by CL Skelton
Naomi gathered Rebecca’s light travelling cloak over her arm and escorted the girl out into the corridor. ‘The odd thing, though,’ she said, as they descended the first flight of stairs in the tall narrow house, ‘is Tenny. After all, Tenny’s practically a scholar compared to all the rest of them. He did superbly at school, and he reads. Really reads, and writes a bit, poetry and such. I would have thought that would have been practically heresy in Old Culbrech, but no, he’s everyone’s hero. I suppose he’s just bold enough, and big enough, that he can do what he pleases, and no one dare cross him. Johnny Bruce tries from time to time, but he’s only a close second. They’re the best of friends, though, or so Ian says. Just as well, I imagine there’d be fur flying all the time if they were not.’
‘What’s Tenny short for?’ Rebecca said suddenly.
‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson, naturally.’
‘Surely they didn’t call him that.’
‘What, his parents? Oh, never. Henry, he was christened. Lord Tennyson was what they called him at school. For his reading habits. It was meant to be an insult, but on Tenny insults come out as compliments. He’s rather proud of it, I think. He’s always got Keats or Browning in his pocket, rather like a badge. Or a chip on his shoulder. Anyhow, no one tried to knock it off, and he’s never been anything but Tenny for years.’
‘He sounds a bit awesome,’ Rebecca said. ‘I think, even without any competition, I’m not likely to make much of an impression.’
Naomi stopped short on the stairs and said, ‘Oh, never you mind. I don’t know the boy that well, but I rather knew his father. And I would say that Tenny, like any real Maclaren man, is likely to have one great weakness.’
‘And that?’
‘An absolute light-headed devotion to the prettiest face in the room, and an equivalently absolute inability to understand the mind behind it. Your looks will win his attention, and your wits are ample to hold it for ever. You’ll wrap him round your finger,’ she added with a satisfied sniff.
‘I rather doubt it,’ Rebecca said a little shyly.
‘But I didn’t say there was no competition,’ Naomi warned. ‘There is Susan Bruce.’ She looked worried. ‘I’d hate for her to have taken a fancy to Tenny, that would be a dreadful shame. You’d be such splendid friends otherwise. When last I saw her she had exhibited her feelings towards him by tripping him into the water-trough in the stables. But that was two years ago, when I was last at Cluanie. She may have grown up a bit. She was certainly a beauty, and a proper little devil. She got expelled from school some years ago for some perfectly unmentionable disgrace. Mother was in a positive flap, but Willie seemed to rather admire the girl. That was how he was with me, always,’ she smiled, recalling. ‘He always encouraged me to do my worst. I gather he’d been a holy terror in school himself, not that he went to school for long. He was in the regiment and under fire by his fifteenth birthday, I’m afraid,’ she smiled again. ‘In my case the whole thing rather went too far, even for Willie. Still, with Susan, it’s more likely to have been dramatics than anything else. She’s got a touch of the Sarah Bernhardt’s, I’m afraid. She’ll probably fall in love with you. So far Susan’s fallen irrevocably in love with all her schoolmistresses, both her governesses, three ponies and a cat. I dare say she’ll be moving on to men by now, though. She’s nearly twenty-one. They’ll have their hands full with that one. They’d probably have packed her off to a convent years since, if they weren’t all so utterly Presbyterian to the bone.’
‘I don’t think,’ Rebecca said, glancing nervously at her previously assured features in the second-floor landing mirror, ‘that I’m going to enjoy this at all. She sounds more formidable than any of them. Isn’t there anyone plain and simple?’
‘Oh yes, indeed there is. There’s always Philippa, Tenny’s younger sister. Now, it’s a pity it isn’t the other way round, and she isn’t Susan. She’ll be no competition to anyone. She would have made an excellent Maclaren man, actually. Pity she wasn’t. If she isn’t careful she’ll end up like her Great-Aunt Jean, all horses and religion. She’s got lovely hair but that’s all, I’m much afraid, and every time she meets a man she either flings herself all over him or runs like a scalded cat. A most peculiar girl. Victoria is really quite concerned. It’s hard to imagine her in the same family as Tenny, or Emma. Emma is so much a mistress of every situation. But then she is the oldest. Even Tenny looks up to Em, even if he won’t admit it. So that’s all of them then, Emma, Tenny, Philippa, and Albert. And of course little Jamie, but he’s just a boy. And then the Bruces, Harry and Johnny and Susan.’
