In the Shade of the Blossom Tree

by Joanna Rees

  They reached the croft door and Red pushed it open. ‘It’s not quite what you’re used to,’ he said.

  He wasn’t kidding. As far as des-res status went, this place, half buried as it was in the granite landscape, was strictly niche market. But then Red was niche market. He was the man she’d just travelled halfway around the world to see.

  It was only now, as he opened the door, that she wondered what she might find behind it. A girlfriend? A wife? Or even a child? She had absolutely no idea of Red’s circumstances, only that she was compelled to make the surprise visit and her schedule had presented the gap she’d been hoping for, for months.

  The croft was untidy, but homely. A tiny shot glass stood with a sprig of heather in it on a small wooden table. A ratty-looking mongrel dog was asleep in the basket by the wood-burning stove and a delicious smell rose from a hearty casserole cooking on the hob.

  All in all, though, it didn’t look like a woman had been anywhere near this place. If ever. There were only shirts on the wooden washing rack hanging from the ceiling and muddy boots stood on the draining board of the butler’s sink and only male coats were slung over the back of the wooden chairs. All of which contributed to the sensation Savvy now experienced of feeling very, very much at home.

  It felt safe. As if the whole world, the press, her responsibilities, were a million miles away. Red had put her bag on the floor and was staring at her.

  ‘I still can’t believe you’re here,’ he said.

  ‘I came because . . .’ she started, but she stopped.

  She knew why she was here. Because she still wanted to believe that anything was possible. After the emotional hell she’d been through, she still wanted to believe that there could be happily-ever-afters.

  She didn’t finish her sentence. Couldn’t. Because Red was staring at her.

  ‘It’s really so good to see you again,’ she said.

  ‘And you.’

  His eyes locked with hers. His lovely, honest eyes. She couldn’t help but blurt out the question that had been on her mind so much.

  ‘Red, why didn’t you ever call me?’

  His eyebrows furrowed together. ‘But I did. I even came to see you in Vegas. When I heard your father had died. I saw your friend Paige. Didn’t she ever tell you?’

  Savvy felt her heart thump hard. Yet another act of betrayal. Yet another way Paige had tried to destroy her. But she hadn’t succeeded, Savvy reminded herself.

  ‘She told me that you’d moved on and not to contact you.’

  ‘Oh,’ Savvy said. She didn’t know where to start. Should she tell him how Paige had betrayed her? Or that he’d been right about Luc all along? That her obsession with him had nearly cost her everything?

  In time, yes. But right now it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he’d been to see her. That he’d tried. Which could mean only one thing.

  ‘So you did regret walking away from me that day?’ she said.

  ‘Almost straight away. I just hoped you’d follow. When the time was right.’

  ‘Well, here I am,’ she said.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said, grinning. ‘But I’m wondering what the hell a sophisticated Vegas girl like you is planning to do with a grizzly sheep farmer like me?’

  She shrugged and then laughed. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  And she didn’t. Would it work? Between her and Red? With him wanting to be here and her needing to be running her business empire around the world? She had no idea, but it was worth giving it her best shot. She’d take it as it came. Day by day.

  People changed. Red had taught her that. And plans changed too. She’d learned that for herself.

  But for now, all that mattered was this moment. This wonderful feeling of life in freefall, of waiting for fate to take its course.

  And then it hit her. This was the feeling she’d been chasing all her life.

  And it had nothing to do with gambling at all.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Firstly, I’d like to thank Linda Evans and all the fabulous team at Transworld. Also, thanks to my wonderful agent Vivienne Schuster and to everyone at Curtis Brown, especially Felicity Blunt, Carol Jackson and Elizabeth Iveson. A big thank you to my early readers Toni Savage, Dawn Howarth and Sara Sims who gave me so much support and invaluable feedback. Also to Laurel Lefkow and Rebecca Choi for their advice and expertise in American and Chinese matters. Thanks to my family – especially my three girls – and to the friends who helped in various ways along the way, Katy Whelan, Jacob Potts and Lisa Campbell-Bannerman. And lastly, my never-ending heartfelt thanks to my amazing in-house editor, tea-maker, pep-talker and the person without whom this book would never have been written, Emlyn Rees.

