Forever Yours

  Forever Yours

  Rita Bradshaw

  Headline Publishing Group Ltd (2010)

  Tags: Historical Saga

  * * *

  About The Book

  A heartbreaking saga of true love against all odds. A tragic house fire kills both her parents, but Constance Shelton escapes, rescued by her eight-year-old neighbour, Matt Heath. She is brought up by her grandparents, but the two children become inseparable and, as she enters her teens, these strong feelings turn into love. But Matt sees her only as a sister and Constance can do nothing when he proposes to another girl. When Constance discovers that the fire that killed her parents wasn't an accident, but in fact the actions of a jealous man, she finds herself in terrible danger and is forced to leave the village and everyone she knows. Although Constance makes a good life for herself elsewhere, her heart remains with the only man she has ever loved. But what will it take for Matt to realise his true feelings for her?

  Forever Yours

  RITA BRADSHAW

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2010 Rita Bradshaw

  The right of Rita Bradshaw to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may

  only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means,

  with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of

  reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of

  licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 7111 2

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  PART ONE - The Die is Cast 1893

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PART TWO - Through the Green-Baize Door 1900

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  PART THREE - Roots 1910

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  PART FOUR - The Third Chance 1911

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  For our beautiful granddaughter, Emily Rita Anderson, born 17 June 2009 – perfect in every way and infinitely precious. Baby sister for Georgia and cousin for Sam and Connor. So much prayer went up for you, little one, when we thought we were going to lose you – you really are our beloved miracle baby and cherished more than you will ever know.

  All praise and thanks to the Lord for His grace and mercy, and thanks to our darling Faye and Roy too, for doing their bit in producing the most adorable and exquisite pair of little girls the world has ever seen. Those genes are pure dynamite!

  Love that is constant knows no boundaries,

  It is the dew in the morning and the night’s breeze.

  Its melody can be heard in a child’s laughter,

  Its warmth in a mother’s smile.

  It gives and gives without measure

  And when it is spent, it gives again.

  It sees the worst and the best in the beloved

  And it is not shaken.

  It believes all, endures all, trusts all.

  It is constant; it is love.

  ANON

  Prologue

  Sacriston, Durham, 1880

  ‘Where are you off to, this time of night?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Aye, I can see that – I’m not stupid. I didn’t think you were going to park your backside in front of the fire wearing your coat and muffler, now did I?’

  Vincent McKenzie cast a cold glance at his mother but didn’t reply. He reached for his cap, pulling it over his thick brown hair. He then waited for her voice to come at him again, and as he opened the front door her nasal tones followed him as he had known they would.

  ‘Well? I’m waiting for an answer, m’lad. Are you off sniffing after a lass? Is that it? ’Cos I won’t have some little baggage back here, so think on. This is my house and I say who comes in and out.’

  Knowing his silence would rile her more than any retort, he stepped outside, shutting the cottage door behind him and walking down the garden path to the gate. He’d just opened this when his mother wrenched open the front door and let loose a tirade worthy of any dockside fishwife.

  The night was as black as pitch and bitterly cold but to the tall, well-built man striding away from the cottage it wasn’t overly dark. It was the same with any miner. They’d say to anyone who’d listen that you didn’t know what darkness was until you’d been down the pit. That blackness was consuming, a living entity so thick and heavy you felt you could touch it.

  But Vincent wasn’t thinking of the pit, nor of his mother. His thoughts were concentrated on the news he’d heard that morning. Hannah had had a baby. His Hannah. His beautiful, pure Hannah had had Stephen Shelton’s bairn. She’d lain with Shelton, let him kiss and fondle her and impregnate her with his seed.

  He made a sound deep in his throat that could have come from an animal in pain, the muscles in his face working. Why had she done it? Why had she married Shelton?

  It was beginning to rain, icy droplets that carried sleet in the midst of them, but Vincent didn’t feel anything besides the white-hot rage which had burned him up all day as he’d laboured down the pit. It had been bad enough this time last year when she’d married Shelton. Having to stand by and watch her on her wedding day, dressed in white and walking down the aisle to that nowt. That had been betrayal enough. But to bring forth living proof of what they got up to . . . His thin lips curled back from his teeth as though he was smelling something foul.

