The Shadow of Sin

Chapter One ~ 1821-1

Chapter One ~ 1821Celesta, while picking the peaches, was humming to herself.

The sunshine streaming through the peach house that had been built against one of the old redbrick Elizabethan walls shone on her fair hair and turned it gold.

The peaches were small because they had not been thinned in the spring.

Celesta could remember when four peaches with one on top would fill the beautiful Sèvres dessert dishes that they had always used at The Priory.

Her father with a gold dessert knife would peel the rosy velvet skin from a peach and, as he did so, would say,

“I suppose all the large ones are being kept for the Flower Show?”

“Of course they are,” her mother would reply from the other end of the table. “You know that it would break old Bloss’s heart if he did not win a prize.”

It was a conversation that was repeated every year until her mother was no longer there –

Celesta pulled herself together with a little jerk.

She would not think about that.

Instead, as she picked the small but deliciously sweet peaches and placed them carefully in her basket, she decided who she would give them to.

There would be Mrs. Oakes, aged seventy-eight and crippled with arthritis, who would be delighted to have six and little Billy Ives, who had broken his leg two weeks ago, should have another half a dozen.

And old Bloss’s wife, who lived in a cottage at the end of the village, would not only be thrilled to have the peaches but also the chance of a talk. She had been very lonely since her husband had died.

And the rest, Celesta thought, when she and Nana had eaten as many as they could manage would be made into the delicious peach jam that was Nana’s speciality.

Unfortunately they still had a few pots left over from last year, but it would be a pity to let the fruit go to waste.

She reached a little higher to where above her head there were three almost overripe peaches and as she did so a deep voice came from the broken doorway,

“A very pretty thief, but nevertheless a thief!”

Celesta turned round in astonishment.

Standing just inside the peach house was the most elegant gentleman she had ever seen in her life!

Dressed in the very height of fashion with a high cravat and smart cut-away coat over tightly fitting champagne-coloured pantaloons, he seemed almost overpoweringly big in the low-roofed peach house.

He was carrying his tall hat in his hand, his hair cut in the windswept manner made fashionable by the King when he was Regent, was dark and his eyes, strangely penetrating, seemed dark as well.

Never, Celesta thought, had she seen a man who looked so handsome, so raffish and at the same time so cynical.

She was surprised into silence and the stranger with a mocking note in his voice continued,

“You must admit that I have caught you red-handed, but it would be a pity if someone as attractive as you should be prosecuted for crime.”

He paused and his eyes seemed to flicker over Celesta’s white skin, her deep blue eyes seeming too large for her small heart-shaped face, her tiny straight nose and sweetly curved red lips, before he went on,

“You can, of course, be hanged for stealing over five shillings’ worth of goods and, if you escape the hangman, you still might be transported to New South Wales, a very unsavoury fate for such an alluring young woman!”

“Who – who are – you?” Celesta tried to say, but before she could enunciate the words he went on,

“On reflection I think it would be kinder if I was to be my own Judge and Jury. I therefore sentence you, my entrancing little intruder, to pay for the fruit you have so shamelessly taken from me.”

“Who a-are you? What are you – saying?” Celesta stammered.

“I think those are the questions I should be asking you,” the stranger retorted.

He took a step nearer to her and then, almost before she could realise what was happening and before she could cry out or move, he put one arm round her and with his other hand lifted her face up to his.

She had one convulsive moment of fear as his lips came down on hers and then, when she should have struggled and fought against him to be free, she was unable to do so.

Celesta had never been kissed before and she did not know that a man’s lips could hold a woman completely captive.

She was only conscious that his arm round her was strong and that his mouth, firm and demanding, was something beyond comprehension and beyond thought.

Her lips were very soft beneath his and for a moment his arm round her tightened and the pressure of his mouth became more insistent.

Then, as unexpectedly as he had taken her, he set her free.

She made an inarticulate little sound that should have been a cry of fear, but which died away in her throat.

Then, as her eyes met his, she stood for a moment spellbound before she turned and ran away.

She picked up the skirts of her cotton dress and ran through an opening in the walls with a swiftness that had something of panic in it.

It led from the lower garden into the upper one and Celesta ran on past the gooseberry bushes and the raspberry canes and through the gate that led into the shrubbery.

Still running she passed through the high rhododendron bushes, which only a month before had been a blaze of glory, and then down the small path that led to the Garden Cottage.

She pulled open the door and closed it swiftly behind her to stand with her back against it breathing quickly and feeling that she had shut out something nasty that menaced her.

“Is that you, dearie?”

It was Nana calling from the kitchen and her warm calm voice was somehow consoling.

“Y-yes,” Celesta managed to reply a little unsteadily.

“Luncheon will be ready in a few minutes.”

“I will go and – wash.”

