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Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: The White Dove, The Potter’s House, Celebration, White
Rosie Thomas
A collection of four stunning ebooks from the author of the runaway bestseller, THE KASHMIR SHAWL.THE WHITE DOVE: Born an aristocrat, beautiful Amy Lovell leads a whirlwind life of extravagant parties and balls. But Amy is ill-suited to a life of indulgence, and eagerly embraces a nursing career, where she is drawn into the radical politics of the day. As the spectre of war looms, Amy's bittersweet love for the proud miner Nick Penry leads them to the conflict in Spain, where love and pain become inseparable agonies.THE POTTER’S HOUSE: Olivia Giorgiadis has left her English roots behind to live on a tiny Greek island, married to a local man, mother to two small sons. But when an earthquake devastates the island, a stranger appears in the aftermath: an Englishwoman, destitute but for the clothes she wears. As she melts into the family and the village community, so Olivia begins to sense that her mysterious visitor threatens all she holds dear…CELEBRATION: For Bell Farrer, rising wine journalist, it was the break of her career. To interview both reclusive Baron Charles de Gillesmont of Chateau Reynard and business genius Valentine Gordon of California's Dry Stone Wineries. But suddenly Bell's career is the last thing on her mind. Because Charles and Valentine are not just opposites but enemies, locked in lethal rivalry by their only common bond, the women they choose to love. Once, Charles's wife; now Bell. How can Bell, loving one, still feel the draw of the other?WHITE: One Love. One Chance. Once Sacrifice. For Sam McGrath, a brief encounter with a young woman changes his life. On impulse, he vows to follow her – all the way to Nepal. Finch Buchanan, flying out as doctor, reaches the Himalayas only to be reunited with a man she has never been able to forget. Al Hood has made a promise: once he has conquered this last peak, he will leave the mountains behind forever. And the passionate relationship between Finch, Al and Sam – two men driven by their own demons, and a woman with a dream of her own – begins to play itself out, with tragic consequences…
ROSIE THOMAS 4-BOOK COLLECTION
The White Dove
The Potter’s House
Celebration
White
Rosie Thomas
Copyright (#u17c7a2d6-0a3c-5023-982c-312e76784c98)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 1986, 2000, 1982, 2000
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007560622, 9780007560547, 9780007560585, 9780007560530
Ebook Edition © November 2014 ISBN: 9780008115302
Version: 2014-10-11
Contents
Cover (#ua6e4fb25-7ade-5c0e-a6de-9c03c562aa12)
Title Page (#u7e7e70a5-01ad-5ba1-b7e6-9e6c3bbc9986)
Copyright
The White Dove (#u8d6cdd99-b439-5bfe-8b7b-e1fcf7383348)
The Potter’s House (#ucaedfd50-2645-5438-9032-9aa7ddce8329)
Celebration (#u7b3a125d-8e93-5d92-9e06-8a8556da5b8a)
White (#u82cc3ece-5cba-5a4c-8b70-612d14ca2377)
Keep Reading: THE ILLUSIONISTS (#u91086c4d-7646-59fd-8898-3af123544d63)
Keep Reading: THE KASHMIR SHAWL (#u6a02d9dc-7af6-5535-966d-4a0d682e6f71)
About the Author
Also by Rosie Thomas
About the Publisher
The White Dove
BY ROSIE THOMAS
Contents
Title Page (#uca9b51ed-f326-5064-94ca-8c3211cb8203)
Part One
One
Two
Three
Part Two
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Part Three
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Part Four
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Part One (#u2761c367-8bf2-5dfa-b775-9b1f45f842ec)
One (#u2761c367-8bf2-5dfa-b775-9b1f45f842ec)
The cedar tree was four hundred years old; as old as Chance itself. The shade beneath the cedar was more fragrant, cooler and deeper than the shade of any of the other great trees across the park. From its protective circle the family could look into the dazzle of light over the velvet grass, back to the terrace and the grey walls rearing behind it. The splash of the fountain was a deliciously cool note in the heavy heat of that long afternoon of July 1916.
Amy Lovell sat squarely at the tea-table, her chin barely level with the starched white cloth, wide eyes fixed on the sandwiches as fragile as butterflies, tiny circlets of pastry top-heavy with cream and raspberries, melting fingers of her favourite ginger sponge, and enticing dark wedges of rich fruit cake. A long time had passed since nursery lunch at twelve, and Amy was hungry. But she sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap, without even a rustle of her frilled petticoats. Her feet, in highly polished boots with intricate buttons and laces, did not nearly touch the grass, but she held them rigid. Only yesterday Papa had banished her from the tea-table for swinging her legs, and she had not even had a sandwich, let alone a ginger sponge finger. Amy allowed herself one sidelong glance at Isabel, six years old to her own four-and-a-bit, and saw that her sister looked as effortlessly still and composed as always.
A flutter of white cloth to the right of the table heralded the silent arrival of Mr Glass, the butler, with another, subsidiary table. This one was laden with silver tea-things.
‘I will pour out myself, Glass, thank you,’ said Amy’s mother in her special, low voice. When Amy first heard the word ‘drawling’ it pleased her, because it sounded exactly like Mama.
‘Very good, my lady.’
Mr Glass retreated across the grass, flanked by the maids with their apron and cap strings fluttering, and left them alone. Amy sighed with satisfaction. It was the best moment of the day, when she and Isabel had Mama and Papa all to themselves.
Lady Lovell stretched out her hand to the silver teapot. Her dark red hair fell in rich, natural waves, and where it was caught up at the nape of her neck beads of perspiration showed on the white skin. Her afternoon dress of pale rose silk was pleated and gathered, but it failed to disguise the ungainly bulk of the last days of pregnancy. Her hand fluttered back to rest over her stomach, and she sighed in the heat.
