Rutherford Park

P
RAISE FOR
E
LIZABETH
C
OOKE’S

Rutherford Park

“A breathtakingly beautiful book. Cooke portrays an aristocratic dynasty that, in 1914, was poised on the brink of extinction, as ponderous as the huge dinosaurs but just as magnificent. The exquisite intimacy of the writing and of the haunting love story drew me into this elegant world so entirely that I couldn’t imagine ever leaving it. The vivid characters and understated heartbreak of their conflicts, above and belowstairs, are depicted with sensitivity and insight. Superbly researched; a real treat.”

—Kate Furnivall, author of
The Russian Concubine

“I found myself addicted to
Rutherford Park
, much as I was to
Downton Abbey
. I reveled in delicious detail about life in a great country estate, all the while waiting to learn would Octavia’s family survive or would they be torn apart by the forces converging on them: personal failings, society’s excesses and Europe’s Great War?”

—Margaret Wurtele, author of
The Golden Hour

“Beautiful, melancholy and richly detailed,
Rutherford Park
elegantly depicts the lives within an English country house on the cusp of a new age. Elizabeth Cooke evokes classic authors like Vita Sackville-West and Frances Hodgson Burnett.”

—Natasha Solomons, author of
The House at Tyneford

“Reminiscent of Catherine Cookson, a heart-aching story of an old world order and class divides set against Edwardian England.”

—Judith Kinghorn, author of
The Last Summer

“With its vivid descriptions and memorable characters,
Rutherford Park
drew me in from the first page. Richly textured with historical details, the novel captures perfectly the pre–World War I mood and atmosphere of the grand Yorkshire house and the lives of those who inhabit it. The final page left me thoroughly satisfied, yet wishing for more. Thank you, Elizabeth Cooke, for a wonderful story and the promise of another.”

—Kelly Jones, author of
The Woman Who Heard Color

“Comparisons with
Downton Abbey
on the eve of World War I are inevitable, but
Rutherford Park
gives a more comprehensive and realistic look at the farms and mill villages that sustained the great houses, and shows us the inevitable cracks in their foundations. Compelling.”

—Margaret Maron, author of the Judge Deborah Knott series

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Readers Guide to Rutherford Park

S
now had fallen in the night, and now the great house, standing at the head of the valley, seemed like a five-hundred-year-old ship sailing in a white ocean. Around it spread the parkland, the woods, terraces and gardens; beyond it and high above was the massive slope of the woodlands and the moor. To the south and the east, the river described a wide loop; to the west, the nine-acre lake was a grey mirror fringed with ice.

Although it was early, Rutherford was not asleep. It was never truly asleep, for everywhere in that white landscape there was hard labor to keep the estate functioning. Power and influence had raised Rutherford; power and influence trailed in its wake. Just as the late-Victorian additions to the house spread outwards from the Tudor hall where the first brick had been laid in 1530, so Rutherford spread outwards from the house itself, radiating through the tenant farms, the villages, the long sweep of the valley down towards York, touching and altering everything in its path: commanding lives, changing landscapes.

On the first floor now, above the terrace, a light was shining, and the heavy curtains of the largest room in the west wing were drawn back. It was barely seven, but Octavia Cavendish had been awake for some time. She sat swathed in the Poiret dressing gown, full-length black-and-white satin, lined in sable, that William had bought her in London eighteen months ago. A fire glowed in the limestone-framed fireplace; Octavia’s morning tea was laid to one side.

Around her fussed Amelie, her maid, laying out the first changes of clothes of the day: four alternatives. The lavender, perhaps, for luncheon, or the morning dress of grey velvet. A tea gown for the afternoon. And the elaborate white tulle with green appliqué for the evening. Past the gowns, on the dressing table, Amelie had already spread out the jewels that had once belonged to Octavia’s husband’s mother: heavyweight emeralds set in gold, and the opals, which she particularly loathed. In a room awash with silks and gauzes, Octavia looked, and felt, like some overblown rose wilting before the fire. “The lavender,” she decided eventually. Amelie dipped her head in agreement, bundled up the grey velvet over her arm, and retreated to the dressing room.

Octavia got up and looked out at the snow. It was more than an hour since she had first noticed the great beech tree lying on its side at the top of the drive, and she gazed at it now, watching the men gathering below the curved steps: monochrome silhouettes against the branches and the burned-out color of last year’s leaves.

She had an overwhelming feeling that she might go outside; she might go and listen to their conversations. She might run in the snow as the children used to. She remembered running across this perfect lawn, this perfect terrace, when she had first come here with William, a bride of nineteen, alive with a happiness that had been rapidly extinguished, brimming with an enthusiasm that was not
required. She remembered passing the North Lodge in the old landau on the very first day, the large carriage dipping and rolling as it turned the corner of the drive, and Rutherford had come into view, with its towers, mullioned windows and barley-twist chimneys looking so ravishingly pretty in the afternoon sunshine.

Octavia unconsciously straightened her shoulders. Of course, it was impossible to go outside. One would hardly be expected to, unless there were a shooting party or one was dressed to walk, as she sometimes did in the spring or summer. Besides which, it would not be seemly for the wife of the eighth earl to run. And she certainly could not go to listen to the talk among the servants. Still, it was unreal: the huge tree lying broken-backed. The silence of the snow for miles beyond. The ghostly atmosphere of the day. She had once dreamed, not long after Harry had been born, that all of Rutherford had vanished. She had dreamed that the grounds had fluttered for a brief second and were suddenly gone: the glasshouses, the lake, the long drive to the edge of the hills, gone in an instant, shut up in a breath, eclipsed in one long, suffocating sigh.

She wondered why she thought of that now. It was Christmas Eve, 1913; the house was entertaining for the next four days; as the mistress of the house, she ought to be too busy for such fantasies. She turned back and looked at the room, frowning and calculating. There were sixteen guests coming in all: a rather small house party, but she preferred to have simply friends at Christmas, for there were too many formal parties to host during the rest of the year.

She had no doubt that the stoical little steam train would run from Wasthwaite along the valley; but she wondered about the horses struggling along the country road to the house. There was no possibility, surely, of the Napier or the Metz going out in this weather? The Napier was temperamental at best; the wheels would slither down the incline to the gates—and as for the Metz, it had
been a whim to occupy Harry, to distract the boy from his perpetual obsession with air flight. The Metz was a little green roadster hardly capable of battling through snow. However, no doubt William would insist upon his Napier, for, to the horror of the staff, he enjoyed driving it himself, and had an enormous fur driving coat, a boxlike monument of a coat, that he would wrap himself in today. The drive would be cleared, the lane, the hill—four miles of snow. William would set the ground staff to it. Four miles. Eight more guests to add to those already here. Two more trains, Charlotte and Louisa returning on the same afternoon train and Helene de Montfort before luncheon.