Orphans from the Storm: Bride at Bellfield Mill / A Family for Hawthorn Farm / Tilly of Tap House
For the children’s sake…Lancashire, 1903Clutching her infant son, widowed Marianne Brown headed towards the chimneys of Bellfield Mill. She had to get work and luckily the dark and brooding Heywood Denshaw needed a housekeeper – but the Master soon begun to wish for more…Sunderland, 1899Wealthy farmer Luke Hudson gets more than he bargained for when he plucks a destitute young woman from the workhouse. He may have rescued Connie Summers from a life of penury, but her spirit and warmth give him a second chance at love.Isle of Dogs, 1928Doctor Harry Fleet and compassionate nurse Tilly Dainty can’t help but clash at the Tap House Surgery. But working together to help the sick turns out to be the healing balm both their hearts needed.
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Orphans from the Storm
Rita Bradshaw
Writing as Helen Brooks
Penny Jordan
Carol Wood
* * *
Three amazing bestselling authors use their historical saga writing talents to create three unforgettable heroines!
Orphans from the Storm
Bride at Bellfield Mill
Penny Jordan
A Family for Hawthorn Farm
Rita Bradshaw
Writing as Helen Brooks
Tilly of Tap House
Carol Wood
To my wonderful editor, Bryony Green, for her encouragement and support.
Contents
Bride at Bellfield Mill
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
A Family for Hawthorn Farm
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Tilly of Tap House
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
PENNY JORDAN, one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors, unfortunately passed away on 31st December 2011. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. Penny wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, she was successful in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan, ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters.’ It is perhaps this gift for sympathetic characterisation that helps to explain her enduring appeal.
Penny Jordan also wrote World War II sagas as Annie Groves, published by HarperCollins.
‘I CAN’T take you no further, lass, seein’ as I’m bound for Wicklethwaites Farm and you’re wantin’Rawlesden,’ the carter informed Marianne in his broad Lancashire accent, as he brought the cart to a halt at a fork in the rutted road. ‘You must take this turning ’ere and follow the road all the way down to the town. You’ll know it before you gets there on account of the smoke from Bellfield Mill’s chimneys, and then you keeps on walking when you gets to the Bellfield Hall.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Marianne asked the carter uncertainly.
She needed to find work—and quickly, she acknowledged as she looked down into the too-pale face of the baby in her arms. A lone woman with no work and a baby to care for could all too easily find herself in the workhouse—as she knew already to her cost.
The rich might be celebrating the Edwardian era, and a new king on the throne, but nothing had changed for the poor.
‘I says it on account of him wot owns it—aye, and t’mill an’ all. There’s plenty round here who says that he only come by them by foul means, and that the Master of Bellfield wouldn’t think twice about ridding himself of anyone wot was daft enough to stand in his way. There’s one little lass already disappeared from these parts with no one knowing where she’s gone. Happen that’s why he can’t get no one working up at the hall for him. No one half decent, that is…’
‘He doesn’t sound very pleasant,’ Marianne agreed as she clambered down from the cart, and then thanked the carter as he handed her the shabby bundle containing her few possessions.
‘I still dunno wot would bring a pretty lass like you looking for work in these parts.’
Marianne could tell that the carter was eager to know as much about her as he could—no doubt to add to his stock-in-trade of gossip. He had already regaled her with several tales of the doings of those who lived in the town and the small farms on the moors beyond it, with a great deal of relish. Marianne suspected it was an enclosed, shut-off life here in this dark mill town, buried deep in a small valley between the towering Pennine hills.
Her large brown eyes with their fringing of thick black eyelashes shadowed slightly in her small heart-shaped face. The carter had referred to her as a ‘pretty lass,’ but she suspected that he was flattering her. She certainly did not feel like one, with her hair damp and no doubt curling wildly all over the place, her clothes old and shabby and her skin pinched and blue-looking from the cold. She was also far too fine-boned for the modern fashion for curvaceous women—the kind of women King Edward favoured.
‘It’s just as I explained to you when you were kind enough to offer me a lift,’ she answered the carter politely. ‘My late husband’s dying wish was that I should bring his son here, to the place where he himself was born.’
