Lady in the Veil

Leah Fleming
was born in Lancashire and is married with three sons and a daughter. She writes from an old farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales and an olive grove in
Crete.

The War Widows

Orphans of War

Mothers and Daughters

Remembrance Day

Winter’s Children

The Captain’s Daughter

The Girl Under the Olive Tree

The Postcard

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright © Leah Fleming, 2015

Extract from
The Postcard
copyright © Leah Fleming, 2014
Extract from
The Last Pearl
copyright © Leah Fleming, 2015

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

The right of Leah Fleming to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-47114-102-7

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

2012.
YEWBANK HOUSE

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I found the photograph album by chance when we were clearing out the old coach house. It must have been sitting on the garage shelf for years among all the family rejects
consigned to this glory hole.

At first I thought it was just a family Bible, the sort the Victorians furnished for their parlours with names and dates at the front. I hoped it might help my current mania for researching the
history of Yewbank House, but no such luck.

There was so much de-cluttering to do before the architect came to discuss turning the stone buildings into a holiday let. As usual, only Bill and I had turned up to see to the clearing up.
Stockdales were always hoarders, I thought, as I sifted through the suitcases full of musty books and papers. The farmhouse was big enough to shift stuff from parlour to attic or cellar, cellar to
coach house but as this was now our new home I wanted everything out and sorted.

It must have been at the weekend when Bill and I sat down with the books and the Bible by the fire. ‘You’re not throwing that out!’ my husband laughed.

I realized it was a fine piece of Victorian tooled leather and gilt work with a gilded clasp opening up into a huge thick album full of photographs of beautiful Yorkshire Dales scenery, hay
timing in the fields, the house during renovations, horse and carriages. These pictures were works of art. There were later sepia portraits of ladies with parasols sitting by the front portico,
children in ringlets and tartan dresses and I could see at once the genetic inheritance: those strong brows, high cheekbones and ruddy country faces of the Stockdale clan. I looked at Bill and
laughed. ‘Easy to see who this lot belongs to. Do you know any of them?’

He turned over the pages slowly. ‘That must be my great-grandpa as a baby, judging by the date. But what the heck is this?’

We stared in shock at the toddler sitting in the lap of its mother or at least someone holding him, draped from head to toe in a cotton lace curtain or something, completely enveloped and
unrecognizable.

‘That’s weird,’ I answered. ‘How bizarre . . . who would take a photo like that? Is she a corpse?’ I had heard that infants were often photographed on their
deathbeds, but a mother concealed under lace? I dropped the photo quickly. ‘Put it away!’

When Bill left the room I found myself strangely drawn to take a second closer look at this portrait. I noticed her ladylike fingers clutching the child as it sat looking puzzled at the camera.
The baby was sunk into her groin, relaxed, almost smiling. This was no dead infant and the hand that held it was firm and alive. It was then I noticed another faded hand to the left of the hidden
mother reaching out to steady the both of them. This was not a female hand with its broader palm like a spade. I sensed a muscular grip on the child’s shoulder, but why was he also cut
out?

Who were they? Why was this photograph loose, not fixed like the others and what had it got to do with Bill’s family? Why had his gran never shown the album to anyone? Those early
landscapes were skilled, taken by a man with an eye for beauty, which made this portrait all the more strange. Who was left now to answer all these questions? It was going to be up to me to find
out more about these lost relatives of Yewbank House.

I turned the photo round, hoping for some clue. In a spidery hand was written:
my father, William Albert Dacre Stockdale
. Nothing more; but who was the lady in the veil?

‘Last one to the stone cross is a sissy!’ yelled William Dacre as he spurred his horse past his sister.

‘Wait for me, that’s not fair!’ Mirabel Dacre shouted, not so easily shaken off, especially as she’d ditched the side-saddle in favour of a proper saddle, her riding
habit daringly hitched up. Why should boys have all the fun? They were racing along the ridgeway on top of the Yorkshire moor looking down into the valley where the silver river snaked past the
gardens of their residence, Lawton Hall.

Will was home from his boarding school. There was always good-natured rivalry between them, being just a year apart, while their younger sister, Eliza, stayed indoors, believing it was unsafe to
venture out onto the hills.

Someone had to keep an eye on Papa when he was in one of his black moods. Ever since their dear mama died in childbirth, he had ignored his other children in favour of business activities: the
mills, the district bank, the Assizes. Sir Barnett Dacre was renowned for his involvement in Dales affairs. Mirabel knew he didn’t care what they got up to as long as they kept out of
sight.

Will was racing ahead faster and faster on Hector while she was lagging behind, but not for long. She kicked hard and bent her head into the wind to chase after him, breathless, her determined
jaw set for victory, her ringlets whipping her cheeks. Her eye was on the stone cross by the finger post at the crossroads from Skelsby to Dallingford. Then to her horror she saw a wild deer leap
over a stone wall in Will’s path. Hector reared up catching the deer, flinging it aside but Will was thrown right over the horse’s head and into the stone cross.

‘Will!’ Mirabel screamed, screeching to a halt, leaping down from the saddle with difficulty, seeing him lying prostrate on the bridle path not moving.

‘Will! Wake up!’ She lifted his head onto her lap. He was breathing but was fast asleep and she felt helpless to know what to do next. The deer lay on the ground wounded. Hector had
dashed off. Suddenly the sky glowered over then; the moors empty of carts or coaches. Only sheep grazed curiously. ‘Oh Lord, what do I do now?’ she cried into the wind. ‘Please
help us.’

Matt Stockdale was busy setting up his tripod to catch the light before the sun descended behind the hidden gill. Ever since he had read Mr Fox Talbot’s book,
The
Pencil of Nature,
that told him how to capture images on paper by the action of light, he was hooked on the new art of Photography. He had even made his own equipment for outdoors work. His
late father had thought it was queer to want to steal pictures from the sunlight. ‘Nowt’ll come of it. Don’t waste yer brass, lad.’ But Matt knew better and the discussions
at Skelsby’s Men’s Forum agreed that photography was a new science. Even the Queen had herself portrayed by light.

As a grammar school boy, he had had some chemical lessons, but he had to leave school to help his mother on the farm when his father died suddenly. Yewbank was a hard taskmaster and with only a
yard boy and dairymaids, he was in charge of hundreds of sheep roaming on the fells. It was the life he was born to and they owned a stretch of moorland thanks to the dedication of his Stockdale
ancestors who fought off the land-grabbing Dacres for centuries.

He wanted to capture the waterfall in the rocky gill where the stream cascaded down the ravine in such force. He had even brought his own dark cabinet to process his plates quickly. It was an
expensive hobby for a Dales farmer but Matt was careful and made what he could himself. He had brought the cart to bring back some good stones for walling later. Work first, then pleasure, he
smiled to himself. It was then that he heard the scream carried over the wind but it often played tricks on him so he stopped. There it was again, not the screech of a bird but a woman’s cry.
Someone was in trouble. He left his equipment safe by the stone wall and took the cart in the direction of the cry. It was getting louder as he approached the four lane ends.

‘Hey up, I’m coming!’ he yelled. There was a horse grazing and a deer on its side already dead and at the crossroads sat a girl sobbing with a man in her lap.

‘You have to help us,’ she whimpered. ‘My brother fell off his horse and he won’t wake up’. She was stroking his fair hair as she stared up at him.

All Matt could see was a pair of blue eyes with tears rolling down her cheeks but he knew the face of the Squire’s daughter and her brother. By the looks of him he lay half dead with not a
mark on him.

‘Give him here, Miss,’ he spoke gently as to a child. ‘We’ll lay him down in my cart and take him home.’

‘Oh thank you. My father will be so grateful. Master William is his only son, if anything should happen to him . . . Oh do be careful. Wake up, Will . . . Why won’t he wake
up?’

‘Happen he’s knocked hissen out. Not to worry, Miss. We’ll take him back to Lawton straight away.’

‘You know who we are then?’

‘Of course, I see you in St Peter’s church now and then. Come on, give me a hand. You can rest him on you.’

She smiled. ‘How can we thank you? How would we survive if you hadn’t come?’

‘You’ve got a good pair o’ lungs on you, I’ll say that, Miss. I heard you a mile off.’

Matt lifted the youngster gently, aware that there were stones to be chucked out and the cart smelt like a midden. The girl didn’t notice, being so taken up with her brother. She looked a
bit of a sight with her hat awry and her hair dishevelled but she was the most beautiful lass he’d ever set eyes on.

‘Oh do hurry up!’ she ordered.

‘Hold on! We must go gentle. His ribs might be cracked. Sorry, Miss Dacre, but slow is best for him.’

‘And who must we thank for rescuing us?’ she replied.

He turned to reply. ‘Matt Stockdale, Matthias Stockdale of Yewbank Farm up on the tops. I was out collecting stone.’ He didn’t tell her the real reason for his expedition. He
just hoped it wouldn’t rain on his precious equipment and that his covers were waterproof.

They drew closer to the bridge across to Lawton and he saw the golden stone house with its ancient peel tower. The girl leapt off the cart unladylike, racing across the garden lawn to raise the
alarm. ‘Fetch Papa! Fetch the doctor!’ she yelled as servants emerged from the kitchen yard and stables.

He had never been through the front entrance of the hall before. Farmers always came to the tradesmen’s gate out of sight of the Dacres. The boy was lifted from the cart into waiting
hands. No one returned to speak to him so he turned the cart round and headed uphill. His job was done but he wondered just how bad young Master William’s injuries were. Doubtless he’d
get news one way or another. All he could see were those bright blue eyes the colour of forget-me-nots , staring up at him with such gratitude. And he hoped he would see Miss Dacre again.