An Endless Song

by Lilian Harry

Genres: Sagas; Romance

Synopsis

Previously published in paperback under the name Donna Baker. Rowenna Mellor's life in the small Cumbrian mill village of Burneside has already known hardship - she lost her mother young, but friends and the bond with her beloved brother kept her going. Now, in the spring of 1885, he too has been snatched away from her. Rowenna knows she must now devote to caring for her father, and even falling in love cannot be a free choice for her. But a chance for salvation comes from an unexpected direction. To grasp the opportunity, Rowenna must risk everything - her good name, her liberty, and her heart - and defy the restrictions of her narrow life. Rowenna realises that starting a new life far away, under the wide open skies of Canada, will bring her freedom - but at what price? And will those she loves - and those she fears - find a way of following her there?

Release date: November 19, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 416

Sample

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A blustery March day in the year 1885, with the meadows a glory of dancing daffodils and sunlight glancing off the tumbling river with the flashing colour of new-cut diamonds.
A misting of green over the winter-bare hedgerows and a flurry of small birds – tits, chaffinches, wrens and robins – searching out new nesting sites. A beginning everywhere.

Yet there were endings too. All over England, the day was set aside in mourning for General Gordon, the brave soldier who had been murdered in Khartoum after a bitter siege of over three hundred
days. And in St Oswald’s church at Burneside, beneath the fells which rose gently above to stretch the length and breadth of the Lake District, there was an ending for another man, whose life
had scarcely begun and whose name was scarcely known other than by his friends.

For Rowenna Mellor, watching as the first shovelful of earth was scattered over the coffin to hide her brother from her for ever, it threatened a lifelong winter.

Wrapped in a heavy black cloak, she stood very still, her eyes fixed on the fresh-dug earth. Was Haddon really inside that box, so soon to be buried with no more than a gravestone to mark that
he ever lived? Wasn’t it all a bad dream, a nightmare from which she surely must soon wake? But the dream had been too long, too clear. The cheerful goodbyes at the little railway station as
he set off for his journey to London. The postcard to say he had arrived safely. The long letters describing his adventures there and the business he was conducting for his father. And then, quite
suddenly, the telegrams which announced first his illness and then his death.

Diphtheria. A scourge that could take a man by the throat and kill him, so swiftly that those he loved could reach him only in his last gasping moments.

Rowenna lifted her eyes and looked around at the rest of the mourners, gathered about the churchyard. There were no relatives, for Warren Mellor had no close family and their mother had come
from Canada. Most of them were local people, her father’s business associates and friends from Kendal, together with the families they had known, the friends she and Haddon had made. The
Somervells, the Wilsons, the Croppers. And Alfred Boothroyd, whose mill stood on the opposite bank of the river and shared the power of the tumbling water.

As if her thoughts had called him, Alfred Boothroyd turned suddenly and caught her eye. He was about forty years old, a tall, thin man of almost cadaverous appearance, with black hair that
looked as if it were painted on his skull and eyes like black marbles. His lips were thin and wet-looking. He stared for a moment at Rowenna, and she stared back, feeling the creeping sensation up
her spine that she always experienced when she met those cold, marble eyes. Quickly, she turned away.

For the first time in her life, Rowenna was thankful that their mother had died ten years ago, when Haddon was fifteen and she not quite ten. For Dorothy had adored her son more than any other
living being, and to lose him from such a cruel disease would have broken her heart.

At the edge of the little crowd were the mill workers. They had all known Haddon well and Warren had allowed them an hour to walk down the road from the mill and attend the funeral. They stood
sombrely amongst the graves, their eyes cast down, and did not look up as the coffin was carried from the church to its last resting place. But there was a heartfelt ‘Amen’ as the last
prayer was spoken and the earth scattered on the wood.

Rowenna’s eyes moved slowly over their faces. She too knew most of them. Haddon had often taken her to the mill with him, explaining the processes so that she knew almost as much as he
about the making of paper. He had shown her the vats in which the pulp swirled, beaten into a porridge before the water was squeezed from it. He had shown her the fourdriniers, the great drying
machines through which the mash passed, each stage bringing it closer to its transformation into paper, and she had stood beside him and watched as the huge sheet passed the length of the drying
room and over the rollers. He had shown her the different kinds of paper made – from wrapping paper and tissue to wallpaper rolled into ‘long elephants’. Some firms’
catalogues, he said, contained over six hundred different samples.