‘Frankly,’ Rebecca shuddered, ‘they sound positively ghastly. Thank God they’re not my family. I don’t know how you bear them.’
‘By living in London, my dear.’ Naomi laughed, but then with a wry cynical smile added, ‘They’re hardly my family anyhow, are they?’
Rebecca looked at the stair-carpet and blushed and Naomi said, ‘Oh don’t be coy, darling. I know you know the whole story. My friends leave little to chance. Do tell, what’s this year’s version?’ Rebecca paused and Naomi said, ‘Come, come, speak up girl.’
‘I try not to listen,’ she said.
‘Nonsense. You listen as if your ears were afire. Don’t apologize. I’d do the same at your age.’
‘Mr Leitner says you’re really an Indian princess,’ Rebecca whispered.
Naomi let out an unladylike shriek of laughter. ‘Oh, he’d simply love that to be true. The dreadful old snob. A princess,’ she repeated with scorn. ‘No, dear, I am not a princess. No. Rather the opposite.’ She raised the girl’s chin with the fingers of her left hand, and their eyes met. ‘I am, I fear,’ she said, ‘our family’s little legacy of the Indian Mutiny. My unlamented father was a Sepoy mutineer. He raped my mother. Several times, I gather. It was not very pleasant for her, I imagine. But nature cares little for pleasure. She was young and very fertile, and I was the result.’ She smiled again briskly and made a little turnabout on the stairs, showing herself off. ‘The nuns in the Irish convent where I was born were quite convinced I was a changeling. Dear souls. The thought that a highborn English lady like my mother might produce a black child was quite beyond them.’
‘Black?’ Rebecca exclaimed.
‘Oh, brown. Whatever. Figuratively speaking, naturally. My dear, I am clearly not white, am I?’
Rebecca gasped, amazed at so irreverent a concept. ‘But you’re beautiful,’ she blurted out at last.
‘Dear child,’ Naomi whispered, ‘do you honestly believe that beauty reigns only in England?’ She was teasing, but her smile was sad and gentle. It was replaced in a moment by her familiar look of wise cynicism and she said suddenly, ‘Tell me, girl, who’s Robert’s father meant to be?’
Rebecca was wide-eyed and silent. She was well aware that Robert Bruce was illegitimate. Naomi had told her, blithely, early in their friendship, and told her too that the married prefix to her name was a device she had adopted in her first days in London, in an era when a single young woman living alone was unthinkable. But the details of the story Rebecca had never dared to ask. ‘Come on, child, they will have told you something.’
‘Charles de Vere-Smith,’ Rebecca mumbled, fumbling with her hat-brim.
Naomi leant her head to one side and considered. ‘Logical,’ she said. ‘The dates aren’t right but who would notice?’ London would not have forgotten her liaison with Lord Charles, a companionship of many years. ‘Yes, quite logical. But not correct.’
Rebecca blinked, awaiting more. Naomi was terribly good at that sort of stunning revelation, often followed by weeks, or months, of silence on whatever the subject. This time she only paused for a moment before she said, ‘I was only ever in love once in my life, only once, when I was very, very young. It was a charming but fruitless experience. I would not recommend it.’ She started down the stairs. ‘Still, you will enjoy Tenny. A delightful young man. Quite like his father in every way.’ She paused, smiling distantly, her unruf
fable oriental smile. ‘Oh, and do give Sir Ian my very best regards,’ she said.
Continue reading Beloved Soldier by C. L. Skelton.
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Promises by Catherine Gaskin
The gripping story of a remarkable woman and the promises she must keep to those she loves.
A sweeping family saga, from the grand homes of Yorkshire and London in the Edwardian era, to the heartbreak of a French nursing station during World War I, and the glamour of American high society in the 1920s.
