The Mistresses of Wistmere
A Neo-Gothic Novel
BY
Rachel Secor
Copyright © 2019 by Belinda Barrett & Leona Seaver
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book or any portion thereof may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or authors except for the use of brief quotations in a book review and where permitted by law.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2019
ISBN 978-1-7340316-0-7 Paperback
ISBN 978-1-7340316-2-1 Ebook
Above-the-Hollow Press
Morrisonville, NY 12962
Email: [email protected]
To our family, past, present and future
“Remember those you came from”
- Ossian, Scottish poet, 3rd century
Chapter One
1863 Wistmere Manor, Scotland
The matching grey horses guided the carriage up the drive, into the courtyard, and stopped before the manor house.
High in the southeast wing, dark angry eyes peered through the dirty glass and watched a young man descend the steps of Wistmere to greet the arrivals. Focusing on the disembarking travellers, the observer from above concentrated first on the raven-haired woman, then on the darker-skinned lady. Her angry whisper clouded the glass in a hiss, “There was to be only one!”
The onlooker pushed the attic casement open and strained to hear the conversation below, but she was too far away. She eased the window closed again and backed into the shadows to await the chance at changing her future.
* * *
Edinburgh, Four days earlier
“You’re dead,” Katherine St. Pierre spat, “and not one utterance of sorrow will I breathe for you, Robert Craig! You’re gone and there’s little in me that cares. I shall never mourn your passing.” Bitter words from a bitter heart.
The announcement of Sir Craig’s death had come to her at her place of employment. She read the letter again, “Robert Andrew Craig died January 17th, 1862.” The letter didn’t go into the details of her benefactor’s death. It simply stated “at sea.” Neal Jameson, Esquire, requested her presence at the reading of the will. A numbness coursed through Katherine’s heart.
She sat on the bed and wept, not out of grief, but for the carrion of hate that her heart and mind had fed on throughout the isolated years of her life.
Wiping the tears from her face and refolding the letter, she crammed it into her handbag. There was still the question of whether to respond to the solicitor’s summons or not. Katherine hated the menial attitude people had toward her as a governess. Could acting on what the letter promised bring about a change in her life? Could acting on the letter bring about a change in her heart? Would it resurrect the past… or settle the future? The more she considered her position as a governess, the easier it became for her to decide.
After arranging to be released from her duties, Katherine donned her brown wool dress and stood before her vanity to study her reflection. She frowned at her plain tawny complexion and her sedate green eyes. She had never been one to primp or dress with much care. But now she had to mingle in with a part of the city that demanded fashion, more fashion than a governess could afford. Katherine had longed to wear the kind of elegant clothing that the women of genteel birth wore. But as she leaned closer into the light that fell across the mirror, she knew that she lacked the courage to be anything other than what she was. And no amount of makeup or fine garments could cover her half Scottish, half Jamaican physique. With a resigning sigh and her habitual curse to Robert Craig, Katherine pushed a thick wave of her brown hair beneath an unobtrusive bonnet and left her room.
* * *
The gentle sway of the carriage induced Katherine to close her eyes. Entombed memories grew restless for their resurrection. The crack of the coachman’s whip seemed to say ‘Sir Robert’. Even the wind swishing past the window murmured ‘Sir Robert’. Her mother’s voice reached out from the grave and whispered his name, as if it were sacred, ‘Sir Robert’. Katherine tried to still her mind, but it wouldn’t be quiet. She remembered.
“Sir Robert will be sending you to school,” came her mother’s voice.
As a child of eight, Katherine nestled against her mother’s soft body and never questioned why she was being sent away or why she and her mother lived in a cottage at the edge of the estate. She simply accepted their life there, never seeing the pain behind her mother’s liquid green eyes or the etched look of sadness on her face. It was a face that refused to wrinkle even in the cold harshness of Scotland.
“You have to be learned,” Cora told her daughter, “so that Sir Robert will be pleased to let us go on living here and one day perhaps you will live in Wistmere.”
The carriage made its way through a tangled intersection as the image of the Craig manor passed through Katherine’s mind like the massive sail on one of Sir Robert’s ships. She whispered its name: “Wistmere”. She wasn’t allowed to play beyond the scrubby yard that spread its tendrils from the front of her cottage to the edge of the golden fields, for there
