The Hawthorne Heritage Read online

  The Hawthorne Heritage

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Two

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Three

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Four

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Copyright

  Prologue

  The sun was warm on the old woman’s shoulders, and she smiled to feel it. The lake glimmered in the light, its metallic surface rippling in the gentle summer breeze. In the shimmering distance two swans, their plumage gleaming like polished silver in the sunlight, sailed in stately grace upon the waters. Behind her the docile pony stood patiently between the shafts of the dog cart.

  Ten years ago she had had this seat placed here at the lakeside beside the small church of St Agatha’s, and on any day that was warm enough she would escape the happy chaos of Old Hall, with its children and its puppies and its constant hubbub of noise, and come to the peaceful spot. So much had happened here. So very much.

  Robert had known this place. And so had Danny. Oh, yes. So had Danny.

  The old woman lifted her eyes to the shining waters of the lake, remembering.

  The breeze had risen a little, whispering through the trees, stirring the soft dark hair of the child who sat at her feet, his head bent absorbedly to his task.

  Gabriella’s grandson.

  She had to smile at the thought of her daughter being a grandmother. How time had raced away with all of them. She had been born just before the century that now, like her, was in its seventies. In the past fifty years so much had changed. The railways had come to East Anglia and suddenly the world had seemed a smaller place. It no longer required a day’s harrowing journey to visit London. The machines that once had caused such bitterness and fury were now as commonplace in the country as they were in the industrial cities. And the people had left, drawn from the land to those same cities by the promise of work and money.

  She stirred a little, easing her back. A way of life was changing, and the heritage of the child beside her and of the children who would follow him would be very different from the one that William Hawthorne had bequeathed.

  She lifted her eyes. In the far distance, over the tops of the trees at the head of the lake, she could just see the peaks of the impressive roofs of New Hall. With its master dead Clara had lived in the great house alone now for ten years, childless and sour, her ambitions brought to nothing. It had been years since Jessica had seen or spoken to her. She wondered now if she had grown any wiser with the years.

  ‘Look, Great-Grandmama – a bird! Do you see? It is a bird, isn’t it?’ The little boy was offering her the piece of wood upon which he had been working diligently with a small, sharp knife.

  The old woman took it. It was indeed a bird, with the lift of flight in the gracefully curving wings.

  ‘It’s lovely, dear. Truly lovely.’ She smiled at the pleasure that lit the serious little face at her praise. This small, talented child was her pride and her joy, and he knew it, and returned her devotion. Only she truly understood his need to create beauty, to use the as yet undeveloped skills of his hands to bring life to wood and to stone.

  She held the bird as gently in her gnarled hands as if it had been alive, feeling the smoothness of the wood and watching with delight the bright and handsome face of her great grandchild. The skill of those young hands was a wonderful heritage indeed. And in the dark, shining eyes she saw another – the only heritage worth fighting for. The heritage of trust, and of love.

  Part One

  1810–1811

  Chapter One

  Jessica Hawthorne never forgot the tragic day on which her brother died.

  His loss, in his twenty-second year and just three days before her twelfth birthday, struck the child to the heart, her grief and shock not unnaturally intensified by the fact that this was her first unnerving brush with the reality of death. Never before had she been brought so forcibly to face the fact that both she and those she loved and depended upon were mortal, and vulnerable. That dreadful day she ever afterwards held to be a turning point, when the first unwilling steps were taken from the shelter of childhood into the perilous uncertainties of the adult world.

  It had begun a day much like any other, bright with sunshine and gaudy with the colours of autumn. It was perhaps regrettably commonplace also that Jessica, before the morning sun was well up in the sky, had found herself in disgrace and at odds with her brother Giles. Soundly slapped for it and locked in her room on the nursery floor by her governess, MacKenzie, not for the first time she brooded, scowling, upon the injustices involved in being the youngest and consequently – it seemed to her – the least considered and most put-upon member of the Hawthorne family. Poor, scruffy Bran, the over-excitable culprit in her brush with Giles, had been dragged off to his own miserable confinement in the barn, and as she huddled upon the window seat of the dormer window high in the west wing of the house the dire threats that had been made against her devoted if undisciplined companion and friend worried her far more than did her own disgrace.

