The Secret Daughter

by Catherine King

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

Loss
Phyllis Kimber's entire future is called into question after her father is killed in Earl Redfern's employ. But the earl knows something about Phyllis that means she will always be looked after.

Lies
As lady's maid to Martha, Phyllis is the American heiress's only confidant in England: she knows Martha doesn't love the recently widowed Lord Melton, the man Martha's socially ambitious father is determined she marries, but there's another secret - a secret that makes Phyllis give up everything to protect her friend.

Loyalty
Martha begins making preparations to return to America with Phyllis, her father and new husband on the Titanic but the burden of deception eclipses Phyllis's hope for a new future. As she struggles to protect Martha, Phyllis must decide where her loyalties lie, unaware of the undiscovered secrets in her own past and of the tragedy that is about to unfold on that fateful crossing.

Release date: August 2, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 400

Sample

Phyllis Kimber whimpered as her mother gently took her from her husband’s sinewy arms. ‘She’s so pretty, isn’t she? Don’t you think she’s the bonniest baby you’ve ever seen?’

Her pink and white skin, silky fair hair and large blue eyes gave the infant an angelic appearance that melted the stoniest of hearts.

Jack Kimber’s features barely moved. ‘Aye, she is. You make sure you take good care of her.’

‘As if I wouldn’t! I’m her mother.’

Jack looked away and the ensuing silence was broken only by Phyllis’s snuffles as she rooted for a breast. Ellen took a deep breath. ‘I know I wasn’t your choice of bride but I’ve given up as much as you, Jack Kimber!’

‘He would never have wed you, he didn’t want to.’

‘He did! He couldn’t, that’s all.’

‘Well, what’s done is done,’ Jack replied.

‘Yes it is, and you are my husband now, and – and my baby’s father.’

‘Don’t fret yourself. I’ll do my duty by you and the bairn. You’ll have food on the table and she’ll have her penny a week for the board school.’

‘She needs more than that.’

An impatient expression passed across her husband’s weathered face and Ellen swallowed back the words she needs your love as well. This marriage had to work for Phyllis’s sake.

‘We might grow to love each other if,’ she added, ‘if we have more children.’

She watched his mouth turn down at the corners. ‘Don’t ask that of me,’ he said. Ellen thought he was about to leave but he stopped and added, ‘You’ll sleep with the bairn in the second bedroom.’

‘Not for ever, surely?’

‘As soon as she is old enough, I’ll put a window in the gable end of the box room to make a bedroom for her.’

A tear welled in Ellen’s eye and she blinked it back. ‘You’ll have to ask the land steward for permission. People will talk.’

‘How we live is none of their business!’

‘You did agree to marry me, Jack,’ she protested.

‘You should be grateful for that so we’ll say no more about it,’ he retaliated. ‘But make no mistake, I don’t care for you in that way and never shall.’

‘No, all you care about is that woman! Well she didn’t want you and I am your wife!’ Phyllis’s whimper rose to a wail and she squirmed in her mother’s arms.

Jack Kimber stood up abruptly. ‘Didn’t you hear me, woman? I won’t have another word said on the matter in my house!’ He collected his cap from a peg by the back door and added, ‘I’m to be made up from stable hand to one of His Lordship’s grooms. You and the bairn won’t want for anything from me.’

He closed the door behind him. ‘Except love,’ she whispered to the empty room. Ellen licked her finger and placed it between the baby’s tiny lips where she sucked on it hungrily.

‘Ta-ra, then,’ Phyllis said.

A straggling group of children dawdled down the street outside the board school in town and a shopkeeper sweeping her front step called, ‘Get off home you lot before I tell your teacher.’

The girls ignored her but the boys pulled grotesque faces and she shook her broom at them.

A girl from her class asked, ‘Are you coming to the canal for a swim?’

It was a boiling hot day and a cooling dip would have been welcome. She frowned. ‘I have to go straight home.’ She had a long walk to her father’s isolated cottage on the edge of Redfern estate. It used to be in the hunting chase years ago, but Sheffield factories and houses had spread and gobbled up most of the land.

One of the lads shouted after her, ‘Scaredy-cat! Scaredy-cat!’

‘No I’m not! I’m not frightened of you lot. Anyroad, I’m leaving this rotten school soon, so there.’

The lads laughed and ran off, leaving the girls to absorb this new information. Phyllis picked up a stick and thrashed at the long grass growing beside the dusty path, glad to be free from sitting still all day chanting times tables and spellings. But she daren’t dawdle too long or Mother might come looking for her and the other kids would call her a big baby if they found out.

The biggest of the girls stopped and turned. ‘You can’t leave. You’re not ten yet.’

‘I am in September.’

‘Oh.’ The girl thought for a second and added, ‘Well I’m ten already. That makes me the eldest here so I get to say what we do and I say we go and watch the lads swimming.’

Phyllis lifted her chin. ‘I’ve told you I can’t. I’ve got too much sewing to do before I go—’ She stopped abruptly. Oh lord, she mustn’t say! Father would be furious with her!

‘Go where? You’re not going to the bottle factory, are you? My dad says it’s the only place taking on girls this year.’

‘I’m not working in any factory,’ Phyllis stated. She said it in the same haughty tone that she had heard her mother use about anything regarded as ‘common’, and regretted it immediately. Most girls from this school went into factories. Fortunately, none of them teased her about it. They were too curious.

‘Have you got a place already, then?’

Another girl became interested. ‘I bet she has. Her dad works on t’Redfern estate. I bet her dad has got her into service at the Abbey. She’s allus been little Miss Lah-de-dah.’

‘Well,’ the bossy girl said, ‘my dad says going into service is beneath any decent person and he wouldn’t let me do it. He said none of his lasses should have to kow-tow to anybody just because he’s rich. My dad says you ought to be able to speak your mind if you want.’ She stopped her tirade and demanded, ‘Have you then? Have you got a place at the Abbey?’

‘No I haven’t! Anyroad, I can’t go before I’ve been to training school.’

‘What training school?’

Phyllis had said too much and muttered, ‘I – I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do and I’ll pull your hair if you don’t tell.’ The leader scanned the gathering group of interested onlookers triumphantly and added, ‘Won’t we?’

The others were smaller but there were several of them and they nodded with glee.

‘Tell us then.’

‘It’s – it’s like an industrial school that the lads have so they can learn a trade. Only it’s for girls.’

‘Where is it, then? What’s it called?’

‘I – I don’t know.’

‘I don’t know,’ the older girl mimicked and grasped her long plaits. ‘Tell or I’ll string you up by these and leave you to the crows.’

Another girl added, ‘They peck your eyes out first.’

Phyllis’s head jerked backwards and she yelped. But she’d had her fill of this constant tormenting because she wasn’t one of them and elbowed her assailant in the stomach while kicking back with her boot. The older girl was caught off guard and loosened her grip. Phyllis whirled around and kicked her again, hard on the shin, making her squeal. She doubled over to rub her shin and yelled at the little ones, ‘Get her!’

Phyllis took one look at the advancing group and realised her legs were longer than theirs. She swished her stick backwards and forwards a couple of times until they backed off then turned and fled, running as fast as she could until her breath was coming in rasps and her heart was thumping in her ears. Eventually she realised that they weren’t coming after her and slowed. The river and the lads, who took off all their clothes to swim, held more attraction than she did.

She was glad to be leaving. She hated it here. She hated the tormenting kids at school only marginally more than she hated going home to her stiff and starchy mother and father who hardly said two words to each other. Being home was as boring as being in school and she got the cane from her father and teacher alike if she misbehaved. At least at home it was across her backside with her clothes on. Mr Green gave you strokes across the palms of your hands and still expected you to write neatly afterwards. She breathed in so deeply that her throat rattled but her heart began to slow.

Phyllis knew she was different from the town kids because Mother and Father had brought her up not to mix with them outside of school. They called their parents ‘Mam’ and ‘Dad’ and she was often the butt of their jokes. Although she liked the learning, and the teacher when he wasn’t caning her, she was pleased to be getting away from the constant teasing. She turned her back on the town and began the long trudge home, thrashing harder and harder at the grass as she walked.

She would have been happier at the village school with other children from the estate. But Redfern village was further away from home. You couldn’t live much further from the Abbey and still be on the Redfern estate. Mother and Father had argued about it when she started school. She remembered the raised voices as she darned her stockings by her bedroom window overlooking the garden. Chase Cottage was a pretty stone-built house, but it was a mile away from its nearest neighbour and down a long muddy lane. However, anybody could tell it was on Redfern land because its woodwork was painted in the same green as all the other properties owned by the Earl.

Her father was head groom and His Lordship kept a stable of hunters as well as his carriage horses so he was well enough off to afford her the training she needed to go into service. Mother thought it was a good idea. Phyllis wasn’t that keen but her father insisted and he was old-fashioned. He was ten years older than Mother and expected unquestioning obedience from his wife and daughter. He was dutiful and loyal to the Earl and spent long hours at his work even in winter. Phyllis’s younger memories were of coming home from school to a well-ordered but joyless home.

Yet she knew her parents cared for her in their own way. She never doubted her mother’s love, but her father was a different kettle of fish altogether. She wasn’t sure that he really loved her. And she was certainly never convinced he loved her mother, or that she loved him. She heard other girls talking in the playground and giggling about creaking bedsprings through cottage walls. She listened for them at home, but her nights were silent. One day, when the house was empty, she crept into her mother’s room and bounced up and down on the bed. Sure enough, it creaked. Her father’s bed was noisy too, but he slept alone in the big bedroom and she knew instinctively that her mother and father were different and she ought not to talk about them.

Mother was waiting at the front gate for her and as soon as she was in sight, she waved and called, ‘Tea’s ready!’ Phyllis was hungry and quickened her step. Tea would be laid out on the kitchen table, on a fresh cloth with pretty china and a clean napkin. It was always a slice of bread and butter and a drink of tea from a pot that was kept warm from a brew Mother had made for herself earlier. If Phyllis was really hungry and asked for more Mother always refused, telling her not to spoil her proper tea, which she would eat at the table with Father when he came in from work. Father’s days at the Abbey stables were long and he walked there and back every day so he needed a lot of feeding. But his quarter acre of garden around Chase Cottage grew most of the vegetables they needed for the whole year.

‘Goodness me, what have you been doing? Look at the state of your pinafore. That will never do for Lady Maude’s. Find a clean one straightaway, then wash your hands and sit to the table. I have Father’s tea to see to.’

It was always Father’s tea. Never your tea or even our tea, but Father’s tea as if no one else in the house would be eating it. She obeyed her mother without question, washed in the scullery and returned to the warm kitchen. It was cosy and comfortable, with a cooking range and dresser, and gingham curtains at the window. But the kids at school had unsettled her and she felt irritable.

‘Do you have to watch me all the time, Mother?’ Phyllis couldn’t stop herself sounding ungrateful and felt guilty.

‘I want to be sure you know your table manners. Besides, we can talk.’

‘What about?’ There I go again! Phyllis thought.

Her mother looked cross and replied. ‘Father is right, it’s high time you got away from those town children, you’re beginning to sound just like them.’

‘You sent me there.’

‘It was your father’s decision, not mine.’

‘Well, they say I’m lah-de-dah in town because Father works at the Abbey, but their dads get paid more down the pit so I’ve no call to put on airs.’

‘I’ve told you to take no notice of them! I don’t know why children need all this schooling anyway. I only went to Sunday school until I did my two years at Lady Maude’s.’

‘Everybody has to go to board school now. It’s the law. Mr Green told us.’ She liked Mr Green except when he used his cane that he kept in the corner of the classroom. She wondered if they used the cane at training school and guessed they would. As well, the other girls would be older than she was and bossy like the girl in her class. Lady Maude’s was probably going to be worse than the board school.

‘Do I have to go to Lady Maude’s?’

Her mother’s face took on an expression of pained shock. ‘Oh Phyllis, it’s an honour for you to be given a place there! Father will have to pay a lot more than a penny a week for you.’

‘But it means I’ll have to go into service. None of the other girls at school are, they’re going straight to the bottle factory.’

‘Well, more fool them. None of the other girls at school live on the Redfern estate and their fathers have to pay rent for their houses. I was in service and so was my mother. In fact, your grandmother was a parlour maid at the Abbey before she wed.’

‘Did she go to Lady Maude’s?’ she persisted.

‘She was one of the first. You can’t get a good position in a titled household without proper training. You have to know how to carry on in front of your betters.’

‘Kow-towing, you mean?’

‘You’ve picked that up from town, haven’t you? I knew I should have insisted you went to the village school, but your father wouldn’t have it. Thank goodness he isn’t home to hear you! He’d give you a caning for saying that. The sooner you leave that school the better. Lady Maude’s might cost more to send you there but you’ll mix with a better class of girls.’

By that, Mother meant the daughters of shopkeepers and clerks instead of the coal miners and steelworkers whose children populated the town school. But at least, Phyllis thought, the town girls came from big families that could stick together in the playground. Her parents’ families didn’t have much to do with her. She once met a great-aunt at a funeral in Redfern and thought she put on airs. She had been Head Laundress at the Abbey, her mother explained, and Phyllis had wondered what was so special about that.

Phyllis said, ‘How can they be a better class if they’re going to be servants just like me?’

‘Don’t argue. When you’re fourteen, you’ll get a respectable place in a titled household.’

‘You mean I’ll work at the Abbey like you and Father.’

‘No, you can’t work there.’

‘Why can’t I? They have loads of servants.’

Phyllis remembered her visit to Redfern Abbey last year for the Queen’s Jubilee. She sat at a long table on the lawn in front of the grand house with a lot of other children. It was a hot day and she wore her best dress with ribbons in her fair hair. Mother and Father walked to Redfern village then travelled with other families in a farm cart to the Abbey where the kitchen servants gave them tea. They had potted meat and jam sandwiches, lemon curd tarts and butterfly buns washed down with lemon barley water.

‘Because you can’t,’ her mother replied.

‘Why not?’

‘Because – because – because Father says you can’t. Now stop answering back. I want you to finish that smocking on your nightgowns before you go to bed tonight.’

Three of them, Phyllis sighed, three new nightgowns, three new of everything. Each piece of linen had to have her initials embroidered in a corner and there were six handkerchiefs and those special monthly towels that her mother had told about. She didn’t need them yet, of course, but would one day and had to take them just in case. Mother was making her brown uniform dresses as the cloth was too dear to let her loose on it, but Phyllis made the pinafores because she had learned how to in sewing lessons at school.

Phyllis sat by the window where the light was good and she would be able to see Father come in through the back door. Everything had to be put away for when he came home from work and his tea had to be on the table as soon as he had washed at the stone sink in the scullery. It was toad-in-the-hole today and Phyllis could smell the sausages cooking and hear her mother beating the Yorkshire pudding batter to pour over them. When she was little Father used to come home for his dinner in the middle of the day but he didn’t do that any more. He took bread and cheese and a bottle of cold tea and stayed with his horses. In the cold weather, the stable master’s wife made broth and brought it out for all her husband’s men. Mother always said Father was ‘well-placed’ at the Abbey stables, and they were better off than many a family in town or village.

Phyllis put away her sewing, brushed down her pinafore with her hands and went to set Father’s place at the table. She mashed the tea, put a knitted tea cosy over the pot and placed her father’s pint mug beside it. Not a word was said as he sat at the table and waited for her to pour, add milk and sugar and stir it round. Mother placed a plate of steaming food in front of him and he picked up his knife and fork straightaway. Phyllis waited quietly for Mother to sit down with their dinner plates. When Father had finished he nodded in the direction of his pint mug and mother refilled it silently, rose to add hot water to the teapot and brought it back. Phyllis took the rice pudding out of the oven and Mother dished it up at the table, passing the pot of jam first to Father. He always did the same, plopped the jam in the middle and heaped the creamy pudding over the top with his spoon. She preferred to swirl it around making patterns in the bowl. When he had finished eating, Phyllis got up to clear the table. If Mother made a start before she did, Father said, ‘Leave it to the lass. I’ve told you before about spoiling her. She has to learn her place.’ Then he scraped back his chair and went out to the garden behind the cottage to pass the hours before bedtime.

Father’s productive vegetable patch was helped by cartloads of horse manure from the stables. Sometimes he brought home a brace of pheasant or partridge that the Abbey gamekeeper gave him and Mother kept a few laying hens so they never went hungry. In fact, when she listened to the town kids going on about their lives with only bread and dripping to eat on some days, Phyllis realised how comfortable she was. Father had a secure position and they lived in a proper house. Mother excelled at all her domestic tasks and won prizes for her baking and preserves at the village show. Even though they didn’t live anywhere near the village she was allowed to enter because Father was employed by the Abbey.

