Cassie Jordan

Book 0: Colchester Sagas

by Elizabeth Jeffrey

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

When Edward Price-Carpenter arrives in Wyford, Essex, he immediately catches Cassie Jordan's eye.

Handsome and persuasive, the young man has come to oversee work on his father's racing yacht and takes lodgings in the Falcon Inn, where Cassie lives with her family.

As romance blossoms between them, Cassie finds herself torn between the man she loves and Luke Turnbull, a childhood friend whom she is destined to marry. Though she raises a family with Luke and lives an outwardly happy life, inside Cassie is tormented by thoughts of her lost love Edward and longs for a way to be reunited with him. When tragedy strikes, will Cassie finally learn where her true affections lie?

Release date: October 4, 2018

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 336

Sample

‘Cassie!’

At the sound of her mother’s voice calling from below, Cassie tried to struggle away from the young man’s hold. ‘I must go, Edward,’ she whispered breathlessly. ‘I’ve told you before, I’m never supposed to be in the bedroom at the same time as a guest.’

He grinned and caught her to him again. ‘But it’s hardly your fault if the guest walks in when you’re making his bed, is it?’ He began to kiss her again, his tongue gently teasing.

‘No, Edward. No!’ She twisted away. ‘I can’t … we mustn’t … I must go.’ She went over to the mirror on the dressing table to smooth her hair and rebutton her bodice, realising with dismay that there was little she could do about her flushed face.

‘Later, then. Come back later.’ He came and stood behind her, lifting a strand of her thick, golden hair and kissing it, all the while his blue eyes holding her reflected gaze. ‘After all, my lovely Cassie, I haven’t seen you since – when was it? Last October? That’s a whole six months! We’ve got a lot of lost time to make up.’ He tried to take her in his arms again but again she broke away.

‘No. No. It’s too dangerous. Mama would be furious if she found out.’ She hurried across to the door and wrenched it open.

He followed her, placing his hand over hers on the door knob. ‘By my father’s yacht, then. Tonight. About seven. The covers have come off today and the men have been working on her, but there’ll be nobody about by that time.’ Leander, Jonas Price-Carpenter’s sailing yacht was one of the many large racing yachts that had been laid up for the winter in mud berths on the River Colne and were now, in early April, emerging from their winter rest to be made ready for the summer’s racing.

‘Cassie! Where are you!’ Her mother’s voice was rising with impatience.

Cassie looked at Edward indecisively. All through the winter her dreams – both sleeping and waking – had been of this handsome young man. He had paid just one brief visit to Wyford, and had stayed at the Falcon Inn with his father, who, as owner of Leander, was a frequent visitor. Nevertheless, Cassie remembered everything about Edward: the way his fair hair was parted in the middle and brushed out to the sides in the latest style, his teasing blue eyes and the wide, trim moustache that masked a long upper lip and his even teeth that were hardly stained at all from the cigars he smoked. She remembered, too, the way he had looked at her, pressed her hand and – just before he left – kissed her, full on the mouth, promising to return. No one had ever kissed her that way before, not Luke, not anybody, and although it was not the first time a guest had taken a fancy to her – that was something she had learned to deal with quite early on, extricating herself from delicate situations both speedily and tactfully – it was the first time in all her nineteen years that she had felt any urge to respond.

And now, just as he had promised, Edward had come back to the Falcon, filling her with longing and confusion. ‘I don’t know. I … ’

He smiled, a teasing, confident smile. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

Her heart thumping, Cassie hurried down the stairs and along the passage to the kitchen where her mother was making soup with the vegetables Lizzy, the scullery maid had prepared. She wouldn’t go, of course. It was out of the question. But then the vision of Edward’s blue eyes, and the memory of his kisses …

Her mother looked up as she entered. ‘It took you long enough to make five beds, my girl,’ she said. ‘With Stella helping you it should have been done in half the time.’

‘Stella’s polishing the snuggery.’ Cassie consoled herself that this was not a lie. Her younger sister was polishing the snuggery. Cassie had sent her to do it ten minutes ago when the last of the beds was finished.

