The Return of the Stranger
Standing high on the windswept moors, the lone figure of Heath Montanha vows vengeance on the woman who destroyed the last fragments of his heart…Lady Katherine Charlton has never forgotten the stable hand with dangerous fists and a troubled heart from her childhood. Now the rebel is back, his powerful anger concealed under a polished and commanding veneer.When ten years of scandal and secrets are unleashed, with a passionate, furious kiss, Heath’s deepest, darkest wish crystallizes: revenge—and Kathy—will be his!
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He could have her now. Kiss her into submission, take her up against the dark, dirty wall of this neglected hallway, and he would swear that she wouldnât even fight him.
And he would have gone that way once. In his youth he wouldnât have thought twice about it. Young and wild, he had operated only on instinct, on hunger, on need. But Katherine Charlton was a very different matter.
He had sensed that hunger in her kiss. In the tiny whimper she had made under his mouth, the way her body had melted against him. And he hadnât even touched her. But one day he would. One day she would leave all her pride in the dust and she would beg for his touch. And the waiting, the anticipation, would only make the fulfilment all the more delicious, more satisfying.
He could wait. And enjoy that anticipation.
Dear Reader
Youâll see the book is partly dedicated to a Mr Grogan, who first introduced me to the story of Wuthering Heights. I was just ten years old, and living just down the road from where the Brontë sisters grew up. One day, to distract us from the heavy storms outside, our teacher started to read us Wuthering Heights. We only ever heard the start of the storyâup to the moment when Heathcliff turned his back on Cathy and walked away to make his fortuneâso I didnât know what happened until I found a copy on my motherâs bookshelves and found myself caught up in the story.
I had always hoped that Wuthering Heights would have a happy-ever-after for Cathy and Heathcliff. But even from the start I had somehow known that that wasnât going to beâthat, whatever else it was, Wuthering Heights wasnât really a love story but a story about passion and possession. So when I was asked to rework Wuthering Heights I could take the wild, strong-willed Cathy and the dark, brooding, dangerous Heathcliff and let them learn about love, so as to give them give them the happy ending Emily Brontë's original story could never have had.
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was a vital part my life right from that day in my childhood, and I still reread the book at least once a year, so writing THE RETURN OF THE STRANGER was a dream come true for me. Iâve loved reworking this classic story, and I hope youâll love the result when you read it.
Kate Walker
http://www.kate-walker.com
For my junior school teacher, Mr Grogan, who first told me the story of Wuthering Heights, and for Michelle Styles, who always believed. (Not forgetting Heathcliff the Cat!)
CHAPTER ONE
HE WAS back.
Heath stood on the moorland rise that was positioned almost exactly halfway between the two houses that had shaped his life in the past. Up above him, high on the steep hill, was the big old-fashioned stone building known as High Farm. Neglected now, and desperately in need of repair, the window frames crumbling, the garden overgrown, it looked bleak and unwelcoming as the winds lashed the trees behind it. Further down in the valley was the Grange, elegant, well cared for, with sweeping lawns, a flourishing rose garden and there, at the side of the big golden-stoned house, the glint of blue where the swimming pool gleamed in the sunlight.
One of these houses had been the place he had grown up in but had never truly been able to call home. He had spent most of his childhood and adolescence there but he had never belonged. Always been on the outside. And once the man who had brought him there had died, any trace of warmth or âfamilyâ had vanished with him.
The other house heâd been totally excluded from. Not even allowed through the door, never mind into any of the elegant, expensively decorated rooms. Just once heâd crossed the threshold, getting as far as the hall and that was as far as heâd managed. That time he had been ejected with a hand on the collar of his shirt, a knee in his back, thrown out onto the rain-soaked gravel driveway, landing on his face with such force that he had been picking bits of stone out of the grazes for days to come.
He was back but there was no way that he was home.
âHome! Hah!â
He kicked a pebble out of his way, watched it bounce along the path then fall into a rough patch of grass. This had never been his home even when he had thought, had hoped that it was. Ten years before, a penniless adolescent, he had turned his back on it without a second thought, driven out by one last betrayal, one last rejection, that had been more than he could take. Heading out into a night so vile it had seemed as if all the devils in hell were howling in the wind that whirled across the moor, and the icy rain had almost blinded him as it swept into his eyes, plastered his hair to his skull.
With only the clothes he stood up in and his paltry savings in his pocket, the amount so small that he would now think more than twice about even tossing it into a beggarâs collection pot, he had vowed that one day he would be back. That one day he would return. But not until he had the status, the wealth, the power, that meant that neither the Nicholls family nor the Charltons would ever be able to make a move against him again.