Phyllis washed up the pots and returned to her sewing. When Father came in from the garden he drank beer that Mother had brewed in the scullery. It made Father’s eyes go shiny very quickly and if Mother heard him slur his speech she sent Phyllis to bed whatever time it was. It was worse in winter because daylight faded early and so did her lamp as Father was mean with the oil. She had to lie awake for hours sometimes with nothing to do but think. Mother followed soon after but often Phyllis was asleep before Father lumbered up the stairs crashing and banging enough to wake her. Very early on Phyllis realised that she didn’t want to be like them when she grew up. I want to be different, she thought.

But she didn’t want to be a town kid with hand-me-down boots and sleeping six to a bed. She knew that was true because one of the little ones had told her in the playground. It was a big bed, she had said, and with three at the top and three at the bottom there was plenty of space. Phyllis reflected on this, alone in her tiny bedroom with its window in the end gable. It was a pretty room. Father had painted it and Mother had furnished it with print cotton curtains, bedcovers and made her nightgowns to match. But she so wished she was sharing it with a sister. Even a brother was better than nothing. Although she really didn’t want to go into service she did consider that going to Lady Maude’s might not be so bad after all. At least there would be other girls to talk to.

Edward Redfern sat opposite his father across the mahogany desk. He could see his face in the high gloss of its polished surface. He was still a handsome fellow in spite of his wrinkles. ‘You’re working too hard, Father,’ he commented.

‘Redfern Abbey demands it.’

‘Then let me take some of the burden from you. Give me the coalfields to manage.’

‘There’ll be time enough for that when I’m gone. You have your hands full looking after the farmland and tenants. Besides, I have an important task for you.’

Edward brightened and waited. His father rolled a pen around in his fingers looking pensive. It was one of the new designs, with its own reservoir of ink so you didn’t have to keep dipping it in the inkwell. Nonetheless, his father’s desk displayed a fine mahogany and cut-glass writing set. ‘How are you getting on with the Marshall-Kemp girl?’ his father asked.

‘What? Oh Lucy.’ She was pleasant enough, Edward thought, but she didn’t fire his passion. ‘I am taking her to the races next week. Why do you ask?’

‘You will be thirty next year. It’s high time you settled down and raised a family.’

Not that again! He bristled and replied, ‘You didn’t marry until you were thirty-three. Mother told me.’

‘It was different for me. It took someone as wonderful as your mother to show me—’ his face softened, ‘—to show me the way.’

Edward’s mother was older than his father and she had told him that everyone was against the match because of her years. But she had given him an heir, a cause for much celebration at Redfern Abbey, and although they had hoped for more children, it was not to be.

Edward tried not to show his impatience with his father. Why should it be any different for him? ‘I simply haven’t met the right girl yet,’ he said.

‘Not Lucy Marshall-Kemp then?’

Edward would have laughed at the notion if it wouldn’t have sounded rude. ‘No. Is that why you asked to see me?’

‘Partly. A good woman is always helpful in these situations and I really don’t wish to worry your mother more than necessary. She is very upset about her brother’s death.’

‘So was I, Father. It was unexpected. What is it you want of me?’

‘It’s her nephew,’ he ruminated. ‘Mine too, I know, but he’s her blood.’

Edward had enjoyed his cousin Melton’s company when they were at Oxford together. But that was nearly ten years ago. He had returned to Redfern Abbey to help his father run his estate. But Melton had continued to enjoy life in the same way that he had as an undergraduate. ‘Is Mama worried about him?’

‘Yes she is, and I understand how she feels. I felt the same about you ten years ago.’

Lord, Father had a good memory. His father had caught him with … with … He heaved a sigh. Well, she was one of the maids and they couldn’t hide what they were doing. It hadn’t been the first time either. Edward gazed out of the window. It was over ten years ago and had been his first experience of passionate love. He truly believed he had loved the girl, and in the rebelliousness of his youth, hadn’t seen anything amiss with falling in love with a maid.

‘I was eighteen, Father,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘And I learned my lesson.’

It was a hard lesson, too, for she had been dismissed and he wasn’t allowed to know where she had gone. But, maid or not, his heart had been broken. His father had given him a thrashing and sent him up to Oxford where he’d had extra tuition to keep him out of mischief. He had not needed to be distracted in this way, Edward reflected, because it had been a long time before he had even attempted to kiss a girl again. And it wasn’t the same as in his father’s time when a lady was closely chaperoned. These days, some were forward with their desires.