  Turn over for an extract from the next Joanna Rees novel

  BEHIND THE HOURGLASS

  coming in 2018 . . .

  1.

  INVENTING MISS CASEY

  The shrill whistle woke her. For a second she didn’t move, the rattle of the steam train jolting her as she remembered her midnight flight across the moonlit field. She recalled how she’d spotted the stationary train impatiently puffing silvery clouds into the night air, how she’d managed to prise open a wooden door with her shaking fingers and how she’d curled up in the tiny space in the draughty carriage behind the industrial machinery, how the exhaustion and terror had transported her to blackness.

  Now her legs were stiff and her cheek was sore from where she’d been leaning against the cold metal chimney. She felt the chill coursing through her, making her take a sharp breath of icy air. Teeth chattering, she felt the same fluttering feeling as she had when she’d fallen asleep, as if the fear was darting around inside her like the canaries in her grandfather’s coal mine.

  How long since they’d last stopped? How far till she was far enough away?

  Would she ever be far enough away?

  She thought of the drama that was bound to be unfolding by now. She imagined her parents’ drawn faces when they discovered Clement’s body in the stable; her mother’s muffled scream.

  Would they even be thinking of their daughter? Would they have noticed her absence yet? Probably not, she thought bitterly. She’d always been an afterthought to them. An irritation. Lower down on their pecking order than even the dogs.

  Or perhaps they’d drawn the correct conclusion straightaway. Helped, no doubt, by Thomas. He’d never liked her and she had no doubt that the cruel stable-hand would be all too happy to describe how he’d seen her running for her life. And if he had, then the police were bound to have been called. Perhaps they were already chasing her . . .

  Again, she fought down the fluttering fear. She’d got away, hadn’t she? She’d escaped.

  Underneath the wooden carriage door she could see an inch of the world outside. The tracks flashed by with tufts of fresh grass and daisies.

  She yawned and rubbed her face, feeling the indent of the machinery’s steel stamp on her skin. Casey, she read on the brown-grey iron. She traced it with her finger, noticing that her nail was rimmed with dried blood.

  Casey.

  That could be her name.

  Miss Casey. It felt good to make a new decision for a new day. Fast and life-changing, like the decision to hide on this train. Where there’d only been despair, this felt like a whole new way of living. Impetuously. Impulsively. The opposite of who she’d been until now – pushed down, trodden on, so suppressed that life had been an agonizingly slow grey. But not any more. Because now that she’d run away from Darton Hall, she – Anna Darton – could be anyone. Anyone at all.

  She got to her feet and stretched her arms up with difficulty, the full sleeves of her best Sunday woollen coat stiff with the layers and layers of all the clothes she owned beneath it.

  Casey . . . yes.

  She’d take it. Isn’t that what she’d decided? That she would reinvent as she went along. Because that was the only way she could cope with this terrifying descent into her future. She felt like s
he was sand pouring through an hourglass.

  Matilda. It came quite suddenly. She didn’t know why. She’d never known a Matilda before. Not apart from the village girl who’d once danced around the maypole on that holiday long ago. The full-breasted girl’s smile flashed in her mind’s eye.

  ‘Matilda Casey,’ she said aloud. Around her the rhythm of the train sounded like the start of a song. Matilda Casey didn’t have to be scared. She could be fearless. She would be fearless.

  And if she was brave, who knew what she’d become?

  2.

  SIXTY SECONDS

  The train slowed as it entered the suburbs of the city, the brakes on the huge wheels making a deafening screech below the boards of the carriage. After fiddling with the catch for twenty minutes, and some serious hefting, she’d managed to slide the door open several inches, and now she, Matilda, stood and watched the slums slide by through the cloud of steam.

  She hadn’t dared to hope that the train might have been travelling south, but during the last hour they’d slowed and passed through a station and she’d heard someone calling out that this was a freight train to London.