‘Very well.’ Hannah Jordan turned to put the pan on the big iron range. ‘You can make a start on the pastry for the apple pies. You’ve a good, light hand with shortcrust.’

Cassie gave a sigh and shot a look of exasperation in her mother’s direction as she rolled up her sleeves. She hated making pastry.

It was the year 1868 and life at the Falcon Inn was hard. An old, rambling building sprawling beside the grey stone church, it was in the centre of things, less than five minutes from the railway in one direction and from the river in the other, and was always busy.

The local people thought of it as the pub, the place where all thoughts of the day-by-day struggle to exist could be drowned, but to visitors it was the village inn, where a good meal and a comfortable bed were assured. Only Hannah Jordan, who ran it with autocratic efficiency, chose to refer to it as an hotel, in an endeavour to persuade herself and her daughters that they hadn’t really come down in the world when they had moved there.

Not that living at the Falcon worried Cassie and Stella; they knew no other life. They had no recollection of their yacht-captain father, nor of the house in West Street where, according to their mother, there had been several servants. The only servants the girls knew now were Lizzie, rescued from the workhouse, who did all the menial tasks like scrubbing flags and emptying slops, and Mrs Gates, who came in every day to clean and help with the laundry. And the fact that Hannah had scrimped to have them expensively educated at Miss Fanny Browne’s Ladies’ Seminary behind the Post Office had never stopped Cassie and Stella larking about down by the river with the other village children, who, if they went to school at all, attended the National School in the High Street.

Yet something of Hannah’s dissatisfaction with her present situation had rubbed off, if not on to Stella, then on to Cassie. Even now as she made the apple pies, Cassie consoled herself that a good knowledge of domestic things was no ill store, for if nothing else it would teach her how to handle her own servants when the time came – as it most surely would. Once again her thoughts turned to Edward and in her musings she nearly burnt her hand on the oven door.

By the time Cassie finished her work for the day it was very nearly seven o’clock in the evening because not only did she and Stella have to help with the cooking, they were also expected to wait on the tables in the dining room, which was full at this time of the year. In springtime the yacht owners came to Wyford, pretending they were overseeing the fitting out of their yachts for the summer’s racing, a task that in reality was the responsibility of the captains, who knew what they were doing. All the owners were really required to do was to foot the bill.

The only place the girls were not expected – in fact, were forbidden by Hannah – to work was in the bars, particularly the taproom, where neither behaviour nor language were what she considered suitable for her girls.

As soon as she had finished her work Cassie hurried up to the room she shared with her sister. This was a large room at the back of the house overlooking the yard. It was reached by its own staircase leading up from the kitchen and was quite cut off from the bedrooms in the other part of the house. Hannah had put the girls there when they were quite small, for safety’s sake, and they had made the most of their proximity to the kitchen to have midnight feasts, although it was always Cassie who instigated them, raiding the pantry and cutting off chunks of pie and cheese and slices of whatever cake there was available and carrying them back upstairs. The food always tasted better, eaten sitting up in bed.

‘Where are you going?’ Stella came into the room a few moments later and stared at Cassie, struggling into her secondbest dress. ‘Why are you putting on your muslin? Aren’t you coming down to the wall with the rest of us?’ The wall, as it was called, was a grass-covered bank that had been built up beside the river to give the low-lying marshes some protection from flooding. It was the usual meeting place for the young people of the village.

‘I might.’ Cassie leaned forward, frowning, to examine her freckles in the mirror.

‘Not in that dress, surely.’ Stella came and stood beside her. At sixteen, three years her sister’s junior, Stella was very like Cassie in colouring, but where Cassie was tall and slimly built Stella was short and inclined to be plump; and where Cassie’s brown eyes were large and set wide apart Stella’s were a shade too close to a nose that although it was the same shape as Cassie’s – slightly tip-tilted – was a trifle bigger. Her mouth was just a little smaller than Cassie’s, which was wide and generous, with full lips and a ready smile. Her hair, too, was the same golden colour, but where Cassie’s hung in thick, shining waves Stella’s was fine, with a tendency to frizz if she tried to tame it with curlpapers. The result was that Cassie, even with the peppering of freckles that were the bane of her life, was beautiful enough to turn the head of any man, whilst Stella was no more than passing pretty.

