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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

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Margaret Pemberton

  Silver Shadows, Golden Dreams

  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 Mike, as always.

  Chapter One

  ‘I don’t want her and I’m damned if I’ll keep her,’ the girl said viciously, thrusting the squalling bundle into the arms of the startled young nun.

  Sister Françesca stared at her thunderstruck. ‘But you can’t leave her here,’ she protested, horrified. ‘This is an orphanage. We only take children who have no parents. There are rules…regulations…’

  ‘Damn the rules,’ the girl said crudely, showing no respect for Sister Françesca’s calling. ‘I don’t want her. I’m not keeping her and that’s final.’

  ‘Do come on, Lou,’ the young man in the battered T Ford parked some yards away, called, revving the engine impatiently.

  Sister Françesca looked around wildly for help. She had been on her way to collect the convent’s daily supply of eggs when the automobile had bucketed down the dusty track and halted blocking her path. The convent stood some hundred yards away overlooking the Pacific, its high white walls blind to her plight. The children were at class, her fellow sisters about their tasks. Beneath its tightly wrapped shawl the baby struggled, fighting to be free.

  ‘I’ll be going then,’ the girl said, smoothing an imaginary crease from the cheap, shiny material of her skirt, turning away on a suicidally high heel.

  ‘No!’ Sister Françesca’s voice was anguished. The girl was no older than herself. Eighteen or nineteen at the most. Her hair had been inexpertly bleached and frizzed in a manner which owed nothing to nature. Sister Françesca was irrationally aware that beneath the dark lipstick and mask-like make-up, was a face of uncommon prettiness.

  The girl was opening the door of the Ford, slamming it behind her. Sister Françesca ran after her, the baby and the long skirts of her habit hampering her speed. ‘No! Wait! You can’t leave your child like this! I don’t know your name… Your address…’

  The girl turned and held Sister Françesca’s eyes reflectively as the wheels spun and gained a hold on the unmade track.

  ‘My name doesn’t matter. Hers…’ she nodded indifferently in the direction of the baby, ‘is Daisy.’

  She leaned back against the cracked leather upholstery and closed her eyes as if overcome with boredom as the Ford pulled away, quickly gathering speed.

  Desperately Sister Françesca began to run in its wake. ‘Stop! Oh please, stop!’ Her pleas went unheeded. She ran until she was breathless; until the Model T was nothing but a black speck heading towards the Santa Anna highway. Then she stumbled to a halt, standing on the dust-blown track, the baby clasped tightly in her arms.

  The Ford had disappeared. A bird swooped low overhead. In the distance a farmer was tending the trees in his orange grove.

  She looked down at the child, who continued to squall, fists clenched tight, eyes bright with rage. She was less than a week old.

  Sister Françesca lifted the baby to her breast, holding her close, soothing her with gentle words as she began to walk back towards the convent.

  The pearl grey of early dawn filtered through the wooden slats of the room. Daisy woke with a sense of elation. Today was St Joseph’s day. Today was special. There would be extra prayers before breakfast, dedicated to the saint the tiny Californian town of Capistrano had made its own. But it was not this that filled eight-year-old Daisy’s heart with excited anticipation. It was because St Joseph’s day had become her very own, treasured anniversary: it was the day the swallows returned to Capistrano.

  She couldn’t remember how old she had been when she had first seen the thousands of birds winging their way inland from the Pacific, darkening the sky with the rhythmic beat of their wings. All she could remember was the awe she had felt.

  The swallows were so beautiful; so graceful; so free. She had known that miracles occurred. Sister Dominica, who was old and strict and into whose care Daisy was placed daily with her twenty companions, had told her so. But this was the first miracle Daisy had witnessed: the sweeping flight of the swallows returning on the same day every year, their arrival hardly varying by so much as an hour.

  It was still only five-thirty. Small, curled bodies lay asleep in narrow beds that ranged the length of the sparsely furnished dormitory. It would be another half hour before Sister Dominica’s handbell roused them into unwelcome wakefulness.

  Daisy swung naked feet on to the polished wood floor. Sister Dominica would scold her for rising before the correct time, but Daisy didn’t care. There would be a penance to pay, but it was small punishment for seeing the glory of the first swallows on the distant skyline.

  She slipped her uniform dress of coarse, blue linen over her head and tiptoed into the washroom. The cold water stung her cheeks. She rubbed her face dry and then brushed and braided her hair as she had been taught. By the time she had finished her arms ached but she knew with despair that the result would not please Sister Dominica’s critical eye.

