Briar Patch

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  BRIAR PATCH

  Linda Sole

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2011

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2011 by Linda Sole.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Sole, Linda.

  Briar patch.

  1. Great Britain – History – Victoria, 1837–1901 – Fiction.

  2. Great Britain – Social life and customs – 19th century – Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9'14-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-155-2 (epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8088-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-388-5 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  Prologue

  ‘Something is wrong with our Carrie.’ Ellen Blake shaded her eyes as she stood at the kitchen window. ‘I told you to keep an eye on her, Dick. You know she isn’t safe out on her own.’

  ‘I can’t watch her and do my work,’ Dick muttered. ‘Pa sent me down to the bottom field with the cows. Carrie followed. I sent her home but you know what she’s like – it’s not my fault if she wanders off in a daydream. The girl is soft in the head and it’s no use denying it, Ma.’

  ‘Our Carrie isn’t like other girls. I wish the good Lord had made her ugly for then her foolishness wouldn’t matter so much – but she is beautiful and the lads stare at her. She hasn’t the sense to know what they’re after.’

  ‘You worry too much, Ma.’

  Dick was at the deep stone sink pumping water to wash when his mother opened the back door.

  ‘Come away in, Carrie,’ she scolded. Then, on a different note: ‘What’s wrong, love?’

  ‘He hurt me, Ma.’ Carrie’s sobs brought Dick’s head round sharply. He grumbled about having to watch out for her when he was at his work but in his heart he loved her. She was vulnerable and a little lacking up top but her beauty and her sweetness of character made her a favourite with everyone. ‘I didn’t want to do it – but he forced me.’

  ‘Forced you to do what, Carrie?’ Dick saw the tear to her bodice and the mud on her long skirts. Moving swiftly towards his sister, he grabbed her wrist. ‘Who was the bastard that hurt you – and what did he do to you?’

  Carrie yelped in fright. She was sixteen; a lovely girl with hair the colour of ripe corn in sunlight and wide, greenish-blue eyes that always held an expression of wonder or bewilderment. She had no reason to be frightened of her eldest brother, though at seven and twenty he was tall, broad-shouldered and powerful.

  ‘The squire.’ Carrie’s face was streaked with dirt and tears but Dick could see the red mark on her cheek. ‘He was riding his horse through the wild meadow. I asked him why he was there because that’s Pa’s land. He dismounted and pushed me down on the grass and then he did it . . .’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Ma . . . Don’t let our Dick hurt me. I didn’t mean to let him . . .’ Her eyes widened as she stared at her mother. ‘Will I have a baby, Ma? Da will kill me if I bring shame on him – he said so.’

  ‘The filthy bastard.’ Dick took Carrie by the shoulders, shaking her until she started sobbing again. ‘What did he do to you, girl? Did he rape you? By God, I’ll kill him for what he’s done.’

  ‘You sound like your pa. Sit down and have your meal, Dick. Whatever is done is done. You can’t change it and who would take Carrie’s word against Squire Thornton?’

  ‘Everyone knows what he is. He gets away with it time and again. No one stands up to him – but this time he has gone too far.’

  ‘You don’t know what he did.’ Ellen caught hold of her son’s arm as he started for the door. ‘Where are you going? You can’t touch him, Dick. Squire is too powerful. He has men working for him who think they rule this county.’

  Dick met her eyes defiantly. ‘I’m going to kill him, Ma – and damn the consequences.’

  ‘Violence never helped anyone. If you do this you’ll have to run and where does that leave me? You know what your pa is like and Tom can’t stand up to him the way you do.’

  ‘I’m going after him, Ma, and you can’t stop me – this time the bastard is going to pay.’

  ‘Dick, please think. Mebbe nothing happened. Carrie’s all right, just a bit frightened. Come back. Please don’t leave us alone with your pa.’

  Dick wasn’t listening. The anger had been smouldering inside him for a long time: anger at his sister for being the way she was; anger at the world for the injustice he saw around him every day; and anger at himself for bowing his head to his pa.

  In the yard outside, Dick saw the long-handled axe he had used earlier for chopping wood and picked it up. His face was grim as he set off across the low-lying fields which lay between Thornton’s land and his father’s farm. The squire coveted their land because of its access to the fast-flowing stream that ran through it and bordered the wild meadow. It petered out to a thin trickle by the time it reached the squire’s land, which meant that all the water for the stock and much of what was needed elsewhere had to be pumped from various wells Thornton had sunk. During the previous hot summer some of his wells had run dry but the stream on their land had kept flowing, even though it had been sluggish during the drought.

  ‘Sell to me, John Blake.’ Thornton had made a generous bid for the land at the time. ‘You have barely enough acres to support your family, man. With the offer I’ve made you could settle elsewhere – perhaps buy an inn or more land. Send your eldest boy to me and I’ll give him a cottage and a job in the stables.’

