or if you don’t remember the plot, you’re probably wondering how Mr Rochester, the spare, came to inherit Thornfield Hall.

Some time after his marriage to Bertha, Mr Rochester’s father and brother died and he inherited the Rochester estate, including Thornfield Hall. He returned to Thornfield, locked his wife in the attic and took off to France to enjoy life as the wealthy bachelor he claimed to be.

For ten, long and miserable years, Bertha became a ghost at Thornfield Hall. She was mostly unseen, except by Grace Poole, the servant who made sure she was never seen or heard. Bertha is not allowed a single word in Jane Eyre. Her presence must have been known to the other servants at Thornfield, but to the other residents, she was a no more than a ghost. It would seem that only Jane was unaware of her presence, and eight-year-old, Adele who had travelled from France, to live at Thornfield, shortly before Jane arrived.

The Ghost Wife by Luccia Gray

Edward and Marcus have similar backgrounds and lives, although they lived two centuries apart.

Mr Kent inherited Rosewood Hall and the family fortune, and he also had an older brother who would have inherited it, if he hadn’t died. Mr Kent was forced into an unhappy marriage to wealthy heiress, too, but I can’t go into any more details about Marcus without spoiling the fun of reading the novel!

As the title suggests, there is also a ghost at Rosewood Hall in my novel Ghost Wife, but what kind of ghost is she? Is Alma a living or a dead ghost?

There are many similarities between Bertha and Alma, but there is also one major and highly significant difference: Alma’s ghost has a voice. She is one of the narrators in Ghost Wife, in fact she narrates chapter I, among others. I’ll tell you more about Ghost Wife’s three narrators in another post. For now, here’s a taster of the first chapter.

Chapter 1 – My Mausoleum

Rosewood Hall, November 2017

Maria

They call me Maria, and I’m a ghost. Rosewood Hall is my mausoleum, and my room is a dank cell, hidden within its clammy walls.

It used to be easy to reach the other side, with the rest of you, in the land of the living, but it’s getting harder to cross the boundaries. The others are cruel and cunning, and I am weak and alone.

People imagine ghosts can walk through walls and haunt them, but that’s not true. These walls are impenetrable, and my voice is so frail that I can’t haunt anyone yet, but I’ll find a way. I have time, all the time in the world. I’ll get back into their domain one day and make them pay.      

I’m not alone. There are other people in this house. They can’t see me, but they know I’m here, although they pretend I’m not, because I don’t exist, not really, not at all, at least not for them. I’m part of the building, ignored but unmoveable, secured to the walls by invisible chains.

I’ve seen them glancing at my window. I’ve felt the terrified look on their faces when they dare to glance up before they shiver and walk away, and it gives me strength because it means I’m still powerful, even though I’m a ghost.

They can’t tell anyone about me because they claim they don’t believe in ghosts. I’m their dark secret, so they make sure no one comes anywhere near the third floor.

You probably think less of me because I can only haunt the attic, but being a ghost isn’t as straightforward as you think. You have to stage your rebirth by shedding the remnants of the person you were.

At first, I resisted. I tried to return, but I was trapped in my mind, drowned at the bottom of an immense ocean. My new body wouldn’t respond. My limbs were heavy and numb, and distorted shapes swirled around me as if I were spinning like a top in the silent waters of the seabed until icy air and shrill sounds replaced the water. I fought against the violent intrusion, but once my new body recovered its balance, it was almost like being alive again, except I wasn’t—not really.    

Time, space, and movement are different when you’re a ghost. Hours become seconds and seconds dissolve into hallucinations which travel to the ends of the universe where stars burn brighter than the summer sun.  

I’ve lived other lives since I died. I wasn’t always in this gloomy place. I used to walk with angels who dressed like me, in long white robes. They didn’t speak, but they sang soothing chants. We floated across the patio, inhaling the sweet scents of the orange trees, water burbling in fountains, flowing from the basins to the pool below.  The trickle never stopped. It was a pretty purgatory. I was a lucky ghost then.

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I’ll tell you more about Ghost Wife’s three narrators in future posts, so stay tuned!

Meanwhile, pick up your free copy of Ghost Wife today! I think it’s the last day in the promotion, so don’t miss out! It’s the perfect winter fireside read!

Happy reading!

Lucy xx