He had explained to her the history of paper, from the days of parchment to the times only a few years ago when rags were used as the raw material. And he had told her how, when the demand for
paper began to outstrip the supply of rags only twenty years ago, papermakers had searched desperately for a new source.

‘They tried all kinds of things,’ he said, lying back on the grassy riverbank near the mill. ‘Grass – esparto was a favourite. Straw. Even rhubarb!’

‘But finally they decided woodpulp was the best,’ she said, feeding him with plums.

Haddon nodded. ‘The world’s covered with trees. It’s just a question of discovering which produce the best pulp and harvesting them. New ones can be planted in their place. Of
course, there have been problems. Until sulphite pulp was invented a few years ago, the wood was only ground mechanically and although the paper is good, it’s not right for newsprint. But
now, by combining the two, we can make just the right consistency for newspapers. And that’s where the biggest market lies. More and more people can read and they want information. They want
news. They want to see for themselves what’s happening and what people are saying and doing about it.’

His words echoed in Rowenna’s brain as she watched the mourners. He had been so alive that day, so interested, so eager to explain. He had talked about Canada, their mother’s
country. There were forests there, he said, that stretched for thousands of miles. Trees for the taking. One day he would go there to find out for himself, to meet their mother’s family, to
go into the ‘bush’ as they called it and see how they harvested the great white pine, the balsam and the hemlock.

‘They float the trees down the rivers,’ he said, sitting up and folding his arms around his knees. He looked young and boyish, enthusiasm shining from his flushed face. ‘They
actually ride them downstream to the ports. Can you imagine it, Sis? Huge rivers, broader than a road, filled with logs and men riding them as though they were horses. No, not horses.
Standing on them – running on them. Oh, I’d like to do that!’

‘So would I!’ Rowenna felt the flame of his excitement sear her veins. ‘Haddie – when you go, take me with you. Please.’ She looked restlessly about her, at the
tumbling river and the brown fells above. ‘I want to see these places too. I can’t stay in Burneside all my life.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose you will. You’ll get married. You could go anywhere.’

Rowenna gave him a scathing glance. ‘Like Kendal! Or perhaps even Lancaster. Who am I going to marry, who’s likely to take me any further than that? We never meet anyone else, you
know that. Besides, I don’t know that I want to marry and have to spend my life doing what my husband tells me. I’d rather be free.’ She looked at him again, envying his easy
clothes, the way he could move without restriction, running and jumping without heavy skirts to hamper him, envying the freedom that was endowed him simply because he was a man. ‘Please,
Haddie. Take me with you, when you go to Canada.’

He looked at her and grinned, then stretched out his hand and covered hers.

‘Of course I will, Sis. Provided you still want to come.’

But now Haddie lay in the cold ground and would never go to Canada, nor even sit on the riverbank beside her, his face aflame with excitement as he talked of his dreams. And how could she go
without him?

Her eyes, moving almost unseeingly over the people clustered in the churchyard, suddenly paused in their movement, arrested by a face that stood out from the others. A dark, gypsy face with eyes
that were almost black, sombre under straight brows. A firm mouth and a high forehead under tossing black curls. An uncompromising face, yet with a candour in the glance and a hint of sensitivity
about the lips that caught her attention.

And it was at her that the gaze was directed. Despite her veil, she had the impression that the dark eyes saw straight through to her heart. She felt a quiver, as though his glance were an arrow
that had pierced her breast.

She knew his name. It was Kester – Kester Matthews, who had worked occasionally for the last two or three years in the gardens of Ashbank. She had met him with Haddon in the grove that
Haddie had been planting, for it was in the little wild woodland that he had been mostly employed. Together, the three of them had tended the rare seedlings that Haddie had sown in the little bed
near the greenhouses, and talked about the mystery of their germination – a few weeks for the eucalyptus, ten years or more for the giant redwoods and sequoias.

‘Such patience,’ Rowenna had marvelled. ‘And we’ll never see them in their full growth. What makes you care so much about them, Haddie?’

But it was Kester Matthews who had answered, looking with his dark gypsy eyes deep into hers, and for a moment she had felt as if he looked straight into her soul.

