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Larkrigg Fell
The Brandon twins are unalike in every way except in their
love of their home, Larkrigg Hall. Beth is the romantic one with dreams of an
idyllic life in rural Lakeland. Sarah is ambitious, ready to take risks with the
family woollen business to achieve the life style she craves.
But jealousy and greed mar their uncertain relationship so
that when tragedy strikes both sisters are forced to come to terms with a very
different situation. Sarah goes off to Italy, Beth loses the man she loves and
launches into a marriage of convenience. Having to face emotional suffering
financial ruin, Beth learns to fight for, or lose, the things that matter most
to her.
1977
1
'I think this could all be a horrible mistake.'
The two girls stood in the bare cobbled yard, a warm breeze
riffling their thin shirts and blue denims, a battery of suitcases at their
feet. It would have been plain to an observer, had there been one present,
that they were not happy. One, rather small and softly rounded with short
brown hair clipped steadfastly behind her ears, was almost weeping. The
other, a mass of black curls bristling with temper, violet-blue eyes blazing,
could barely stand still. She it was who had spoken her feelings in a
sullen and furious pout.
A nine-hour flight, several more hours spent hanging around
airports and a long, dusty train journey from Manchester caused the girls, in
their different ways, to express their exhaustion and despair.
'There's no one in I tell you.' Sarah hammered for the fourth
time on the solid oak door. It was low with an oak lintel above and a
threshwood below, leading into the 'hallan' or hall where animal feed might once
have been stored but now was no doubt full of old coats and muddy boots.
Sarah shuddered. Not her sort of place at all. What on earth was she
doing here? 'Didn't you tell them when we'd be arriving?'
'You can't have done. Incompetent as ever, Beth.
Don't deny it.'
The taxi which had deposited the twins with their luggage in
the yard of Broombank farm was rapidly disappearing down the long winding lane
and while Sarah beat unsuccessfully on the unyielding door then set off round
the back of the house to seek another, Beth emitted a sigh of relief and began
to gaze about her in awed wonder.
Lakeland was greeting them with one of her rare and perfect
days in late May. Painted blue sky, clouds like white socks sauntering
over the distant peaks and closer at hand the soft bleating of contented sheep
cropping impossibly green grass. Broombank too was at its best, the spiky
bushes which gave the farm its name a blaze of gold on the lower slopes of
Dundale Knot. Had she been more conversant with Lakeland weather she might
have looked more closely at those cumulus clouds banking up on the horizon, but
was too absorbed fighting the guilt which Sarah's sulks always brought out in
her, to notice.
Beth dug her toes into the cracks of the dry-stone wall and
hauled herself up to sit on the flat stones on top. she guessed it was a
dreadful breach of country etiquette but couldn't resist, cupping her chin in
her hands and gazing about her, drinking it all in.
She'd forgotten it would be like this. So wild, so
remote, so utterly beautiful. She could feel its beauty already soothing
her and wondered why Sarah could not appreciate its majestic grandeur. But
then Sarah was not in the mood to think of anything but her own
discomfort. When was she ever?
Yet it was she, Beth, who had the greater reason to be
miserable. Less than two months ago she'd been sitting at her dressing
table in a white bridal gown, hand stitched by Miss Lester of Boston, when Derry
had walked in . . .
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