Storks in a Blue Sky
by Carol Anne Dobson
A historical romance played out between the wild coast and moors of North Devon and the mountains and river-crossed plain of Alsace.
The beautiful, red-haired Sarah Durrant is an uneducated servant who takes the place of her mistress when she suddenly dies at Lynmouth as they are travelling across the remote wilderness of 18th century Exmoor. Her origins are a mystery. She only knows she is illegitimate and possesses a gold locket which contains a miniature of a woman who resembles her.
North Devon at first proves a sanctuary from the violence of her past but then the French aristocrat, Jean Luc de Delacroix, a soldier and a scientist, arrives from the New World; the local activities of smuggling and wrecking surface; her life becomes a tangle of love, deception and fear.
Praise for Storks in a Blue Sky:
“The storyline is strong with vivid descriptions of the North Devon and French countryside, complete with storks, so a part of Alsace. I thoroughly recommend this book.”
~ Anna, Amazon Review, 5*“A wonderful romantic read.”
~ Amazon Review, 4*
‘What accursed country is this?’ wondered Sarah, as the air’s icy coldness clutched at her. The carriage lurched madly down the hill and she glanced in terror through the window at a sky and sea which seemed fused together in a swirling cauldron of witch-black fury.
Lightning tore the heavens in vivid, staccato bursts, illuminating sheets of rain sweeping across a dark and violent sea. Water dribbled down the walls and streamed in ribbons across the pitching floor. With sweating hands, she nervously felt around her neck for her locket, whose miniature of a smiling, redhaired woman was her talisman against harm. She was sure the picture was of her mother, but had no idea how she had come to know that.
‘Bastard! Slut!’ The words still rang in her ears. The beatings were raw in her mind and the scars on her back and arms were a physical reminder of the kitchen.
At night, in her truckle bed, exhaustion almost overwhelmed her. ‘I’m not long for this life,’ she thought. ‘Dear God, spare me. Let me be with my mother. She must be dead or she would not have left me in this state and with these people.’
She remembered the patterned hoar frost on the scullery window, its crystals sparkling in the November gloom. She was wearing a white apron and cap and ran her chapped fingers against the pane. She reluctantly climbed the back stairs and was pushed into a vast drawing room, its polished wood floor enlivened with red and gold carpets. Gold also gleamed on the gilded plasterwork of the ceiling and embellished the tapestry wall hangings and the brocade curtains at long sash windows. She found herself in front of a sharp-featured woman, whose powdered face was relieved of its death-mask quality by two, bright red circles of rouge on her cheeks. The startling whiteness extended downwards to her bosom which was caked with Briançon chalk, coloured with streaks of Prussian blue to emphasise her veins. Her hair, also a ghostly hue, its pomatum heavily scented with musk, swayed above her on a wire framework which she delicately scratched from time to time with a jewelled pin to dislodge lice. Her lace-frilled, beribboned, cerise silk dress was equally extravagant, its skirt enlarged by whalebone hoops, which made Lady Throgmorton appear nearly as wide as she was tall.
“You will be Lady Sophie’s maid from now on,” she said, her somewhat bulging, brown eyes reminding Sarah of those of the dead cod boiled on Fridays.
The soot-streaked pantry and kitchen were replaced by spacious, sunlit rooms, spared the noxious fumes from flyblown, putrefying waste heaped in the yard, suffered by the warren of servants’ quarters at the back of the house. The Palladian mansion looked out over a park where cows grazed and riders cantered on horseback along the avenues. Sarah moved like a wraith, overawed by the resplendent furniture and decoration, trying not to dirty them by her unworthy touch. Her new mistress became the centre of her life. She loved her gentleness, her freckled face and her ginger hair, whose brightness could not be hidden, even by repeated applications from the powder carrot; the rainbow colours of Sophie’s gowns entranced her and it was as though the dull monochrome of kitchen drudgery had been replaced by a brilliantly hued world.
Lightning repeatedly seared the sky and images continued to flicker through her mind, in a rhythm with the storm; Sophie’s tears, her step-mother’s malice, the beatings with hair brushes, sticks, almost anything that came to hand. Lady Throgmorton clearly hated and resented her step-daughter, whilst indulging her own children, who rampaged spoilt and unruly.
Her violence extended also to Sarah, but she had been so brutalised by servitude in the kitchen that the blows and pinches were trivial in comparison to her previous suffering. Her waif-like thinness disappeared; she became taller and more rounded.
At times she was disconcerted to find Lady Throgmorton’s eyes on her.
‘Why is she looking at me, a maid?’ she thought and once even had the strange feeling she was gloating.
Standing at the spinet next to Sophie one day, she glanced up and saw Lady Throgmorton staring at them with such malevolence, that it made her flesh crawl, as though a loathsome cockroach was running over her.
‘Why does she dislike Sophie so?’ she pondered, wishing she could protect her. Then, as abruptly as she had left the kitchen, she found herself perched on a hard seat, clutching bags and boxes, in the Throgmorton coach en route to the wilds of North Devon.
“I’m sending you away. I’m finally getting rid of you, you wretched girl,” Lady Throgmorton had hissed at Sophie, her face flushed with anger. “Your relation, the Duchess de Delacroix, needs a companion. She’s a lunatic and should be chained up in Bedlam! She will probably beat you every day, as you deserve! And her son’s a brute! He’s a savage! A Frenchie!” she shrieked. “You’ll get your just deserts with them!”
Sarah’s heart stopped beating. The world froze around her. Was she going to lose her beloved mistress?
Lady Throgmorton turned to her and she shrank in fright from the expression of naked hatred very apparent in her eyes.
“And you can go as well. We’ll be rid of the pair of you. What a clumsy, useless maid you turned out to be! Now get out of my sight, you ugly, vile creature!” As she spat out the words, in a shrill tone of near-hysteria, she yanked at Sarah’s hair beneath the mob cap, making her yelp in pain, and then rained blows on to her with her hands. Sarah nimbly retreated backwards; Lady Throgmorton reached out to attack her further, and hampered by her unwieldy garments, fell awkwardly, beaching herself on the carpet, her dress held rigidly up in the air by its stiff underframe to reveal layers of silk petticoats and two very large, pink, satin-clad feet. Three footmen manfully attempted to right her and Sophie fled the room, pulling Sarah along with her.
This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Carol Anne Dobson is a qualified teacher and librarian with a B.A. in English, French and Russian. She has lived in Devon for most of her life, and North Devon provides the setting for much of Storks in a Blue Sky. Alsace in France came to be a second home when her daughter lived there for six years and it is this Germanic region of France which also features in the novel.
In 2009 Storks in a Blue Sky won the David St John Thomas Fiction Award.
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