  It had felt like a gift. The train might have been going anywhere – she hadn’t cared a jot, only that it was somewhere else. But this wasn’t somewhere else. This was London. Somehow, it changed everything.

  She peered out at the tracks below and the high brick walls banking them stained black with soot, thinking how inhuman it all seemed and not at all like the lively hub of activity she’d imagined from the newspapers and the occasional copy of Sketch she’d read. She didn’t care though – anything to distract her from the constant thoughts of Clement, which seemed to burn through her mind. Don’t think about him now, she told herself. Don’t think about it at all. I’ve ended it and now this is my time.

  She took a deep breath of the smoggy air, breathing in the sulphurous tang that reminded her of the smell of struck matches, and she wondered whether Martha would be lighting the fire in the drawing room this morning. For a heady moment she felt the lightness of her freedom soar inside her. She was free, wasn’t she? At last.

  Above the railway embankments, brown tenement blocks rose to the white sky. She saw a line of washing drying, tatty grey bloomers stretched between two grubby high windows. Talk about airing your dirty linen in public, she thought.

  She smiled, remembering how she’d added some lace trim to a pair of her own bloomers then dyed them pink with beetroot juice, much to Martha’s horror. But what her mother’s housekeeper didn’t understand was that having jaunty bloomers – just that tiny bit of unnecessarily pretty lace below dowdy skirts – had the capacity to infinitely brighten a girl’s day.

  But then Martha, with her grey hair and grim scowl, had always belonged in the same camp as her mother – the one that believed that all clothing should be utilitarian and functional. It was just like the way they approached life: afraid of doing anything that might attract even a tiny bit of attention. And it was dull, dull, dull.

  But Matilda Casey didn’t have Martha breathing down her neck, yanking her hair roughly or smacking her hands any more, nor Mother looking at her with constant thin-lipped disapproval.

  Should she be feeling guilty that she was free of them now? Probably, but she wasn’t. Instead she smiled, silently blessing the people in the tenement blocks, despite their terrible underwear. Good for you, she thought. She ached to be right there, in the city among the people. The shops and theatres and cafes – they were all here, tantalizingly close. She could almost smell it. But how? How could she become a part of it? Now that she’d run away what on earth was she going to do to get by?

  She ducked out of sight as another train pulled up on a parallel track. It had dark green livery, its windows stamped with gold lettering. Sneaking a peak, she saw a man in a smart suit stretching up to retrieve a large leather suitcase from the overhead rack in one of the busy carriages.

  Quickly, she grabbed her carpet bag from the corner. She had to get on that train right now. Who knew where this train was going? Perhaps it wouldn’t stop at a passenger station at all. And how would she explain herself, if anyone caught her here among the machinery? She might get punished or, worse, get found out.

  But in the other train, in a crowd, she could blend in and disappear. Yet her heart hammered with the decision she’d made. It was so risky. If anyone looked out of the window, they would see her. She had to be quick.

  Take everything from now on a minute at a time. She forced the words into her head, as if she were spelling them out on the typewriter in Papa’s study. Sixty seconds. That’s all. She just had to get through the next sixty seconds.

  ‘Sixty seconds,’ she whispered, bracing herself. ‘Come on, Matilda Casey. Do it.’

  She yanked her hat down low over her head and pulled up the collar of her coat. Then, quick as she could, she threw her bag onto the track and jumped down after it.

  3.

  KING’S CROSS

  She landed on the hard gravel, her heart pounding. She’d never felt so exposed, nor so small. But her survival instinct kicked in as she looked at the great iron underbelly of the train with its terrifying pistons.

  You can do this.

  She picked up her skirts and hopped across the tracks onto the wooden sleepers, like she was running away from Clement on the stepping stones across the brook. She’d always been faster than him. She always would be now.

  The outside door of the train was higher than she’d expected. With difficulty she hauled herself up onto the latticed metal step in order to reach the wooden handle. She heard a rip coming from one of her skirts as she yanked it free. The door swung open out towards her, almost making her lose her balance.

