A Bouquet of Thorns Read online

  Table of Contents

  Recent Titles by Tania Crosse

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Author’s Note

  Recent Titles by Tania Crosse

  MORWELHAM’S CHILD

  THE RIVER GIRL

  CHERRYBROOK ROSE *

  A BOUQUET OF THORNS *

  *available from Severn House

  A BOUQUET OF THORNS

  Tania Crosse

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain 2008 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  First published in the USA 2009 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2008 by Tania Crosse.

  The right of Tania Crosse to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Crosse, Tania Anne

  A bouquet of thorns

  1. Dartmoor (England) - Social life and customs - Fiction

  2. Love stories

  I. Title

  823.9′2[F]

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7801-0374-7 (epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6696-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-087-7 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For my three wonderful children, James, Natasha and Michael and their respective spouses and partners.

  And as ever for my dear husband for his love, his strength and his understanding.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again, I must thank my fantastic agent and everyone at Severn House for all their hard work in publishing this novel. As with all my books, my sincere thanks go to my good friend Paul Rendell, Dartmoor guide and historian and editor of The Dartmoor News, for checking the manuscript for any errors regarding our beloved moor. In particular I should like to express my gratitude to Dartmoor Prison historian, Trevor James, for all his detailed information, and to our dear friend Colin Skeen, barrister and magistrate, for his research into the history of the legal system and for explaining it to me in layman’s terms. I should also like to thank local historian Gerry Woodcock for his information on Tavistock, Len March for his explanation of the nature in which gunpowder would explode, The British Army Museum and last but not least, retired physician Marshall Barr. My deepest thanks to you all.

  One

  ‘Ah, Rose, my dear child, did you have a good ride?’

  Henry Maddiford glanced up from his desk in the manager’s office of the Cherrybrook Gunpowder Mills high up on Dartmoor, and beamed at his beloved daughter. Though in his fifties, he was still a handsome man, relatively tall, and strong and athletic from striding all over the factory site, which, for safety reasons, was strung out across the moor on either side of the bubbling Cherry Brook. His alert blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he allowed himself a few moments’ break from his work to gaze lovingly on the child, a grown woman now, and an exact replica of his wife who had died giving birth to her.

  Rose returned his smile, her full red mouth in a soft curve and her heart running over with devotion. She was passionate and untamed, but when it came to her father, she would sacrifice the world for him. She drew the image of him, the pride and the warmth, into her soul, feasting on the contentment, grasping at it, for even as the peace settled in her spirit, she felt something wasn’t quite right. His face was blurring at the edges. Fading. Oh, please don’t go. Father, come back. Please . . .

  Rose stirred as the child inside her kicked beneath her ribs. Reality clawed at her, but she tried to ignore it, to sink back down into the lulling cocoon of her dream where everything was calm and safe. To see her father again, to feel his presence – ah, what bliss . . .

  She groaned, and despite all her efforts to remain in the security of sleep, her eyelids flickered open and she knew she was awake. She closed her eyes again, trying to hold on to the vision of her father, alive and well as he had been not so long ago. In that magical time before the explosion, a time she had imagined would go on for ever. A time before the damage to his spine had paralysed his legs, before his forehead was badly burnt. Before the moment, less than a year later, when a blood clot had lodged in his smoke-damaged lungs and there was nothing even good Dr Power from nearby Dartmoor Prison had been able to do to save him.

  Tears welled in her eyes, and in that twilight world between sleeping and waking, she willed the dream to be real. But even her strong, impetuous determination could not succeed in the impossible, and in her misery she really didn’t want to face the new day. If only she could turn back the clock, harness that momentary joy of having her father back. But she couldn’t. He was dead. Buried in the graveyard of the prison settlement at Princetown, two miles away across the bleak, savage moor.

  The prison. Oh, dear God. The horrific event out in the stable yard the previous day crashed into her mind like a sledgehammer. She sat bolt upright as the hideous clarity of it flashed into her stricken mind. Seth! All at once, her thoughts were a mangled torment of fury, sorrow and awestruck indignation. Sweet Jesus, he didn’t deserve the barbaric cruelty that had been meted out to him by the sergeant from the Civil Guard, who had clearly relished the power he held over the escaped convict he had finally tracked down. Seth Collingwood – or Warrington as Rose alone knew his real name to be – was obviously desperately ill, weak, feverish, agonized as he coughed up blood. And as the two soldiers had held him securely between them, the sergeant had punched him hard in the stomach and then kicked him as he lay writhing in agony on the stable yard cobbles. Yet even then, Seth had come out with a blatant lie to help protect Rose, even though he knew he would be punished even more severely because of it.

