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  Contents

  Margaret Pemberton

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  Margaret Pemberton

  Forget-Me-Not Bride

  Margaret Pemberton

  Margaret Pemberton is the bestselling author of over thirty novels in many different genres, some of which are contemporary in setting and some historical.

  She has served as Chairman of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and has three times served as a committee member of the Crime Writers’Association. Born in Bradford, she is married to a Londoner, has five children and two dogs and lives in Whitstable, Kent. Apart from writing, her passions are tango, travel, English history and the English countryside.

  Dedication

  For MOLLY RUMBELOW

  Chapter One

  It was the first day of June 1900 but there was no June-like mood in Herbert Mosley’s household, high on one of the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay.

  ‘That girl should be whipped!’ he thundered as spilt milk ran in rivulets across the damask tablecloth and dribbled on to a hideously patterned Turkish carpet.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lottie Stullen said contritely, looking not at her enraged uncle but towards her eighteen-year-old sister. ‘I didn’t mean to do it, Lilli. I just caught the glass with the edge of my hand and …’

  ‘It’s all right, Lottie,’ Lilli said, already mopping the milk up with her napkin. ‘No great harm has been done …’

  ‘No great harm has been done? No great harm has been done?’ Her uncle pushed his chair abruptly away from the breakfast table his heavy-jowled face choleric. ‘No child of mine would have ever made such a remark! That you have done so is typical of your regrettable upbringing and Irish blood!’

  Lilli’s face whitened. Since she and her ten-year-old sister and six-year-old brother had, of necessity, moved into her mother’s sister’s childless home, she had become accustomed to joylessness and petty tyranny. What she had not become accustomed to, and had no intention of becoming accustomed to, were derogatory remarks about her dead father.

  ‘Lottie has made an apology and that should suffice,’ she said tightly, pushing her chair away from the table and rising to her feet with an abruptness equal to his own. ‘Your remarks about my upbringing and Irishness are totally unwarranted.’

  Her Aunt Gussie gave a cry of apprehension.

  Her little brother, Leo, began to cry.

  Lottie clasped her hands tightly in her pinafored lap, hating herself for her clumsiness and hating her English Uncle Herbert even more.

  ‘Your father was a reckless nincompoop who made no provision for his motherless children,’ Herbert roared, his hands splayed on the table as he stood, resting his weight on them, leaning bullishly towards her.

  Lilli didn’t flinch but her forget-me-not-blue eyes flashed fire. ‘My father was a gentleman, as any other gentleman would have been well aware!’

  Herbert sucked in his breath, hardly able to believe his ears. ‘Into my study!’ he hissed, ugly splodges of white mottling his flushed colour. ‘No-one talks to me like that in my own house! Especially not a slip of a girl who, if it wasn’t for my charity, would be on the streets, begging!’

  Only responsibility for Leo and Lottie prevented Lilli from retorting that begging would be far preferable to living with him in his tomb of a house. She had, she knew, already gone too far. If he wanted he could turn her out of his hateful house and then what would happen to Leo and Lottie? Her uncle would never allow her to take them with her. Childless himself, she had overheard him discussing with her aunt the possibility of changing Leo’s surname from Stullen to Mosley. It was an action she had vowed he would take only over her dead body, but it had served to show the direction of his thoughts and it was a direction that filled her with dark foreboding.

  As she followed him out of the room she wondered for the hundredth time how the three of them were ever going to escape him.

  At eighteen she was old enough and capable enough to make her own way in the world, but to do so would mean relinquishing Leo and Lottie totally to her aunt and uncle’s care. If only her Aunt Gussie were a little more forceful the dilemma might not be so great, but her mother’s sister was anything but forceful. Whatever her husband said, she bided by. And she was hungry for children of her own.

  As she crossed the hallway towards her uncle’s study, Lilli was aware that in refusing to be brow-beaten by him she wasn’t, in fact, behaving very sensibly. Such behaviour would merely provide him with the ideal excuse to disclaim responsibility for her and he would then have complete guardianship over Leo and Lottie. Hateful though the prospect was, she was going to have to apologise to him. And then she was going to have to think of a way in which she could care for Leo and Lottie without being beholden to her aunt and uncle in any way.

  ‘Shut the door!’ he ordered as she walked into the room after him.

  With her head high, her jawline tense, she did as he bid.

  He was seated at a large desk that fronted a window through which could be seen a cloud-flecked sky and a corner of the fifty mile expanse of water that was the Bay. He breathed in deeply and then said unequivocally, ‘I demand an apology.’

  Everything about him was tense: his voice; the set of his shoulders; the way his hands were clasped together in front of him, the knuckles white. With a tightening of her stomach muscles she realised that he anticipated her refusing to do any such thing, and that he then intended ordering her from the house.

  ‘I apologise,’ she said, forcing the words through lips that felt frozen, her only solace the bitter disappointment that flared though his eyes.