‘A man will always have patience to wait for what he most wants,’ he had said, and his voice was deep and measured. ‘And it’s worth waiting for what’s most
worthwhile.’

Rowenna stared at him, and felt a quiver deep inside, as if something momentous had taken place. But the next second he had turned away, and when she next went into the garden with Haddon,
Kester Matthews was no longer there.

He was looking at her now as if he had something to ask of her. Or perhaps something to offer. Yet what could either of them have to give the other? They lived in separate worlds and could never
come together.

Haddon had been able to bridge the divide between those worlds, she thought sadly. But Haddon had gone, and a chasm lay between her and those who had worked with him and loved him, the chasm
that lay between all those who worked and those who ordered the work. Only a fortunate few could bridge that divide. She might have been one herself, had she not been a woman, but her sex stood in
the way, as it stood between her and so many desires.

The mourners were beginning to move away from the graveside. Rowenna felt a touch on her arm and turned to look into her father’s face. It was still and shuttered, his pain hidden behind
the stony mask he had worn ever since the news first came. If only he could let himself feel it, she thought, if only he could let it break free. But she knew that to Warren Mellor, such a release
of emotion would be as horrific as the crashing of a great wave over his head, a wave that would bring with it the pent-up despair of his whole life. A wave he could not hope to control.

She glanced again at the open grave. Haddon had been everything to Warren, as he had been to Dorothy and to Rowenna herself. And now he was gone, snatched away as if by the blustery March wind,
and the glory of the daffodils and the sparkle of the river were dimmed because he was no longer there to see them.

Slowly, she followed her father down the path to the churchyard gate. The mourners stepped back respectfully to let them pass, to allow them to reach their carriage first and lead the way back
to Ashbank Hall for the funeral meats. Rowenna passed them with bent head, the heavy black veil hiding her tears.

But as she reached the gate some instinct made her raise her eyes. And there, standing apart from the others and still watching her with that sombre gaze, stood Kester Matthews, the man dark as
a gypsy who lived somewhere on the fell and had been her brother’s friend.

Once again she felt the quivering sensation that he had something to tell her.

‘You’re my companion now.’

The words hung in the air. Rowenna turned from the drawing-room window to stare at her father. He sat in an armchair by the fire gazing into its flames, but as she moved he lifted his head and
their eyes met across the big room. She felt a small shiver of unease as she caught the expression that burned in his eyes.

The funeral guests had gone leaving behind them a house that felt empty and cold, filled though it was with furniture and servants and bright glowing fires. The afternoon light was still in the
sky and the bubbling call of the curlew sounded through the windows. It had a cold, lonely tone to it, and it struck an echo in her heart.

‘I? But you’ve never—’

‘I’ve lost the son I had.’ It was as if he had not heard her speak. He turned back to the fire and seemed to address his remarks to the flames. ‘I can’t be without
one. That boy was everything to me, Rowenna. I needed him. But now he’s gone – and you’re all that’s left to me.’ He got up suddenly, crossing the room with long
strides, and she shrank back against the window, lifting her hands as though to ward him off. His hands were hard as he laid them on her shoulders and his eyes burned with the torment of grief.
‘Why couldn’t you have been a boy too?’ he demanded in a low, throbbing voice. ‘Why couldn’t you have taken his place, worked beside me, been my heir? Why did all the
others have to die, and you survive?’ His gaze scoured her face, as if by stripping it of its soft and feminine cast he could reveal a man, concealed beneath. ‘But no matter.
You’re all I have left now, you and the mill. You’ll be to me what he was. You’ll be the companion I need.’

Rowenna stared at him. The iron control she had seen in him during the funeral was faltering. His face was ravaged, his dark eyes haunted, and she felt a surge of compassion, together with
relief that at last he was allowing himself to feel his emotions.

But with the compassion came fear, for his emotion now seemed too intense, too overwhelming, and she shrank again, frightened by the passion in his eyes and voice. His huge body loomed over her,
his fingers tightening on her shoulders, and his bushy beard brushed against her cheek. She could feel the heat of his agitation, see the shudders that racked his big frame, hear the rasping of his
breath. She remembered her impression in the churchyard, of a man holding back a huge flood of grief and despair. Was his strength giving out at last? Was the wave about to break?

