The Mistress of Windfell Manor Read online

Her thoughts returned to her dead grandfather. Good old Grandfather: twenty guineas a year was not to be sneezed at, though he could have made it a round hundred. Still, she’d buy material for a new dress next week, ready to wear once she had got out of these terrible drab mourning weeds. Then the awful thought came that she would have to be dressed in black when she met the wealthy Mr Dawson. What would he think of her? She could have worn the beautiful blue dress that showed her eyes off so well, greatly preferring to use her charms and looks than her brains. Instead, this time she’d have to find something out about him, so that she could show an interest in the same things as him and hold a decent conversation. She’d ask Mrs Cranston; she would know about Joseph Dawson – she knew everything about everybody. That’s what she would do, and she would do it now.

  ‘Aye, Miss Charlotte, will you stop quizzing me? I already told you, I don’t know a lot about him. We don’t exactly move in the same circles, Mr Dawson and I.’ Lucy Cranston bustled around her kitchen table, emptying her newly made scones out onto a wire rack to cool. ‘I know he’s stopping at The Eagle in Long Preston until he finds a home for himself, and folk say he’s got big plans for the cotton mill at Langcliffe, but that’s all I know.’

  ‘But you must know what he looks like, Lucy. I need to know . . .’ Charlotte attempted to pick up a still-hot scone, only to swear when she nearly burned her fingers.

  ‘Will you leave those scones alone? You’re not too big to be in my bad books.’ Lucy put her hands on her hips and scowled at the nuisance in her kitchen.

  ‘I know what he looks like, Miss Charlotte. I saw Mr Dawson coming out of the bank last Tuesday in Settle.’ Mary wiped the mixing bowl and looked smug, as she teased both older women with her knowledge.

  ‘You wouldn’t know him if you fell over him, Mary, and well you know it.’ Lucy Cranston dismissed the young parlour maid’s confession.

  ‘But I do. The bank clerk ran after him down the steps and shouted his name as he walked across to the town hall. I think everyone in Settle stopped to look at him; he’s the talk of the town, with saving the mill.’ Mary smiled and placed the gleaming bowl back in the cupboard in which it lived.

  ‘And . . .’ Both Charlotte and Lucy hung on her words.

  ‘He’s alright; a toff’s a toff to me. Quite tall, dark hair, spoke different to us, a bit posher. Oh, and he wore a gold watch on a chain that hung down on his waistcoat.’

  ‘And his face?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘Couldn’t really see; he’d a top hat on and that shaded it. I only know he had dark hair because I saw it on his shoulders as he walked away.’ Mary grinned at the two women as they sighed in exasperation, sensing a story going nowhere.

  ‘You tell us only half a tale, lass, that’s no good.’ Lucy walloped her maid lightly with her tea-towel and then filled the kettle and placed it on the hearth to boil, stopping for a moment as she heard the knocker on the front door. ‘Go on and see who that is, Mary. It can’t be the undertakers; they’d come round to the back door. Take them into the parlour, if they’ve come to pay their respects. Mr Booth will be back shortly, and in the meantime Miss Charlotte here will keep them company.’

  ‘Oh! Do I have to? What if it’s some of my father’s cronies? I’ll have nothing to say to them.’ Charlotte watched as Mary ran out of the kitchen to open the front door.

  ‘You’ll act like a lady, Miss Charlotte; you know your father would want you to, no matter who’s in that parlour.’ Lucy shook her head. Sometimes her mistress needed a wallop too, but she didn’t dare give her one. Charlotte – or Lottie, as her father called her – was the jewel of Wesley Booth’s eye, and she knew better than to overstep her duties too much.

  ‘It’s only Archie Atkinson. He says he’s come to give his condolences, and he’s got a bunch of primroses in his hand.’ Mary smirked and looked at Charlotte.

  ‘It’s “Mr Atkinson” to you, Mary.’ Lucy looked at Charlotte. ‘I suppose you’ll be alright holding court now, in your father’s absence?’

  ‘Of course. Could you bring Mr Atkinson and me some tea in the parlour, please, Mrs Cranston.’ Charlotte turned as she walked out of the kitchen. ‘And two of your scones wouldn’t go amiss; that is, if you aren’t going to feed them all to my father.’

  Mary stifled a snigger as Mrs Cranston huffed and puffed at the cheek of her mistress. ‘That lass will be the death of me. And that lad needs to know his place – knocking on the front door! He’s nobbut a farm lad. Next time, Mary, tell him to use the back door.’

