Larkrigg Fell (53 page)
Authors: Freda Lightfoot
There was almost admiration in his face now. ‘Damn you, Beth, why wouldn’t you marry me? If only I’d discovered this fire deep within you.’
‘It comes from my love of Andrew, and family. You never inspired that sort of love in me. No one can force me to do anything. Not ever again.’
Drawing a steadying breath into her sore lungs, she continued, her tone quite matter of fact. ‘I’m exceedingly thankful that I didn’t marry you. We wouldn’t have got on at all well.’ She turned to him and smiled with perfect serenity. ‘What a child I was. Besotted, and intrigued by your superficial perfection, when underneath the picture is quite different, is it not?’
Somewhere deep in the house a gust of wind rattled a window, and a door clicked shut, making her feel a breath of unease. Had he started a fire somewhere in the house? Were the bedrooms even now burning? Her nostrils were so full of smoke already, she wouldn’t know until it was too late. Where were Tam and Andrew?
And where was Meg?
‘The reason I couldn’t bring myself to marry you, Pietro, was because I didn’t truly love you. Oh, I was infatuated with you, fascinated by your flattering, latin charm, but it was no more than calf love. What I have with Andrew is the genuine variety. Rich and full and satisfying. I’d do anything for him, lay down my life for him. But you wouldn’t understand selfless love, would you? You are too filled with greed and your own selfish demands.
‘I’m sorry if your mother was unhappy with your father, but she surely had a right to make her own decisions in life. It is only your assumption that she would have been happier here, when in all likelihood the marriage would have collapsed anyway.’
‘No, you are wrong. She dream of England all the time. She hate to be poor.’
‘If that is the case. then I’m sorry for her, and for you. You should marry someone because you love them, and want to be with them and make a life together, not for them to provide for you. What Meg has here she has built herself. She owes your family nothing, nothing at all. And we won’t let you take it, or destroy any of it. Ellen was right. You used me, and Sarah, playing with one to make the other jealous. We all thought Jonty was the joker, but your games were far more evil.’
She moved towards him then, a confidence in her step which brought a new elegance to the more mature line of her slender body. ‘I used to think Sarah was selfish, but she was only childishly so. You are the supreme master and have hurt her deeply. If you don’t truly love her then let her go. No more teasing, no more using her for your own purposes. I hope she has the strength to leave you, as you deserve. But you aren’t ever going to hurt my family ever again. I won’t let you.’
He snorted his derision. ‘And how do you intend to stop me?’
‘Enough is enough, Pietro. Even I have a limit to my patience.’ She went over to the dresser, found a pad of paper amongst the debris stuffed within its shelves and scribbled furiously for a moment. Beth handed it to him, holding out a pen. ‘It’s an IOU. Sign it. You will promise to pay for Meg’s fifty sheep and then you will go far away from Broomdale, and never return.’
He laughed. ‘Or what will you do?’
‘I will have you charged with arson, sheep rustling, damage to an old woman’s property, and anything else I can dream up in the meantime.’ She smiled. ‘And you know what a good imagination I have, and how desperately stubborn I can be.’
His glare should have burned her where she stood but Beth only continued to smile confidently. After a moment his mouth slipped into its characteristic sulk and he signed without further protest. Handing the paper back to her he walked to the door, puffing out his chest with self importance.
‘I was intending to return to Italy, in any case. My point has been made, sì? I have taken my revenge by disrupting all your lives, and I am content. I hate your damp, cold England. I shall buy a villa in Tuscany and enjoy life. This land is not for me.’
‘You do that.’ The paper trembled in her hand. What had she achieved? He would never return the sheep, or pay for them. But it didn’t matter so long as he went out of their lives and never came back. He was right, he had succeeded in taking a warped sort of revenge. He’d broken her lovely sister, burned down Larkrigg, almost ruined her own marriage, and what had he done with Meg?
As he opened the door to leave, it flung wide and in she walked, large as life. ‘By heck, its cold out there, for all it’s May.’ Wide mouth grinning broadly on a face streaked with soot and smoke, nose glowing almost as brightly as the honey gold hair that stood out like a blazing oriel about her head. ‘Whoever put a match to that place did us all a favour. I’m not sorry to see the end of it. Brought this family nothing but trouble. I, for one, won’t cry to see it go.’
A gurgle of joy bubbled up in Beth’s throat, and she dashed to fling her arms about her grandmother and hold her tight. Andrew and Tam came in behind her, grinning from ear to ear. Beth looked from one to the other of them and became very still. ‘How long have you been outside that door?’
‘Long enough,’ Andrew quietly told her.
‘Keeping an ear on things, as you might say,’ Tam agreed, fixing his piercing gaze on Pietro who backed away, startled as the family seemed to mass against him.
Beth was still hugging Meg. ‘Oh, we thought we’d lost you.’
‘Lost me? No, I’m not so easily got rid of.’
‘But where were you?’
Andrew came and rested a hand upon Beth’s shoulder, it felt so good she pressed her cheek instinctively against it and lifted her eyes to his, feeling a spark of recognition as their glances met. ‘Meg had gone up to Larkrigg to investigate for herself,’ he said, ‘instead of going to bed as she promised.’