  ‘I swear I’ll have that damnable beast exterminated!’ Giles had raged, his fair, handsome face brilliant with fury, the stableyard muck from his fall dark upon his elegant breeches. Bran, held captive by one of the stable lads, had yelped in aggrieved surprise as Giles’ leather riding whip caught him viciously upon the nose.

  Blinding temper had entirely ousted good sense. Jessica had flown at her brother, screeching like a street Arab. ‘Stop it! Stop it! How could you? He only wanted to play – it isn’t his fault if you can’t keep a seat on your stupid horse—!’

  He had caught her one-handed, lifting her almost from her feet, shaking her as Bran might a rat. From the corner of her eye she could see MacKenzie bearing down on them like a man o’ the line, bright flags of mortification and anger flying in her cheeks, her smooth and usually iron-neat hair straggling in the wind.

  ‘Damned brat!’ Giles shook Jessica again, and her teeth rattled in her head. ‘You run wild as that ill-begotten mongrel of yours!’ Still holding her he swung irritably upon the panting MacKenzie. ‘Where were you? Can’t you keep the child under control? What’s she doing at the stables at this time of day? Just look at her! She looks – like – a tinker’s urchin!’ He emphasized the last words with a series of fierce, neck-cracking shakes, then let Jessica go so suddenly that she almost fell.

  ‘Steady on, Giles.’ Edward, who till now had watched the whole debacle with his usual tolerant good temper spoke, as always, mildly, calming his dancing horse, his eyes sympathetic upon his dishevelled young sister; despite being the elder of the two he had himself suffered often enough from Giles’ volatile temper.

  Giles did not even glance at him.

  MacKenzie blushed an unbecoming scarlet, her pale and bulbous blue eyes fixed on Giles’ vividly angry face. ‘I’m – sorry, Master Giles—’ the woman stammered, and the look she flashed at her scowling charge threatened near-murder, or worse, ‘Miss Jessica is supposed to be in the schoolroom with her tutor. I left her there myself a bare half-hour ago—’

  ‘Mr Atkinson sent a message,’ Jessica said sullenly, seeing the sweet freedom that had so fortuitously presented its
elf being snatched from her before it had been well tasted. ‘He’s taken a cold and is confined to bed.’

  ‘Wicked girl, not to come straight back and tell me—’ MacKenzie slapped her bare arm spitefully hard. Edward shifted in the saddle again and was still. Jessica, sensing his sympathy yet nursed little hope of help from that direction; for all his easy-going and kindly disposition she well knew from experience that it was no part of Edward’s makeup to spring to an ill-behaved young sister’s defence at cost of his own comfort. He was, however, so far as she could see, Bran’s only chance of reprieve. She cast him a desperate look; but though his narrow, pleasant face beneath its shock of red-gold hair showed wry sympathy, he offered no positive support beyond a small grimace of commiseration.

  Grimly Giles stabbed a finger at the embarrassed governess. ‘Get her inside and cleaned up before Mother sees her.’ He bent to dust the mud from his breeches, turned a glowering look upon the shaggy, eagerly panting Bran who, in his endearing good nature wagged his scruffy tail, sensing no danger. Jessica, paralyzed with terror for him, could have cried. ‘And as for that brute—’ Giles said, his voice savage, ‘I’ll see to it that he’s knocked on the head this time, see if I don’t. Belle could have broken a leg—’

  ‘No! Oh, no—! You can’t kill him – oh, PLEASE—!’ No effort could prevent the rise of humiliatingly childish tears.

  He brushed her away. ‘Lock him in the barn,’ he said to the stable lad. ‘I’ll see to it later.’

