Finding Mr Rochester

by Trisha Ashley

  FINDING MR ROCHESTER

  TRISHA ASHLEY

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Finding Mr Rochester

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Mr Rochester’s Afternoon Tea Recipes

  Read on for a first look at Trisha’s brand new novel Every Woman For Herself …

  About the Author

  By the same author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  FINDING MR ROCHESTER

  1

  Due to a flat tyre, I’d had no time to look around the auction before the bidding started, but when the auctioneer’s assistant held up a mixed box of items, including a willow-patterned teapot and large serving dish, I took a gamble, because I simply adore blue and white china.

  I got it so cheaply that I was worried the dealers knew something I didn’t, like it was cracked or chipped, but I had a quick look while loading it into the car and it seemed perfect.

  I can’t say I paid a lot of interest to the other contents of the box until I got it back to my flat, where I discovered I’d become the proud possessor of a random collection of Victoriana, including a blue-tasselled cardboard fan inscribed with biblical quotes of a bracing kind, a pair of small brown leather buttoned boots, a crushed and depressed-looking black velvet hat with crepe streamers, and a large, fat, gilt-edged book bound in maroon leather.

  The latter, once I’d ventured beyond endpapers marbled like cheap salami, proved to be completely filled by clear copperplate handwriting and was inscribed on the flyleaf, The Memoirs of Hephzibah Burd-Jonas.

  Well, being the author of popular historical romantic novels, I immediately hoped Hephzibah might provide a spark of inspiration for the next, but my hopes were dashed after only a short perusal of her turgid, prissy and pious prose.

  A vicar’s daughter, she’d married a missionary and embraced his quest to go out into the world and convert the heathen, whether they liked it or not. Later, on being widowed, she’d thought it her duty to return home and look after her father, busying herself with parish affairs, and from this point, her memoirs plumbed new depths of boring.

  I’d begun skimming through quickly to the end, when the mention of the name Charlotte – Charlotte Brontë – brought me up short. I read on with a faster beating heart and a sense of rising excitement, as Hephzibah said she’d recently learned that her old Roe Head schoolfellow had gone to meet her Maker, but hoped she would have long since repented of her intemperate writings and died in a tolerable state of grace!

  It emerged that on Mrs Burd-Jonas’ return from Africa, a mutual friend, who had stayed in correspondence with Charlotte, had sent her a copy of Jane Eyre.

  ‘I cannot tell you how shockingly full of wild notions, intemperate language and a lack of acceptance of God’s designated path through life I found it,’ she wrote. ‘A feeling compounded by my friend’s further confidence that Charlotte once laughingly told her she had drawn inspiration for the appearance of Mr Rochester from a surly, black-haired moorland farmer at a place fittingly called Godesend. And, what was worse, until wintry weather put a stop to such excursions, she had passed by this remote spot so often in the hope of catching a glimpse of him that she suspected he began to misunderstand her interest – and he a married man!’

  Then she added, cattily, ‘It was a complete surprise to me that Miss Brontë should have expressed herself in this manner, for I remember little of her at Roe Head, except that she was small, retiring in nature and entirely unremarkable.’

  I read this page over and over, hardly able to believe my own eyes. I mean, I’m a huge Brontë fan and my secret passion for Mr Rochester probably explains my poor choice of boyfriends and current single state! Clever, dark, tricky, sarcastic men have not turned out to be the stuff that dreams are made of. Jane Eyre only pulled it off after the author’s pen had softened up Mr Rochester by maiming him while he was nobly engaged in trying to rescue his mad wife from her burning attic.

  Of course, after this discovery I searched the rest of the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb, but that brief passage was the only interesting thing in the whole memoirs. But it was enough – more than enough – and what plot ideas it was suddenly sparking in my mind!

  For a few days I hugged the secret to myself, doing a little research on Hephzibah – though there didn’t seem to be much that she hadn’t included in her copious memoirs – and outlining a novel I proposed calling Finding Mr Rochester – a kind of Brief Encounter, but without trains.

  When I finally revealed all to my agent, Senga McWhirter, she immediately grasped the importance of my find and the huge media potential for publicising the new novel. Both she and my editor were adamant that the memoir must be kept under wraps until closer to publication day, for maximum effect.

  So I settled down to write the book, taking some liberties to make it a doomed love affair between Charlotte and the farmer, though I couldn’t immediately think how I could possibly end it on a high note!

  I was so inspired that I rushed off a first draft before even researching the background, so it was some weeks later before I thought to look online for any mention of a Godesend Farm near Haworth – but when I did, bingo! There it was, high up on the moors and nearer to Upvale than Haworth – and what’s more, it had a holiday cottage to let.

  The picture showed an unappealing, low stone building resembling a large pigsty, looming out of a fog, and it promised a no-frills base for nature lovers and hikers to explore the nearby countryside. There was a tearoom at the farm in season, though it didn’t specify which season, and a pub within walking distance.

  I rang the number and a woman with a deep voice said the cottage was free for the first week of September and then would be shut up till the spring, so I booked it, after checking that I could take my dog with me.

  ‘So long as it’s not let loose to worry the sheep,’ she agreed.

