CHAPTER ONE
October 1784
“Come on then, girl. No good standing in the shadows where we can’t see you.”
Despite her grey overcoat, Grace shivered by the door, the cold wind tearing at her skin through her dress and petticoats. It was warm inside the forge, at least. She shuffled towards the fire and the two men working there.
“Grace, I’d like you to meet Tom. He’s going to be working with me from now on and living here with us. It means we’ll have another mouth to feed, but it also means I can take on more work.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss,” said Tom. Grace looked from her father to the new face and held out her hand. “Hello, Tom.”
His blue eyes were somewhat sunken in from the tanned skin. He had worked outdoors, that much was obvious, both from his muscular physique and his strength, which became apparent as they shook hands.
She longed to have skin which grew tanned in the sunshine, but she had been blessed with a translucent complexion, rather like her poor dear mother, a fact that made it difficult even now, several years after her death, for her father to look her in the face. Such a pretty face too, her dark hair framing delicate elven features.
She remembered herself as a little girl, walking through the village with her mother and hearing exclamations of praise from the ladies. She sighed inwardly. She knew her father was busy these days, not just with shoeing horses either, or with repairs to Mr Thatcher’s harrow and his other farm tools. They had started work on the canal nearby. Workers were forever turning up with broken pickaxes that had to be mended. Then there were the wagon wheels and iron tyres from the carts that carried out the dug earth. And of course these carts were drawn by yet more horses, all of which needed new shoes from time to time.
What really worried Grace, however, was her father’s intention to have her married off to a nice young man as soon as possible. This time the sigh escaped her lips, and she watched for a while as her father worked. She had always loved to watch him work, even as a small child. She had no fear of the dancing flames, the red-hot coke pieces or the yellow-hot molten metal as he removed it from the furnace with his tongs. Her favourite part came next. She closed her eyes to better appreciate the noise of the hammer striking the metal. DING! DING! DING!
Tom rested for a moment against the wall of the forge, his arm leaning on the bellows to keep him upright. He also watched Joe Richardson working the glowing metal into shape. Sparks flew onto the blacksmith’s leather apron as he knocked the clinker off the iron onto the floor. Tidying up the waste material would be part of his new job. Grace turned her back on them and made her way back into the bad weather. “I’ll put more broth on the stove for dinner, then,” she shouted, just above the racket.
“You do that,” her father shouted back, without looking up.
Siren Spirit Description:
Emma McVeigh is emotionally adrift. Broken-hearted after her marriage breakup, she has escaped city life and sought solace in a quintessential English village. Allowing herself time to regroup seems like the best course of action in her life right now. However, the picture-perfect thatched cottage she moves into hides a secret and is not the sanctuary she was hoping for. Enter her dashing next-door neighbour, Lewis. Charismatic and confident, he seems to be everything Emma wants in a man and she’s very attracted to him. But after a drunken one-night stand, he turns out to be not all he seems either. Can they each face their inner demons and, in doing so, solve the mystery of another lost soul?