  Hannah had been the one perfect, spotless thing in his life, a being apart. From a bairn he’d adored her, worshipped the ground she walked on, and she’d returned his love. He knew she had, although they’d never spoken of it. He’d made up his mind he was going to ask her to walk out when she turned sixteen, but Shelton had got in first. However, he’d waited for her, knowing she’d come to her senses. What could Shelton offer her, after all? A two-up, two-down terrace in the village, whereas his mam’s cottage—

  No, his mind corrected him in the next moment. Not his mam’s cottage. He’d been the man of the house since his da was killed down the mine the very week he himself had gone down as a lad of thirteen. The cottage was his – he paid the bills and put food on the table. And situated as it was just outside the village and with gardens front and back, it was a cut above the colliery housing typical of that provided by the mine-owners all along the Durham coalfield. His grandfather had built the cottage, brick by brick, and it was comfortable and roomy; three bedrooms upstairs and a separate scullery and kitchen and sitting room downstairs, with a wash-house and privy across the paved yard
outside. Aye, most lasses’d give their eye-teeth to live there, even with his mam.

  As always when he thought of his mother Vincent channelled his thoughts in a different direction. It was an art he’d perfected long ago as a young boy of seven years old, the first time she had come into his bedroom at night and told him that the things she’d done to him and made him do to her were what every mother and son did.

  The cottage was on the edge of Fulforth Wood, and as Vincent came out of the narrow lane into the wider road which led to the colliery village a quarter of a mile away, his eyes scanned the darkness. It was gone eleven and he didn’t expect to run into anyone, but you never could tell. One thing was for sure, he couldn’t afford to be seen for what he’d got in mind. If he met someone he’d have to abandon his plan and try again another night, but he was loath to do that. He didn’t think he could endure another hour of knowing they were playing Happy Families while he was in hell. And it was hell, a hell more real than anything Father Duffy scared everyone with in his fire and brimstone sermons.

  When he came to the crossroads where Witton, Durham and Front Streets met Plawsworth Road, he stood looking down Front Street. The lines of housing called Cross Streets in the area to the north was in total darkness, but the inn to the left of the grid of streets showed a light in one of the bedrooms. Moving into deeper shadows, he stood and waited.

  The village was growing fast. There was talk of the colliery owners partly funding a new Catholic school as they had with the Roman Catholic church presently being built at the far end of the village. He and Hannah and the other colliery children had had their lessons in two cottages on Front Street, used as a school on weekdays and a mission chapel on Sundays, but it looked as though that would soon be a thing of the past.

  He hadn’t enjoyed his schooldays. His brown eyes narrowed. Living as he did some distance from the village, he’d been the outsider – and the other lads had never let him forget it. It hadn’t helped that his father was known as the village drunk; when his da wasn’t down the pit he could normally be found propping up the bar in the Colliery Inn, and his mother had had to meet his da at the pit gates come pay day and wrestle enough money off him to buy food for the week. Many a night his father had slept in the sawdust and dirt on the inn’s floor; sometimes three or four days had gone by before they saw him. But his da had never missed a shift. He could say that about him.

  Vincent flexed his big shoulders, his eyes unseeing as he looked back down the years. When his mother’s night-time visits had become a regular occurrence he’d thought about running away, because even as a little lad he’d known that she was lying and other women didn’t do that to their bairns. But there had been Hannah. Beautiful, golden-haired Hannah, his angel, his undefiled, perfect angel. For such a slender wisp of a thing she’d been like a small virago when she’d defended him from the other bairns’ bullying, even though he’d been inches taller than her – an awkward, lanky lump of a boy who’d known he was dirty, filthy, inside. But she had liked him. She had been his friend.

  Or so he’d thought. But it had all been lies. The sound came again from his throat. She was no better than the rest – worse, in fact, because she had made him believe she cared about him and let him dare to dream about a future where he would be like everyone else. That’s all he’d ever wanted, to be like everyone else. But it couldn’t happen now and he was done with pretending.

  She had to pay. He breathed deeply, struggling for control. He had to be thinking calmly when he did this. There could be no mistakes. Clear your mind. Focus, man.

  His fingers felt for the can of oil in his deep coat pocket and he straightened as the light in the inn was extinguished. He’d wait another minute or two before making his way to the Cross Streets, just to be sure.

  ‘Leave her, Stephen. You’ll wake her up and she’ll want feeding again.’

  Hannah’s voice wasn’t cross, on the contrary it conveyed tenderness as she looked at her husband bent over the cradle at the foot of the bed. She knew that some miners, like Stephen’s brother, Howard, would have been miffed if their first bairn wasn’t a boy, but not her Stephen. All along he’d insisted he wanted a miniature version of herself and it was clear, once Constance was born, that he’d meant it. He was besotted by their daughter. Her mam had said she’d never seen a man so unashamedly thrilled with his child and it was true.

  ‘She looks like you.’ Stephen Shelton’s voice reflected the wonder he felt as he stared down at his tiny daughter. ‘Our Howard’s little lad looked like a wrinkled prune for weeks, but she’s as bonny as a summer’s day.’