  Sixty seconds. Nearly there . . .

  She threw her bag into the carriage and then hauled herself inside. She stood quickly and brushed herself down, realizing she was shaking all over.

  ‘Are you OK, miss?’ It was a man – a conductor, she realized with a jolt – his brow furrowing beneath his peaked cap as he walked between the carriages and spotted her in the small walkway. A second earlier and he’d have seen her ungraceful entrance.

  She watched him as he looked from her to the wooden door, but she saw immediately that he had dismissed the thought that she could possibly have come from outside. She looked down at her hand with alarm. Her knuckles were still scuffed and bloodied. She’d forgotten to put her gloves on. She needed to be more careful. To smarten up. To not look like . . . like . . . Goodness! She could hardly even think the word . . . like a criminal. She pressed herself against the corridor wall and shoved her hands behind her.

  ‘Taking some air, that’s all,’ she said, trying to mask the tremor in her voice with a haughty lift of her chin, one of the things she’d picked up from those ghastly elocution lessons her mother had insisted upon.

  ‘Be careful, miss. It’s a long way down to the track. Wouldn’t want a pretty young woman like you to fall out,’ the conductor said, tipping his hat before moving along into the next carriage. ‘King’s Cross in two minutes,’ she heard him say.

  Had anyone seen her? It was hard to know, but suddenly the train was moving. Passengers began stirring in the compartments either side of her. She opened the window, leaning out as the platform came into view.

  Railway porters hauled trolleys through the teeming crowd of passengers. The train slowed and shuddered to a halt beneath the huge round clock, the hands of which now clicked to half past nine, in a bellowing hiss of steam.

  Anna – no, Matilda, she reminded herself – opened the door and jumped down before hurrying along the platform to a wooden bench. There she hastily pulled her mother’s best lace-trimmed gloves from her bag. Then, pretending that she had somewhere important to be, and holding her head high, she made her way with the crowd towards the ticket barrier.

  A portly guard with a bushy moustache was punching tickets as he ushered passengers through to the busy concourse, and she felt her
mouth flood with saliva. What would he do to her when he caught her without a ticket?

  But she was Matilda Casey and she was all brand new, she reminded herself. Matilda Casey could very well have lost her ticket. She could very well be down from, say, York, visiting her aunt in a smart London townhouse.

  Believe me, she willed, approaching the guard and smiling shyly at him. Cook had always told her that she could get anything by batting the huge eyelashes of her baby-blue eyes. She hurriedly explained how she’d mislaid her ticket.

  ‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’ A woman in a purple coat bustled in from behind. ‘Whatever is the hold-up? We’re in a hurry here.’

  The guard met her eye and made a decision. ‘Go through, miss. But be more careful next time.’

  4.

  HEADLINES

  It was Matilda Casey’s second day in London. Last night, she’d stayed at the hotel next to the train station, but it had cost her a third of what precious little money she had. It had felt good to wash and change, but she’d felt on edge the whole time. She hadn’t slept a wink, her mind racing about the hotel staff being suspicious, about feeling conspicuous and stupid that she had come to the first place the police would come to look for her.

  This morning, however, she felt calmer. She’d checked out of the hotel and had decided to get lost in the city.

  And what a city it was. She was mesmerized by the sights she’d only read about, or heard about from her mother’s suspicious ranting from behind a wall of quivering newspaper. Her mother delighted in being outraged by the ‘flagrantly immoral’ types in London, but looking at everything from the top of the omnibus, the sheer colour and magnificence of the city had made up her mind: she was going to be a flagrantly immoral type herself, as soon as possible.

  She only just made it down the outside steps of the omnibus in time to get off at the stop at the bottom of Regent Street. Now she stood on the pavement, taking in the honking motorcars, the statue of Eros and the curved foyer of the Criterion Theatre. She’d only ever seen Piccadilly Circus on the cigarette card she’d stolen from Clement’s bureau, but now she wanted to pinch herself. She was really here. In London. And there was Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament.