Spirited

by Julie Cohen

Genres: Victorian Romance

Synopsis

'I stayed up late, gripped. An unusual, moving read. I LOVED it!' Marian Keyes
'Haunting, tender and true - this story cast a spell on me' Kirsty Logan
'This haunting story about the power of love will give you the shivers' Best
'Wonderfully written and evocative' Woman & Home

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A moving and gripping story about three extraordinary women from the Richard & Judy recommended bestselling author Julie Cohen.

Viola has an impossible talent. Her photographs seem to capture things invisible to the eye - only a leap of faith could mean they are real. Until one day a woman arrives in Viola's life and sees the truth - about her pictures, and about Viola.

Henriette is a celebrated spirit medium, carrying nothing but her secrets with her as she travels the country. The moment she meets Viola, a dangerous connection is sparked - but Victorian society is no place for reckless women.

Meanwhile, across the world, invisible threads join Viola and Henriette to another woman who lives in secrecy, hiding her dangerous act of rebellion in plain sight.

Faith. Courage. Love. What will they risk for freedom?

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Driven by passionate, courageous female characters, SPIRITED is your next unforgettable read!

Release date: July 9, 2020

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One

April, 1858Kimmerton, Wiltshire

They were married in mourning.

Viola’s black day dress was simple, as were all her clothes: close-fitting in the bodice with bell sleeves and a modest crinoline. Jonah wore black morning dress and a black tie, black crêpe tied around his hat. Neither of them had new clothes for the wedding. Viola’s dress had been made up so recently that it seemed hardly worth buying a new one for her wedding day, and Jonah hadn’t been back from India long enough to order a new suit.

The only lightness was Jonah’s white shirt, and the strand of white pearls that Viola wore around her neck. Strictly, she shouldn’t be wearing them whilst in full mourning, but they had belonged to her mother, who had worn them on her wedding day. The locket with her father’s hair lay under her dress, out of sight, close to her heart and Viola’s chestnut hair was tucked underneath a black bonnet. Jonah’s face was tanned from the Indian sun, but still managed to be pale; his eyes, blue in her memory of summers past, were grey. Viola felt that her own face was as colourless as the weak spring sunshine.

Mrs Chapman stopped them outside the vicarage, before they got into the carriage that would take them to the church. ‘Your father wouldn’t mind these,’ she said to Viola. She held two knots of the violets that grew in the vicarage garden. The housekeeper tucked one knot into the band of Viola’s hat, and the other into Jonah’s buttonhole. ‘There,’ she said, standing back, ‘you can’t marry without flowers.’

The words were kind, but the tone was bleak.

‘It’s a new beginning for you both,’ Mrs Chapman said. ‘And the first and last wish of your father’s heart.’

‘I know,’ said Viola, and she pressed the hand of this dear woman who had been with her nearly all her life. She wanted to glance at the face of the man she was about to marry, but she was afraid that when she looked at him, she would see only her father – his waxy face, eyes open, mouth open, a bristle of white on his chin which he had always so carefully shaved every morning as the sun rose; his hair no more than a dishwater wisp. It had nearly all gone, at the end.

Her father had died six weeks ago and since then she had seen his dead face. It floated before her when she closed her eyes to sleep. It appeared at the table when she tried to eat, his mouth open to show the missing molar, his tongue a sandpaper sponge. She had washed his body herself, tied the bandage around his head to close his mouth, and his skin had been – not cold, but not warm. His skin had been an object. He had ceased to be a person and become an appendage of the bed in which he lay, a carving of a naked skeleton which she cleaned as gently as if he were a newborn baby.

‘Viola?’ said Jonah softly, and she started. He was holding out his hand to her to help her into the carriage.

She stared at his black-gloved hand with the sudden conviction that, were she to touch it, the flesh underneath would be as dead as her father’s.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and turned away to climb into the carriage without assistance. Jonah followed her and settled beside her, closing the door. In the enclosed space, his clothing rustled and his breath was a soft hush. The cloth of his jacket touched the side of her skirt. There was a faint scent of camphor. She heard the driver chirrup the horses and they started off. Without looking, she knew that Jonah was staring straight ahead, as she was, at the wooden opposite wall of the carriage. These same horses had driven her father’s body the same route to the Kimmerton church, along the same lane he had walked at least twice a day.

A carriage is larger than a coffin. He’d had white lilies, not violets. They weren’t going to the Kimmerton church but to the church in the next parish, and in another hour this carriage would be driving them back to the vicarage, man and wife. The first and last wish of her father’s heart.

She couldn’t breathe.

‘Are you unwell? You’re unwell. I’ll ask Langley to stop.’

Jonah raised his hand to knock on the carriage but she said, quickly, ‘No,’ and he subsided into his seat.

‘It isn’t far,’ she said. ‘We should have walked.’

‘I’m not confident that your legs would carry you, Viola. And it will rain.’

She should have let him help her into the carriage. It was a weakness on her part. Two summers ago, before he’d left, he’d taken her hand as they walked through the field strewn with poppies, and his fingers had been warm and his eyes the brightest shade of blue she could imagine.

‘I won’t melt,’ she said now, hating the reedy sound of her own voice. It had diminished, it seemed, with the rest of her. She couldn’t help but recall how Jonah had looked at her last week, when he returned to Kimmerton. They hadn’t seen each other for over two years. She’d always been slim, never blooming, prone to freckles if she wasn’t careful enough with bonnet and parasol. She’d always wished for rosier cheeks and brighter eyes, womanly curves instead of her wan, straight body. Her hair was the only part of her that she liked. It grew bountiful and glossy, conker-red, whilst the rest of her was meagre. It had to be combed and tamed and twisted and pinned.

She hadn’t looked in a mirror for weeks, even before her father had finally died and all the mirrors in the house had been covered with crêpe. But when Jonah returned from India, she saw in his shocked expression how much she’d changed from the girl with whom he had walked, hand in hand. She was no longer the girl whom he’d said he loved.

He’d changed, too; but he’d been away, doing things. He had been caught up in a war. He had saved a life. He was a hero. Those things would leave a mark. She had failed to save anyone.

She cleared her throat. ‘Tell me about sunshine.’

‘You know all about sunshine,’ he replied with a smile.

‘Tell me about India.’

‘No,’ he said quickly.

‘But you’ve hardly said anything about it since you’ve come back.’

‘There’s nothing to say.’

‘There’s lots to say. I want to know more about it. The good things. Did you see monkeys?’

‘I said, I don’t want to talk about it.’ His tone was sharp.

She looked down at her lap, at her black gloves.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jonah said.

‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said.

He didn’t answer straight away. The carriage jolted and she heard a splash as they went through a puddle.

‘You think we should’ve waited?’ he said at last. ‘But where would you have lived? Who would have looked after you?’

‘I think a bride should be full of joy and not sadness.’

‘Oh, Viola,’ Jonah said, and he made a move as if to take her hand. She flinched slightly before she could control herself. He noticed it, and returned his hand to his own lap.

‘You’re sad,’ he said. ‘It’s natural that you’re sad. Your father was a wonderful man. I loved him as if he were my own father. It was an utter shock to hear he had passed away. I had no idea he’d been so ill for so long. Your letters …’

‘I didn’t want to worry you, or make you feel that you should come home. You’d been through enough, and you had to recover.’

‘I wish I’d been by his side when he died.’

‘No,’ she said, unable to repress a shudder. ‘You do not wish that.’

‘But you must see that this is the best thing for us to do. I wish we could wait longer, until you’re less sad, until you’re well. But we have no one else, now, except for each other. We’re both alone in the world, and you need someone to look after you. The sooner we’re married, the sooner we can start anew. As Mrs Chapman said.’

‘A new beginning should be fresh and bright. Not … not like this.’

‘It will be,’ he said. ‘I’m determined that it shall.’ He drew himself more upright in his seat. ‘I’m conscious of my duty to you, Viola. I won’t fail you.’



It was raining by the time the carriage stopped outside the church at Bonner Green. Langley hopped off the driver’s seat to help Viola down. She allowed herself to lean on his arm, swathed in his thick, wet greatcoat, as she stepped down into the muddy lane.

‘Blessings on you both, Miss Goodwin,’ Langley muttered. ‘It’s just what your father, God rest him, would have wanted.’

‘I know, Langley. Thank you.’

Jonah appeared at her elbow and held an umbrella over her head. It wasn’t quite large enough to shield her dress completely, and she felt rain falling on the silk, spoiling it, as they walked hurriedly up the path to the church.

A tall, reed-thin man with dusty black clothes and pure-white whiskers was waiting for them in the porch. ‘Oh,’ said Viola. ‘Mr Adams. I wasn’t expecting to see you.’

‘I’m here to give you away, Miss Goodwin,’ said the man who had been her father’s deacon.

‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘That’s very kind, but there’s no need, it’s not at all necessary.’

‘I’m a poor substitute, but your father would never forgive me if I didn’t.’

She hesitated. She’d insisted that she and Jonah marry in Bonner Green church rather than Kimmerton, which had been her father’s parish, specifically because she did not want any reminders of her previous life. Mr Adams’ bony figure had hovered at her father’s elbow over countless Sunday sermons, and occupied a regular seat at their table at Sunday lunches. As a bachelor, he was often present at other meals, too, or ensconced with her father in his library, smoking and talking. He had stood by her father’s sickbed, turning a worn Bible over and over in his hands. He had led the psalms at her father’s funeral.

Now, standing in the porch with his battered hat and old coat and a small drop at the end of his long nose, he looked like a crow perched on a tombstone.

But refusing him would be selfish. ‘Of course, Mr Adams. It’s an honour.’

He smiled his thin smile and he wiped at the end of his nose with a black-edged handkerchief. ‘It’s my honour, Miss Goodwin. Your father was … he was … I don’t know how I’ll do without him, and without you, once you and Mr Worth are gone.’ His watery eyes welled up.

‘Cheer up, Mr Adams, it’s our wedding day,’ said Jonah, and his words were forced. He patted the deacon on his back.

‘Yes. Yes, I don’t know what … I’m sorry, I … ’

Viola pulled off one of her gloves so that she could remove a few violets from the posy in her hat. She gave them to Mr Adams. ‘For your buttonhole, sir.’

He nodded and gulped. Jonah turned to Viola. ‘I’ll go in.’

He left her with Mr Adams in the porch. Viola drew on her glove and tried to use the boot scraper to brush some of the mud off her shoes. Mr Adams, obviously embarrassed by his show of emotion, busied himself with wiping his eyes and arranging the small flowers.

She hadn’t pictured her wedding day like this. She’d imagined it sunny, the stained-glass windows of her father’s church casting dancing rainbows on the stone floor. She had seen herself in a sea-green dress, with roses in her hand, entering the church on her father’s arm, holding fast to the man who’d supported her all her life. She’d seen Jonah standing at the altar, red and purple light in his brown curls, his well-known smile greeting her. He would hold out his hand and she would take it and step into her new life, from her father’s care into Jonah’s.

It would be a moment like a jewel, to be treasured and taken out to polish and admire and cherish. Her father would take a photograph afterwards and they would keep it on the wall of their home to look at whenever they wanted to remember.

When Jonah returns and we marry, she had thought, over and over and over like a refrain. When her father started coughing and could not visit his parishioners. When his voice grew too weak to read his sermons and she sat next to him and read the news about what Jonah had done in Delhi. When Jonah returns and we marry, Father will get better. He’s so proud of Jonah. Happiness will cure him.

When he had to stay in bed and the doctor visited, in the night, she forced the refrain to repeat in her head and sat in her chair by the fire in her father’s bedroom, changing the cool cloths on his forehead, all through the dark hours until the sun rose, mentally rehearsing the cheerful letters she would write to her fiancé who was under the Indian sun, recovering from his ordeal. Even in war and death, Jonah had saved a child. Happy endings were possible. When Jonah returns and we marry. The sunshine would surely come.

A sparkling jewel. The happiest day of her life.

In the last days, she hadn’t been able to see it. Not clearly, in her mind. She thought the words, the refrain, over and over, but sunshine was beyond her imagining. She set up the camera in her father’s bedroom at his bidding and she uncovered the lens, and when the exposure was done, she said it aloud, ‘Jonah will like to see that photograph. When he returns and we marry.’

Her father was asleep by then. Her words sounded hollow, bodiless, a lie.

That was the night she had written to Jonah and begged him to come home, as soon as he could. It was the first urgent, and truthful, letter she had written to him since he had left. It never reached him; he was already at sea by that point. Jonah only heard of her father’s death three weeks ago when he was greeted at Dover by cheering crowds waving British flags, and her second letter on black-edged paper. He had gone straight to London to sort his affairs and engage an agent to find them a house, and then he had come here to marry her.

‘Well,’ said Mr Adams. He went to the church door, opened it, and peered in. Then he returned and held out his bony arm to Viola. ‘I think they’re ready. Shall we?’

She couldn’t avoid taking his arm. When she did, it felt brittle, like a bundle of twigs wrapped in wool. But he smiled down at her, that clear drop still hanging at the end of his nose, and that made it better. They walked in together.

The interior of the church was the same colour as the rain and even colder than outside. Grey walls, windows without light, a long stone aisle in front of them. Their footsteps echoed. Mr Adams walked slowly, his shoulders stooping. She knew Mr Morris, the vicar, who watched their procession. He attempted a smile at her, a baring of teeth.

Ahead of them, Jonah waited at the altar. He gazed straight ahead, not looking back at her as she approached.

For the first time since he’d returned, from this distance and without his eyes to avoid, she could look at him. He, too, had lost weight; his suit was too big for him in the shoulders, and gaped at the back of his neck. He stood almost unnaturally upright, hands by his sides. His hair had been flattened by his hat.

Although Viola had known him nearly all her life, she realised with a jolt that if she hadn’t known that this was Jonah, she wouldn’t have recognised him.

They drew abreast. Jonah’s jaw was set. Viola recalled the words he’d said about duty.

She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to marry her. She should’ve been strong and broken off the engagement, for his sake. But it seemed as if the promise of this day had been the only thing keeping her alive. If she’d known it was going to be so grey and thin and cold, would she have clung to its prospects so much?

‘Are you ready to begin?’ Mr Morris said.

Viola hesitated. It wasn’t too late to release Jonah. But then what would she do? Her father had left her almost nothing. She couldn’t remain in the vicarage; it was needed for the new vicar. She couldn’t live somewhere else alone. This limbo, between two men, between death and marriage, could not last indefinitely. If she didn’t marry Jonah, she would have to find another man to marry – and who would that be? How could she marry anyone aside from Jonah, who had been a fact of her life for as long as she could remember? How could she possibly like another man?

‘Viola?’ prompted Jonah softly. Caught off guard, she glanced at him. And there it was: underneath the resignation, the stiffness, the pallor, there was his dear face. The face of her playfellow and her first, best friend. The old Jonah hovered there like a ghost standing just behind this new, sombre Jonah. He was a slender bridegroom, wearing violets at his breast, his eyes as blue as the summer sky.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.



He took off his right glove and she took off her left so that he could slip the slim gold band onto her finger. The ring had been her mother’s, kept for her by her father until the day she married.

Her left hand lay in his gloved palm. It was a cold, small thing, a naked animal. As he slid the ring onto her fourth finger, the tips of his own fingers touched hers. They were chilled here in this empty church, cold and clumsy, and Viola had to think very hard about sunshine, about violets, as the man whom she had promised to love forever put the ring of a dead woman onto her own finger.

Chapter Two

And then they were man and wife.

Jonah stayed behind to pay the vicar who had married them, and Viola walked out with Mr Adams onto the porch.

‘Well, God bless you, Mrs Worth,’ said Mr Adams, gazing at the relentless rain and shaking the tail of his coat as if it were dull feathers.

‘Mrs Worth,’ she repeated. ‘Just like that.’

‘You will be very happy together,’ Mr Adams said, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘The two of you were inseparable as children. I remember you tumbling into the drawing room at teatime and upsetting all the tables.’

‘Yes, we used to do that, didn’t we?’

‘And now you’re married. And our Jonah Worth is a famous man. I’d be surprised if he didn’t get a medal from the Queen. When will you go to the coast?’

‘Tomorrow morning.’ She held her left hand, the one with the ring, out from the shelter so that she could feel the rain. It pattered on her glove.

‘Your whole life is ahead of you,’ he said to her. ‘Never found the right woman myself. It’s too late now.’

‘It’s never too late,’ she said, but it was automatic.

Jonah opened the church door and came out, putting on his hat. Mr Adams shook his hand. ‘I wish you joy,’ he said.

‘I’m sure we’ll have lots of it,’ said Jonah. ‘Would you like to share our wedding breakfast? Mrs Chapman is bound to have outdone herself.’

He said it so naturally that Viola nearly failed to notice how smoothly he had transferred mastery of the vicarage from Viola to himself. No matter how many times Viola’s father had urged Jonah to consider the house his own, he had always been very conscious of his status in the Goodwins’ home as a ward, not a natural son. Until ten minutes ago, he would have left the invitation to Viola.

‘Yes,’ she said, though with an awareness of the mere form of her assent. ‘Please do, Mr Adams. I know how you enjoy Mrs Chapman’s cooking, and this may be the …’

It would be the last time. After the newly-married Worths left tomorrow, Mrs Chapman would be going to Trowbridge to live with her sister. She’d refused their offer to take her with them to Dorset; she’d never left Wiltshire in her life and she wasn’t about to start now. Viola wasn’t sure if she would ever see her housekeeper again, and if she did, it would never be the same. Mrs Chapman had been with them for as long as she could remember. She had let the young Viola play in her kitchen, and taught her how to sew. Her father’s death had ended that relationship, as well.

‘We’d like it very much if you joined us, after your kindness,’ she said instead.

Mr Adams wavered, but the thought of Mrs Chapman’s pastry lit a greedy light in his thin face. ‘I wouldn’t want to intrude.’

‘Not at all,’ said Jonah. ‘Mr Morris is coming as well, and his clerk. I hope that’s all right with you, Viola.’

She swallowed. ‘Of course. The more the merrier.’



Breakfast finished, guests departed, neither of them as merry as she might have hoped, Viola walked between the pale forms of the dust-sheeted furniture, feeling insubstantial. Jonah had leased a furnished house for them on the Isle of Portland, so that Viola could take the sea air. His own belongings had gone there already. Only her personal things from this house would follow them. The Kimmerton living, and this house, would go to a new vicar. Other people would sit in this chair, use this table, take a book from this case. Would they think of the people who had gone before them?

Jonah found her in the library, running her hands over the wooden crate that held her father’s books.

‘Shall we do the last boxes?’ he asked her.

‘I’ve been dreading it,’ she admitted.

‘I’ve already written to Burnham about your father’s photographic equipment,’ Jonah said, ‘and he’s willing to take anything you don’t want to keep. He has some students—’

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘No, I don’t want to sell it.’

‘Then we’ll take it all.’

Outside, Jonah opened an umbrella for her and they hurried across the garden to Papa’s studio in an adapted outbuilding. She hadn’t stepped into this place since she had developed the last photograph of her father, a week before he died. That photograph was already packed, folded among her clothes to keep the gilt frame from breaking.

She had carried the camera upstairs, taken the photograph of him in his bed. His body weight had hardly dented the pillows. In the photograph, his hands were folded on the neat coverlet. His wedding ring was loose, but his nightshirt was starched, hair combed, face shaved, sideburns trimmed. His eyes glittered with fever. But he smiled and gazed straight at the camera lens, because she stood behind it.

When she looked at the photograph now, she could see the echo of his love captured in the image. She treasured it, but it was too difficult to look at except in glances. It was like holding a knife by the blade.

Viola unlocked the green wooden door with one of the keys at her waist. Even though it was still pouring outside, the white-painted studio was lighter and airier than the inside of the vicarage. A chair and small table sat in the centre of the room in front of a screen that her father had painted to look like a formal garden. His tripod faced the chair, waiting for him to place his camera upon it. As always, the chemical scents of photography greeted her nostrils. The rusty twinge of ferrous sulphate, the lavender oil in the shellac.