He said, ‘I’m sure if you could remember what it’s like to be that age you’d be more understanding.’

Pain showed in his father’s face as he recollected old memories and Edward watched with interest. He didn’t speak of it much except to say he barely knew his own father. Edward’s Aunt Daisy, of whom both were very fond, had chosen not to live on the Redfern estate. Aunt Daisy was Father’s twin and she and Uncle Boyd were travelling, visiting their children in America. They had left their beloved Dales farm in the capable hands of their younger half-brother, Edward’s Uncle Albert.

‘I inherited at eighteen!’ his father exclaimed and spread his arms. ‘I became head of all of this. I had good stewards but every decision was mine.’

‘You are not complaining about being Earl Redfern, are you?’

‘No, of course I’m not.’ His father, who was not one to dwell on the past, stood up to walk around the desk. He stopped beside Edward and placed a hand on his shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze. ‘I am very proud of you, Edward, and so is your mother.’

Edward placed the palm of his own hand over his father’s. ‘Thank you, Father.’

‘But your cousin Melton …’ Earl Redfern shook his head. ‘Amelia is worried about him without his father there to hold the reins and she – we – hoped you might help.’

Edward’s spirits sank. ‘What has he done now?’

‘He’s getting through his money far too fast.’

‘Well he’s just like his father was with his extravagant ways.’

‘But he can’t afford it! He hasn’t got coalfields to finance his lifestyle and he cannot continue selling off his farms as his father did.’

Edward saw the sense in what his father was saying. If his cousin invested his income in modern machinery and proper management, his estate farms would turn him a tidy profit. But as long as his gamekeeper kept the streams and forests well stocked for sport, Melton was satisfied. Melton Hall shooting and fishing were legendary and invitations keenly sought after.

‘Your mother is thinking of giving back her dowry.’

‘No! You can’t let her do that. Mama uses her money for charitable works. Be honest, Father, you wouldn’t have let her keep it if she had been a spendthrift like her brother.’ Edward stopped and chewed his lips. ‘I’m not speaking ill of the dead. Uncle Mel was great fun, but he was what he was and my cousin is from the same mould.’

His father ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Your mother is so worried that he will fritter his wealth away on cards and horses and whatever new craze takes his fancy.’

‘He’s irresponsible, Father. He was not ready to inherit.’

His father raised his eyebrows. ‘He was twelve years older than I was.’

‘But he isn’t you and times have changed.’

‘Quite so. And he isn’t giving his estate the attention it needs. He’s fallen in with a group of like-minded drinkers and gamblers and Amelia and I want you to distract him. Bring him back into the fold, as it were.’

‘How am I supposed to do that? Melton is a law unto himself. He makes his own rules.’

‘He may be Viscount Melton but he’s not above the law. Did you know he was at Tranby Croft when the baccarat scandal happened?’

Edward was shocked. ‘No I didn’t. Did Mama?’

‘Yes, and between us we managed to keep his name out of the papers. That’s more than can be said for the Prince of Wales.’

‘Well, HRH doesn’t exactly set a good example himself, does he? It’s the second time he’s been called to give evidence in court over a scandal.’

‘That is enough, Edward. He is your future king and you are named after him.’

Edward tapped his hands impatiently on the arms of his leather chair. ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

‘Melton needs to marry; settle down and produce heirs. He might start taking an interest in their inheritance then.’

Edward thought privately that as far as Melton Hall was concerned it was too late. Most of it was already sold off and that didn’t make Melton a particularly attractive marriage prospect in spite of being a viscount. Besides, he’d not shown any inclination to marry. Edward was wondering how he could influence his cousin in this respect when his father went on, ‘There are plenty of eligible girls in the country and your mother and I have agreed to keep open house at our hunting lodge when the shooting starts.’

Edward considered this an excellent prospect. He enjoyed shooting and the more relaxed routines of their moorland retreat. However, the task remained a difficult one. ‘No self-respecting debutante will go near him.’

‘Amelia will find him one.’

‘She’ll have to be rich,’ Edward warned.

‘Your mother knows what she is doing.’ His father smiled. ‘Why do you think she married me?’

Edward grinned back fondly. His father’s land sat on coal, making him one of the richest men in England and at some time in the fu. . .