Death Be Not Proud

F Dunn C

Description

It would be so easy just to stay there, submerged and warm where the world couldnt touch me and I wouldt have to face tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. So easy. To let go. Painless. Quick.Following the vicious attack that nearly killed her and reeling from the discovery that mysterious Matthew Lynes the man with whom she has inadvertently and irresistibly fallen in love is lying, historian, Emma DEresby flees the college in Maine for her ancient home town in England. With her she carries a precious Seventeenth-century journal and the secrets bound within its pages. Once home, she comes to terms with a shattering revelation, and, just when she thinks she has the answers, faces a future where past and present collide.Set in England and in Maine, USA and steeped in history and atmosphere, Death Be Not Proud the second book of The Secret Of The Journal series continues the romantic mystery begun in Mortal Fire as Emma and Matthew reveal the turbulent truth of his past.Dunn vividly evokes a range of characters and the tense and tender relationships between them. Fay Sampson, award-winning author, The Hunted Hare.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 19 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782640547
• Langue: English

Extrait

DEATH BE NOT PROUD
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Mortal Fire

Text copyright 2013 C. F. Dunn This edition copyright 2013 Lion Hudson
The right of C. F. Dunn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Lion Fiction an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www.lionhudson.com/fiction
ISBN 978 1 78264 034 9 e-ISBN 978 1 78264 054 7
First edition 2013
Background image acknowledgments iStockphoto: pp. 10-11 Alexey Popov; pp. 12-13 JVT; p. 79 Kim Sohee
Cover image acknowledgments Corbis: Patrick Strattner/fstop; iStock: peter zelei, Diane Diederich
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Contents

Acknowledgments

Characters

Map of Stamford

Map of Rutland

The Story So Far
Chapter

1. Abyss

2. Revelation

3. The Museum

4. The Box

5. Martinsthorpe

6. Ghosts

7. The Horse s Mouth

8. The Call

9. Out of Time

10. Saying Goodbye

11. Revolution

12. Exit

13. Solo

14. Walls of Jericho

15. Secrets and Ties

16. Complications

17. Aftershock

18. Taking Stock

19. Dangerous Liaisons

20. Out of the Frying Pan

21. Defining Boundaries

Author Notes
For my mother and father, who made all things possible.
Acknowledgments

My gratitude, as ever, to Tony Collins and a great team at Lion Fiction - especially Kirsten, Jude, Jessica, and Simon - who have guided me with infinite patience through the labyrinthine process of publishing, and to Noelle Pederson, in the USA, and her team at Kregel Publishing for their fantastic support. To authors Fay Sampson and Colin Dexter I owe thanks for their generous endorsement.
Thank you to Wendy Rowden, whose power of persuasion is second to none. My mother, Mary, whose unstinting encouragement is matched only by my father, Bill Turnill, whose sterling work makes him a one-man promotion team to be reckoned with.
To Dee Prewer, who once again cast her velvet eye over the manuscript, and to Lisa Lewin, who had the fortitude to read the first draft.
To Mark Nardi-Dei, whose knowledge of the aircraft industry helped to join up the dots, and Kate Nardi-Dei, who understood the flight plan. Thanks for the lift to Bridgton, Maine, and the chowder, guys. Oh, and Mark told you so.
My thanks to the staff at Stamford Museum (alas a victim of the cuts), and for the enthusiastic advice given to me by staff at the Rutland County Museum (Oakham); also to the gentleman at Gunthorpe, for giving me access to Martinsthorpe, where I could step back in time.
My enduring love to Richard, Kate, and Sophie, who keep my feet on the ground, and our corgi - Stig - for the walks that keep me moving.
Last and foremost, my thanks to the many readers, whose feedback and support make writing worthwhile: this book is for you.
Characters

ACADEMIC & RESEARCH STAFF AT HOWARD S LAKE COLLEGE, MAINE
Emma D Eresby, Department of History (Medieval and Early Modern)
Elena Smalova, Department of History (Post-Revolutionary Soviet Society)
Matias Lidstr m, Faculty of Bio-medicine (Genetics)
Matthew Lynes, surgeon, Faculty of Bio-medicine (Mutagenesis)
Sam Wiesner, Department of Mathematics (Metamathematics)
Kort Staahl, Department of English (Early Modern Literature)
MA STUDENTS
Holly Stanhope; Josh Feitel; Hannah Graham; Aydin Yilmaz; Leo Hamell
IN CAMBRIDGE
Guy Hilliard, Emma s former tutor
EMMA S FAMILY
Hugh D Eresby, her father
Penny D Eresby, her mother
Beth Marshall, her sister
Rob Marshall, her brother-in-law
Alex & Flora, her twin nephew and niece
Nanna, her grandmother

Mike Taylor, friend of the family
Joan Seaton, friend of the family
MATTHEW S FAMILY
Ellen

Henry
Pat (Henry s wife)

Margaret (Maggie - Henry s daughter)

