In Sunshine Or In Shadow Read online

  About the Book

  Brougham is the stateliest of stately homes, but for Lady Artemis Deverill it proves a lonely, loveless place. Eleanor Milligan, born in downtown Boston, knows only poverty and a continuing battle against bullying brothers and a sadistic father.

  From the moment Artemis and Ellie meet on a liner sailing to Ireland, they are destined to become friends. And when Eleanor’s Cousin Rose asks not only Eleanor but also Artemis to stay on at Strand House, County Cork, it marks the start of what is for both of them an idyllic time.

  But with the arrival of the devastatingly handsome artist, Hugo Tanner, it seems as though nothing will be quite the same. For in the sunlit pre-war summer, all three become emotionally entwined, with startling consequences that threaten to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1913

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  1923

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  1931

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  1939

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Also by Charlotte Bingham

  Copyright

  IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW

  Charlotte Bingham

  For the Duke – with love for the sunshine

  From quiet homes and first beginning,

  Out to the undiscovered ends,

  There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,

  But laughter and the love of friends.

  HILLAIRE BELLOC

  Prologue

  He stood outside the house waiting for the signal which was given exactly as arranged.

  Let in by the back door, through the kitchen, he followed the maid’s directions until he arrived at the door of the room. Easing the door open, he saw she was sleeping on a chintz-covered sofa by the fire. The dog was there as well, lying on the rug in front of a log fire.

  ‘It’s all right,’ the maid whispered, ‘he’s as deaf as a post now. He won’t hear you.’ He nodded and eased the door open more. The maid left him, disappearing into the shadows of the hall back to the kitchen.

  There were gifts on the floor, at least that’s what he took them to be as he carefully tiptoed his way towards her. She was sleeping so peacefully, one arm draped above her tousled head, the other trailing off the sofa so that her long elegant fingers just touched the floor. They had to be gifts because there was wrapping paper in the waste basket and some hand-made tags on the chimney piece. The gifts were some small hand-carved models, figures, some embroidered linen napkins, a book bound in deep red leather, and a water-colour of the dog who still slept on, undisturbed by him.

  It was her birthday.

  The image before him was so beautiful that for a moment he caught his breath, the girl and her dog, asleep in an elegant room lit by the warm glow of the firelight. She was even lovelier than he remembered. And it was her birthday.

  There was also an old-fashioned hat, which looked as though it had been retrimmed, lying on the arm of the sofa, and another book, but an old and much read one, which had fallen open on the floor.

  He bent to pick the book up to look at what it was. It was a children’s book, open at an illustration of a child in a bed, with a young girl with long dark hair standing at the foot in nightrobes, holding a candle. He read the caption. ‘Who are you?’ the little boy was saying. ‘Are you a ghost?’

  ‘Who are you?’ the young woman on the sofa with the bright blue eyes said to him when she awoke and saw him. ‘Are you a ghost?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Are you?’

  1913

  1

  The man who was to kill her mother rode calmly up the drive of the great house. He was mounted on a chestnut thoroughbred who was already becoming over-excited at the thought of the day ahead. His companion rode side-saddle, a beautiful dark-eyed girl in a shiny top hat and immaculate riding habit, mounted on a pure bred iron-grey Arab.

  As they rounded the final bend in the long drive and the house came into view, the man reined back his horse, as did his companion.

  ‘I always think,’ the man said, ‘that Brougham is almost impossibly perfect.’

  ‘I actually prefer Chatsworth,’ the girl replied. ‘If I had to choose.’

  ‘Too grand,’ the young man said. ‘Superb but much too grand. The charm of Brougham is that one can live in it.’

  They lingered a few moments more to admire the Palladian house which stood before them, beyond an ornamental lake crossed by a fine stone bridge, lying in a fold of the rolling parkland, as if held in the palm of a vast green hand.

  ‘What I love about it,’ the young man said, leaning forward in his saddle, ‘is its symmetry. The balance of the two wings, those wonderful colonnades, and of course that exquisite pillared portico.’

  ‘Yes,’ his companion agreed, adjusting her top hat, ‘it’s very pretty. But I really would rather have Chatsworth.’

  The young man’s horse, grown fretful with the wait, pawed the ground and started to back away. ‘Come on,’ said his rider, ‘or we shall miss all the gossip.’

  As always with the opening meet there was a splendid turnout, with every invitation issued by the 4th Earl of Deverill, master and owner of the Brougham Fox-hounds, having been eagerly accepted. The weather was perfect, and a small army of servants, dressed in plum coloured livery, moved through the mounted followers carrying stirrup cups borne high on silver salvers. The brindle hounds, John Deverill’s speciality and obsession, stood well to order at one side of the drive with the whippers-in waiting as patiently as they could for the order to move off.

  ‘Wonderful weather, Lady Deverill!’ the young man called to his victim as he cantered through the iron gates and reined his horse back to a walk. ‘Perfect, I’d say!’

