Abbeyford Inheritance (4 page)

Hugh Langley looked shocked. “Martha – how can you think of that when the poor child is a homeless orphan? I would not have thought you so uncharitable.” It was the closest he ever came to remonstrating with his wife.

“Uncharitable? It'll be a sight more than ‘charity' if
she
inherits from Lord Royston now, instead of our own daughter!” Martha Langley said tartly.

Mr Langley shook his head sadly. He'd tried, oh how he'd tried over the years to soften Martha's mercenary streak, her bitterness against her wealthier relations. Then, after Caroline's elopement and the birth of their own daughter, Emily, Lord Royston had altered his will and had made no secret of the fact that he had cut out his own wayward daughter and had made baby Emily Langley heiress to his entire estate.

Martha's vindictiveness had been mellowed somewhat by his action. But now, threatened again by the arrival of Caroline's daughter – Lord Royston's own granddaughter, a close blood relative whereas Emily was only distantly connected to him and that by marriage – all Martha Langley's jealousy was rekindled.

Emily led Adelina up the stairs and along the dark landing to a room at the rear of the Vicarage.

“This,” she said, sounding almost apologetic as she opened the door, “ is your room.”

Adelina stepped inside. To anyone else the bedroom would have appeared poorly furnished. There was a high, hard single bed, a dressing-table and wash-stand and a tall, narrow wardrobe. The bedspread was obviously old and patched here and there, and the faded blue curtains scarcely covered the window. But to Adelina, who had more than once slept on bare boards with only one moth-eaten blanket as a cover, it was comfort indeed!

“There's some water in the ewer and clean towels nearby,” Emily said. “I'll leave you to freshen up. Please,” she begged, lacing her fingers together nervously, “don't be too long. Dinner will be served very soon, and Mama dislikes unpunctuality.” Then she gave Adelina a quick, hesitant smile and left the room.

Adelina went over to the window. Immediately below her window was part of the Vicarage garden and the village green, then the road and a row of cottages. Behind them was a strip of meadow-land and the stream and then the ground rose. Adelina's gaze travelled up the hill until she saw a mansion standing just below the top of the hill.

“That must be Abbeyford Grange,” she murmured, “where Lord Royston lives.” She found it impossible to think of him as her grandfather. He was only a remote image created in her mind. Sadly she turned from the window and left the bedroom. Emily was waiting for her in the hall.

The meal was passed in an uncomfortable silence. Covertly, Adelina appraised her new-found relatives. Martha Langley sat stiffly at one end of the dining-table. She was thin with angular features, a pointed chin, a long nose and narrow, almost non-existent lips. At the opposite end of the table, Mr Langley stooped over his plate, his shoulders permanently rounded. He was bald except for tufts of wispy white hair over his ears. His manner was diffident, rather fussy, and yet Adelina could sense his kindliness towards her.

Emily, seated opposite Adelina, was small and slim, but rather plain. Her brown hair was pulled tightly back from her face into a coil. Her dress – though of good material and well-made – was a drab grey.

At any moment Adelina expected to be questioned about her parents, but Martha Langley remained obstinately tight-lipped and silent.

After casting several glances towards his wife, and then sighing softly to himself, Mr Langley turned to Adelina and said, “ What happened to your mother, my dear?”

Martha Langley's head snapped up, but resolutely he ignored his wife. “And your father?”

“My mother died ten years ago, in childbirth – the baby too. My father …” she hesitated, reluctant to be disloyal to her father, yet she could not hide the truth for ever. “My father,” she continued firmly, “suffered much after her death. He never fully recovered. Eventually, we lost everything. He – he died shortly before I came to England.”

“So,” Martha put in waspishly, “ you thought you'd look up your wealthy relative, did you?”

“Martha!” Mr Langley's tone was gently warning, but his wife would not be silenced.

“Well, let me tell you, my girl, Emily is Lord Royston's heiress and nothing and no one is going to change that!”

Emily blushed scarlet and hung her head, whilst Adelina's own heightened colour came from an indignant anger. She sprang to her feet, the chair falling backwards with a crash at the violence of her sudden movement. She faced Martha Langley squarely. “ If I'm not welcome by my mother's own folk, I'll go – at once!” Impetuously, she made as if to turn and leave the room and the house that very instant.

