Stranger at Stonewycke (The Stonewycke Legacy Book #1)

Michael Phillips, Judith Pella

Description

The push for modernization in the early twentieth century has brought many changes to the once-grand Stonewycke estate. By 1931, the Stonewycke fortune is stretched thin as the Depression reaches Scotland, and heir Allison MacNeil finds herself at a crossroads. When a stranger shows up with a marked interest in the estate, will she hold on to the family legacy?

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441229786
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 1987 by Michael R. Phillips and Judith Pella
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-2978-6
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Eric Walljasper
Judith Pella is represented by The Steve Laube Agency
Dedication
With love and thanks to my parents John and Norma Pella
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 3
Copyright Page 4
Dedication 5
Introduction 11
1. Lady Margaret 19
2. Stonewycke 26
3. The Sinner and the Serpent 33
4. Skittles 44
5. A Scheme Takes Shape 55
6. A Festive Evening at Stonewycke 61
7. Allison 72
8. Grave Words 77
9. To Catch a Thief 80
10. Flight 92
11. Home Again 99
12. A New Scheme 107
13. A Suspicious Caller 117
14. Errand Day in Port Strathy 120
15. Stranger in a Strange Land 125
16. Introductions 129
17. The Lady and the Sharp 133
18. Disclosures 141
19. Conversations in the Bluster ’N Blow 151
20. On the Sea with Jesse Cameron 159
21. Allison in New Town 170
22. The Door Is Opened 175
23. Another Stranger in Town 185
24. Visitors 189
25. The Greenhouse 196
26. The Stable 203
27. Heated Words 214
28. The Hunt Begins 220
29. Braenock Ridge 227
30. Telegram from the Fox 232
31. An Unexpected Invitation 236
32. Glasgow Red Dog 244
33. The Party 252
34. The Drive Home 265
35. Back to Stonewycke 276
36. Grandpa Dorey 285
37. Unexpected Guest 293
38. Confrontation 300
39. The Healing Rain 309
40. Tragedy 313
41. Rescue 318
42. New Dawn 325
43. The Prayers of the Righteous 331
44. Ramsey Head Again 334
45. Crossroads 342
46. The Lady and the Seeker 346
47. A Deal at the Bluster ’N Blow 353
48. Digory’s Clues Unfold 359
49. The Turn 366
50. The Confession 371
51. Abduction 379
52. The Abandoned Cottage 382
53. Looking Death in the Eye 388
54. The Stretching of Allison’s Faith 392
55. The Fate of the Bonnie Flora MacD 396
56. The Guest of the Admiral Mannheim 399
57. The Legacy Continues 403
About the Authors 411
Fiction by Michael Phillips 412
Books by Judith Pella 413
Introduction
To man’s undiscerning eye, the generations come and go, fading one into the other, ultimately passing from the face of the earth. As the march of history progresses, only the land remains, while men, women, and children grow, live, and die and then return to the earth from which they came, seemingly swallowed into nothingness by a vast uncaring universe.
In reality, however, the land is the stage upon which a drama of unparalleled eternal significance is played within the hearts of every man and woman who sets foot upon it. Unseen by those around us, often uncomprehended by ourselves, the choices and values of our earthly lives mold and determine the character we take with us into the next life.
From the time the Picts settled in northern Scotland in the seventh century, until the region was overrun by the Vikings in the ninth, and then settled throughout the following centuries by the Scots, the estate known as Stonewycke became a symbol of the enduring quality of the land. When the castle of that same name was built by Andrew Ramsay in the 1540’s, his prayer was that the estate would stand as a sentinel in the north to God’s goodness. His prayers for the generations who would follow him in the Ramsay line resulted in blessings and prosperity to the family throughout the next two and a half centuries, finding special fulfillment in the righteousness of his descendant Anson Ramsey in the early nineteenth century. (The spelling of the family name was changed in 1745 to Ramsey.)
But as the blessings of God follow generational lines, so also do the consequences of wrongdoing and ungodly choices. The self-will and personal greed of Ross Ramsay, brother of Adam de Ramsay, baron of Banff, also became an intrinsic factor in the family bloodline—a black stain which, unknown to Andrew, his descendant, was too strong to be rooted out entirely by the prayers that followed the stigma.
Hence, though Andrew’s blood was strong in Anson, Ross’s found fertile soil in Anson’s sons, whose father suffered the tormenting fate of watching his own offspring turn away from the God of their fathers. The family continued to be infused by new blood; while the choices and prayers of each succeeding generation breathed new life into the heritage of godliness, at the same time self-interest strengthened the forces which opposed those prayers. The grafting into the family of James Duncan in 1845 threatened to eradicate altogether by greed and ambition what Andrew and Anson had prayed so diligently for.