  ‘You’d better not let your brother hear you call Daniel a wrinkled prune.’ Hannah’s voice carried a gurgle of laughter in its depths. She agreed with her husband; even now, at six months old, his brother’s child couldn’t be called handsome by even his nearest and dearest. And when Stephen still hovered by their daughter’s cradle, she added, ‘Come on, love. Come to bed.’

  As he joined her in the iron bed that could hardly be called a double but which had been a good price in one of the second-hand shops in Sunderland, some fourteen or fifteen miles south-east of Sacriston, the bedsprings zinged their protest. Hannah immediately snuggled up to her husband, for in spite of the coal fire burning in the small grate, the room was cold and what warmth the fire gave out was soaked up by the baby’s cradle directly in front of it. As Stephen put his arms round her, she murmured, ‘Do you think she’s warm enough?’

  ‘She’s as snug as a bug in a rug.’ Stephen kissed her brow. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Tired.’ It had been a long labour, thirty-six hours from start to finish, and the last few had verged on the unbearable. She hadn’t expected it to be so awful but the midwife had assured her the first was always the worst and the next one would be better. She hadn’t wanted to think about the next one; she still didn’t. Lifting her head to look into Stephen’s face, she smiled. ‘All the pair of us have done today is eat and sleep – your mam and mine have seen to that.’

  ‘Good.’ He stroked a strand of hair from her forehead, marvelling – as he always did – that this beautiful woman was his. ‘I told them when they arrived this morning that I didn’t want you putting so much as a foot out of this room.’

  ‘Well, they obeyed your instructions to the letter.’ She had tried to persuade her mother and mother-in-law that she was perfectly capable of going to the privy in the backyard rather than having to use the chamber pot, but they wouldn’t have it. Mind you, when she’d got out of bed to use the pot she’d felt so sick and giddy she’d thought she was going to pass out, so perhaps they were right. ‘I’ve never been so cosseted in me life and Constance only has to squeak and they’re whisking her up.’

  ‘All the lads wanted to be remembered to you, by the way, and send their best to you and the bab.’ Stephen pulled her closer into him. Constance had been born late on Saturday night and the next day being the Sabbath, Stephen hadn’t gone into work until this morning. ‘All except Vincent McKenzie, that is. Surly devil. I swear he gets more moronic with each passing day. Just stared at me, he did, when the lads were asking about the bab and didn’t say a word.’

  ‘Vincent’s not moronic, Stephen. You know he isn’t. He was considered bright at school.’

  ‘Bright or not, he’s got a side to him that’s stranger than a nine-bob note. You’d know what I mean if you worked a shift or two with him. Never says a word to no one unless it’s the deputy, and he’s all over him. Got his eye on the main chance, sure enough.’

  Hannah shifted slightly in his arms but said nothing now. She knew Stephen had a bee in his bonnet about Vincent. It dated back to when they’d been bairns and she’d used to stick up for Vincent when the other lads had a go at him, which was most of the time. But she’d felt sorry for him. She still did. It couldn’t be much of a life for him; his mother like a millstone round his neck and her with a tongue on her like a knife. She’d said as much once to Stephen in the days when the
y were courting and asked him if he couldn’t be nice to Vincent, make a pal of him, but it had caused such a row between them she hadn’t mentioned it again. Stephen had got it into his head that Vincent liked her in that way and nothing would dissuade him otherwise, even though she knew Vincent thought of her as simply a friend. Probably his only friend, poor thing. Not that she’d seen hide nor hair of him since she’d got married apart from once or twice in the distance, and then he’d made no effort to pass the time of day even though she’d smiled and waved at him.

  ‘Bob Hutton reckons Vincent’s after being second in line to the deputy when old Walter goes, and that’ll be the day I’ll get meself set on elsewhere. I wouldn’t work for that nowt if I got paid in gold nuggets.’

  She wanted to ask him to stop talking about Vincent, but knowing that would provoke an argument, reached up and kissed his stubbly jaw instead. ‘I missed you today,’ she said softly. ‘It was lovely having a day to ourselves with Constance yesterday, wasn’t it?’

  Her reward for her tactfulness was his voice coming deep and warm when he murmured, ‘Aye, my idea of heaven, lass. You hear some of the lads talk, ones who’ve been married less time than we have, and it makes me thank me lucky stars for what we have.’

  Hannah nodded. Beryl and Molly, her two older sisters, seemed to expect their husbands would disappear on a Saturday afternoon to watch the footy and spend Sunday lunchtime – and more than one evening a week too – at the Colliery Inn with their pals. But Stephen had never been like that. From the first week they’d been married he’d been content to spend all of his time with her.