‘And got herself locked into an outhouse up there,’ Tam added. ‘Daft eejit!’ But he spoke lovingly, with his arm about his wife.
‘I wasn’t tired, and wanted to help.’
Andrew gave her what could only be described as an old fashioned look. ‘If the firemen hadn’t found you, God knows what might have happened.’
‘Don’t say it,’ Beth cried. ‘Don’t even think it. Thank God she’s safe.’
‘It’d take more than a bit of a fire to harm me.’ Meg held something bright and shining in her hand. ‘Besides, see, I had my luckpenny with me. Never let me down yet.’
And they all burst out laughing. Then she looked across at her granddaughter, contentedly snuggled in her husband’s arms, and smiled. ‘Course, I’d be happy enough to hand it on were someone willing to take Broombank and the land with it. Sarah isn’t interested, I talked to her about it. She’s planning on returning to America, to reassess her life, she says.’ Meg turned the coin in her fingers. ‘It needs to go to someone who cares about sheep and farming, same reason it was once handed on to me.’
Smiling, Beth glanced up at Andrew and kissed the rigid line of his jaw. ‘I could only take it if it was in an equal partnership, given and accepted with love.’
As the corner of his mouth lifted into a smile he placed a kiss on her small nose, right on his favourite spot. For a moment nothing existed but what they read in each other’s eyes. Then Andrew turned his grin on Meg.
‘I don’t have any problem then.’
And as the shining luckpenny spun through the air no one noticed as a figure slunk quietly from the room. They were far too busy holding out their hands to catch it.
Also by Freda Lightfoot as ebooks
Ruby McBride
9780957097834
‘An inspiring novel about accepting change and bravely facing the future.’
The Daily Telegraph
on Ruby McBride
The grand opening of the Manchester Ship Canal is a big day for Ruby McBride and her young sister and brother. Its glories fade into insignificance, however, when their mother Molly, due to illness, reluctantly entrusts her beloved children to Ignatius House, and the not-so-tender care of the nuns. Ruby, a rebel at heart, is always on the wrong side of authority, but when she is sixteen, the Board of Guardians forces her into marriage and she has to abandon her siblings, vowing she will reunite the family just as soon as she can.
Convinced that her new husband is a conman, she discovers life on the barge is not at all what she expected. She is furious at being robbed of the chance to be with her childhood sweetheart, Kit Jarvis, so resists Bart’s advances for as long as she can. But Ruby’s courage and spirit enable her to rise above the disadvantages of her birth and make a life for herself within the thriving community of waterways folk.
Daisy’s Secret
ISBN 9780957097827
‘Another Lightfoot triumph’ Dorset Echo on Daisy’s Secret
The Lakes 2012
Laura is having problems with her marriage, so when she is left a house in the Lake District by her grandmother, she starts to look at her life anew. And she begins to investigate the cause of the feud between her father and his mother. What was Daisy’s Secret?
Manchester 1939
Abandoned by her sweetheart and rejected by her family, Daisy agrees to being evacuated to the Lakes at the start of the war. Still grieving for the baby boy she was forced to give up for adoption, she agrees that he will be her secret - a precious memory but spoken of to no one. She seeks consolation by taking under her wing two frightened little girls. Can helping evacuees make up for losing her own child?
Historical sagas
Lakeland Lily
The Bobbin Girls
The Favourite Child
Kitty Little
For All Our Tomorrows
Gracie’s Sin
Daisy’s Secret
Ruby McBride
Dancing on Deansgate
The Luckpenny Series
:
Luckpenny Land
Storm Clouds Over Broombank
Wishing Water
Larkrigg Fell
Poorhouse Lane Series
The Girl from Poorhouse Lane
The Child from Nowhere
The Woman from Heartbreak House
Champion Street Market Series
Putting On The Style
Fools Fall In Love
That'll Be The Day
Candy Kisses
Who’s Sorry Now
Lonely Teardrops
Historical Romances
Madeiran Legacy
Whispering Shadows
Rhapsody Creek
Proud Alliance
Outrageous Fortune
Contemporary
Trapped
Short Stories
A Sackful of Stories
Available in print and ebook
Historical sagas
House of Angels
Angels at War
The Promise
My Lady Deceiver
Biographical Historicals
Hostage Queen
Reluctant Queen
The Queen and the Courtesan
The Duchess of Drury Lane
About Freda Lightfoot
Born in Lancashire, Freda Lightfoot has been a teacher and bookseller. She lived for a number of years in the Lake District and in a mad moment tried her hand at the ‘good life’, kept sheep and hens, various orphaned cats and dogs, built drystone walls, planted a small wood and even learned how to make jam. She has now given up her thermals to build a house in an olive grove in Spain, where she produces her own olive oil and sits in the sun on the rare occasions when she isn’t writing. She’s published 40 novels including many bestselling family sagas and historical novels. To find out more about, visit her website and sign up for her new title alert, or join her on Facebook and Twitter where she loves to chat with readers.
http://www.fredalightfoot.co.uk/
http://www.fredalightfoot.blogspot.com/
If you find any faults with this ebook please do contact the author so that it can be put right for future readers.
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