  Lady Mary smiled at the young man as he doffed his topper to her, and walked her horse on, uncertain for a moment of her guest’s identity. She knew the girl who accompanied him well enough, but her companion’s face escaped her.

  ‘That’s one of the Stanhope-Murray boys,’ a friend told her. ‘Charming and utterly feckless and, let it be said, a bit of a “thruster”.’

  Lady Mary laughed. ‘Thank you!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I shall do my best to avoid him when hounds are running!’

  Looking back at the crowd at the foot of the great stone double staircase, she suddenly caught sight of the familiar blonde head of her daughter and called the nursemaid, who was holding her up to get a better view of all the excitement, to bring her over. The girl handed her charge to Nanny, who immediately straightened the child’s dress and re-tied her hair ribbon.

  ‘Thank you, Rosie,’ Nanny said to her subordinate, before calling for a way through the throng of servants who had gathered to see hounds move off.

  Lady Mary smiled when she saw her daughter, and bent down towards her from her horse.

  ‘Do you want to stroke Capers’ nose, darling?’ she whispered. ‘You know how Capers loves you doing that.’

  Nanny walked to the front of the handsome grey gelding and the child put out a small hand to rub his silk-soft muzzle. The horse p
ushed his nose upwards and snorted, spraying the little girl and making her laugh with delight.

  ‘You see?’ her mother told her. ‘You see how much he loves you? Nearly as much as I do, my darling,’ she added. She bent down to kiss her child. ‘But not quite, because I love you far too much.’

  The little girl would always remember that moment, and the picture of her mother, so beautiful and so elegant in her top hat and long dark riding habit, mounted side-saddle on her famous grey hunter. It would stay with her for the rest of her life.

  Nanny hoisted her higher in her arms as the huntsman blew his horn and the hounds moved off. For a moment she lost her mother in the crowd of horses and riders and foot followers, as people jostled for the best position, or to ride alongside their fancy. Then she saw her once more, as she checked her horse in the mêlée before easing him through to take up their regular position at the front.

  There was one last wave as they crossed the stone bridge before swinging away right, up the long gentle pull which led to the first draw. Lady Mary Deverill, now clear of the pack and alongside her husband, reined Capers back into a half-rear, blew her daughter an extravagant kiss, raised her hand in the air, and was gone forever.

  Early on that morning, that very same morning in October 1913, anyone walking or motoring down Westfield Drive, Boston, Massachusetts, would never have given any of the houses a second glance, so ordinary were they, and none more so than number 1015, a clapboard house like all the others in the street, only one which was in even more urgent need of repainting than most of its neighbours. The small grass lawn at the front was overgrown, the wooden verandah running from the porch along the front of the house had several posts missing, and the catch on the outer porch door was broken, so that it swung open and shut with a groan and a bang in the ever freshening wind.

  A woman arriving at the house fiddled with the lock as she waited for someone to let her in, but finally, with a despairing gesture, gave up the attempt to fix it long before she was admitted.

  Next door, in the house on the right, someone had been watching the visitor’s arrival from the side of an upstairs window, a middle-aged woman with a startling mass of red hair piled high above a powdered face with a well rouged mouth and plucked and pencilled eyebrows, a woman dressed in a dark crimson gown, of the kind which some years before would have been described in fashionable circles as ‘tea gowns’. She was holding a net curtain to one side with the gold-ringed fingers of one hand, while in the other hand she held to her mouth a long white ebony cigarette holder on which she drew constantly as she watched the visitor enter her neighbour’s house. Then she waited with a slight frown on her pale white face, as if she might learn something by waiting. But when she heard or saw nothing more, she dropped the net drape back into place, to disappear once more into the darkness of her house.

  Outside number 1015 the rest of the world came and went, while the porch door swung open and shut even more frequently, as the October wind strengthened, forcing the few passers-by to bend into what was now turning into a gale and to clutch at their hats. So when the cry came, that first cry which heralds life, had anyone been passing the house at that moment, it is doubtful that they would have heard it. What they might have heard however, had they been passing ten minutes later, even above the noise of the traffic and the raging of the wind, was a roar of someone in pain, a great and agonizing cry. The red-haired woman in the house next door most certainly heard it, and hurried to another upstairs window to look out the back, for the cry seemed to have come from the yard of her neighbour’s house. And sure enough, there her neighbour was, standing half dressed in his yard, with both fists clenched and raised to the skies as he demanded to know of his God why He had chosen to take his wife.

  No-one ever told Artemis Deverill that her mother had been killed out hunting that fine October morning, knocked from her horse by the young Stanhope-Murray boy as he tried to thrust his way past her, jumping a hedge and instantly breaking her neck. Later Artemis was told in many indirect ways that her mother was dead, but on the day of the accident she was kept in ignorance.