  I assured her that Missy, a small, fluffy white bundle of indeterminate parentage, was more likely to run in the opposite direction.

  ‘The weather’s none too good this time of year,’ she warned me, though only after making the booking.

  ‘That’s all right, I just want to soak up the atmosphere.’

  ‘We’ve got plenty of that,’ she said dryly, then put the phone down.

  2

  My first visit to Godesend Farm passed by in a mist – literally. A fuzzy, thick grey blanket of the stuff shrouded the moors and it was by sheer good luck that I found the turn to the farm from the road, next to a weathered and dismally flapping sign that read:

  Afternoon teas 100 yards.

  Hikers

  The rest was worn off, but I assumed hikers were welcome, since I couldn’t imagine many other customers finding their way there.

  Following the directions I’d been given, I bumped my way up the track and found the cottage just off to the left, huddled behind a row of stunted rowans.

  As I got out with Missy under my arm, the door opened and a tall, raw-boned woman with iron-grey hair in a long plait over one shoulder and a flowered pinny showing below a quilted red anorak, beckoned me in.

  The mist swirled, Missy shivered and some unseen bird screamed like a lost soul overhead. I’ve seen horror movies that start like that, so I’d have been tempted to turn tail and run for home, except that it would have been bad manners.

  So I followed her into a chill, stone-flagged passageway and through to a kitchen warmed to blood-heat by a woodburning stove, where she introduced herself as Martha, who looked after the cottage and ra
n the tearoom during the season.

  ‘Is it still the season?’ I asked hopefully, longing for a good afternoon tea by a roaring fire.

  ‘Nay,’ she said shortly, seeming to be a woman of few words.

  ‘The sign’s still out at the top of the lane.’

  ‘I can’t help that. We’re always closed mid-September to Easter.’

  ‘But it’s the first week in September,’ I pointed out.

  ‘When Mr Godet took ill, I thought we could do without strangers traipsing about the place. Not that there’s too much of that, even in the summer,’ she added, ‘bar a lot of hikers wanting their tea.’

  ‘I’ll try not to traipse about too much then, and disturb him.’

  ‘Oh, you won’t be doing that – he died only last week.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Eh, well, it were a good send-off, even if the boys did come to blows afterwards, when the will was read.’

  ‘His sons?’ I queried.

  ‘His son and his nephew, and both quick-tempered, like all the Godets – as I should know, because my sister married one.’

  ‘There have always been Godets here at Godesend Farm, haven’t there? I looked it up on the internet.’

  ‘That’s right. But you won’t be looking anything up on the internet here,’ she added, with a grim smile. ‘I don’t know what you’ll do with yourself for a week on your own, but if you walk on the moors, stay on the path – there are bogs and places you could fall where no one might find you.’

  I shivered. ‘I certainly will!’

  ‘And don’t go letting that little dog of yours roam about, for there’s sheep around, and that George is likely to shoot a loose dog first and ask questions second.’

  ‘Is that Mr Godet’s son?’ I asked. I didn’t much like the sound of him.

  ‘Nay, his nephew, who’s been working the farm along with his own,’ she said. ‘And a godsend it seems to have been for him, worming his way into inheriting the land as he did.’

  She suddenly seemed to recollect that she was talking to a stranger, for she abandoned this interesting topic and led me on a brief tour of the facilities.

  These were not extensive. Upstairs was a small bedroom furnished in Victorian style, a tiny spartan bathroom with a shower and loo, and downstairs, other than the kitchen, only a chilly and minute front parlour.

  ‘There’s an electric water heater for the shower and the kitchen sink,’ she said. ‘Keep the stove going and the heat will warm the whole place in a couple of hours: there’s wood out the back in the lean-to.’

  ‘There’s no one in the farmhouse at the moment?’ I queried, seeing she was zipping up her anorak and preparing to depart.

  ‘I’m there in the afternoons, but there’s nowt much to do at the moment other than clean. There’ll be no one there at night.’

  She looked at me doubtfully. ‘I hope you’ll be all right on your own.’

  ‘I’ve got my mobile phone,’ I told her, but I don’t think she heard me, for she was opening the door, letting an icy stream of air into the passageway.

  ‘The nearest shop …’ I began quickly, before she vanished.

  ‘Haworth back the way you came, Upvale the other,’ she said. ‘There’s the Standing Stones pub at the crossroads, but I wouldn’t go there alone of a night.’

  With that, she was gone, heading towards the dim outline of a large building that must be Godesend Farm.

  When I checked my mobile later, it had no connection, so it was just as well I wanted a quiet week!

  Missy and I didn’t venture further on to the moors than the start of the well-trodden footpath beyond the farmhouse, and we saw no one about for the whole week.

  Occasionally a tractor would roar up and down the drive outside, and once I heard a car door slam and then the sound of raised and angry male voices but, discretion being the better part of valour, I didn’t go and investigate …

  One day I went down to Haworth to do a little research and make some phone calls, but despite the mist and the isolation, I found myself happy to be back at the cottage and reluctant to go home at the end of the week.