Yet in the mystery of God’s purpose, in James’s own daughter rose the strong desire to give her life to the Almighty plan. Such yielding, however, never comes easily. Battle raged within the soul of young Maggie Duncan—the conflict found in her Ramsey bloodline was illustrative of the essential human condition. Indeed, the future of the family’s heritage was at stake. Her laying down of self, and her prayers for the future of the Ramsey/Duncan lineage, rekindled for a new era the prayers begun through her ancestors, enabling the blessings of God to pass to new generations through her granddaughter Joanna.
Thus the legacy continued into the second millennium of settlement on the northern Scottish coast. And with the passage of time the tempo of life accelerated. The twentieth century brought many changes to the inheritors of the once-magnificent estate known as Stonewycke. In Great Britain the twentieth century brought the end of the Victorian Era with the Queen’s death in 1901. Monarchies had come and gone countless times before, but this transfer of power was more far-reaching in its impact on the world than a mere changing of the guard from mother to son in London. A thorough-going transfiguration, the roots of which had sprouted during Victoria’s lifetime, was in the process of turning society inside out.
Not only was the entire political framework of the world being revamped; cataclysmic social change, affecting every level of society, was sweeping through the once-proud center of the mighty British Empire. The growth of the Labor Party overhauled Parliament’s decision-making process. Morals and literature changed dramatically. The spiritual foundation-stones of Victoria’s administration eroded. Socially, economically, politically, and spiritually old norms were being thrown out. Technological breakthroughs, given momentum by the Great War against Germany, found their way into the daily lives of countless millions on both sides of the Atlantic—automobiles, electricity, airplanes, radios, urban growth, new factories, and the wild music and fashions of the 1920s.
These were profound changes. The world in the first two decades of the twentieth century was a world rushing to modernize itself. The world of Maggie’s childhood was a world as distinct from that in which Joanna would raise her daughter, as the horse was distinct from the automobile. Between 1900 and 1930 stretched a gulf, not of decades but of centuries.
Perhaps most significant for the northern shires of Scotland during this time was the final demise of the old feudal and manorial systems of land management, which had been dying a slow death for centuries. Once-proud estates gradually were sold off in parcels, were apportioned and split between heirs, or went bankrupt as their owners desperately tried to keep vast holdings together with insufficient capital. Not only economics, but social outlook had changed. While titles and nobility still mattered a great deal in Britain, they were coming to matter less. The working classes could now vote and buy land and improve their lot. The separation between the workers and the aristocracy was much narrower. No longer were the fortunes of the workers solely bound up in their dependence on the landowners and lairds who owned their houses, their lands—sometimes, it seemed, their very souls.
With such total dependency gone, the economic benefits to local lairds of the surrounding crofters and poor tenant farmers was also gone. Only the landowners who were able to cope with the changes time had brought survived in their positions of stature. They forged new, more equitable relationships with their subjects, and found other means to support their estates rather than by the blood and toil of the peasantry.
Many estates were not able to survive intact. Others, like Stonewycke, faced the new times by adapting to them rather than trying to stem the tides of change. With a wisdom supernaturally inspired, Anson Ramsey drew up a transfer document for a time which would come years after him, transferring a large portion of the Stonewycke estate to the people who lived on the land. Anson’s transfer turned out to be the salvation of the proud Ramsey heritage. For in that magnanimous act was solidified a bond between the people of Stonewycke and its nobility, unique among such estates—a bond of mutual love that would see mighty Stonewycke, and all those bound to it, through years of change and regeneration.
Quietly, invisibly, the hand of God is always at work. Although we may see only a narrow indi