  Of course, she was aware that something had happened, and that whatever it was, was wrong. She knew this from the hushed voices of the nursery staff and from the comings and goings far below her in the great house. Years later, all that she would remember of that fateful day were two things. First, the sight of one of the huntsmen galloping at full speed up the drive, over the bridge and in through the ornamental gates, throwing himself off his still cantering horse, and running into the house through one of the entrances below the main staircase.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ one of the nursemaids, catching sight of him, called excitedly. ‘There must have been an accident.’

  Artemis had been busy drawing, sitting on the window seat of the nursery, high up on the third floor of the family wing. She was drawing a house, a house which had just four windows, one chimney and one door, while Nanny, full of nursery lunch, dozed by the fire. Having finished it, Artemis then sat gazing at her drawing, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a house with just four windows, one chimney and one door, with just her mother, and perhaps even her father. When she too heard the clatter of the galloping horse far below she went to the window, but there was no longer anything to see and only the sound of the nursemaids chattering.

  The second thing Artemis remembered was being put to bed very early, so early that tea had hardly been cleared. That night, unlike other nights, Nanny sat and stroked her head and held her hand.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ she kept saying. ‘There’s been a dreadful accident.’

  Artemis had a vague idea as to what accidents were. They were things like a servant getting shot in the chest when a big party went out shooting, or a boat capsizing on the lake, nearly drowning the four occupants. But this accident must be something far more serious, because all the nursery maids were crying, and so, when she looked through the bannisters on her way to bed, were the servants downstairs.

  ‘What is it please, Nanny?’ she tried to ask when Nanny was tucking her in. ‘Please, what has happened?’

  ‘Just go to sleep, child,’ Nanny replied. ‘Go to sleep and your papa will come and see you in the morning.’

  Artemis lay in the darkened room. Her father never came up to the nursery floor. It was unheard of. She knew then it was her mother who must have been hurt. She called out for someone, but no-one came. She called again and again. Eventually Rosie, the youngest of the nursery maids, pushed the door open a fraction, a handkerchief to her face.

  ‘Go to sleep, pet.’

  ‘What’s happened, Rosie?’

  ‘You’ll find out in the morning,’ Rosie replied, her voice floating towards Artemis through the handkerchief. ‘You just go to sleep, pet.’

  In the morning her father arrived up in the nursery. Artemis knew it was him before she saw him, because even before he was in the room everyone stood up, and Nanny as always straightened Artemis’s dress, tugging it at the back. He dismissed the nursery staff with a peremptory wave of his index finger, leaving only Artemis alone with him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, after clearing his throat. ‘Look here, there’s been a bit of an accident. Couldn’t be helped. One of those things, I’m afraid.’

  Artemis frowned, but said nothing, wondering what was to come. Her mother had fallen off Capers, that much she knew. And that was why everyone had been crying. For a moment her father said nothing more either, he just stood with his hands clasped behind him, looking up at the ceiling. Artemis attempted a smile to reassure him that she at least wasn’t going to let him down by crying, but he paid her no attention. Instead, he turned away to stare at the picture of her mother which was on the chest of drawers. He picked it up and held it away from him while he looked at it. Then he replaced it.

  ‘Nice picture,’ he said finally. ‘Very nice indeed. Anyway. About the accident.’ He cleared his throat once more and resumed staring up at t
he ceiling. ‘Happened when we were out, do you see. Nasty business. And the long and the short of it I’m afraid is, your mother’s gone.’

  He turned and walked over to the window where he stood looking out with his hands clasped behind his back. Artemis didn’t understand what he meant, but dared not ask him.

  ‘So there you are,’ her father concluded, once again clearing his throat. ‘Terrible business, I’m afraid, but there you are. These things will happen.’ He left without turning back, without looking at her.

  When Nanny returned at last Artemis asked her what her father had meant by saying her mother had gone.

  ‘Because I’m afraid she has, dear,’ Nanny replied. ‘She’s gone where we all must follow.’

  ‘I see,’ Artemis said, without seeing. ‘But where, Nanny? Where’s she gone?’

  ‘She’s crossed over, dear,’ Nanny sighed, ‘gone to Kingdom come. Your poor mother has been gathered.’

  ‘Will I ever see her again, Nanny? If she’s gone?’

  ‘Of course you will, dear. We all will.’ She nodded briskly. ‘Time for your walk.’

  That night Artemis prayed silently to God that if she was going to see her mother, then she hoped it would be soon.

  They buried Lady Mary Deverill without her daughter knowing. It had been decided that the child was too young to understand and as a result she might suffer unpleasant after-effects, rather as people tend to do after eating something which disagrees with them. So prior to the funeral, which was to be held in the church attached to the great house, Artemis was despatched with her nanny to Scotland, to stay with relations in a remote castle, where once more no reference whatsoever was made to the tragedy.

  It was all intended for the best. The reasoning behind it being that she would not be able to come to terms with the notion of her mother being dead, so by removing her from the place where the tragedy had occurred and allowing enough time to pass, she would better be able to come to terms with her loss. It was also to be hoped, her father told her nanny prior to their departure, that by the time his daughter was returned to Brougham, the memory of her mother would already be fading.