A groan burst from his throat and his face twisted. He’s having a fit, she thought, some kind of apoplexy, and she wondered what would happen if he should fall. Would he take her with him?
Would he crush her?

‘Father!’ she said, laying her palms against the wall of his chest and pushing with all her strength. ‘Father, let me go. Come and sit down – you’re not well.
I’ll ring for Ackroyd, he’ll bring something to make you feel better.’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing will make me feel better. Only seeing Haddon walk in at the door would make me feel better.’ But he allowed her to lead him back to his chair, and sank
into it like a man exhausted from heavy toil.

‘Father, you know he won’t do that,’ she said gently, settling him with a cushion behind his head. ‘He’ll never come in again.’ And she felt her own pain,
like a white-hot knife twisting in her breast. ‘But I’m here, Father. You still have me.’

He turned his head and she felt again that tiny shiver of unease. But it was too late now, and what else could she have said? He was her father, he had just lost his only son, he had no one but
her. What else could a daughter do?

Warren reached out a hand and gripped hers. He dragged her closer, so close that their faces almost touched, and stared into her eyes.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I still have you. And you won’t leave me, will you? You’ll always be here. You’ll be a son to me, just as your brother was,
and you’ll stay with me always.’

‘Always is a long time, Father,’ Rowenna said uneasily, and he gripped her hand yet more tightly, so that she was sure the bones must crack.

‘Always, Rowenna,’ he said, and again that disturbing intensity throbbed in his voice. ‘Always.’

For a long moment, he held her there. And then, still fixing her with that burning look, he slackened his grip and released her.

Rowenna straightened, rubbing her wrist with her other hand. She looked down at him and saw, with a tremor of fear, a strange look of satisfaction upon his face.

What have I done? she asked herself. And then – oh, Haddon, what have you done? Why did you have to die and leave me alone – with him?

It was late that night when Rowenna finally went to her bed. Exhausted, she sank down on the chair by her dressing table and gazed into the mirror.

Dark blue eyes, smudged with black, stared back at her from a face almost as white as the paper made in her father’s mill. Lifting her hands, she unpinned her hair and it fell in a cloud,
the colour of honey blended with cream, to her shoulders. Listlessly, she picked up a brush and began to drag it through the drifting waves.

The evening had seemed endless. Her father had required her to sit by him all the time, silent as he stared at the day’s newspaper – without, she was certain, having read a word of
it – yet ready to entertain him with talk when he grew restless. And, as she had known he would, he soon tired of her talk – and what else was to be expected, when she had nothing to
discuss other than the the affairs of the household and the doings of the villagers, both of which bored her as much as him?

With Haddon, there had always been plenty to talk about. But Warren had never expected her to take an interest in the mill, any more than he had taken any interest in her own affairs. And to
find now that she had almost as much knowledge as her brother might serve only to remind him of what he had lost.

Desperate, she had suggested a game of backgammon, but her father had shaken his head. Instead, he rang for Ackroyd and the butler had brought him a tray with a decanter of whisky and a single
glass of Madeira for Rowenna. They had sat together, she sipping her wine, he drinking steadily until at last he fell into a heavy slumber and she called Ackroyd again to help him to bed.

Now, assured that he would sleep the night through and that Ackroyd would remain within call should he awake, she was able at last to go to her room and try to find her own peace.

The bedroom door opened and Rowenna turned from the glass, the hairbrush still in her hand.

‘Molly! What are you doing here? You ought to be in bed.’

‘I couldn’t go till I knew you were all right, miss.’ The girl came quickly across the room and took the brush from Rowenna’s hand. ‘I reckoned you’d need
someone to talk to. You’ve had just about all you can stomach these past few days.’

Rowenna sighed and nodded. She leant back her head, feeling the soothing touch of the girl’s hands on her forehead and the slow strokes of the brush through her hair. She had known Molly
for twelve years, ever since the maid had come as a village girl in her Sunday pinafore, asking for work. It was the year before Dorothy had died and Molly had been fourteen, Rowenna almost ten.
Perhaps even then her mother had known that she was going to die and that Rowenna would need female company, for she had instantly engaged the girl as a companion and maid. To protests that Molly
was too young and untrained, she had merely answered that her youth was a virtue and training would be a pleasure. And by the time she died, a year later, Molly was Rowenna’s firm friend and
comforter, and had remained so ever since.