Mr Langley's soothing voice spoke up. “Adelina, Adelina. Sit down, child, do. You shall stay with us for a short while, until his lordship has had time to – to make up his mind. This has all been a great shock for us, my dear, you must realise that.”

Adelina saw him glance at his wife again. “ We were not even aware of your existence, nor of your mother's death. You must give us all time to adjust to the situation.”

Anger still smouldered in Adelina's green eyes. “I'm not a fortune-hunter, if that is what you are thinking,” she declared.

“No, no, my dear, of course you are not.” Once again the gentle eyes were directed at Martha, but with a note of firmness in his tone now, he added, “ You shall stay here until after Christmas at least. Then we shall see what is to be done.”

Martha Langley shot him a look of malice, her thin lips tight, but she said no more.

Later, alone in her room, after she had undressed down to her chemise, Adelina went over to the window and opened it. She leaned out and breathed the night air deeply. Her fingers touched the leaves of an ivy tree which covered the outside wall and wound itself round her window. High up on the hill she could see Abbeyford Grange where her grandfather, Lord Royston, lived in lonely splendour.

If only she could see him, could meet him, just once. She touched the locket around her neck, her fingers tracing the ruby set in the centre and the smaller diamonds surrounding it. As she gazed through the darkness at the house her mother had once called home, Adelina felt the yearning to belong – really belong – to someone. She resolved that somehow she would find a way of meeting her grandfather – no matter who stood in her way!

The following day Emily took Adelina for a walk to show her the village.

Abbeyford lay in its own shallow valley in gently rolling countryside some fifteen miles south of Manchester. In the centre of the village was the church and the Vicarage, the green and the duckpond, and clustering around them were the villagers' cottages. On the hill-slope to the east, just below the summit, stood the half-timbered Grange, built in the Tudor style. On the opposite hillside was Abbeyford Manor, a square, solid house with stables to one side and farm buildings at the rear. Above the Manor and a little to the south, on the very top of the hill, the abbey ruins rose gaunt and black against the sky.

From the waterfall where Adelina had first met Lord Lynwood, a stream ran through the wood, channelling a deep gully, down the hill and into the valley and on through the common. The lane leading from the village up to the Manor ran through this stream, literally, for there was only a narrow footbridge across the water at this point. Farm carts and the gentry's carriages had to splash through the ford in the lane. Another stream ran from the eastern hillside through the valley and at the southern end the two streams joined together and ran as one out of the valley through a natural pass between the hills to join a river some miles away.

The two girls looked in the church with its grey stone and shining wooden pews and then walked across the green. A few children played in the roadway and here and there a woman sat in her doorway spinning. Adelina was shocked to see that the children ran barefoot and that their clothes were ragged and dirty. The low, squat cottages, too, were tumble-down. Doors hung off their hinges and broken windows were stuffed with sackcloth to keep out the cold.

Emily linked her arm through Adelina's. “I'm glad you've come, Adelina. I hope we shall be friends.”

After Mrs Langley's open hostility, Emily's gesture was all the more surprising. “I've to take a message to Mrs Smithson,” Emily said. “She helps out at the Vicarage sometimes.”

She stepped towards one of the cottages and knocked upon the door. It was opened, somewhat tentatively Adelina thought, by a woman.

“Mrs Smithson, I have a message from my mother …” The woman's stare travelled past Emily and saw Adelina. “Oh, this is Miss Adelina Cole. She's from America. Our mothers were cousins, you know.”

The woman's eyes widened as she looked at Adelina. Then she gasped and one hand fluttered nervously to her throat while the other gripped the door fiercely as if to gain support.

“What is it, Mrs Smithson?” Emily asked. “Are you ill?”

“No, no. But it's like seein' a ghost, miss.” She continued to gaze at Adelina.

“You mean Adelina is like her mother? Yes, Mama, was saying so.”

“I can scarce believe it, Miss Emily!”

“Mrs Smithson, Mama says can you come to the Vicarage tomorrow afternoon?”