It was as if her father were there just out of sight in the darkroom, making prints, and she had only to wait for him to step outside and greet her, to hold out his hands stained black with silver nitrate.

Viola stifled a sob. Jonah turned to her quickly.

‘I can pack all of this,’ he said. ‘I know your father’s equipment almost as well as you do. Why don’t you take a rest. It’s been a tiring day.’

‘But I should do this. It …’

She was putting her father into a coffin again.

‘You put the albums together,’ he said to her kindly. ‘I’ll get you some brown paper and string. And I’ll do his equipment.’

She nodded. She began to stack the heavy albums of prints together, without opening them, though she knew the contents of each one. This room was where her father had taught her to prepare a plate, how to frame a composition. He had stood behind her and taught her the names of every chemical he used to fix the image and print the negative; discussed with her the difference between a daguerreotype and a calotype, outlined the advantages of the newer wet-plate method, his gentle voice in a red-lit room.

‘The house in Portland,’ Jonah said, from across the room where he was carefully wrapping her father’s wet plate camera, ‘was built by an artist. It has a studio in the attic. We could work side by side. The agent says there’s even a place for a darkroom.’

She wrapped a shroud of brown paper around the stack of albums.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever want to take another photograph again,’ she said.



Jonah had come to them when he was eight years old and Viola was six. His parents lived in India and he was going to spend this summer with them in Kimmerton until he started boarding school. His parents wanted him to have a proper English education. He would spend every holiday with them too, until he was grown up.

‘You must look after him, Viola,’ her father had said. ‘He came all this way from Delhi without his parents, and he doesn’t have any family in this country. You have lost a mother, so you know what it is to miss a parent. Only speak of it if he wishes to. Try to talk of pleasant things and make him know that he is welcome here.’

It was a hot day in July with heavy bumblebees weighing down the flowers in the garden. They were still making calotypes then. She and her father had set up the tripod on the lawn and she was dressed as her idea of an Arabian princess, draped in pink and orange scarves and with a pheasant’s feather, one of her treasures, tucked behind her ear. Father was adjusting the lenses when she heard the carriage draw up in the front of the house. She ran around in time to see Jonah Worth step down, next to Mrs Chapman who had been to fetch him from the station. He was slender and tanned from the sun, and wore a linen suit that was too short for him in the arms and legs. He must have grown during the journey from Delhi. His hair was a jumble of curls. He has no one to comb it for him, she thought with pity, although when she thought it through when she was older, of course even if his mother were in England instead of far away in India, she wouldn’t be combing Jonah’s hair any more. Her own mother had died the year before, but Viola had been brushing her own hair since she was four.

She had never met a real person from India before. But aside from the tanned skin, he looked very much like a child who had grown up in England.

‘I’m Viola Goodwin,’ she said to him, and although she wouldn’t do this with her playmates, she held out her hand as she had seen her father do with his contemporaries. He took it, and shook it in what seemed like a kind of daze. He had a narrow face, pink lips, large blue eyes. With his abundance of curls he looked as pretty as a girl, which pleased her.

‘Jonah Worth. You’re Mr Goodwin’s daughter?’

She nodded. ‘My father and yours were best friends, you know. They were at school together.’

‘I know. My father told me all about it.’

‘Was the boat trip very long to get here? Months and months at sea? Who looked after you?’

He shrugged narrow shoulders. ‘Mrs Brownlee, whose husband knows Father.’

‘Was she kind to you?’

‘She was seasick. I kept busy drawing. Why do you have a feather behind your ear?’

She released his hand. His palm had been a bit sweaty, so she wiped it on one of her scarves. ‘Father’s taking photographs and I’m Scheherazade. You can be Aladdin now that you’re here. Come on, we’ll find you some better clothes.’

He followed Viola around the house to the back garden and to the studio. Father had moved to the back of the camera now and was only a black shape under the cloth. ‘I’ll introduce you in a minute, when he’s finished,’ Viola said, passing him. ‘There’s no point interrupting him when he’s busy. He won’t even hear us. We might as well go to the studio and find a costume.’

‘I thought your father was a clergyman?’ Jonah said, staring at the spindly-legged. . .