‘It’s warm tonight,’ Cassie said, moving away from the mirror that stood on their chest of drawers. ‘And this dress is nice and thin when the weather’s hot.’

‘It’s not that warm,’ Stella remarked sensibly. ‘After all, it’s only April.’ She waited a moment. ‘Well, are you coming?’

‘Coming where?’

‘Down to the wall. I’m going. I’ll wait for you if you’re not ready.’

‘No, don’t bother. You go on. I’ll be along in a minute.’ Cassie picked up her hairbrush and began to brush her hair with careful strokes. Suddenly, she put the brush down. ‘What are you waiting for? What are you looking at me like that for?’

Stella grinned. ‘I know where you’re going. You’re going to meet that nice young Mr Price-Carpenter, aren’t you? I’ll bet Luke doesn’t know.’

‘You’re not to tell.’ Cassie rounded on her. ‘You’re not to let anyone know. Anyway, it’s nothing whatever to do with Luke,’ she finished airily. Luke Turnbull was twenty-five, and by far the best looking of all the young men who congregated down by the wall, with thick brown hair and deepset grey eyes that were kind and full of humour, a wide mouth and a ready smile. All the girls liked him, but he had eyes for no one but Cassie, a fact that faintly irritated her, although at the same time she enjoyed the superiority it gave her over the other girls, and if she led him on it was only to make them jealous. Because she would never have dreamed of taking Luke seriously. Her sights were set far higher than a humble woodworker in her uncle’s yacht yard.

Stella put her head on one side. ‘You can walk with me, if you like. Then people will think you’re only going along the wall to meet the others.’ She smiled. It was a smug smile. ‘Can I wear your pretty beads? Then I won’t breathe a word.’

‘No.’ Then, knowing what her sister was capable of if she didn’t get her own way, ‘Yes, all right. But only for tonight. And don’t get them broken or I’ll kill you.’

They left together, going out by the back door and hurrying through the churchyard, leaving it by the little kissing-gate that gave on to the road leading to the quay.

The quay was crowded at this time of the year with the usual clutch of seamen in their dark guernseys, who every evening paced up and down, smoking their clay pipes and spitting into the river, hoping to be taken on as crew on the big yachts that would soon be off racing. They took no notice of the two Jordan girls and Cassie and Stella went on, past the row of squalid cottages known as The Folley, past Turnbull’s yacht yard and out on to the wall.

Any other night Cassie would have gone with Stella to join the group sitting in a row along Fedora’s jetty, some of them dangling their bare feet in the brownish water of the rising tide as they teased and jibed each other but tonight she simply called a greeting and hurried on, as if to catch up with the staid courting couple a little way ahead. She noticed that Luke had been saving a space for her beside him, a space Stella was quick to fill. Cassie managed to glare a warning, reminding her to keep her mouth shut.

It was a warm, early April evening and a light veil of mist was beginning to creep over the marshes. The only noise, apart from the giggles and chatter of the young people on Fedora’s jetty, was the gentle slap of the water as the tide reached its peak, and the sound of a curlew way in the distance. The row of sleek yachts stretching downriver that were so much a part of the local scene from October to May rose and fell gently with the movement of the water. They varied from forty to nearly sixty-five feet in length and some were still shrouded in their winter covers, dark and sombre, giving no hint of the polished decks and gleaming brass that would soon be revealed.

A dark-clad figure sat on the bank, half hidden by Leander’s jetty and Cassie hung back, waiting until the couple ahead had gone. Then she began to run. As she reached him Edward stood up and held out his arms and she was enfolded in their warmth. ‘I knew you’d come, Cassie,’ he said as he drew her down beside him and began to kiss her.

‘I mustn’t stay long. If Mama knew … ’ She tried to pull away but he held her close.

‘I’ve missed you, Cassie,’ he murmured against her ear, ‘but I’ll often be here this summer. I’m to supervise Leander’s fitting out so we’ll have plenty of time … ’ He drew away from her a little, still keeping his arm round her. ‘Now, surely you can stay long enough to tell me all you’ve been doing while I’ve not been here?’

It was so quiet and peaceful in the shadow of Leander as she moved gently on the tide that Cassie relaxed. She smiled up at him from the circle of his arm. ‘And what would I have been doing but helping my mother?’ she asked. ‘The Falcon takes all our time, what with people staying … ’

‘Yes, and who’s been staying? I want to know. I want to know that nobody else has come and stolen your heart.’ He smiled at her, his eyes warm.

‘Oh, Edward, you know that’s not possible. You know I … ’ she hesitated. Edward had never actually said that he loved her so she must be careful. ‘You know I’m far too busy for anything like that,’ she finished instead.

He nodded, satisfied, and pulled her head on to his shoulder so that he could stroke her long silky hair. ‘Have you always lived at the Falcon?’ he asked.

‘No, only since I was about four. Stella was less than a year old when we moved there so she can’t remember living anywhere else.’

‘And can you?’ He played idly with a strand of hair, stroking her neck so that it was difficult to concentrate.

She sighed. ‘I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I can. But I’m never really sure whether I remember living in the big house in West Street or whether Mama has told me about it so often that I only think I remember it. Like I think I remember Papa. He was a yacht captain and there’s a picture of him in his uniform in Mama’s room. His yacht used to win a lot of races so we were quite rich. But then he was drowned and we had to give up the big house and move to the Falcon.’

‘What about his yacht?’

‘It wasn’t his yacht, silly.’ She twisted her head to smile up at him. ‘He sailed it for somebody, like Captain Chaney sails Leander for your father.’

‘And was it as big as Leander?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know. I don’t really know anything about it. Mama never really talks about it and somehow I’ve never liked to ask.’

‘So you never went aboard?’

‘Not that I remember.’ She sighed again, wistfully. ‘I’ve often thought I’d like to go aboard one of the big yachts. Then I’d know the kind of boat Papa sailed in.’

‘Not necessarily. They’re not all the same. Leander’s what’s known as a gaff-rigged cutter. Maud, lying beside her there, is a yawl. Vanessa, over there, is a schooner. Then, some have one mast, some two, some even three. Oh, there are no end of different types of yachts and rigs and they come in all sizes.’ He bent his head and kissed her, tired of the conversation. ‘But I can take you aboard Leander if you like,’ he said, his mouth against hers. ‘I’ve got a key.’

‘Oh, yes, I’d like that,’ she answered, hardly knowing what she was saying for the turmoil he had aroused in her.

‘We’d better go now, before it’s too dark to see anything,’ he murmured, helping her to her feet without relinquishing his hold on her. ‘Not that there’s much to see, at the moment, but I’m happy to show you what there is. Careful, now, we don’t want you falling off the jetty into the water, do we?’ he said, holding her so close to his side that she felt weak and breathless.

Leander had a distinctive smell of tarred rope, mud and seaweed, mingled with a lingering aroma from the canvas covers that had protected her from the winter weather. The brasswork was dull and there were cobwebs in the winches and windlasses. In the gathering dusk Leander gave the impression of a slow awakening from a winter of hibernation.

‘She needs a bit of spit and polish,’ Edward said, taking Cassie’s hand and leading her long the deck. ‘And her topsides will have to be revarnished. Quite a lot can be done while we wait for a berth in Harvey’s yard to get her bottom scraped. Anyway, I’ll have all that attended to after my father has gone back.’

‘You’re staying, then?’ Cassie stumbled a little in her eagerness, trying unsuccessfully to keep her voice casual.

‘Yes. I just told you. I’ll be here until Leander goes off to Harwich. I might even follow her there. It depends what Father wants me to do.’ He headed down the companionway and unlocked the door to the cabin as he spoke.

‘I can’t see much.’ Cassie followed him in, squinting, trying to peer into the semi-darkness.

He laughed. ‘I did warn you there wasn’t much to see. This is the saloon, but naturally everything was stripped out before she was laid up. It’s stripped like this for racing, too, to make the boat as light as possible.’

‘Oh.’ Cassie was disappointed. Some of the yachts, she knew, had saloons furnished like drawing rooms, with armchairs and settees built round the sides and that was what she had been hoping to find, not just this empty maple-panelled shell. As far as she could see the only things in it were a box of the lead that was used for ballast when the boat was racing and an empty sailbag that had somehow got left behind. ‘I didn’t think it would be quite as bare as this,’ she said, peering around.

‘It won’t be in a week or two, I can assure you,’ he laughed. ‘Not once all the paraphernalia is brought back on board. But once that happens we shan’t have the place to ourselves like this, Cassie.’ His voice dropped and thickened as he drew her into his arms. ‘Whereas now we shan’t be disturbed.’ He began to kiss her with mounting passion, one hand busy with the buttons of her bodice.

At first she returned his kisses, then suddenly she became afraid of his increasing ardour and tried to push him away. ‘No, Edward. It’s not right, we mustn’t. Supposing … ’ But her words were lost against his mouth as he lowered her none too gently to the floor.

‘Supposing what? Don’t you trust me, Cassie?’ His voice was no more than a whisper close to her ear.

‘Yes, Edward, of course I do. You know I do.’ She hardly knew what she was saying. This was not what she had intended. She didn’t want Edward to think she was what her mother called ‘a loose woman’. Letting him kiss her and caress her a little was one thing … more than that was quite another. For a brief moment she struggled to escape from him but her own body betrayed her and she had no will to resist his expert touch and could make no more than a token protest as he lifted her skirts and began to fumble with the string of her drawers.

It was quite dark when they left Leander. Edward guided her along the jetty to the safety of the sea wall.

‘I’ll see you here again tomorrow, at the same time?’ he whispered, giving her a last kiss.

‘I’m not sure … ’ She broke away.

‘Oh, come now, don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it.’

‘Yes, but … ’

He caught her to him again roughly. ‘Yes, Cassie, you must come. I need you. I can’t do without you.’He began to kiss her again.

‘I’ll come if I can get away,’ she said, once again weak from his embrace.

‘I’ll be waiting.’

She hurried off with Edward’s words, ‘I can’t do without you,’ singing in her ears. She was so in love. And Edward loved her, there could be no doubt of it. She smiled a little in the darkness. It would please Mama to know that Jonas Price-Carpenter’s son, of all people, had singled her daughter out for his attentions. Mama had always said that they’d been born to better things and that their life at the Falcon was only a temporary setback. Cassie smiled again. It looked as if she’d been right, too, because Edward was a rich man. His father owned vast estates in Buckinghamshire. Suddenly, filled with joy, she began to run.

Then, just as suddenly, the pendulum of her thoughts swung and her step slowed again as she reddened with guilt. There must be no repetition of what had happened on Leander tonight. It had been quite wrong and must never happen again. Not until after she and Edward were married. She was quite determined about that.

There had been trouble in the taproom. A fight had broken out whilst Hannah was busy elsewhere and although Tom, the big ugly potman, had used his brawn and quelled it successfully a bench had been broken and a table smashed.

Hannah surveyed the damage grimly the next morning, before even the earliest morning drinkers had arrived. ‘We must get it all seen to before the place fills up later in the day,’ she said. She looked at the watch she wore hanging at her waist. ‘Cassie, go along to Uncle George’s yard. It’s seven o’clock now so they’ll all be at work. Ask him if he can lend me a carpenter for a few hours. You can tell him what’s happened.’ She turned back to Tom. ‘He might send his nephew, young Luke. He’s a good worker, not like his father.’

‘He hadn’t need be. That Alf Turnbull’s a real waster. That was him what started the row last night. ’E’s a reg’lar bruiser when ’e git a bit o’ drink inside ’im.’ Tom began clearing up, emptying spittoons and sweeping up the old sawdust before putting down fresh. He leant on his broom, always ready for a yarn. ‘Good job you wasn’t about, missus … ’

‘It would never have begun if I’d been here,’ Hannah said firmly, going off down the passage with a swish of her skirts.