  Punished. God Almighty. They all knew exactly how he would be punished for his escape. Tied to the flogging frame and tortured with up to thirty-six lashes of the cat-o’-nine-tails, each frayed
end stiffened in one of several ways to slice into the flesh until the felon’s skin hung from his back in ribbons. Seth’s beautiful back, which she had secretly admired as she had removed the six balls of lead shot from his muscled shoulder. Rose wanted to scream at the horrendous vision of what would happen to him as soon as he was considered fit enough – if he ever were. Unleashed rage flared in Rose’s breast. This was 1877. Queen Victoria had been on the throne for forty years and was considered such a fair, just monarch, and yet she permitted such sadism to continue in her gaols and, so Rose believed, in her army and navy as well.

  But sitting in bed, seething with bitterness and anger wouldn’t help Seth. Yesterday, Charles, her husband, had promised to listen to Seth’s story of how he had come to be wrongfully convicted of robbery with violence. Of how, in a moment of madness, he had run off in to the thick fog, taking advantage of his trusted position of feeding the prison farm animals, a privilege he had earned through his previous good behaviour.

  The guard had fired at him. They were supposed to aim for the legs, to wound the escapee and prevent him from getting any further. But, for one reason or another, six of the thirteen lead pellets from the cartridge had penetrated Seth’s shoulder, and though in pain, he had run on, disappearing into the dense, vaporous shroud, lost and having no clue where he was going. He had discarded and hidden his prison boots that left the telltale arrow footprint, and had sped on blindly over boulders and through streams, his feet raw and bleeding as his socks disintegrated. Breathless, disorientated, he had stumbled on until his foot caught in a rock and his ankle had snapped beneath him. In agony, he had limped on until he had come to the grand, isolated house and had slipped unseen into one of the loose boxes where Rose had discovered him.

  And now Charles had promised to try to help him.

  Rose could scarcely believe it. Charles Chadwick had always scorned his wife’s sympathy over the vicious way in which the prisoners were treated. He disapproved of her association with her dear friend Molly, because her father was a prison warder and she was of working stock. Rose and Charles had fought like cat and dog, nearly coming to blows when he had discovered that she had sneaked off to Molly’s wedding to Joe Tyler, the stable lad at the gunpowder mills who as a child had been rescued by Henry Maddiford from a cruel Plymouth master, and so had been like a younger brother to Rose.

  There was so much Rose and Charles disagreed over, she refusing to bend to his will. But when the vile, sickening scene had unfolded before their very eyes in their own stable yard the previous day, Charles had apparently been moved by the convict’s plight. He had been incensed at the sergeant’s abject barbarity in front of his heavily pregnant wife, and when she had later begged him to listen to Seth’s claims of innocence, he had agreed.

  Perhaps, in her headstrong stubbornness, Rose had misjudged Charles, her opinion coloured by his insatiable demands in the bedroom. Their marriage could never be perfect and Charles would always be possessive and domineering in his love for her, but perhaps there was hope yet. And when their child was born, hopefully the son that Charles craved, they would find happiness at last.

  Rose hauled herself to her feet, flinging on her dressing gown, and some vain, desperate hope drew her to the window. She couldn’t actually see into the stable yard from there, but somewhere deep inside her a demented disbelief willed Seth to be safely hidden in Gospel’s loose box. She recognized the horrible choking void, the emptiness of total, irrevocable loss. For in her heart was a similar pain to when her father had died.

  She turned away from the window and, striding purposefully across the room, her hand closed on the doorknob. And there it stayed. For though the china sphere turned, she met with unyielding resistance. She tried again to no avail. Charles was always up before her, particularly since, to Rose’s relief, Dr Seaton had advised him a little while ago to desist from their marital relationship from then until six weeks after the birth. In a distracted moment, his mind preoccupied with the problem of the prisoner perhaps, Charles must have locked the door by mistake. But no matter. Rose hurried into the bathroom. There was another door directly on to the landing so that the servants could bring up hot water and later empty the tub without disturbing the master and mistress in the bedroom. Rose’s hand flew to the handle, tugged it, jerked it. But it was only ever locked from the inside, and the key was nowhere to be seen. She searched round in a panic, and then the truth drove into her heart like an arrow. Charles had locked her in.

  The bastard!