‘Oh, Molly,’ Rowenna said now, her voice breaking, ‘why did it have to happen? If only he hadn’t gone to London . . .’

‘He could hev caught it here, just as like,’ the maid said. ‘It’s been everywhere this spring. It’s the damp, and the cold. And they did all they could for him, by
all accounts.’

‘Oh yes,’ Rowenna said wearily. ‘Everything. Caustic solution applied to the membrane; tincture of iron and glycerine; poppy-seed fomentations; Condy’s fluid, laudanum,
chlorate of potash – everything they could think of. None of it the slightest use.’

She bowed her head and let the tears fall. Poor, poor Haddie, so cheerful, so full of life, choking and shuddering his life away in London, far from all he knew and loved. Had he thought of her
in his last moments? Had he called for her and wondered why she did not come?

She and Warren, summoned so hastily, had come as fast as the train would bring them. But in the last half-hour, they had been beaten by the crowded streets of London. Their four-wheel cab had
been caught up in a tangle of traffic, with horses pushing against each other, neighing and stamping as their drivers struggled to find a way through. The chaos was not relieved until a policeman
arrived, blowing the whistle that had recently replaced the rattle all constables used to carry and waving his truncheon to add to the turmoil. Somehow, miraculously, he found a way through for one
vehicle after another, until all the coaches, carriages, cabs and traps were once more clattering on their way. But the time taken had been just too long for the Mellors, and when Warren and
Rowenna arrived at last in the hospital where he had been taken, Haddon had died.

‘There’s some things must be meant,’ Molly said, stroking the brush down Rowenna’s hair. ‘It’s hard, but there’s naught to be done about such things. We
just hev to bear them.’

‘I know.’ But I can’t bear it, I can’t, she thought rebelliously. Haddon was all I had. And now Father wants me to be Haddon – he doesn’t want
me, he doesn’t want Rowenna, or indeed any daughter at all. He just wants Haddon, and so to please him I must become my brother.

How can I become someone else, even someone I loved as much as I did Haddon? How can I become someone I am not?

‘So how is your mistress taking it? Hard, I’d guess.’

Molly stretched herself out on the grass and looked up at her questioner. Leaning over her, silhouetted against the sky above, he looked broad and sturdy; when he rose to his feet his height
would give him a commanding, almost lordly appearance. Yet his origins, she thought, were even humbler than her own, though he would never concede it.

‘Aye, Kester, she’s reet upset. Master Haddon were like a god to her. And she’s got her work cut out with the old man now.’

‘I saw him walking on the terrace this morning. Looked as if he had it in for the whole world.’

Molly nodded. ‘He’s in a reet bad temper. Drinks half the night and nothing will do but Miss Rowenna must sit beside him while he does it. It’s wearing her out.’

‘And when does she do her own grieving?’

‘Oh, the master don’t believe in that. Says Master Haddon’s gone and crying won’t bring him back. Well, we all know that, but the tears got to be shed.’ Molly shook
her head sadly. ‘She can’t even weep when she’s on her own, ’cause he don’t like to see her with red eyes, and she can’t talk about her brother ’cause he
won’t hear his name mentioned. He can talk about him but no one else must say a word. It’s like he thinks Master Haddon belonged to him and no one else has any right to be
upset.’

‘He’s a selfish old bastard,’ Kester said. ‘And always has been, by all accounts. Rowenna needs someone who’ll let her pour it all out. Don’t she have any
aunts or uncles?’

Again, Molly shook her head. She was beginning to feel nervous about the time. She had hurried out after supper to meet Kester, but all too soon she would have to run back down the hill, and she
was beginning to wonder why she had come. For the past two or three weeks she had been slipping out to meet the dark-haired gardener’s lad who had almost every girl in the village in a
flutter, yet he had never done more than ruffle her hair or give her a casual kiss in parting. Yet he must want something from her, or why would he ask her to come? And Molly knew, from looking in
the scrap of mirror in her attic bedroom and the bigger one in Rowenna’s room, that she was pretty enough, with her thick brown hair and rosy skin. John Richmond, the head gardener’s
son, thought so anyway – and he would have taken his chance to kiss her quickly enough if she’d been slipping out to him of an evening.