  ‘The devil you do!’ Once again, like a malevolent Jack-in-the-Box, he sprang to his feet. ‘You’re being insolent, young lady, and don’t think I don’t know it!’

  ‘You demanded an apology and I gave it,’ she retorted icily, keeping her temper well-curbed, knowing how fatal it might be if she were to lose it. Down in the distant Bay the sun sparkled on the white of furled sails. With a pang she remembered the leap of excitement she had felt when her father’s lawyer had told her that San Francisco was to be her new home. Compared to the small Kansan town in which her widowed father had died, it had seemed to promise so much …

  ‘’49ers,’ Leo had said, his eyes rounding. ‘Don’t you remember the stories Pa told us about the Gold Rush? That was San Francisco! Do you think there’s still gold to be found there, Lilli? Do you think we might find gold?’

  Leo’s thick thatch of hair was nearly as dark as her own and she had laughed an
d ruffled his curls. ‘The San Francisco Gold Rush took place long ago, in 1849,’ she had said lovingly. ‘That was why the gold prospectors called themselves ’ 49ers.’

  Lottie had said, a catch in her voice, ‘If Pa hadn’t been ill, I know he would have taken us to Alaska looking for gold, because he told me so.’

  Neither Leo or Lilli had doubted her. Going to Alaska, panning for gold, was exactly the sort of adventure to have fired their father’s imagination. And if he had lived long enough to have embarked upon it he would most certainly have taken them with him, for he took them everywhere with him.

  They had all fallen silent, thinking of the father they had loved so much. An immigrant to America, he had been an incurable optimist, always certain that things were ‘going to look up’ and that good fortune lay ‘just around the corner’.

  Sometimes his optimism had been well-founded. There had been a time, when their mother had been alive, when home had been an exceedingly comfortable ranch-hand’s cabin in Wyoming. Like nearly all Irishmen, Connor Stullen had had magic in his hands when it came to horse-flesh, and it had been when he was working with horses that he had been happiest.

  His brother-in-law, an immigrant of a very different stamp, had had no time for a man who earned his living in such a gypsyish fashion. Herbert liked to think of himself as being a businessman, though exactly what his business was remained a family mystery …

  Nearly as tall as he was, her eyes holding his, Lillie faced Herbert across the solidly built surface of his leather-topped desk. From the moment she had stepped across his threshold, holding Leo and Lottie by the hand, she had known that she was not welcome. The knowledge had shocked her, but it had been a shock her resilient nature had quickly come to terms with.

  What she had not been able to come to terms with was the growing realisation that though she was definitely not wanted, and Lottie was only tolerated under sufferance, Leo was wanted very much indeed.

  At first she had thought the favouritism shown towards her little brother was simply the favouritism often shown towards the youngest of a family, especially if the youngest were a boy. Then, as she became more attuned to the tense atmosphere in the childless household and to a better understanding of her uncle’s character, the ugly truth dawned. Herbert believed Leo was young enough to be moulded by him; young enough to have all traces of Irish accent eradicated from his speech; young enough to be reared as his son and for the world to be duped into believing that he was his son.

  ‘You’re an insolent chit and you’ve sponged on my generosity long enough,’ her bête noir said now, with savage vehemence, spittle forming at the corners of his thin-lipped mouth. ‘If your father’s boasting about how talented and educated you are were true, you’d be able to find employment quick enough, though as he alone was responsible for that education I don’t imagine it amounts to much!’

  Lilli, steeped in an upbringing that had embraced her father’s idiosyncratic view of world history, the very best in Irish literature, a detailed knowledge of Greek mythology, a wide understanding of botany and the medicinal use of herbs, the ability to play both an accordion and a fiddle and the ability to care for and cure sick horses, remained silent. She also knew her Bible and she had no intention of casting her pearls before swine.

  Her refusal to retaliate to his goading enraged Herbert to near apoplexy. ‘I want you out of this house today!’ he shouted, slamming his fist down hard on the top of his desk. ‘I’ve no legal obligation towards you, and your insolent behaviour has ensured I have no moral obligation either!’

  The very idea of Herbert Mosley feeling bound by moral obligations of any sort was so farcical that under other circumstances, Lilli would have hooted with laughter. Instead, knowing how difficult he would make it for her to return for Lottie and Leo if she once left without them, she said tautly, ‘It’s unreasonable to expect me to leave the house when I have no employment and nowhere to go.’

  Satisfaction flared across Herbert’s face. ‘So you’ve realized your predicament at last, have you? You should have thought of it much earlier, young lady!’

  Lilli’s stomach lurched sickeningly. Dear Lord, how low was she going to have to sink in order to gain herself time? Time to find employment; time to find a home for herself and Lottie and Leo; time to think of a way of achieving both without Herbert being able to trace them.

  With her hands behind her back, her fingers crossed so the deceit wouldn’t stain her soul she said, struggling to sound suitably contrite, ‘I’ve already apologised once for what you perceived as my insolence and I apologise again.’