‘You’re about right at that, missus,’ Tom remarked, looking after her admiringly. He turned to Cassie. ‘One look from your ma’s enough to take the wind outa any man’s sails, drunk or sober.’ With a shake of his head he went on with his sweeping.

Cassie was glad of the short walk to Turnbull’s yard. It promised to be one of those hot days in late May that sometimes heralded a good summer and it had been so stuffy indoors that she had felt quite faint. She was tired, too. Last night it had been late when she had crept home from seeing Edward. Fortunately Stella was a heavy sleeper and never heard her sister climb through the scullery window – carefully left unlatched – and creep up the stairs, sometimes at past eleven o’clock. Not that she met Edward every night. Sometimes she made him wait two, or even three nights, and once it had been a whole week. But it was hard, because she loved him very much and he was always telling her how much he needed her. And in spite of her determination not to give in to his persuasive demands again until they were married, she had several times since found herself powerless against him.

Turnbull’s yard was already busy. Cassie could hear the sounds of banging and sawing as she approached. A large yacht, the Vanessa, was on the slip, having a final coat of varnish after repairs to her hull and topsides and there was a small yawl under construction in the open-ended boat shed. The men working about the place took no notice of her as Cassie picked her way across the yard between planks of wood propped against sawing horses, pots of paint, and the odd bits of rope and old rigging half-buried in shavings, and went up the wooden stairs to the door with Office scrawled on it in chalk.

‘Come right in,’ a voice called in answer to her knock.

George Turnbull stood at a table under the window overlooking the yard studying boat plans. A short, tubby figure, with a greying fringe of hair round a shiny bald head, his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and pencils were stuck in all his waistcoat pockets and behind his ears. His son Martin sat at another table in the corner, busily adding up columns of figures.

George looked up and beamed as Cassie entered. ‘Cassie, me dear. How are you? And what brings you here at this hour of the day? Not trouble, I hope? Your Aunt Maisie was a-sayin’ only yesterday that she hadn’t seen her sister Hannah for a week or more.’

‘Oh, Mama’s all right, thank you, Uncle George,’ Cassie smiled, ‘but there was a spot of trouble in the taproom last night and a bench and a table got broken. Mama wondered … ’

‘ … if I could spare somebody to repair ’em.’ George nodded. ‘’Course I can, me dear. An’ if I don’t miss my mark, my brother Alf was half the cause of it. He’s come into work with a rare black eye this morning, drunken lout that he is. I don’t know why I keep him on, ‘cause he’s a lazy sod, except that I feel sorry for poor Liddy, me sister-in-law, with all them kids.’ He turned and made a mark on the plans with a pencil and then replaced it behind his ear. ‘You can take young Luke. He’s a good lad and a fine worker. You’ll find him working on the yawl.’ He bent over his plans again, saying over his shoulder, ‘Don’t tell him his father was the one who busted the furniture, though. The poor lad has enough to put up with at home without that.’

‘I wouldn’t keep Alf on, if it was left to me.’ Martin looked up from his work. ‘He costs you far more than you get out of him you know, Dad.’

George sighed. ‘Do you think I don’t know that, boy?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m soft. I know I am. On the other hand, young Luke more than makes up for what his dad don’t do. He’s a real hard worker … ’

‘Is that why you’ve sent him off to mend Aunt Hannah’s furniture, Dad?’ Martin said with a smile. ‘I doubt you’ll get paid a lot for that.’

‘Hannah’ll pay me what I ask,’ George said.

‘And that won’t be a sight,’ Martin retorted with more than a tinge of exasperation.

Luke was busily planing a piece of wood when Cassie found him. Totally engrossed in what he was doing, he didn’t hear her approach and she studied him for a moment before speaking. He was tall, that was evident even though he was stooped over his work, and lean, with a sinewy strength that showed in the rhythmic movement of the big jack plane. His brown hair was coarse and unruly and he had thick, curly whiskers. Already his face and arms were tanned from continually working out of doors and Cassie couldn’t help contrasting him with Edward, who was pale-skinned and aesthetic and altogether more refined.

Suddenly, Luke sensed her presence and looked round at her, his grey eyes lighting up under thick black eyeb. . .