The Sugar Merchant's Wife

Lizzie Lane

Description

In the face of changing fortunes, the Strong family must unite to keep their wealth and status…or risk losing it all.

As Cholera sweeps through the streets of Bristol, no one is immune. Blanche and her husband Conrad Heinkel, sugar merchant and master sugar baker, are devastated when their seven-year-old daughter Anne, is taken by the deadly disease.
Lost in her own immense grief, her childhood sweetheart Tom Strong, is the only man who can heal Blanche’s terrible hurt and reignite the passion for life and love that has died within her.
But Horatia Strong, daughter of the eldest Strong son, has her sights on grabbing power of the Strong family dynasty. Ambitious and more ruthless than most women, she is still desperately in love with her adoptive cousin, Tom, despite his humble birth. As her brother Nelson succumbs to his opium habit, Horatia, believes that only Tom can give her the wealth and strength to take the family businesses to new heights.
Will Tom be able to leave his romantic history with Blanche behind for the sake of the Strong family? Or will Blanche and Tom get their happy ending they deserve?
Perfect for fans of Dinah Jefferies and Fiona Valpy
Previously published as 'Just Before Dawn' by Jeannie Johnson and 'The Sugar Merchants Wife' by Erica Brown.

Don’t miss the rest of the Strong Family Sagas: 1. Daughter of Destiny
2. The Sugar Merchant’s Wife
3. Secrets of the Past

Sujets

• Mashups
• Historical Fiction
• Siblings
• Historical
• Women
• Inglaterra
• 19th century
• Historical romance
• Sibling
• General officer
• Woman
• The Women
• General
• Family Life
• Romance
• England
• Gloucestershire
• Somerset
• Bristol
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 25 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781837518234
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE SUGAR MERCHANT’S WIFE
THE STRONG FAMILY TRILOGY


LIZZIE LANE
CONTENTS



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30


Acknowledgments

More from Lizzie Lane

About the Author

Sixpence Stories

About Boldwood Books
1

For the rest of her life, Blanche would detest dandelions. She could cope with them in flower, glowing like bright suns in the grass, but not when they turned fluffy-white, their seeds tossed like tiny parasols on the breeze.
Dandelions grew profusely on the common opposite the Bedminster cottage that Blanche’s husband had bought on a whim. His original idea had been to use it as extra quarters for the servants. However, Blanche and the children had fallen in love with its pretty rooms and twisted apple trees and given it a name – Little Paradise.
‘It is not a playground,’ Conrad had said.
Smiling bewitchingly, Blanche had argued that the children should have exercise in the open air.
Conrad had pointed out that they had a garden at Somerset Parade.
Blanche had convinced him that their children burned off more energy playing in the empty rooms of the cottage and running on the common opposite where sheep still grazed and the grass grew waist high.
She won the argument, and for a while, Little Paradise lived up to its name.
It was after Anne went picking dandelion clocks on the common that everything changed.
‘They’re just weeds,’ Blanche remarked as she straightened the newly hand-painted sign that hung from the cottage gate.
Anne held her chin high and said to her mother loftily, ‘I think them very fine and if I put them in a vase in my bedroom and leave them close to the window, they can fly away like fairies when the wind blows.’
Blanche laughed.
Clutching her bouquet, Anne crossed to the common to collect more.
Blanche craned her neck and smiled at the sight of Anne’s straw bonnet bobbing up and down as she picked her dandelions.
Her attention was drawn to the sight of an old woman struggling along the path that dissected the common into two uneven halves – a street seller on her way home judging by the tray she carried.
‘Lemonade, my dear,’ Blanche heard her calling to Anne. ‘Only a penny a glass. I have just enough left for a slip of a girl.’
‘Damn this blasted kite!’
Blanche tore her gaze away from the woman and directed it at her son. ‘Wash your mouth out, Maximillian Heinkel!’
Max pulled a face. ‘It’s enough to make a man swear,’ he grumbled.
‘You’re not a man,’ his mother said in a chastising manner, then wistfully to herself, ‘Please stay a child for a little longer.’
Accompanied by his younger sisters, Max was attempting to fly a kite. The wind was less than exuberant. Like a dead bird, it trailed behind them, bumping and shuddering through the grass.
‘I think it’s time we went home,’ called Blanche.
‘I bet it isn’t,’ said Max, who was always prepared to hold an opinion on anything.
A church clock struck four.
‘I think I won the bet. Now let’s see how much you owe me,’ she said, holding her finger to her chin and looking as though she really was calculating a figure.
Max groaned despairingly. ‘Already? We haven’t got it flying properly. Couldn’t we stay a little longer?’
‘There’s not enough breeze and there’s nothing to be done about it today,’ his mother called back as she shut the cottage gate.
Resigned that kite-flying was over for the day, the children obeyed, though Max dragged his feet. Blanche smiled to herself. Conrad called him defiant. She preferred to think that he was more independent than the others. He didn’t get dejected as they did when given orders he had no wish to obey, but contemplative, as though he were considering how best to achieve his desire without appearing belligerent.
Tucking the kite behind his back, he came to his mother’s side. She eyed him lovingly. She shouldn’t have favourites, but sometimes she couldn’t resist being too proud of him. She tried not to show it too much in front of Conrad. Good man that he was, he had married her knowing that she was expecting a child that wasn’t his. At the time, she had thought that Nelson Strong was his father, but could not tell her new husband.
Nelson had made love to her before she knew he was her half-brother. The truth of that still made her tremble. It was only when Max was born two months before he should have been, that the truth struck her and she remembered a night spent with another man…
Behind his intelligent eyes, Max’s brain clearly ticked like a clock. He was already planning his next day of kite-flying. ‘I’m back at school soon and the weekends are not always the best time if the weather’s bad. But school breaks up in four weeks. There will be days then. What do you think, Mother?’
His adamant expression struck a chord in her heart. Blanche smoothed the dark-blond hair where sun-lightened streaks fell over his brow. ‘I think that this is not the best place for flying kites. It’s too close to the river. We shall take the carriage to Durdham Down when we next go kite-flying. The wind is brisker up there.’
Max brightened. ‘Good.’
‘I’m thirsty,’ said Lucy, her youngest, slipping her hand into that of her mother. Bright blue eyes shone like moons in her baby round face.
‘I’m sorry, but the pump at the cottage needs mending. You’ll have to wait until you get home,’ said Blanche.
‘I’m not thirsty,’ said Anne, addressing Lucy in a childish effort to invoke jealousy. ‘I bought some lemonade from that old woman back there.’
‘Can I have one, Mother?’ Lucy asked, adopting the plaintive voice that usually got her what she wanted.
‘Me too,’ added Adeline.
Blanche sighed. After all, it was a long walk back. ‘I suppose so.’ She turned to where the old woman had been with her stone jug and tin cups, but she was gone. A cloud of dandelion clocks flew around in a sudden gust of breeze in the place where she’d been.
Blanche sighed. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to stay thirsty.’
‘Not me,’ said Anne, ‘I’m not thirsty at all,’ and she laughed and danced along the edge of the common and most of the way home.
It was the most wonderful sound to her mother’s ears, a sound she would treasure for ever. It was the last time for everything.