  Charlotte smiled at Archie Atkinson as he held out to her a freshly picked bunch of primroses, which he had hurriedly picked from the mossy bank leading down from the fellside of his farm.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. I knew you’d be upset that your grandfather had died, and I thought you might like these, especially the one or two violets that are mixed in with them – they smell so sweet.’ Archie blushed. He wanted to add, ‘Just like you’, but he didn’t dare.

  ‘Archie, they are beautiful. Primroses are quite my favourite flower.’ Charlotte took them from his trembling hand and looked at his red, blushing cheeks, framed by a mop of shocking blond hair. ‘Do sit down. I’ve ordered some tea, and I’m sure you’ll not say no to one of Mrs Cranston’s scones.’ She sat with the small bouquet in her hand and looked at the fidgeting lad, who she knew was sweet on her. ‘I tell you what: let’s not bother with tea. It’s lovely out there this morning, let’s go for a walk up the knot behind the house.’ Charlotte instantly sensed the relief coming from Archie. She knew he wasn’t at ease in her decadent surroundings, and knew also that a walk up the small hillock known as ‘the knot’ would be more to his suiting.

  ‘Are you sure? What about the undertakers? What about Mrs Cranston?’

  ‘They’ll be alright. Besides, I could do with a breath of fresh air. There’s a feeling of death beginning to seep into the air, and I’m not going to let that spoil a beautiful spring day. My grandfather was old, he was ill, but life goes on, Archie. That’s what he would have wanted.’ Charlotte placed the primroses carefully down on the polished sideboard. ‘I’ll put them in a vase when we come back. Come on, we’ll sneak quietly out of the front door.’

  She reached for Archie’s hand and urged him along the passage and through the front door, closing it behind them.

  ‘There, that’s better – fresh air!’ She breathed in deeply, the sharp spring air biting at her lungs, as they stood on the paved path that ran around the farm’s large garden.

  ‘But you’ll freeze, you’ve no coat,’ Archie shouted as Charlotte ran to open the garden gate onto the farmyard and duck pond.

  ‘No, I won’t. This is grand weather. It’s spring, Archie, you can smell it on the air. The fell around us is waking up after its winter’s sleep. I love the smell of the sphagnum moss and the primroses that you have lovingly picked me – it’s part of me, and always will be. Come on, catch me if you can; race you to the top of the knot.’ Charlotte picked up her skirts and ran over the rutted farm track and up the smooth grassy fellside, laughing at Archie as he tried to catch her. The breath from her running clouded around her in the cold air as she clambered her way to the top of the fellside hillock, only to collapse in a heap on the summit.

  ‘Your dress, Charlotte! You’ll get it filthy, sitting down like that, and the ground is still rock-hard with frost.’ Archie clambered up the side of the steep hill and stood next to her, breathless.

  ‘Stop wittering like an old woman. Just look at the day. No wonder my father decided to ride around his land this morning.’ She sighed and looked around her at the outstretched dales, shining and sparkling as the frost on them began to thaw with the warmth of the sun.

  ‘Aye, I must admit, it’s on days like these I’m glad to live here in the country, not in a town with its grubby streets and mill chimneys.’ Archie put his hand on Charlotte’s shoulder and looked out towards his home, Eldroth, nestling amongst the sprawling fells and dales in the distan
ce.

  ‘You mean like Accrington? I hear that the new mill owner at Langcliffe is from there. Have you met him yet?’ Charlotte pulled herself up with the help of Archie’s hand and looked into his eyes.

  ‘No. Why should someone like me have met him? But I have heard plenty about him. He sounds a bit full of himself. He’s going to update the mill, renovate the mill-pond cottages for the workers, and thinks he can bully the town council. My father says he won’t last long – that he’s all talk.’ Archie didn’t like the way his Lottie was showing interest in this offcumden.

  ‘My father’s asked him to dinner next week. He seems to have taken a shine to him.’ Charlotte grinned. She could see the jealousy creeping over Archie’s face. ‘He says we should get to know him well, because he’s got power.’

  ‘Power’s not everything. Some of us are happy just being content with a roof over our heads and a full belly. But if that’s what you are after, Lottie, I wish you well.’ Archie watched the undertaker from Austwick coming up the rough stony track, with his team of black horses nearly at a gallop.

  ‘Why, Archie Atkinson, is there a hint of jealousy in your voice? I haven’t even met the man yet, and he’s my father’s friend, not mine,’ Charlotte teased.

