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  Blake’s Reach

  Catherine Gaskin

  Copyright © The Estate of Catherine Gaskin 2018

  This edition first published 2018 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1958

  www.wyndhambooks.com/catherine-gaskin

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover images from Shutterstock © Boiko Olha/Eva Bidiuk

  Cover design © Wyndham Media Ltd

  Titles by Catherine Gaskin

  from Wyndham Books

  The Property of a Gentleman

  Sara Dane

  The Lynmara Legacy

  The Summer of the Spanish Woman

  Promises

  A Falcon for a Queen

  Edge of Glass

  Blake’s Reach

  Fiona

  Corporation Wife

  Many more titles coming soon

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  For Moria Gaskin

  Contents

  PART ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  PART TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  PART THREE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Epilogue

  Preview: The Property of A Gentleman by Catherine Gaskin

  Preview: Sara Dane by Catherine Gaskin

  Preview: The Lynmara Legacy by Catherine Gaskin

  Preview: The Summer of the Spanish Woman by Catherine Gaskin

  Preview: A Falcon for a Queen by Catherine Gaskin

  Preview: Edge of Glass by Catherine Gaskin

  Preview: The Wine Widow by Tessa Barclay

  Preview: Lily’s Daughter by Diana Raymond

  Preview: Wonder Cruise by Ursula Bloom

  Preview: Wyndham Books

  PART ONE

  One

  Jane pushed herself forward in the hay, craning to get the last glimpse of the coach before it vanished along the road that led south to London. It was a day of spring unexpectedly dropped into late February; all morning there had been showers, and the air was sharp and clean. From the heights of Hampstead Hill the towers and roofs and steeples of the distant capital were clearly visible ‒ a glittering city, and for Jane, who had never seen it at closer hand, one possessed of a devilish, compelling enchantment, which gave her no peace.

  It wasn’t that life here at The Feathers was dull, or that they didn’t hear enough of London and its doings. A coaching inn on the road to the North from London, placed strategically at the end of the long upward pull to the Heights, would never lack business. They heard the gossip of the capital almost as soon as it reached the coffee-shops in Fleet Street. The excellence of its food and service was well known, and, in its time, The Feathers had served many important political figures, as well as the men and women who made up the world of society and the Court. The Feathers was nothing if not cosmopolitan, carrying out its business as it did, almost on the fringe of the great city. But the fringe, for Jane Howard, was not enough.

  Especially now, it was not enough. London seemed to be caught in a fever of uncertainty and unrest, and the travellers brought it with them to The Feathers. Now, in the second month of 1792, the fever was mounting. Its centre and starting point was the Revolution in France, carried on in bloody haste and passion in the strange, unfamiliar names of Liberty and Equality. In the minds of most people who stopped at The Feathers to eat and rest ‒ and if the London papers were to be believed, in the minds of most Englishmen ‒ there was no doubt that, sooner or later, they would go to war with France, and in that thought lay their disturbance. War was many things ‒ but most of all, war was change.

  The English could think back to their own taste of revolution, when the American Colonies had fought and defeated them; its memory was still bitter. But this business in France was another matter, and uncomfortably close to home. It was difficult ‒ no, impossible ‒ to imagine their own King, ‘Farmer George,’ stubborn and difficult as he was, with increasing and longer periods of madness upon him, being taken prisoner by his own people, and even threatened with death. Such things did not happen in England. But it was a time when strange ideas were drifting about, and it led to restlessness, and questioning. It wasn’t only the travellers who stopped at The Feathers who talked of the disturbances and the new ideas. They were on the tongues of the villagers as they sat over their ale. Now it was possible to hear mention of war and revolution mixed with the peaceful talk of crops and weather and the enjoyable scandals of the countryside.

  Jane heard the talk as she refilled tankards, or helped Sally Cooper, the innkeeper’s wife, serve an elaborate dinner in one of the private rooms. She listened, and thought back on what she heard, and it only served to increase her own personal restlessness. The times were stirring, or was it simply, she wondered, that spring was upon them unseasonably?

  She settled back in the hay, and loosened the shawl she had thrown about her shoulders. It was spring, and yet another coach had continued its journey on to London, and, as always, left her behind. She looked at the black oak beams above her head and sighed ‒ a rebellious sigh that only went halfway to expressing what she felt.

  The loft was as still as a church mid-week, but Jane guessed that she wouldn’t be left long to enjoy its stillness. Sally frequently turned a blind eye to her absences, forgetting to notice that the key to the outside storeroom was gone from its hook in the kitchen. But within the hour a coach was expected from London, bound for the North, and the usual rush to serve the travellers and get them on their way would begin. Jane knew well she couldn’t be spared, and so when Sally’s deep voice calling her name came floating across the stable yard, she would descend the ladder reluctantly, and exchange the smell of dust and apples and hay for the stronger smells of brandy sauce and pork slowly roasting on the spit before the fire in the kitchen.