  May God forgive her, but at that moment, the hatred spewed into her gullet. Damn Charles! Damn and blast him to hell! It had been a trick, a total lie, his promises to help Seth. She should have guessed that he had just been trying to pacify her, in the hope that she would forget all about the felon and return to the law-abiding, respectable reputation of which Charles was so proud. But he had seemed so genuinely shocked by what had happened that she had believed his promises, had wanted to believe in him, just as she had always wanted to love him. But overnight he must have reconsidered, and returned to the bigoted, implacable brute he really was. She should have known that a leopard couldn’t change its spots! Not for the first time in their married life, she felt as if Charles had presented her with a bunch of beautiful roses that had quickly withered into a bouquet of thorns to scratch her and make her bleed. But if Charles thought he could treat her like that, he would have to think again. For Rose Maddiford was afraid of no man, and she wouldn’t give in without a fight. Her eyes narrowed dangerously and, raising her fists, she began to pummel relentlessly on the door.

  It was a full five minutes before she heard him on the other side, and the string of profanities that tumbled from her mouth shocked even herself, but she didn’t care. The instant Charles opened the door, she made to dive past him, but it was impossible. He grasped her by the shoulders and forced her back into the room, using his foot to slam the door closed behind him. Mad with fury, she managed to break free from his hold and stood back, breathing heavily, her fingers ready to claw at his face.

  ‘Shut your mouth, for God’s sake, Rose!’ Charles bawled at her. ‘You sound like a fish wife!’

  ‘And can you wonder at it, you treacherous sod! You—’

  ‘Treacherous! My God, you’re the one guilty of treachery, my girl, not me! Aiding and abetting an escaped convict, no less . . .’

  ‘One who with half a chance can prove his innocence, and yesterday you promised to help him! You tricked me, you despicable, bloody liar!’

  ‘Rose, how dare you!’ The shock on Charles’s face was so appalling that Rose recoiled. ‘And you don’t seriously think I was considering helping him, do you? A dangerous criminal who for God knows how long had been tricking my wife – my wife! – into concealing him—’

  ‘Seth’s no more dangerous than you are!’ Rose retorted, recovering from her momentary fear. ‘Less so, in fact! He risked discovery to save the life of one of the puppies when for two pins you would have drowned the lot of them!’

  ‘Seth now, is it? Well, I can see, madam, that he really had you wrapped round his little finger!’

  ‘Actions speak louder than words, Charles! And your actions – locking me in here – prove that your words are nothing but lies. Why did you promise to help Seth when you had no intention of doing so? You know,’ she sneered sarcastically, ‘I really thought for once that you were a man of principle, but how wrong I was!’

  She shuddered as Charles stepped towards her, poking his nose into her face and baring his teeth as he spoke. ‘I’ll tell you why!’ he snarled. ‘Yes, I was appalled by the way that sergeant treated your convict, but I was mainly worried by the effect it was all clearly having on you! And God knows the effect it may have had on our son! I needed to calm you down, and that seemed to be the only way to do so! Now, I’ve already had a summons from the prison governor, you know. And I’ll probably have to do some pretty clever talking to get you and that stupid old doctor out of trouble! I’ll have to blame
it all on your condition and your frail nerves, though God knows, if the governor could see you now . . . I’ll have to lie through my back teeth to save your hide! And if you think for one moment I believe your story about stealing the plaster of Paris from the doctor’s bag, well, I hope for the old fool’s sake I can manage to convince the governor of it!’

  He clamped his jaw shut, his cheeks flushed puce and his bulging eyes boring into her. She opened and closed her mouth twice, burning to make some scathing retort. But though she was poised to fly at him, she managed to restrain herself. What she really needed was to manoeuvre him. Besides, she recognized that she had put him in a difficult position, and she supposed she was sorry for that. And when she thought about how she had persuaded dear old Dr Seaton from Tavistock to treat Seth secretly in the stable, setting his leg and providing antiseptic for the wounds on his shoulder, Rose felt horribly guilty. She must do everything in her power to keep the elderly physician out of trouble. It had been ironic that Charles had refused to allow the prison medical officer, Dr Power, to take care of her during her pregnancy, as he would have had no option but to take the escaped convict back into custody. Rose could taste the same bitterness in her mouth as when she had argued with Charles at the time. He had considered Dr Power good enough to tend her father, but not to oversee the birth of his son! Well, just now she would perhaps take some vengeful satisfaction by outwitting him with a little play-acting.

  She lowered her eyes and allowed the tears of anguish that were indeed blurring her vision again to meander down her cheeks. She sank down awkwardly on the edge of the bed, her head bowed over her jutting stomach, and wrung her hands.

  ‘It really was true,’ she moaned, ‘even if you don’t believe me. I did steal from Dr Seaton. He wasn’t involved at all. I put the plaster on Seth’s ankle. I don’t suppose I made a very good job of it, but I didn’t know what else to do. I was so confused . . . But, Charles, please. I really do believe Seth’s story. Surely if it can actually be proved that he’s innocent . . .’