Patricia M Osborne

I’m delighted to welcome back author Rosemary Noble to Patricia’s Pen. This time it’s to celebrate the release of her latest novel, Isabella’s Curse.

About the book

Two women, two hundred years apart. Can a family curse be broken?

East Norfolk 2019
When Esther Mayhew is engaged to find provenance for art works in a Norfolk country house after the death of Sir Hugh, little does she know what mysteries and dangers lie before her. Why did Sir Hugh leave the estate to an obscure charity and not his grandson? Who was the enigmatic Spanish Lady in the portrait? Why does her curse resonate down the centuries?

Jamaica 1798
Isabella, a new bride, thinks her life is mapped out on her husband’s plantation. Newly pregnant, life is at last peaceful after fleeing uprisings on Hispaniola and losing her beloved mother. Surprisingly, her husband is called back by his father to Norfolk in England and Isabella’s nightmare begins. Trapped in an increasingly bitter family feud, Isabella desperately tries to find a way to escape before her husband can receive her inheritance and there is no longer any reason to keep her alive.

And here’s a taster!

Prologue

Easterton, Norfolk, December – 1799

Tom Woodman snapped the latch behind him while the brindle hound whined and scratched forlornly at the rough timber planks. Unhappy at his desertion, her whine turned to a yowl.

‘Hush Bess, I don’t want even you as a witness.’

His soothing voice calmed her, but she continued whimpering. No one would hear, no one would care. Tom shivered, the biting easterly wind coursing its way through the layers of his clothing, but it was not just the wind; his stomach churned as he considered the task ahead.

Pitch-black, save for the stub of candlelight behind the waxed paper window, he knew his way blindfold. He was born in the cottage twenty-five years before, if he was lucky, he would die there more than twenty years hence, and with a son to follow in his footsteps. With the coins now tucked in a leather bag deep in a hole scraped into the chimney breast, he could afford to court Alice Carter at last. The one good thing to come out of this. Who was he to say no to the master? Not this master at any rate. A chip off the old block, for sure, maybe worse. Time would tell.

He stiffened his back and strode across the yard to the woodshed where he had hidden the tiny pine coffin made the day before. His hands trembled as he lifted the lid, the body of the newborn failed to distress him so much this time. He understood the dilemma, the master would never have accepted a tainted child. It wasn’t up to such as he to question the whys and wherefores. The family at the big house could depend upon his silence.

Taking an acorn from his smock pocket, the gravedigger placed it in the babe’s mouth, dislodging the penny the midwife had placed there. She too no doubt had been proffered a bag of coins, one larger than his, before she scurried off back to Cromer. Far enough away from gossip. Poor mite, the babe had even been denied a shroud. Tom took a scrap of muslin from his pocket.

An owl hooted from the branch of a nearby oak. He took it as a sign.

‘Hear you this, little’un, one day, a great oak will honour you. I’ll keep it watered and tell my son to do the same, should it please God that I am so blessed. Them as live in the big house may forget, but not I. This I vow on my mother’s life.’

He smoothed the thin muslin around the baby’s body, tucking it in gently while reciting a brief prayer. The words came easily. How many times had he heard them as he hung back in the shadows waiting for the vicar and mourners to disappear? Tonight, he was both sole mourner and gravedigger. He took the lid and placed it over the coffin, a hole cut for a sapling to sprout above the babe’s mouth, then hammered in the nails lightly, enough to stop foxes.

Hoisting the tiny coffin in his arms, he walked back into the open where a sliver of sickle moon had resurfaced from behind a rain-laden cloud, picking out the ruins of the old church a few hundred yards in the distance. That afternoon he had hidden a shovel in the nave. The babe would lie in consecrated ground, the least he could do for the lad. In the distant future, he imagined visitors to the church marvelling at an oak tree growing amidst the ruins, a canopy of branches and leaves where the roof should be. Lovers would tryst there, maybe another babe would be made on a bed of its coppery autumn leaves. A child who would be loved and cherished and grow strong, not smothered then cast aside like a drowned kitten. The idea comforted his soul.

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