  Jane didn’t dislike The Feathers ‒ but it irked and frustrated her to be continually on hand to serve and help to speed on the travellers, constantly watch their departures to places she had never been, to have to stay while they moved on. The worst times were when coaches from the North started on the last stage of their journey south to London; her heart followed them with a badly-concealed longing and envy, and in the kitchen she would bounce the copper pots on the range, or knead the dough, her arms covered with flour to the elbows, with unnecessary energy. These were the times that Sally’s three daughters, Prudence, Charlotte and Mary, had learne
d that Jane’s temper was not to be trusted, and they stayed clear of the sharp side of her tongue.

  It wasn’t possible to live in a coaching inn, especially one on a road as much travelled as this one, and not share a little in the lives and personalities of the passengers who stumbled wearily from the hard-benched coaches at all hours through the day and the night ‒ the long twilight evenings of the summer or the winter nights when the horses came into the yard caked with mud, and icicles hung inches long from the carriage lanterns. Jane had seen and observed them all … the humble ones, the curates in shabby black or the more prosperous parson with tight gaiters, merchants’ clerks, governesses ‒ careful of their dignity even when travelling in public coaches ‒ sailors going home on leave. The rich rode in their own carriages, some of them velvet lined and silk-curtained, the ladies wearing large hats and clutching miniature dogs on their laps, the gentlemen with waistcoats of wonderful colours, and hands that flashed with rings. Jane’s eyes were on them ceaselessly as she moved about her tasks, her mind storing up information about worlds she knew only by words dropped carelessly as she poured the wine. Every kind of person came to The Feathers, and The Feathers endeavoured to serve them all to suit their needs and the size of their purse. The demands for food and ale, for fresh bed-linen and warming pans were endless. Jane’s body was as strong and supple as a cat’s, but by candle-lighting time her legs ached dully, and she understood why middle-aged Sally dropped on the kitchen settle with sighs of exhaustion. If you had to work ‒ and Jane wished she didn’t ‒ The Feathers was a good place to be, with abundant and good food, and brisk gossip to go with it. She always enjoyed the gossip ‒ a whispered piece of scandal about the young baronet who sat over his wine in the front room, tart observances on the manners and airs of the lady whose coach had just rolled away. In a sense gossip was information, and Jane had a great curiosity about things that even remotely touched her life.

  But there were times when she had thoughts that weren’t to be gossiped about ‒ that couldn’t be shared with Pru and Lottie, or even with her favourite, Mary … thoughts that disturbed her, and made her restless, thoughts that caused her eyes to follow the coach, down the road with greater keenness. There was no way of communicating these things to Mary, though she had the feeling, sometimes, that Sally knew them without being told. On these days she waited until the quiet of the afternoon, then she crossed the yard, ignoring the glances of the stable-hands, and climbed the ladder to the loft, where the loose hay made a couch for her. Here she felt secure to do as she pleased ‒ free to enjoy the hint of warmth in the breeze that came through the gap in the wall, to kick off her heavy shoes and wriggle her toes against her coarse stockings ‒ free to close her eyes and think aloud the thoughts that couldn’t be spoken elsewhere.

  To-day her mind followed a track which in the last months had become routine ‒ though with the remembrances of last night’s angry scene with Sally and Tim Cooper to sharpen it. Yesterday had been the twenty-sixth of February. Sally was too busy to keep close track of passing time, but, by her rather loose reckoning of the year Jane had been brought to The Feathers as an infant, February twenty-sixth, 1792, was Jane’s eighteenth birthday. Her dark brows knitted sharply over this. At eighteen most other girls had married and already christened their first squawling infant at the parish church. Eighteen was almost on the shelf … yet here she was ‒ if not a beauty by the standards of some of the ladies who called at the inn, then at least more than able to draw and hold the glances of the men ‒ with no one she considered worth marrying in sight.

  It was over this Tim had quarrelled with her ‒ Sally less violently taking his part. It was well known in the village that Jane could marry Harry Black at a day’s notice, if she would have him. The trouble was that she didn’t want him ‒ and she didn’t know what she wanted in his place.

  The thing that puzzled everyone, Jane included, was that Harry Black stood for such treatment as she gave him. It wasn’t as if he were of no importance, or had nothing to offer her. Harry was a giant of a man, famed for his strength through all the neighbouring villages; he was blond, thick-necked, blue-eyed, with enormous hands which were slow and heavy in their movements. If Harry leaned back in a chair it broke beneath his weight; when he wound a clock it inexplicably came to pieces. He had regular, good-looking features, he bore himself erectly and was proud of his physical appearance. He was also boastfully proud of the success he had with women. Apart from this, Harry was the only son of Thomas Black ‒ and in the village this meant something. Tom Black owned the most prosperous farm in the whole district, and had built himself a fine red brick house which was almost as large as the one belonging to Sir George Osgood; he owned and operated a brewery, and there was talk that he was doing some trade with merchants in the City of London. Tom Black was a man of means and authority, and Harry was his only son.