  She paused and stared into the cracked mirror above the basins. Huge eyes in a small, pointed face stared back at her. Jessie Sullivan’s hair sprang into curls no matter how tightly it was braided and Sister Dominica never chided her. Sister Dominica liked Jessie, but then Jessie was pretty. She had pink cheeks and eyes as blue as those on the painting of the Virgin in the convent’s chapel. Daisy wondered if Sister Dominica knew that Jessie lied and had twice no
t owned up to hiding the chalk so that lessons had been delayed while more was obtained from the storeroom.

  When Sister Dominica had sternly asked that the culprit stand and step forward, the whole class had suffered from Jessie’s silence. There had been no supper that night, but Jessie had disappeared for fifteen minutes between evening prayers and bed and Daisy had wondered uncharitably if those fifteen minutes had been spent with Sister Dominica and if Jessie had not been less hungry on her return.

  She shrugged her shoulders and dismissed all thoughts of Jessie Sullivan and Sister Dominica from her mind. There were more important things to think about. Where the swallows had come from; where they were going. Hurriedly she ran along the deserted corridor and down the shallow flight of steps that led to the classrooms and refectory. Bypassing them, she opened the heavy oak door with difficulty and stepped out into the early morning air.

  The convent had originally been a Spanish mission and had changed little in style since the Françiscans had founded it in the late eighteenth century. A covered walkway interspersed with delicate arches surrounded a central square. Thick adobe walls supported a roof of rose-red tiles and protected the inmates from the intrusion of the outside world. In all her eight years Daisy had never stepped outside the giant wrought-iron gates. Only girls who had been selected for adoption did so.

  Daisy had watched their departures with envy. Adoption meant a real home. It meant not having to wear the same blue dress day in, day out. It meant freedom from Sister Dominica. One day she, too, would be adopted. She would miss Sister Françesca, Reverend Mother’s secretary, who was kind to her, but maybe Sister Françesca would write to her or even visit her.

  Sister Françesca’s duties often took her beyond the confined walls of the convent. Once she had gone to a far-away place called Los Angeles. Daisy had asked Sister Dominica where Los Angeles was but Sister Dominica had told her it was a Babylon too sinful to be mentioned. Daisy had cried and prayed fervently that Sister Françesca would return in safety, and when she had done so had thrown her arms around her in ecstatic relief.

  On the distant skyline a dark speck appeared, and then another and another. Daisy clasped her hands together, her eyes shining. They were coming. At first only a few, but soon they would be flying overhead in their thousands, the sun glinting on their blue-black wings.

  ‘I wish I was a swallow,’ Daisy whispered to herself fervently in the silence of the courtyard. ‘I’d fly higher and further than all the other birds. I’d fly so high I’d touch the sun!’

  There were more birds now, speckling the gold-streaked sky like a vast army. Wave upon wave of them, heading with blind primitive instinct towards Capistrano and the sun-parched hills beyond. Daisy felt her heart soar. One day she would be just as free. One day the giant wrought iron gates would open and she would step outside just as Sister Françesca did. Only, unlike Sister Françesca, she would never return.

  The blissful stillness was broken by the harsh ringing of Sister Dominica’s handbell. Daisy felt a surge of despair. Her absence would be noted. She had to return indoors: attend prayers, breakfast, classes. And all the time the swallows would stream overhead and she would catch only glimpses of them from the convent’s high, narrow windows. Why, oh why, could she not be left in solitude for just one hour, one day?

  Sister Dominica’s voice rose stridently. Daisy sighed, knowing to the second the length of time it would take Sister Dominica to storm down the stairs and to shatter the almost unearthly beauty of the morning.

  Throughout her years in the convent Daisy had never cried, but her throat tightened now as the door slammed back on its hinges and Sister Dominica strode angrily towards her.

  ‘Daisy Ford, return to the dormitory instantly! I shall report your behaviour to the Reverend Mother. Never in my life have I met such a disobedient, intractable child!’

  A gaunt hand seized Daisy’s shoulder and began to propel her towards the still-open door. Daisy raised her head for a last precious glimpse of the swallows and then the door closed, banishing them from view.

  ‘Jessie Sullivan is going to be adopted!’ The news ran excitedly round the room as the girls made their beds with military-like precision.

  Daisy stared at them. It had been a long time since anyone from their dormitory had left, small cardboard valise holding the set of new underclothes that the sisters regarded as a necessary start in life. They were eleven years old now. Adoptive parents liked younger children. Over the years the girls who had shared her dormitory had all been called to Reverend Mother’s office and returned exultant, leaving the convent shortly afterwards. Only she and Jessie had remained. All the others were relatively new, girls who had been orphaned at nine or ten.

  ‘Of course, I would have been adopted ages ago,’ Jessie was saying grandly to those gathering around her bed, ‘only my uncle was alive and he wouldn’t give permission. He’s dead now,’ she added with undisguised satisfaction.

  Daisy folded her top sheet the regulation ten inches below the edge of her blanket, a slight frown furrowing her brows.