The woman nodded absently, hardly seeming to hear Emily, her attention still upon Adelina.

Sarah Smithson must once have been very pretty, beautiful in a natural way, Adelina supposed, but now she wore the lines of defeat and bitterness upon her tired face. Her mouth was drawn into a tight line, her shoulders drooping, and her movements were slow and lethargic as if life held little interest or meaning for her. She was dressed in a shapeless blouse and a coarse brown skirt. Her eyes were dull and sorrowful and her hair, once black and shining, was now grey.

Sarah Smithson blinked and seemed to recover her senses. “ What – oh, yes. I'll be there, miss.”

As Emily and Adelina walked back to the Vicarage they passed several villagers. Each one smiled and bade Emily ‘good-day'. Then their eyes strayed to the stranger at her side. Their reactions were varied. A young girl merely smiled and passed on. A youth grinned cheekily, his admiration of Adelina apparent. But two older women, walking together, stared at Adelina with open astonishment, and as they passed by they whispered to each other.

“It seems,” Adelina remarked, “that my appearance has a strange effect upon some of the villagers.”

“The older ones – yes. Those who remember seeing your mother. Mama says your likeness to your mother is uncanny.”

Adelina was silent. Just what could her mother have done to arouse such deep resentment that it had lasted all these years? First Lord Lynwood, then Martha Langley – and of course Lord Royston, who would not even meet his own granddaughter!

They walked on. Adelina asked suddenly, “ Lord Royston – he owns all this?” She waved her hand to encompass not only the farmland on the surrounding hillsides and the cattle grazing there, but the tumble-down cottages too.

“Why – yes.” Emily turned her wide eyes upon Adelina. “ Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered why he doesn't do a little more for his tenants?”

Emily blushed. “ Lord Royston has nothing to do with the day to day running of his estate.”

“Then who has?” Adelina demanded sharply, growing more disgusted at the poverty she saw where there was no reason for the people to be so poor.

“The Trents. I suppose Wallis Trent really, since his father, Squire Guy Trent,” she paused as if searching for the right words, “ takes little active part in running the estate.”

“Hmm, I should like to meet this – Wallis Trent,” Adelina murmured.

“You'll meet him tomorrow night,” Emily was saying softly.

Adelina turned to look at her. Emily's face wore a dreamy expression and two bright pink spots of colour burned in her cheeks.

“Will I indeed? How?”

“He'll be dining with us tomorrow evening.” Emily spoke reverently. Adelina raised her left eyebrow in surprise, but asked no more questions.

The following evening Adelina viewed her one gown critically. The old skirt she had worn before was beyond salvation, but now the dress the tinker had given her seemed tawdry beside Emily's neat, finely stitched gowns. Adelina sighed and pursed her lips grimly as she pulled it over her head. She refused to give Martha Langley the satisfaction of hearing her ask for anything. She would sooner wear this one dress until it fell from her back! Adelina thought.

She was very soon ready. She knocked on Emily's door and entered. As she turned from her dressing-table, Emily appeared prettier than usual. There was the light of happiness shining in her eyes, a rosy blush to her cheeks. Her gown, though plain and demure, was of good material and fitted her slim figure well. Her soft brown hair shone.

“Oh, Adelina – haven't you any other gown but that one? Oh I'm sorry,” she added swiftly. “I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.”

Adelina smiled ruefully.

“I expect you lost all your clothes on the voyage, did you?” Adelina did not contradict Emily's kindly invention and the girl hurried on, “If it won't offend you – there – there are one or two of my gowns we might alter to fit you, though you are a little more – shapely than me.” There was a wistful note in Emily's voice.

Despite the poor, faded gown, Adelina was still strikingly lovely with her clear skin, auburn hair and green eyes. Adelina smiled. Emily's offer held none of the resentment her mother harboured.

“Thank you, Emily. That would be sweet of you.”

Wallis Trent rose from the sofa as the two girls entered the drawing-room. He was, Adelina thought, the tallest man she had ever seen. His hair was jet black and his eyes grey. His presence seemed to fill the room. There was an aura of power and authority about him.