A New Dawn Over Devon by Michael Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

Hall and its garret yet remained.



 1 
A Time to Remember
    An attractive young woman, by appearance in her midtwenties, stood at the window of a thick stone wall gazing out upon a serene English countryside.
    A calm radiated from her posture and bearing which, had an observer been present, might have seemed almost too peaceful for her years. Full waves of light brown hair flowed down onto her shoulders.
    Was she what the world would term beautiful? From the look in her eyes at this moment, it would have been difficult to say. It was a compelling face, not because of the attractiveness of its features, but for what lay beneath the surface . . . an expression hinting at mystery.
    Who was she? How had she come to be here?
    In partial answer to such inquiries, a closer look would have revealed that the eyes bore an aspect of pain, a good deal of it recent. Their expressiveness explained much of what was to be known about her personal history that had come before, as well as what yet lay ahead in the story being written on the pages of her life.
    The colors of the rolling terrain of meadows of the Devonshire downs, broken here and there by clumps of trees, were muted by the subdued oranges and pinks of the late afternoon’s sun. It was a landscape she had been intimately familiar with since earliest childhood.
    It meant more to her now than she would have thought possible at an earlier season of her life. She once gazed out this same windowwith far different eyes. But that time was now long past. At last she had begun to apprehend the heritage that was truly hers, and had been all along.
    The tower in which she stood rose from the northeast corner of a great country house too old to be called a mansion yet not quite so austere and grey to be comfortable with the term castle . For as long as anyone could remember the place had been known as Heathersleigh Hall. It was an estate of ancient date, whose walls contained many secrets—some of which yet lay awaiting discovery.
    Her eyes now fell on the small village of Milverscombe two or three miles in the distance. The thatch and slate roofs were all she could make out from this vantage point of the forty or fifty cottages and homes which housed its population. Several larger buildings rose above the level of these roofs, most visibly the old stone church, and a modern train station.
    She now looked toward a small wooded area to the west of the village situated about a third of the way toward it from the Hall. Nothing stood out as so remarkable about the collection of birch and pine trees enclosing a small dell between the slopes of two adjoining hillsides. There were a thousand such places in the southwest of England. But this one was special, and not only because it lay just across the boundary of the estate.
    She stood for several long moments as her gaze stretched across the fields. Even as unconscious prayers gathered themselves within her heart, the memory of an afternoon not so very different from this came to focus from out of the past in her mind’s eye.
    In the measure of eternity the years since had not really been so many. Yet the day she now recalled had in truth been another lifetime ago.
    Her thoughts were interrupted by footsteps echoing from the passage behind her.
    â€œAmanda . . . Amanda, are you up there?” came her sister’s voice up the narrow staircase.
    â€œYes, Catharine,” she answered softly, half turning behind her. “I’m in the tower.”
    Amanda sent one final wistful gaze of poignant memory out the window, then turned into the small room just as Catharine entered through the large oak door that stood open where Amanda had left it a few minutes earlier.
    â€œHi . . . what are you doing?” said Catharine with a buoyant smile.
    â€œJust coming to terms with a few memories,” said Amanda, returning her smile. “I have a lot to get used to now, things to put right from