She stretched her body out on the grass and looked up at Kester from between her lashes. Perhaps now he might forget about Rowenna for a few minutes. But he was staring away from her, into the
valley, and his dark face was unreadable. It’s not her he’s forgotten about, she thought sadly. It’s me.

‘She never comes into the garden now,’ Kester said, breaking the silence. ‘She used to work there a lot, but we never see her now. What does she do all day?’

‘Oh, she reads or sews. The old man don’t like her doing rough work. In fact, he don’t like her being out of the house at all, but sometimes she goes walking.’

‘On her own?’

‘Often with me. But quite a lot by herself.’ Molly glanced at the little stone hut in which Kester had lived ever since he came to the village. It stood by the side of the old fell
road and he had made a garden around it, growing his own vegetables and soft fruit. ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t been past here. She roams for miles sometimes.’

‘Well, happen she’ll come this way one fine afternoon.’ Kester lay back beside Molly. ‘Maybe you’ll bring her yourself.’

Casual as his tone was, there was something in it which brought Molly swiftly to a sitting position. She looked down at him, at his tanned face and black curling hair, at the strong, muscled
body. His life had been so different from that of the other men she knew – her father and brothers, the village boys she had grown up with, who now worked on the farms or in the mills which
stood along the banks of the tumbling rivers. That was one of the things that made him so interesting. That and the fact that not one of the village girls had managed to ensnare him, not even
Lizzie Hardacre who everyone had thought could get any man she wanted. But not Kester. He flirted with them, laughed at them and then went striding long-legged away up the fell, leaving them
baffled.

Molly had been scarcely able to believe it when he began to single her out, first through her brother Jem who worked in the mill, then greeting her as she came to the kitchen garden or the
conservatory with messages from the cook. His dark eyes challenged her and she responded with a toss of the head or a caustic retort that made him chuckle. Soon enough they were pausing for longer
than a few minutes, and then he suggested that she might walk up the fell with him after supper.

‘And what then?’ she had asked, tilting her head. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m like some of those other lasses, easy for a roll in the hay. I’m a respectable
girl, I am.’

‘It’s a walk I’m suggesting, not wedding bells,’ he said, grinning. ‘But if you don’t want to come, I daresay Lizzie Hardacre—’

‘I never said I didn’t want to come. I just want it clear what I’m coming for.’ She gave him a steady look, then smiled back. ‘We finish our supper at seven and
then I’m free till Miss Rowenna goes to bed. I’ll walk up the fell road then, shall I?’

After that, she had gone regularly to meet him, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for no more than a few minutes. But although she had been ready to defend her honour, she was disappointed as the
weeks passed to find that there was no need.

Now, looking down at him stretched upon the grass, she thought of all the questions he had asked about Rowenna and wondered whether he had ever been really interested in Molly herself.

‘I hope you don’t fancy your chance with Miss Rowenna,’ she said. ‘She’s far above the likes of you.’

Kester grinned. ‘I’d like her to prove it! There’s no one, man nor woman, who’s better than me just for being born in a big house. And I’ve got something
she’s never had, nor ever will if she goes on in the same path.’

‘And what’s that?’ Molly said scornfully. ‘Something you bin keeping to yourself, is it? Well, if it’s Miss Rowenna you’re saving it for—’

Kester laughed. ‘You think there’s others might appreciate it more, do you? Well, it’s not what you’re thinking of, Miss Molly. It’s freedom I’m talking
about. Freedom and independence. They’re the best things in the world and I’d not give them up for a crock of gold.’

‘Freedom? Independence? I dunno what you mean.’

‘No,’ he said soberly, ‘I don’t suppose you do. I don’t think there’s many who do. But I reckon Miss Rowenna might, if only she had the chance.’ He
glanced up at her, his eyes bright and dark, the shimmering colour of the water that ran, stained with peat, from the fells. ‘Try to get her to come out in the garden again, Moll, will you?
It’s what she needs, to work with the soil and the living things. It’s doing her no good to be shut up in that gloomy house with an old man who’s driving himself and her mad. Or
bring her up here for a walk.’

Molly stared at him. His voice was suddenly serious, his expression g