  ‘You’ll all be gone soon,’ Jessie was saying brightly. ‘Everyone is adopted eventually.’

  ‘I haven’t been,’ Daisy said, tucking the bottom of her blanket in as neatly as if she were a ward sister.

  Jessie sat on her bed and swung her legs, her eyes gleaming maliciously. ‘Well, of course not. Only orphans get adopted.’

  Daisy halted in her task and stared at her. ‘We’re all orphans. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’

  Jessie smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile and Daisy felt a curious sense of unease.

  ‘Not all of us,’ Jessie continued, putting a sweet into her mouth and sucking it slowly.

  The room fell silent and those around Jessie’s bed stared at Daisy with open curiosity. Daisy, looking beyond them into Jessie Sullivan’s knowing eyes, felt suddenly cold.

  ‘The Convent of the Sacred Heart is an orphanage,’ she said tightly, her hands clenching involuntarily, the knuckles showing white.

  Jessie nodded. ‘In which case you should think yourself very lucky to be here.’

  Their eyes held. Daisy had never liked Jessie and was well aware that the feeling was mutual. Jessie was a trouble-maker and a liar. The most sensible thing for her to do was to ignore Jessie’s foolish remarks and leave the room. Yet there was something in her tone that held her fast. Slowly she began to cross the polished wood floor to Jessie’s bed. Instinctively the girls who had gathered around it retreated.

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that remark, Jessie Sullivan?’

  Jessie laughed. Her teeth were very white; very small.

  ‘Only that as you’re not an orphan you shouldn’t be here. You should be in a home for children whose mothers don’t want them.’

  Daisy moved so swiftly that Jessie did not even have the chance to spring from the bed. Her hands closed around Jessie’s wrists, her eyes blazing in her pale face.

  ‘My mother did want me, only she’s dead!’

  ‘No she isn’t!’ Jessie spat triumphantly. ‘She brought you here. Sister Dominica told me so. She brought you here and she left you. Sister Dominica said you should have gone to a home for the abandoned but that Reverend Mother decided to make an exception in your case. I suppose she thought that if you stayed here your mother would eventually return for you.’

  Taking advantage of Daisy’s stunned incredulity, she snatched her wrists from Daisy’s grasp.

  Daisy’s heart felt as if it were about to burst. She couldn’t get her breath. ‘You’re lying!’

  ‘No I’m not!’ Jessie scrambled to comparative safety on the far side of the bed. ‘You ask Reverend Mother! Ask Sister Dominica! Ask anyone!’

  Jessie’s face swam before Daisy distortedly. She wanted to reach out and grasp something to prevent herself from falling, but there was only Jessie’s bed and the ring of watching girls.

  ‘I’m going to Reverend Mother now.’ The blood pounded in her ears.
‘I’m going to prove to everyone what a liar you are, Jessie Sullivan!’

  Jessie leaned back against her pillows, her blue eyes gloating. ‘You’ll only prove to everyone that you’re a bastard and shouldn’t be here. Sister Dominica says…’

  She never finished the sentence. Daisy leaped on to the bed, seized hold of Jessie’s braids and wrenched them in frenzied ferocity. Jessie screamed and kept on screaming, lashing out vainly at Daisy with her feet, clawing at her face with her nails.

  Daisy’s knee drove hard into Jessie’s stomach and as Jessie choked for breath, she knelt astride her, releasing her braids and pinning her wrists high above her head.

  ‘Apologize for what you said, Jessie Sullivan! Apologize, or I’ll scratch your eyes out!’

  Jessie sobbed and gasped for air. ‘No… It’s true! Your mother left you here because you were born in sin. Sister Dominica said so. Sister Dominica said…’

  Daisy’s nails dug so deep into Jessie’s wrist that blood seeped beneath them. ‘You’re lying! Tell me you’re lying!’

  ‘No… Never… You’re a bastard. A bas…’

  Daisy sobbed and slapped Jessie across the mouth. ‘Liar!’

  ‘Bastard!’

  As Jessie writhed to be free, they tumbled to the floor, feet kicking, nails clawing.

  As the horrifed spectators gathered their scattered wits, some ran for help. None ventured to intervene. Help was not far away. Sister Dominica was already striding mottle-faced towards the dormitory, where the screams and sobs were reaching crescendo pitch.

  ‘It’s Daisy Ford, Sister! She’s trying to murder Jessie!’

  ‘No she isn’t. Jessie said that…’

  ‘There’s blood everywhere, Sister Dominica…’

  Sister Dominica strode through the clamouring girls, her crucifix swinging against the heavy black folds of her habit. At the open door of the dormitory she halted. Lockers had been overturned, their contents spilled on to the floor as Daisy and Jessie rolled and fought and kicked and screamed.