  ‘Giles, no!’ The child’s voice lifted to a distracted wail. ‘Edward – please—’ She turned to her eldest brother, ‘—please, you can’t let him—’ MacKenzie’s iron-hard fingers, bony and cold even on the warmest day, clamped upon her thin shoulder and she was dragged unceremoniously, sobbing with rage and with dread for Bran, across the yard. Looking back she saw the big mongrel being towed reluctantly in the opposite direction, saw too Edward’s face set in the disturbed and faintly puzzled look that any kind of unpleasantness always brought to it. As he caught Jessica’s eye he made a small gesture, the tiniest of signals – Leave it. I’ll do what I can.

  Some small relief moved in her. Edward surely wouldn’t let awful Giles kill Bran. But gloomily, directly on the heels of that thought came another – when had Edward, or anyone else, ever stopped Giles from doing as he wanted?

  ‘Wicked! You’re a wicked child!’ MacKenzie’s rage was venomous. She had been made to look incompetent and foolish, and in front of Master Giles of all people. She pinched hard as she caught Jessica’s arm. ‘If you die in your sleep tonight, my girl, you’ll go straight to hell, you hear me? Straight – to – the – devil—’

  The child ignored the hissed words – the threat had been used too often, and the original sting was long gone. She was concentrating the whole of her mind on willing Edward to save Bran, turning her head, pleading with wide, dark eyes that dominated a face pinched and pale with panic.

  As the two brothers, followed by a mounted groom, swept past her Giles did not glance at her. Edward, however, in response to her desperate look, winked, his irrepressible smile lifting the corners of his mouth. At least a little reassured by the silent half-promise, she sullenly allowed herself to be marched like a prisoner under escort across the gardens at the back of the house – canny MacKenzie had more sense than to risk displaying evidence of such ill-temper and ill-behaviour on New Hall’s immaculate front lawns with Jessica’s eagle-eyed mother somewhere within the house – through the west door and up the steep and narrow nursery stairs. Once safely behind the closed door of her own domain MacKenzie vented her fury with more vindictive slapping – those cold, bony hands were as effective a weapon as any cane – before flinging open the door that led to the bedroom. ‘In you go, Miss – and there you stay! Lucy – go tell Cook Miss Jessica will be requiring neither lunch nor tea. And bread and milk only for supper, if you please.’

  Plump Lucy, Jessica’s kind-hearted friend and confidante since babyhood, scrambled awkwardly to her feet, dropping the petticoat she had been mending from her lap. ‘Yes, Miss.’ She picked up the sewing, dropped it again. MacKenzie always made poor Lucy’s slow wits even slower.

  MacKenzie impatiently snatched the garment from her. ‘Go!’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ Lucy said again, and casting at Jessica one terrified look of fellow-feeling she scuttled from the room and down the stairs. MacKenzie shoved the child with entirely unnecessary force through the open door. Jessica stumbled to the bed, heard the slamming of the door and the rattle of the key in the lock behind her.

  She sat upon the bed, angrily rigid, fists clenched, teeth gritted against tears. She would not cry. She – would – not! She screwed her face up hard. Detestable Giles. Detestable MacKenzie. Horrible world. And poor, poor Bran—

  For all her obstinacy, the last thought was almost too much for her. The tears she was refusing to shed rose burning and salty behind her eyes, all but defeating her. Stubbornly she fought them down, her face aching with the effort. ‘Damnation!’ she said – one of the only two swearwords she knew, culled from her frowned-upon visits to the stableyard – and then, the need being pressing, she called upon the other one, ‘Bloody damnation! Bloody, bloody damnation!’ A single tear escaped. She blinked fiercely and scrubbed it angrily away. ‘Bloody damnation!’ she said again, but with less force, a woeful wobble in her voice. In her imagination, so real and so familiar that she could all but smell the comforting, doggy smell of him, Bran pushed his big wet nose into her hand, licked her skin eagerly with his rasping tongue. She sniffed and gulped hard, tried to suppress awful visions of what might well be happening at this very moment in the barn.