  It followed that Jane was a very foolish girl to ignore Harry as she did. Tim Cooper went beyond that, accusing her of other and less creditable ambitions.

  ‘It’s bad blood!’ Tim had raged at her last evening. ‘You’ll turn out like that whore, your mother!’

  ‘Hush! Tim, hush!’ Sally said quickly. ‘What Anne Howard does is her own concern … and Jane’s no need to account for it.’

  Tim bit at his pipe angrily. ‘You’ve high-blown notions, girl … notions that only belong with them as can afford them. Get yourself a dowry before you look beyond Harry Black.’ Exasperation seemed to choke him. ‘Why … why, who are you, when all’s said and done? Nothing but a bit of a serving girl at an inn, and Harry could look much higher if he choose ‒ and find a girl with a penny or two in her pocket, to boot!’

  Stung and irritated by pressure which had been building over the last months, Jane became haughty. ‘Tom Black started as a common labourer, and I’m more than well enough born for the great Mr. Black’s son! My mother and father were gentle-folks!’

  ‘Your mother’s a whore … and your father died in prison! And don’t you forget it, miss!’

  Jane writhed in the hay at the memory of it. They always spoke of bad blood when her mother’s name was mentioned. They used the words with certainty, too, for the whole parish had known Anne’s history from the day she had arrived at The Feathers with Jane to leave her in Sally’s care. Anne had been twenty then, a vivid young red-head whose clear beauty made strangers gasp. She was the widow of Captain Tom Howard ‒ ‘Merry’ Tom Howard they called him ‒ who had died four months ago in the Fleet prison, where his creditors had finally put him. Two things were plain ‒ Anne hadn’t been bred to work, and she had no money. A young baby was obviously a hindrance in this situation, so Jane was brought to The Feathers. She made no secret of where the money came from for Jane’s support: already she clung on the arm of the first of her lovers, and she wore the silks and velvets she loved. There were pearls about her throat.

  Anne was as gay and exotic as some brilliantly plumaged foreign bird; she was clever with cards and conversation ‒ good-natured in a careless fashion, and generous in a foolhardy, spendthrift way. No one ever saw her wearied or subdued; late at night when others were heavy with wine and sleep, her wit and spirits were as sharp and pointed as over the noon-day meal. Anne hated to waste time in sleep ‒ she was happiest to see in the dawn with cards and good company.

  Over the years she appeared occasionally at The Feathers, and Jane came to look forward to her visits as she did to the coming of spring at the end of a hard winter. She was dazzled by Anne’s beauty and vivacity, by the clothes she wore, the sound of her laughter; as she moved and talked she carried with her the breath of a gay, cosmopolitan world. Anne was completely selfish, but that was a failing Jane found easy to forgive. Hopefully each year Jane examined herself in the mirror to try to discover a closer resemblance between them; when she remembered she aped Anne’s manners, and the way she spoke. It was safe to imitate her; Anne had been well born, and her air of breeding was unmistakable. What puzzled and frustra
ted Jane was that Anne would never, even under pressure, speak of her family and background. It was the only aspect in which Anne ever disappointed her daughter.

  Sally Cooper was disapproving of Anne’s mode of living, and what she called her ‘giddyness,’ and yet she was quite as helpless as Jane under Anne’s spell. They both left their tasks unattended to listen to Anne’s lively chatter. The talk was of men, always different men. They came and went in Anne’s life, rich and powerful men ‒ some that were merely rich, and a few that attracted her for their own sakes, and were no profit to her at all. She could be prodigal of affection, as well as greedy and grasping for material returns. Men there were always about Anne ‒ but none married her.

  Sally would shake her head. ‘You’re no businesswoman.’

  ‘But I’m lucky at cards,’ was Anne’s reply.

  When Anne fell in love finally she blossomed into a new and startling beauty, a mature beauty; even a stranger, watching her speak of John Hindsley would have known that she was in love. He was a viscount, and reputed to be one of the richest men in England. He paid Anne’s debts, and gave her a small, elegant house in Albemarle Street; she wore exquisite jewels. She came, radiant, one day to The Feathers. One look at her face told Sally and Jane her news.

  ‘Johnny and I are going to be married! Lord knows, I don’t deserve to have him love me ‒ but this is one time when I’m lucky in love as well as cards!’

  The luck ended too soon. They read in a newspaper that Hindsley had been drowned in a river on his estate in Hampshire. There was no word from Anne, and she didn’t appear at The Feathers; they felt her anguish in her silence. Then months later came a brief letter. Jane had never forgotten its opening lines.

  ‘Two weeks ago I gave birth to Johnny’s son. I have called him William. Johnny was drowned two days before the day we had set for our marriage, so William doesn’t inherit.’

  Sally looked at Jane with stricken eyes. ‘Hindsley’s bastard ‒ what will she do now, in Heaven’s name!’