Celesta spoke automatically and, as if in a dream, she walked slowly up the narrow oak staircase to her bedroom on the floor above.

It was a small room and the diamond-paned window was open so that there was the scent of the roses climbing up the house and the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle.

Celesta sat down on a stool in front of the dressing table and stared at herself in the mirror.

‘How could it have – happened?’

How was it possible that she should have been kissed by a complete stranger and done nothing to prevent it?

Then, as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she realised that he had, of course, mistaken her for a girl from the village.

It was not surprising since, with her fair hair uncovered and blown by the summer breezes, she had been working in the garden all morning.

She was wearing a very old cotton dress, which had shrunk and faded from frequent washing. No lady could be expected to look like that or even be found unaccompanied in a garden as vast as the seven acres of gardens, which were part of The Priory grounds.

Nevertheless, she told herself, he had no right, no right at all!

At the same time some part of her mind was saying,

‘So that is what a kiss – is like!’

She had no idea that a man could seem so strong, so overpowering or that his mouth could be so possessive. Then, as she thought more about it, Celesta tried to be angry.

‘How dare he?’ she wanted to storm, but her anger turned only to shame.

How could she have been so weak and so spineless as to stand there and let it happen?

He was not really to blame. Men, she had always been told, did behave like that.

But for a lady to submit to such an intimacy without screaming or without attempting to fight against her assailant showed a very reprehensible character.

Who was he and what was he doing here?

There seemed to be so many questions with no answers to what had occurred and finally, having washed her hands in the china basin that stood on the wash stand, Celesta tidied her hair and went downstairs.

The table was laid for her in the small dining room, which, until she and Nana had gone to live in the Garden Cottage, had only been a large storeroom attached to the kitchen.

Now furnished with a sideboard, a small walnut table and four velvet-seated chairs it looked very elegant.

“Do we really need a dining room?” Celesta had asked Nana when they had moved into the Garden Cottage.

“I’m not havin’ you eatin’ in the kitchen, Miss Celesta,” Nana had said firmly. “We may be poor, poverty-stricken some would say, but you’ll behave like a lady as long as I’m with you and that indeed is what your father would have wished.”

“I only thought it would make more work for you,” Celesta answered her quietly.

“You’re a lady, bred and born, and you’ll behave like one and there’s no arguin’ against that!”

Now, as Celesta seated herself so that she could look out of the small window onto the garden that she and Nana had made at the back of the cottage, she realised that something was wrong.

“What has happened, Nana?” she asked.

She was too dose to her old Nanny, who had looked after her since she was a child, not to be aware of every mood, every changing intonation of her voice and the telltale frown that appeared between her kindly eyes whenever she was worried.

“Eat your luncheon!” Nana told her gruffly.

Celesta knew that this meant that something was really wrong.

Nana had a theory that no one should eat when they were upset because it caused indigestion. When Celesta was a child, Nana would never scold her at mealtimes or tell her anything that was unpleasant before she went to bed.

The dish set down in front of her, while very simple, was well cooked and there were fresh vegetables from the garden, which Celesta had herself brought into the cottage earlier in the morning.

“Tell me, Nana,” she coaxed.

“You eat what I’ve put before you,” Nana answered. “There be plenty of time for worryin’ after it’s inside you.”

She went from the room as she spoke and Celesta smiled as she helped herself from a silver dish onto a plate of Crown Derby china.

So many treasures from The Priory had been brought to the Garden Cottage, but as Nana had said,

“What’s the point of leavin’ them for the rats and mice? Master Giles appears to have no interest in them and it’s nice for you to have your father’s belongings round you.”

“If Giles wants them, I can always give them back,” Celesta had said, feeling it salved her conscience.

Equally when Giles told her that she and Nana must move from The Priory because he could no longer afford to pay the servants, she had naturally assumed that she would have to furnish the cottage where old Bloss had lived for so many years.

Nana had complained more than Celesta.

“It’s goin’ down in the world to live like a labourer,” she had fumed, “and what your father’d say I can’t imagine.”

‘If Papa had lived, it would never have happened,’ Celesta thought.

Who could possibly have imagined that Giles, because he had succeeded to the Baronetcy and the small fortune their father had possessed, would have gone completely crazy?

It was all due, Celesta thought, to a man called Lord Crawthorne.

Looking back she could remember when Giles had first talked about him.

Her brother had come home that week with a number of his new London friends and the household had been rushed off its feet to offer them the sort of hospitality that Giles had required.

He had developed very grand ideas since he had been to London, Celesta found.

To begin with he wanted far more footmen than poor old Bateson, who was on his last legs, could possibly produce or manage.

However, he brought some footmen down from London and very tiresome they were, treating The Priory servants with supercilious scorn and drinking far more ale than Nana thought necessary.

Before his guests arrived Giles had talked to Celesta.