  Dick frowned as he recalled his father’s reply. John Blake’s curses had made even Dick blush and he was used to his father’s foul language. Since then they had heard nothing but Thornton was not a man to take such insults lying down.

  ‘Damn him for a coward and a rogue!’

  What kind of a man too
k his revenge on a defenceless girl? Everyone knew that Carrie was a little slow in her mind. The doctor said it was because she’d been too long in coming when Ma gave birth.

  ‘I’ll kill him. I’ll kill the bastard if I swing for it.’

  Dick’s anger festered as he strode through the fields, most of which were pasture for the squire’s herd of prime Herefords. He was trespassing but he didn’t care. What kind of a man would take advantage of a girl like Carrie?

  Anger carried Dick swiftly towards the large sprawling manor house that had belonged to Squire Thornton’s family for more than three hundred years. Added to over the centuries, it was a hotchpotch of styles ranging from Jacobean to the Georgian facade that the squire’s grandfather had built. As he saw the grey stone walls rising ahead of him, Dick hesitated and for a moment his mother’s words came back to his mind.

  Please don’t leave us alone with your pa.

  It would be hard for her but it couldn’t be helped. He took a firmer grip on the handle of the axe and strode on. When he reached the front courtyard, Dick saw a group of gentlemen standing outside. The squire was one of them. They were all laughing in the wintry sunshine – Thornton as carefree as the rest. The rogue hadn’t an ounce of conscience.

  ‘Damn your black soul to hell, Thornton!’

  Dick raised the axe above his head and charged towards the men. At first they seemed unaware but then they turned to look at him. He saw their stunned expressions and the fear in their faces as they scattered. For the first time in his life he felt powerful. He had always been a labouring man, forced to bow his head and obey orders. These rich men rode by on their horses and splashed mud over him, hardly seeing him; he was nothing, dirt beneath their hooves – but they were seeing him now.

  He heard the screams and shouts but his mind was focused on only one thing. Thornton must die. The squire had turned to look at him, incredulity in his eyes. He alone of them all stood his ground. Once, Dick would have admired that but the red mist in his brain shut everything out but the desire to kill.

  ‘What do you want, Blake?’

  ‘Revenge for my sister,’ Dick said and smashed the blade of the axe against his head. Thornton went down like a stone, blood spraying everywhere. Dick felt a moment of triumph before the shot made him crumple to his knees and then fall flat in the dirt beside the body of the man he had just killed.

  One

  ‘Philip, you are a mean beast. I could never marry Mr Rushden and you know it.’ Roz Thornton flashed blue eyes at her brother in the way that had half the young men in the county running after her. ‘Mama said there was no need for me to marry until I was sure I really liked someone.’

  Philip Thornton stood up and took a turn about the large well-furnished sitting room. The dark mahogany furniture belonged to a more elegant age and had not been replaced by the heavier pieces that were popular these days. At three and twenty he was four years older than his sister, an attractive man with reddish-brown hair and dark eyes. He did not have his father’s build, being leaner and shorter by a head. For a moment he gazed out of the window at the wide expanse of lawn beyond the terrace and the shrubbery.

  ‘That was then and this is now, Roz. Father left things in a muddle. We ain’t exactly done up, but there are debts. We can’t afford the money for a London season for you or me come to that – I may have to go somewhere to find an heiress. I wasn’t cut out to be a farmer.’

  ‘No, you weren’t.’ Roz smiled up at him teasingly. ‘I’m not sure you are fit for anything but visiting your clubs and playing cards with your smart friends.’

  ‘Hang on, Sis,’ he protested. ‘I’d have jumped at a commission in the army but Father said I had to come back from college and learn to become the squire. I escaped to London for long enough to discover its delights – then he got himself into this mess.’

  ‘Is it so very terrible here? Papa always enjoyed hunting and shooting, and we had parties all the time last year.’ Roz arched her pretty brows. ‘Why did Dick Blake have to kill him like that and spoil everything? I know Papa used to – well, he didn’t behave just as he ought, but Carrie Blake? How could he!’

  Roz had always been a little in awe of her powerful, rather loud father. He’d been a handsome man, larger than life with dark hair and grey eyes. Squire Thornton had laughed a lot, hardly noticing his daughter until her sixteenth birthday when he’d taken to pinching her cheek and telling her she was his beautiful puss. ‘It was all so horrid. Goodness knows what that Blake man might have done had Higgins not shot him. We might all have been killed.’

  ‘You weren’t even there.’

  ‘Mother and I were about to go out to the landau. It was our day for visiting. Another few minutes . . .’ she broke off and shuddered.