  In fact, there was something about Godesend Farm that drew me back, and I rented the cottage again from early spring for a few weeks, intending to finish off the final editorial changes to Finding Mr Rochester and then have a brief break before the proofs arrived.

  My agent and editor loved the novel and were planning a major publicity campaign leading up to the publication day, and until then, Hephzibah’s memoirs were being kept firmly under wraps – now literally, because I’d sealed the book in a plastic bag and locked it into my suitcase.

  3

  ‘So you’re back,’ Martha said by way of greeting, meeting me at the cottage just as she had the last time.

  But that was the only thing that was the same, for the door behind her had been painted a fresh, deep, emerald green and weak sunshine revealed the nearby extensive stone farmhouse, with a theatrical backdrop of endless moors topped by a single, stark monolithic stone. I’d had no idea that was even there!

  ‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘I was lucky the cottage was free for a few weeks.’

  ‘We don’t get that many takers and you got in first,’ she said. ‘Though it beats me why you want to be up here on your own again.’

  ‘I’m a writer, didn’t I say? Last time I needed a little inspiration for my new novel, but now it’s written I thought it would be the perfect place to do the edits and have a bit of a holiday.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ she said, with little curiosity. ‘Do you write as someone famous, like, that I’d know?’

  ‘I use my own name, Eleri Groves, but you’ve probably never heard of me.’

  ‘No. But I don’t read much, because I’m too busy with the house and the teashop.’

  ‘Is anyone living at the farm now? Didn’t you say it had been left to Mr Godet’s nephew?’

  ‘Only the land went to George – all of it bar these two fields behind the cottage. Henry, Mr Godet’s son, inherited the house and buildings.’

  This was as gossipy as I’d ever known her, so I said encouragingly, ‘That seems very unfair!’

  ‘Henry fell out with his father over him wanting to be a chef, instead of a sheep farmer, but I knew he’d come home to stay one day. And so he has – and underfoot in my kitchen all the time, too.’

  She gave her grim smile, so I deduced that she was quite pleased, in her way, to have him there, but then she said she had to go, because she’d be opening the tearoom at two o’clock and a rambling club was expected.

  While Missy reacquainted herself with the small paved yard behind the cottage, I settled in.

  The inside hadn’t changed much, though it did all look and feel much cosier now the weather was brighter. This time there was a stack of local visitor attraction leaflets – mostly Brontë – on the end of the kitchen table, together with a laminated information sheet telling me that broadband was available for a small charge and to ask at the teashop if required. This seemed unlikely, for it would surely cost a fortune to have such a remote spot connected?

  Once I’d unpacked, I took Missy for a walk, heading for the path on to the moors behind the farmhouse and thinking how lovely it was to be able to see where we were going this time!

  I discovered that the wide gateway through the drystone wall had been blocked with new, paler stones, leaving only a high stile to get over.

  I tucked Missy under my arm and negotiated it with some difficulty, since I’m on the short side, then walked in the direction of the standing stone, before turning back just as a party of distant hikers came into view. They were heading towards us, presumably eagerly anticipating their tea at the farmhouse.

  I was keen to get back over the high stile without an audience, but when I turned the last bend in the track, I discovered a large tractor parked right in front of it, from the seat of which a thin, dark-haired man, with the sort of nose and chin that were
destined to meet each other in old age, was having a shouted argument with an unseen person on the other side of the wall.

  ‘What’s to stop me knocking it down again?’ the man yelled.

  ‘The letter from my solicitor threatening legal proceedings?’ shouted a deep, gravelly voice back.

  ‘I’ve a right to come through here – a right of way,’ shouted Tractor Man, whom I assumed to be George – and actually, I felt deeply disappointed by the sight of my first Godet, because he was not at all Mr Rochester.

  ‘Rubbish! My father put in that gateway, there was only the stile to the path before,’ shouted the other voice, which had to be his cousin Henry. ‘And you’ve no need for a gate there anyway, because the wall and everything this side is my property.’

  ‘I’ve been coming and going as I like and there’s nothing to stop me knocking your bit of wall down again,’ rejoined George, practically bouncing on his seat with rage.

  ‘You can – if you’re prepared to pay for it to be repaired. You’d better read that solicitors’ letter.’

  ‘You know you won’t be able to keep the farm without the land! What would you do with yourself up here? You might as well sell the place to me and get back to your pots and pans.’

  ‘You may have put my father against me and got him to leave you the land, but you’ll never get your hands on the farm. And I’ve got plans for it, too.’

  ‘Aye – I’ve seen the planning notice for a restaurant, pinned to the fence at the top of the lane, but I’m opposing it. And anyway,’ he sneered, ‘who’d come all the way up here to eat their dinner?’

  The other voice said something unprintable and then George laughed and started his tractor, roaring off back up the track towards where, presumably, his own home lay.

  The hikers had almost caught me up now, so I let them climb the stile before me, and by the time I’d followed suit, there was no one in sight at all.

  When I’d taken Missy back to the cottage, I tidied my windswept hair and decided I’d go and have tea at the farmhouse. I admit this was mainly motivated by curiosity to see if I could catch a glimpse of Henry Godet, but also I wanted the password for the internet … if it really did exist.