  ‘I know you: I’ll never be good enough. Sometimes I think it’s only because you are bored that you bother with me at all.’ He shuffled his feet and put his head down.

  ‘Poor little farm boy, does nobody love you?’ Charlotte shivered as a cold northern wind suddenly whipped her for her scathing torment of Archie.

  ‘No, but I love you, and you know it.’ He grabbed her hand and held it tight.

  ‘Don’t be silly – let go. The undertaker can see us. What will he think? And my father’s just riding into the yard.’ Charlotte started off back down the hill, stopping after a few steps. ‘We are just friends, Archie. I’m very fond of you, you know I am; but to talk of love, that’s not for me.’

  ‘Well, I do love you,’ Archie yelled as she strode out down the hillside, leaving him standing in the biting wind. He watched as her black chiffon mourning dress shimmered in the sun. She didn’t give a damn about him, and he knew it. He was just a poor farm boy, in her eyes.

  2

  ‘Aye, stop your blubbering, our Lottie, a few tears are enough. You don’t want to spoil that bonny face of yours, not when he’s here.’ Wesley Booth whispered fiercely into Lottie’s ear as she sniffled yet again into her handkerchief while she watched her grandpa’s coffin slowly being lowered into the ground. ‘First impressions and all that, lass. He doesn’t want to think he might be courting a blithering idiot.’

  Lottie sniffed loudly and stared at her father. ‘It’s what you do at a funeral, Father. And who said Joseph Dawson will want to court me, if I don’t show any grief for my grandpa’s death?’ She muttered between sobs and smiled weakly at the curate, as she picked up a handful of heavy clay soil and sprinkled it onto the dark oak coffin. Afterwards she sobbed and pretended to be feeling faint at the sight of her beloved grandpapa being covered by the dark earth.

  ‘For lawk’s sake, Lottie!’ Wesley could nearly have laughed at his daughter’s acting, but a graveyard was not the place.

  ‘Are you alright, Lottie?’ Archie rushed to her side, worried that the love of his life had nearly swooned into the open grave, and that her father looked uninterested at her despair.

  ‘I’m fine, Archie, thank you for your concern.’ Lottie could have sworn; it wasn’t Archie she had wanted to save her, but the tall, dark stranger she now knew to be Joseph Dawson, who stood not more than a few feet from her.

  ‘Can I get you a drink of water? Do you want to take my arm and we’ll go and sit in the church?’ Archie looked alarmed and held his arm out.

  ‘She’s right, lad. Go back to your father, I’ll look after our Lottie.’ Wesley dismissed the young lad who was going to spoil his plans, if he had his way. He linked arms with his ‘grieving’ daughter and led her away from the grave’s edge, giving Archie a black look as he watched him head back to his father’s side. ‘Bloody well behave yourself,’ he told Lottie. ‘He was eighty-eight. Folk expect you to die, at that age, and you are just looking foolish.’

  ‘But, Father, I was only trying to attract—’

  ‘My condolences, Mr Booth.’ Wesley looked up at the tall figure of Joseph Dawson, who must have heard him chastising Lottie, and smiled a humble smile. Joseph bowed and held out his gloved hand for Wesley to shake. ‘And you must be Charlotte? I’m sure you miss your grandfather terribly, and funerals are so upsetting, aren’t they, Wesley?’

  Charlotte smiled. She could feel herself blushing from her toes up.

  ‘Aye, my lass and my father were awfully close. She thought the world of him, didn’t you, Lottie?’ Wesley grimaced a smile, meanwhile thinking ‘close to his wallet, more like’.

  ‘I loved my grandpapa. My father is correct: I’ll miss him terribly, he was such a kind man.’ Lottie dared to look up into the handsome face of Joseph, who smiled as he noticed her flutter her long blonde lashes at him.

  ‘Still, life goes on, does it not, Miss Booth? He was a good age, I understand, and had a rich life; made all the better, I’m sure, by a doting granddaughter.’ Joseph had to hide a snigger as the young woman in front of him fluttered her eyelashes at him again.

  ‘You’ll not forget supper with us on Friday night, will you, Dawson? The invitation is still standing. As you say, my father was a good age, and he wouldn’t want us to mope over him.’ Wesley was determined to have Joseph sit down at his table, to prove that he was worthy of his company.