  She stood up and went to the window, perching straight-backed upon the deep, cushioned windowsill – in happier moods one of her favourite spots. The nursery suite, high in the west wing, that had accommodated her three older brothers and her sister Caroline as well as the dead brother and sister that they remembered and she did not, overlooked the comings and goings of the vast three-sided court in front of the house, where the broad, gravelled drive swept in from the park past manicured lawns and a pair of triple-cupped fountains to the foot of the wide flight of shallow marble steps that led up to the porticoed front door. Now in the shadows cast by the September sunshine an open carriage stood waiting, John the first footman in attendance and Brancome the coachman, impeccably turned out as always in his dark green livery, on the box. As she watched, distracted a little despite herself, John, seeing the front door open, stepped smartly forward to open the door of the carriage. Not for the first time Jessica wondered if he minded being called by a name not his own – her father, not to be put to the trouble of remembering a succession of – to him – infinitely unimportant names had years ago decreed that all the first footmen of Melbury New Hall, upon elevation to that privileged position should be called John – Jessica was certain that he did not even know, nor would he care, as for some reason she did, that this particular John’s name was actually Samuel. The man stood now, servile and attentive, as Jessica’s mother emerged from the house accompanied by Caroline. Gloomily jealous of the implications of adulthood and consequent privilege and freedom implicit in the scene Jessica watched them walk down the steps to the carriage. From the height from which she looked their figures were foreshortened, but her knowing eye could distinguish even from this distance her mother’s regal carriage and the faultless poise of her fair head beneath the drifting plumes of her small hat. She wore dark green – her favourite colour – over the palest lawn which floated gracefully as she moved. Caroline, blessed with the striking golden looks that both she and Giles had inherited from their mother was in blue – a colour Jessica had noticed with half-envious scorn, that she had much favoured lately, ever since ghastly cousin Bertie had written a fatuous poem to her ‘sapphire eyes’. At the bottom of the steps Caroline turned gracefully and spoke to her mother, and their laughter rang prettily on the autumn air. Entirely unreasonably Jessica leaned to the window and
ferociously stuck her tongue out as far as it would go. Caroline, impervious and still smiling gaily, stepped into the carriage and settled herself with grace upon the leather seat. Her mother, waiting, glanced about her. Knowing it impossible that she might be seen, yet still, from ingrained habit, Jessica drew back sharply from the window. She heard Brancome chirrup to the horses – Betsy and Darling, she had recognized them both immediately, even though all the carriage horses were matched bays and even Jessica’s father sometimes had difficulty telling one from the other – and the big wheels crunched upon the clean, fresh-raked gravel.

  Jessica drew her knees up under her chin, scowling. She supposed that her mother and sister were repaying Lady Felworth’s call. Or perhaps they were going to The Limes to take a glass of wine with Mrs James Spencer. Or to Rendell’s Grove to see Mrs Joyce and her three sour-faced daughters, to share tea and cakes and discuss endlessly such tediously uninteresting subjects as the youngest Belvedere daughter’s latest beau, or the Hatfield girl’s quite disgracefully daring dress at last week’s ball at Felworth Hall (Jessica had had that from Lucy, who’d had it from Lady Felworth’s laundry maid). She folded her arms upon her knees and rested her chin upon them. Who cared? Who’d want to get dressed up like a silly doll and parade round the countryside hoping to catch this eye or that? What a waste of time! She sniffed again, miserably, and moodily huddled nearer to the window. Beyond the east wing of the house, opposite to where she sat, she could see the tiled roof of the barn that was Bran’s prison. The sight brought back all her fears in full force. Surely – oh, surely! – Edward wouldn’t let horrible Giles really have poor Bran knocked on the head? Once again panic rose. Frantically she found herself uttering a garbled prayer:

  Please God, oh please don’t let him – I’ll do anything – I’ll be good for ever – I’ll do as I’m told, I won’t steal from the kitchen, I won’t swear or fib ever again – I won’t listen at doors, or try to get out of going to church—