  Her uncle wasn’t fooled for a moment.

  ‘You can apologise until the Second Coming!’ he snapped viciously. ‘And while you’re doing so, you can search The Examiner’s “Domestics Wanted” column for a suitable situation.’

  Striding from around his desk he snatched a copy of the local newspaper from its surface and thrust it into her unwilling hands. ‘I want you out of here by the time I return home this evening. Is that understood?’

  He was so near to her that she could smell his tobacco-tainted breath. It was clear now, that her uncle had made up his mind as to what the outcome of their interview was going to be and she was wasting her time trying to placate him. Abandoning pretence she held his eyes unflinchingly, letting all her contempt for him show.

  ‘And you needn’t think you can take Charlotte and Leopold with you,’ he said, falling back a step beneath the force of her gaze. ‘No-one will employ you as a live-in maid if you have two brats in tow.’

  ‘What makes you so sure I’ll be looking for employment in the “Domestics Wanted” column?’ she retorted tartly. She was rewarded by seeing a flash of doubt flare through her uncle’s eyes. It disappeared almost immediately.

  He gave a bark of laughter. ‘How stupid of me! I’d forgotten about your grandiose education. You’ll no doubt get employment as a school-mistress or a book-keeper. I only hope your superior salary will be enough to enable you to rent a house and provide a nurse for Leopold,’ and, chuckling to himself, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

  Lilli remained, standing a foot or so before his desk. His amusement was quite justified. Any chance of her finding employment other than that of domestic work was extremely unlikely and, even if she were lucky enough to do so, who would then care for Lottie and Leo?

  Dimly, from the direction of the breakfast room, she could hear Aunt Gussie’s voice raised in protest. No doubt her husband was informing her of the action he had just taken. Her aunt would be devastated, but it would be a devastation that would count for very little.

  She hugged her arms, trying to fight down her rising sense of panic. What on earth was she going to do? She couldn’t possibly leave Lottie and Leo in Herbert Mosley’s care, yet neither could she see a way in which she could take them with her. And even if she could take them with her, where was she to go?

  No more vain protests could be heard coming from the direction of the breakfast room. Instead, there came the sound of muffled weeping. Lilli drew in a deep, steadying breath. In the few months she had been living in the house, there had been many occasions when her aunt had turned to her for comfort, but with the best will in the world she felt no inclination to offer it now.

  There came the sound of the front door slamming, and a feeling of palpable relief settled over the house. Herbert was gone, attending to his many business affairs, hopefully until early evening.

  ‘Lilli! Lilli!’ Lottie shouted, hurtling out of the breakfast room, and running across the hall towards the study. ‘Lilli, are you all right?’

  She rocketed into the room, tears streaming down her face. ‘You’re not going to leave us, are you, Lilli?’ she demanded, flinging her arms around Lilli’s waist. ‘Tell me Uncle Herbert didn’t mean it when he said you were to leave the house! Tell me he was only being bullying and beastly and trying to frighten us!’

  Lilli’s arms folded around her. ‘I’m not goin
g to leave you, sweetheart,’ she promised, her eyes burning with fierce resolve.

  Lottie’s hiccupping sobs began to ease but she made no attempt to let go of her big sister. Instead, still hugging her, she said passionately, ‘I hate Uncle Herbert. He doesn’t like you or me. He only likes Leo and I don’t think he truly likes Leo, because if he did he wouldn’t upset him by telling him he’d told you to leave the house.’

  ‘He was telling Leo the truth,’ Lilli said wryly, stroking the top of Lottie’s neatly braided hair. ‘But I’m going to find a way for us all to leave this loveless heap of stones. Pa would never have wanted us to stay here, not if he’d known what it was like, and he never legally gave any of us into Uncle Herbert’s and Aunt Gussie’s guardianship. Pa’s lawyer only sent us here because Aunt Gussie is our next of kin and it never occurred to him that we might not be wanted.’

  ‘Leave?’ Lottie turned her face to Lilli’s, her eyes widening, hope shining so strong that Lilli’s heart tightened. ‘Oh, Lilli! Can we? Can we really? Will Uncle Herbert allow it?’

  Lilli’s face was grim. ‘Uncle Herbert is going to have no say in the matter. From now on we’re going to make our own decisions.’

  As Lottie sighed in ecstasy Lilli looked around the study. Normally it was a sacred sanctum that no-one entered unless commanded to do so. That her uncle had walked out of it leaving her behind him, alone in it, was evidence of how intently his mind had been focussed on the prospect of ridding himself of her.

  ‘I’m going to have to visit lots of employment agencies,’ she said to Lottie, taking hold of one of the hands clasped tightly around her waist. ‘I want you to look after Leo and to collect all your clothes and belongings together. I don’t know where Aunt Gussie has put the bags we brought with us. They’re probably in an attic somewhere.’

  ‘Do you want me to look for them?’ Lottie’s voice was eager. ‘I’ve always wanted to go into the attics and …’