* * *
Blanche stared at the bedraggled stalks wilting in a vase on the window sill. Just days ago, they’d been growing in the sleek grass in front of Little Paradise. Anne had been well. Now she was very sick and, like the flowers, was dying.
‘If I lose Anne, I swear to God I will never, ever bear another child,’ Blanche murmured.
Conrad was standing behind her, his hand on her shoulder. She felt him tense and knew he would take her bitter words to heart. It couldn’t be helped. Anne’s face was deathly white, her skin shiny with sweat and the room stunk as a result of the continual emptying of her bowels.
Conrad was a good man and Blanche had never lacked for anything, but she’d give it all now, including her own life, for her daughter to recover.
‘Shall I get Mary to bring you some tea and something to eat?’ asked Conrad solicitously.
Blanche shook her head. Although her mouth was dry and her stomach ached with hunger, suffering in such a little way seemed inconsequential and in a strange way, just. Such discomfort was trivial in comparison to what Anne was going through.
Blanche stroked her daughter’s damp hair away from her brow. Anne had been given laudanum but she still grimaced with pain, though had ceased screaming. Seeing her knees drawn up to her stomach and her body convulsing in agony had been the worse experience – so far.
‘It won’t be long,’ the doctor said softly. ‘Perhaps just before dawn.’
‘We can only pray,’ said Conrad. ‘Her life is in God’s hands now.’
Blanche kept her gaze fixed on her child. ‘She’s going to die,’ she said, her body cold as ice. ‘God is deaf.’
Her husband removed his hands from her shoulders and saw the doctor out. On his return, he tried to convince her to take some refreshment and leave everything to the nurse.
Blanche allowed herself to be persuaded and swallowed a cup of tea and a morsel of food. When a church clock struck midnight, she awoke to find that she’d fallen asleep on a settee in the drawing room.
Conrad slept across from her in a chair. She didn’t wake him but swiftly refreshed herself and went back to her daughter’s room. The nurse had straightened the bedclothes and placed a bunch of lavender in a vase at the side of the bed. The dandelion stalks had been thrown away.
Blanche sent the nurse away. ‘This is my child,’ she insisted. ‘I will take over now.’
The room was warm and dark by virtue of the heavy green damask curtains covering the windows. The smell of lavender filled the air, bunches of it hanging before the open windows. More lavender was scattered over the floor, the bluish-purple buds releasing their heady aroma with every soft footfall. It was said that it helped keep the ‘miasma’ at bay. She’d remembered it from the Reverend Strong’s room when she’d been in service at Marstone Court, the Strong family’s mansion outside Bristol.
The Reverend had been dying of a lung disease, the congestion building and necessitating him being turned in his bed so he could breathe. She also remembered Tom and the Reverend’s good deed. He had adopted Tom, snatching him from a life on the streets, perhaps to end up dead or destitute, hung or transported to Botany Bay. Ten years had passed, yet it came back to haunt her even now. She hoped the lavender would do more for her little one; anything she could do, she would do. The past had no bearing here. The present, and Anne having a future, were