Lally Leeds is just a baby when wealthy Black Jack Pollock finds her abandoned in a Yorkshire street and decides to raise her alongside his own children. As Lally blossoms into a young woman, the love and loyalty she feels towards her adoptive family bring her both happiness and heartache.
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Victoria Four-thirty by Cecil Roberts
London, 1937. A world famous composer, a honeymooning couple, a novelist in search of a plot, a German film star, a young crown prince and a sister of charity are among the disparate group of travellers on the boat train to continental Europe.
‘It would be very interesting to know the life history of everybody on this train – why we are travelling on it …’
Set amid the political upheaval of the 1930s, this is the witty, insightful and bittersweet story of the passengers on the Four-thirty from Victoria. Each is facing a different journey, with their own hopes, fears and challenges; and for some, their lives will cross in unexpected ways.
The 80th anniversary edition of the newly rediscovered classic bestseller from the 1930s.
A splendid achievement, with a classic quality.” Daily Telegraph
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Turn of the Tide by Margaret Skea
‘The quality of the writing and the research is outstanding.’ Jeffrey Archer
Scotland 1586. A land in turmoil, a family torn apart. An ancient feud threatens Munro’s home, his family, even his life.
Munro owes allegiance to the Cunninghames and to the Earl of Glencairn. He escapes the bloody aftermath of a massacre, but cannot escape the disdain of the wife he sought to protect, nor inner conflict, as he wrestles with his conscience, with divided loyalties and, most dangerous of all, a growing friendship with the rival Montgomerie clan.
Set against the backdrop of the turmoil of the closing years of the sixteenth century, Turn of the Tide follows the fortunes of a fictional family trapped at the centre of a notorious historic feud. Known as the Ayrshire Vendetta, it began in the 15th century and wasn’t finally resolved until the latter part of the 17th, the Cunninghames and Montgomeries dubbed the ‘Montagues and Capulets’ of Ayrshire.
Book 1 of the Munro Scottish Saga trilogy
Praise for Margaret Skea – Beryl Bainbridge Best First Time Novelist 2014
‘I have read some wonderful debut novels this year – Turn of the Tide is one of them. I loved it … a tale of love, loyalty, tragedy and betrayal.’ BooksPlease
‘Munro frames the book, in at the initial kill, and centre stage in the brilliant climax, all the more shocking as the conclusion of an otherwise measured tale … a fascinating and engaging read with great visual effect.’ Between the Lines
‘It is hard to know where to begin, there were so many things I liked about Turn of the Tide…an emotionally gripping story about a man caught between duty and conscience at a time in history when a man’s livelihood depended upon his loyalty to family and clan.’ The History Lady
‘Margaret Skea brings sixteenth century Scotland to vivid life in Turn of the Tide. I enjoyed travelling back in time with her.’ Sharon K Penman
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The Founder of the House by Naomi Jacob
The seven-volume family saga, spanning generations of the Gollantz family.
Book 1: Set in nineteenth century Paris, Vienna and London, this is a novel about family ties and rivalries, love and ambition.
The Founder of the House introduces us to Emmanuel Gollantz, the son of a Jewish antique dealer, Hermann Gollantz.
Hermann lives his life according to the principles of loyalty, honesty and honour instilled in him as a child. But these ideals are ruthlessly exploited by his wife’s family, threatening everything that is important to him. Protecting his beloved wife, Rachel, from the truth carries a great cost.
As a young man, Emmanuel, becomes involved with the inner circle of the Viennese Court, where his passion for the married baroness, Caroline Lukoes, has far-reaching consequences both for himself and the House of Gollantz.
The Founder of the House is the first book in the bestselling Gollantz Saga ‒ an historical family saga tracing the lives and loves of the Gollantz family over several generations. This seven-novel series explores how one family’s destiny is shaped by the politics and attitudes of the time, as well as by the choices and actions of its own members.
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‘Recommended. Ms Jacob writes skilfully and with that fine professional assurance we have come to expect of her.’ The Times
‘Impressive.’ London Evening Standard
‘A good family chronicle.’ Kirkus Reviews
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