‘Could you, Gerald? Glass does hover so, and it is so nice to be just ourselves out here.’
‘That is his job, Adeline,’ Lord Lovell reminded her, but without the irritation he would have felt seven years ago.
He had fallen in love with his first sight of the exquisite eighteen-year-old American steel heiress dancing her way through her first London Season. And Adeline van Pelt from Pittsburgh, her head turned by her aristocratic suitor’s ancient title as much as by his formal charm, had agreed to marry him even though he was twice her age.
They had not made an easy beginning of their first months together at Chance. Lord Lovell was a widower, already the father of a twelve-year-old boy. His interests, apart from a well-bred liking for pretty girls, were horses, cards, and his estates. The new Lady Lovell came home with him at the end of the Season with only the barest understanding of what their life together would be like. It had come as an unpleasant shock, after the blaze of parties and admirers, to find herself alone much of the day while Gerald rode, or shot, or saw his farm managers. Yet at night, in her bedroom, he miraculously became everything she could have wanted. It was inexplicable to Adeline that her husband found it necessary to pretend, all day long, to be somebody he clearly wasn’t, and only to let the passion, and the laughter, out at night when they were alone.
To his concern, Gerald found that his wife was easily bored, capricious and unpredictable. She was either yawning with ennui, or filling the house with disreputable people and in a whirlwind of enthusiasm for painting the library in pink faux marble. She romped unsuitably in front of the servants, kissed him in public, and had no idea of what was expected of her as Lady Lovell.
And yet the sceptics who smiled behind their hands at the incongruous match and gave it a year to last, found themselves proved wrong. The Lovells grew happy together. Gerald unbent, and Adeline, to please him, learned to obey some of the rules of English upper-class life. Airlie Lovell, the son from his first marriage, remained Gerald’s adored heir, but the two little girls, with the look of their beautiful mother, were more important to him than he would have thought girl-children could ever be.
He smiled at Adeline now over their red-brown, ringleted heads.
‘Of course I will pour the tea, my darling. Meanwhile Glass can recline in his pantry reading Sporting Life, and all will be well with the world.’
‘Thank you,’ Adeline murmured. Her answering smile was tired. She leaned back in her padded chair and listlessly opened her little ivory fan. Gerald saw that her eyes were shadowed, and even her fan seemed too heavy to hold. Of course her condition wearied her. It would only be a few more days now, please God, and then the baby would be born. Then, soon, he would be welcome in his wife’s bedroom again. At the thought of Adeline’s long, white legs and the weight of her hair over his face Gerald shifted in his seat and put his finger to his collar.
‘Well, little girls,’ he said loudly. ‘What have you been doing with Miss May this afternoon?’
‘Handwriting,’ Amy said promptly. ‘It’s awful. “Press down on the lines, Miss Amy”…’
‘That will do,’ her father said. ‘Are these children really allowed cake before bread and butter, Adeline?’
‘Of course they are. Didn’t you prefer cake at their age?’
Amy, with one ginger sponge securely on her plate and the possibility of at least one more to come, beamed with sticky pleasure.
Then, across the smooth grass, between her mother’s rosepink shoulder and her father’s cream-jacketed arm wielding the teapot, she saw a man on a bicycle. He was riding along the west drive, which meant he had come through the west gates leading from the village. Against the bright sunlight he looked all black, perched on top of his angular black bicycle, and his spidery black legs were pumping round and round as he spun up the driveway.
He must be bringing something for Cook in the kitchen, Amy thought. The butcher’s delivery boy had a bicycle like that, only his had a big basket at the front and a wide, flat tray at the back. All the bicycles from the shops had baskets like that, she remembered, and this one didn’t. So it couldn’t be a delivery. The man was riding too fast, too. And instead of wheeling away to the side of the house and then to the kitchen courtyard, he rode straight on. He disappeared from sight behind the wing that enclosed the wide, paved court at the front of the house. The man on the bicycle had gone straight to the great main door.
Amy frowned slightly, wondering. She had only ever seen carriages and cars sweeping up to the main door. Then she took another bite of her cake and looked at Isabel. It was usually safe to take a lead from Isabel, but her sister did not seem to have noticed the man on the bicycle. And Mama and Papa had not seen him either, of course, because their backs were turned to the west drive.
It couldn’t be anything interesting, then.
Amy had barely given her full attention to her tea once more when something else caught her eye. It was so unexpected that it made her stop short, with her cake halfway to her mouth.
Mr Glass had come out of the tall open doors on to the terrace again. Instead of moving at his usual stately pace, he was almost running. He was down the steps, and covering the width of lawn that separated them from the house. Amy was suddenly aware that the afternoon was almost over, and Glass’s shadow was running ahead of him like a long, black finger pointing at them under the shade of the cedar tree. Isabel was looking curiously past her, and she heard the sharp chink as her mother quickly replaced her cup in its saucer.
But her father was frozen, motionless, as he watched Glass coming over the lawn. The butler was carrying an envelope in one hand, and a silver salver in the other. He hadn’t even given himself time to put the two together. Then he reached the table under the tree.
‘A telegram, my lord,’ he said. Yet he still kept hold of it, stiff-fingered, as if he didn’t want to hand it over. In his other hand the silver salver dangled uselessly at his side.
‘Give it to me,’ Gerald Lovell said quietly.
Slowly, as if it hurt him to do it, Glass held out the buff envelope. Lord Lovell took it, tore it open, and read the message it contained.
The little girls looked from one to the other of the adult faces, mystified by the chill that had crept over the golden afternoon.