Daniel (Dan - Henry s son)
Jeannette (Jeannie - Daniel s wife)
Harry
Ellie
Joel

The Story So Far

Mortal Fire introduced the 29-year-old, independent, and self-assured Cambridge history lecturer Emma D Eresby, who has one obsession in life: the curious journal of a seventeenth-century Englishman, a portion of which was left to her by her late grandfather.
Leaving her Cambridge college for a professorship in an exclusive university in Maine, USA, where the complete journal is housed, Emma meets the enigmatic 33-year-old surgeon Matthew Lynes, a quiet and thoughtful widower. Haunted by an illicit relationship with a senior tutor at Cambridge, she is confused by her feelings for Matthew; but she senses that he is not all he appears, and the ghost of his dead wife seems ever present. Encouraged by her vivacious Russian friend and colleague Elena Smalova, Emma begins to contemplate a possible future with Matthew, despite the unwanted but persistent attentions of the seductive Sam Wiesner. Meanwhile, a series of attacks on women leaves Emma fearful that the sinister Professor Kort Staahl is somehow involved, and she begins to suspect he is stalking her.
Driven to learn more about the elusive Matthew, Emma takes the unique journal, in which she believes there are clues to his family s past, from the college library. Although she means to return the journal, fate intervenes as Staahl mounts a vicious psychotic attack on her. Matthew s intervention saves her, but in the days that follow, as he nurses Emma back to health, his unusual attributes raise questions that he is unwilling to answer, and the possibility of a darker side becomes apparent.
Emma s parents fly to Maine and it becomes clear that she has a strained relationship with her domineering father. Although they pressurize her to return to England, she defies them, but on a day out in the mountains, Matthew s ability to survive a bear attack and his refusal to disclose the truth ends in an emotionally charged encounter. Emma decides that things cannot remain as they are. Bewildered, and still suffering from the effects of the attack, she flees back to England with her parents, taking the journal with her in the hope that, given time to think, she will discover what Matthew conceals.
CHAPTER 1
Abyss

Death waits for us all; it is only a matter of time and the when and the where and the how are the only variations to the song we must all sing.

I had good days and I had bad days.
It wasn t as if I could blame anyone else for the condition I found myself in, so I didn t look for any sympathy. I knew that my near-vegetative state caused my parents hours of anxiety, but I couldn t face the questions that queued in my own mind, let alone answer any of theirs.
I stayed in my room. Where I lay at an angle on my bed, I could watch the winter sun cast canyons of light as it moved across the eaved ceiling. Sometimes the light was the barest remnant from a clouded sky; at others, so bright that the laths were ribs under the aged plaster, regular undulations under the chalk-white skin.
I hadn t spent so long at home for many years. Here at the top of the house, the cars droned tunelessly as they laboured up the hill beyond the sheltering walls of St Mary s Church. Below, the voices of the street were mere echoes as they rose up the stone walls, entering illicitly through the thin frame of the window. I listened to the random sounds of life; I watched it in the arc of the day. And the sounds and the light were immaterial - the days irrelevant - time did not touch me.
Sometime - days after fleeing Maine - my mother knocked softly on my door, her disembodied head appearing round it when I did not answer.
Emma, you have twenty minutes to get yourself ready for your hospital appointment; your father s getting the car now.
Her voice hovered in the air above my bed, and I heard every word she said, but they didn t register. I didn t move. She came into the room and stood at the end of my bed, her hands on her hips, her no-nonsense look in place. The lines creasing her forehead were deeper than I remembered, or maybe it was the way the light from the window fell across her brow.
I know you heard me; I want you to get up and get dressed now . I won t keep the hospital waiting.
She hadn t used that tone with me for nearly twenty years and I found it comforting in its severity.
Emma!
My eyes focused and saw her shaking, her hands clutching white-knuckled at the old iron-and-brass bedstead.
Emma, I am asking you, please
My poor mother; with my Nanna in hospital and her youngest daughter tottering towards the edge of reality, she was strung out just as far as she could go, eking out her emotional reserves like food in a famine. I blinked once as I surfaced from the dark pool of my refuge, my mouth dry; I half-rolled, half-sat up. Wordlessly, I climbed off the bed and went stiffly to the bathroom down the landing, my mother a few steps behind me. I shut the door quietly on her, and turned to look in the mirror above the basin. Sunken eyes stared back from my skull-like head, skin brittle over high cheekbones. Even my freckles seemed pale under the dim, grim light from the east window. Mechanically I brushed my teeth and washed, not caring as the cast on my arm became sodden. The bruises above my breasts and below my throat stood out against my fair skin. I pressed my fingertips into them, hands spanning the space between each smoky mark. I closed my eyes at the subdued pain and remembered why they were there.
Mum waited for me outside the door, and I aimlessly wondered if she thought I might try and escape - or something worse. I understood the effect of my behaviour on my family; I understood and cared with a remorse that should have torn the very heart from me, had I one. But my head and my heart were d