  ‘Indeed I will not. I’m looking forward to it. Will you be joining us, Miss Dawson, or will our talk of business and local gossip bore you?’ Joseph flashed a smile, showing Lottie a row of perfect white teeth, made more perfect by his slightly dusky skin.

  Wesley butted in quickly before his daughter showed herself up even more. ‘She will indeed. She’s got a good business head on her, has my lass, and likes to know what’s going on. I sent her to finishing school at Harrogate, and what she didn’t learn there, I taught her. There’s not many lasses as clever as our Charlotte.’ Wesley sighed and looked at the pride of his life. At that moment Lottie looked as daft as a milksop.

  ‘Well, I look forward to seeing you both. Did we say around seven?’ Joseph smiled at them both, as he caught Wesley scowling at his dumbstruck daughter.

  ‘Aye, that will be grand. Mrs Cranston, my cook, will not see you go hungry.’ Wesley shook Joseph’s hand warmly.

  Joseph smiled and bowed politely to the smitten Charlotte. He might have been new to the area, but people gossiped. He was in no doubt whatsoever that Mrs Cranston would give them a good supper – and more besides, to her master. He was also sure there was more to the little actress Charlotte; he had heard that she was as sharp as a needle, and not at all the dim-witted farm girl she was portraying.

  ‘Now think on, Lottie. You act normal tonight. I want none of your daftness. We’ve to impress Joseph. I need him, because I bet he’s got contacts in Bradford and Accrington for my wool. And you, missus, could do with him for his money and lifestyle; you’d want for nowt, with that ’un on your arm.’

  Wesley looked around the large dining room. The parquetry floor had been polished to within an inch of its life and a good blaze roared in the fireplace, reflecting in the shining silver and crystal that adorned the heavily dressed dining table.

  ‘If he’s not impressed with this spread, then I’ll eat my hat.’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing but panic in the kitchen all day. You’d think the Queen was coming, never mind a mill owner, if you’d heard Mrs Cranston flapping. He’s only a fella – nowt special.’ Lottie pinched a grape from the fruit dish that was piled high on the sideboard, and played with it in her fingers before placing it in her mouth.

  ‘He took your eye, so don’t give me that. Anyway quiet now, lass. I can hear Mary talking to someone in the hallway. I should bloody we
ll have hired a butler for the night. What will he think of, being served by a common village lass?’ Wesley sighed and then painted a smile on his face, before giving Lottie a warning glance to behave herself.

  Joseph smiled at the blushing maid who took his top hat, gloves and cane. She was a sweet-looking thing, he couldn’t help but think, as she curtsied and placed his belongings on the hall-stand.

  ‘Ah! Joseph, welcome to my home. I trust you found us easily enough and that my stable lad is looking after your horse?’ Wesley patted Joseph on his back and held out his hand to be shaken.

  ‘Indeed I did. I hadn’t realized you were so far out of Austwick – you are quite remote out here.’ Joseph shook the hand of the robust, red-faced man strongly and looked past his shoulder, to see Charlotte standing behind him. ‘Miss Booth! Are you recovered from your grandfather’s funeral? I was quite concerned for your well-being.’ He smiled.

  ‘Quite recovered, thank you, Mr Dawson. I’m afraid I made a fool of myself, with the grief overcoming me. I hope you’ll forgive me for being so empty-headed.’ Lottie quietly felt her heart jump as Joseph took her hand and kissed it lightly.

  ‘Now then, you two, let’s go into the dining room and I’ll shout to Mary to tell Cook that we are ready for some supper.’ No sooner had Wesley spoken than he bellowed out his instructions from the hallway to poor Mary, banishing any thoughts of refinement in the Booth household. Seeing the look on Joseph’s face, and one of horror on Charlotte’s, Wesley quickly made an excuse to his guest. ‘We are a little short-staffed tonight, as the butler’s off sick.’

  ‘Good staff are so hard to find nowadays. I completely understand.’ Joseph followed Charlotte into the dining room, admiring how small her waist looked in her mourning dress and how the black complemented her long blonde hair. ‘Well, this is a grand room and, even though it’s a spring evening, that blaze is welcome.’

  ‘Aye, Lucy – I mean, my cook – has done us proud. She knows how to lay a table. Wine, Joseph? I bought a bottle or two when I was last in Settle. I can’t stand the stuff myself, I’d rather have a gill of ale, but our Lottie tells me I should be more refined.’ Wesley pulled a face at the bottle of claret he had been bullied into buying by Lottie.