  ‘Dick Blake wouldn’t have harmed you. I knew him a little and respected him. He wasn’t like his foul-mouthed father. People said he took after his mother. Ellen Blake is the daughter of a vicar. She’s a quiet, well-spoken woman. Everyone wondered why she married Blake but it was probably because Dick was on the way.’

  ‘Really! You shouldn’t say such things to me.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Roz. You’ll be married in a year or so at most and then you’ll find out what men are all about.’

  ‘I’m not sure I care to be married. It sounds rather sordid.’

  ‘And you sound like Mama. You mustn’t let her ruin your life, Roz. Father might never have been a paragon, but he told me she was always cold. He had to look elsewhere for his pleasure, and I can’t blame him for that: men have needs.’

  ‘Do you think there is any doubt?’

  ‘I don’t know. She claimed it was Father who raped her – and there’s no doubt she’s having a child. She must be eight months gone at least.’

  ‘Father has been dead for more than seven months.’

  ‘Exactly. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you before we got into all this is that I have invited friends to stay with us over the Queen’s Jubilee.’

  ‘Oh yes, we must celebrate.’

  ‘It would look strange if we didn’t. We’ve been in mourning long enough.’

  ‘It would be such a shame not to celebrate Victoria’s fiftieth year on the throne. She married Prince Albert when she was very young and she was so happy but then he died and she’s been alone all this time. Do you think she wants all these celebrations for the Jubilee?’

  ‘I imagine her ministers have forced her to come out of seclusion. A queen has her duty, Roz – and so have I. This place needs a fortune to run it and it’s my duty to find an heiress who will marry me. At the moment the bank is letting us run, but once things get sticky the money people won’t want to know. My advice is to find yourself a husband while you can. Rushden was hinting that he fancied you.’

  ‘I can’t bear the way he looks at me.’

  Roz was aware that Harry Rushden liked her, but despite his owning one of the finest estates in the country, she had no desire to be his wife. He might be wealthy but he was not her idea of what a husband should be.

  ‘Harry is no different from any other man and he really likes you. If you tried you could probably wrap him round your little finger. If you’re not careful you might get left on the shelf. Especially if things go badly with the estate.’

  ‘I have grandmother’s legacy, Philip. You know she left three thousand pounds in trust until I marry or reach my twenty-fifth birthday.’

  ‘Three thousand isn’t a fortune, and you won’t like living in the dower house with mother.’

  ‘You wouldn’t ask us to move to the dower house?’

  ‘My wife won’t want you and Mother living here. Mama has already asked me about the future. Unless you want to settle down to obscurity, make the most of your chances before then.’

  ‘I’m not going to marry Rushden.’

  ‘I’m not forcing you, Roz. I just wanted you to know what’s going on.’

  Roz smoothed her white leather gloves over her fingers. Now that she no
longer needed to wear black she had chosen a round gown of grey cloth with a matching pelisse trimmed at the hem with red braid. Roz’s bonnet was trimmed with scarlet ribbons that tied in a bow at the side of her face.

  It was a warm afternoon towards the end of May and she was walking to the village with a basket of Cook’s pastries for the vicarage. Mama had always been a generous woman and she saw no reason to mend her ways, despite her son’s drive for economy. Philip spoke of being careful with money but he was planning three days of celebrations for the Queen’s Jubilee. He had invited some London gentlemen down to make up a shooting party and there would be a small dance at the hall on the second evening. On the day of the Jubilee itself the tenants and labourers would be invited to a feast in the grounds.

  ‘We ought to do something for the village folk. If we provide the food and ale the vicar will take care of the sports and entertainment. We can give a few prizes and I’ll make a speech.’

  ‘I wonder that you consider we have enough money for such things.’ Lady Thornton had been annoyed with her son at dinner the previous evening. ‘Why waste what we have?’

  ‘Father would have done something of the kind – and we have to keep up appearances if Roz and I are to make good marriages.’

  ‘Really, Philip. I suppose you can do what you wish – but your sister will do very well at the dower house with me.’

  Roz was not sure that she would be happy to live in the dower house with her mother. It was small by the standards of Thornton Hall, having no more than three family bedchambers and two for guests, besides the attic rooms for the servants. They would have just a cook and a parlour maid to look after them and perhaps a woman from the village to come in and clean. She would be constantly in her mother’s company with nowhere she could escape to when she wished to be alone.

  Besides, living so close to the hall she would be constantly reminded that she was no longer the daughter of the squire but merely Philip’s sister. She wasn’t sure if she would be able to keep her horses and the thought of parting with them made her wretched. Yet what were her alternatives? She had the accomplishments expected of young ladies but her skills were not exceptional. It seemed she had a choice between marriage and living at home with her mother.