A historical romance played out between the wild coast and moors of North Devon and the mountains and river-crossed plain of Alsace.
The beautiful, red-haired Sarah Durrant is an uneducated servant who takes the place of her mistress when she suddenly dies at Lynmouth as they are travelling across the remote wilderness of 18th century Exmoor. Her origins are a mystery. She only knows she is illegitimate and possesses a gold locket which contains a miniature of a woman who resembles her.
North Devon at first proves a sanctuary from the violence of her past but then the French aristocrat, Jean Luc de Delacroix, a soldier and a scientist, arrives from the New World; the local activities of smuggling and wrecking surface; her life becomes a tangle of love, deception and fear.
She woke with a start in the middle of the night. From the hall came the roughness of men’s voices, the trampling of boots and dull thuds. Wind gusted under the ill-fitting door, rattling the window panes. She listened intently, straining her ears to try and discover what was happening.
‘Is it smugglers again?’ she wondered uneasily.
She crept across the cold carpet, gently opened the door and cautiously ventured out onto the landing.
A scene of near-pandemonium greeted her. Candles flickered in the gale blowing violently from the wide-open main door, casting moving shadows over a thronging mass of men, bristling with pistols and knives and carrying crates and boxes. Their clothes appeared outlandish and foreign to her eyes. Rows of metal or gold buttons decorated waistcoats and coats, many of which were red. They all wore boots and reminded her of soldiers, even although they were not in uniform. Several were carrying wide hats of black felt, which they had evidently removed in order to enter the house.
A tall, well-built man with grey hair, whom she took to be the leader, was standing stiffly next to Mrs Yelland. He was holding a fur hat, his coat was also made of fur and he was looking dourly around him. She could see that Mrs Yelland was very flustered; her cheeks were blotched pink and although she was dressed, her night mob cap was still on her head.
Snatches of a foreign language drifted up to her and in a corner an animal was squealing and spitting aggressively. The rising sense of panic beginning to seize her was momentarily forgotten as she gazed at one of the strangest creatures she had ever seen. It was about the size of a large cat and had thick, grey fur. Its tail was ringed with black and white and its pointed, fox-like face had a broad black band across its eyes, which resembled a highwayman’s mask. It suddenly shot across the hall and disappeared into the garden, pursued by several of the men. She burst out laughing and the man who had been kneeling next to it, stood up and turned towards her.
She abruptly realised she had been mistaken. This man was the leader of the group. His coat glowed a deep purple in the shadowy half-light. Rows of lace decorated his pockets and cuffs, and rings gleamed on his fingers. He looked up at her and she saw with horror the same dark eyes, strong jaw and aquiline nose she had so often noticed in the painting on the library wall. He stared at her, expressionless, and she trembled in her thin night gown, as the chilled air rushed in from the wintry night.
His familiar features blurred. The blood ran ice-cold in her veins and she clenched the wooden balustrade with both hands to keep herself upright. Her red curls were caught by draughts of wind and she felt an overwhelming desire to escape into the night, as the masked animal had done.
She stumbled back to her room and hid under the covers of her bed, realising that she was at least safe until morning.
Jean Luc, Duke de Delacroix, watched her go and for a few minutes continued to stare at where she had stood, an expression on his face almost of disbelief. Then he picked up a lantern and went outside to hunt for the raccoon he had brought back from Louisiana.
She tossed and turned restlessly throughout the long night, considering, over and over again, the questions which had tormented her in her first weeks at Wildercombe House.
‘Lady Sophie Throgmorton cannot just disappear. I will be caught and hanged. In any case, where can I go to? I have no family or friends.’
It comforted her somewhat as she recalled Mrs Yelland saying that the Duke had only visited the house once since the war against the French had started and also as she recalled that he lived in France and had never seen Sophie.
She abandoned her bed and roamed backwards and forwards, oblivious to the cold and dark, her thoughts screaming at her. The room, which had originally seemed so forbidding, was now her sanctuary. She pressed her face against the window pane and gazed blindly out at the mysterious, magic wood. She reached towards the walnut dresser and ran her hands over her stones, shells and drawings, placed neatly in piles. In her heart she knew what she would do.
‘Fate has smiled on me so far. I will keep calm and remain as Lady Sophie Throgmorton while I can and attempt to find a way out of my predicament. Hopefully this man will not stay long and I will try to see as little of him as possible.’
At dawn, she watched a twin sun and moon grace the lightening sky together and as she looked out at the garden a black and white striped tail, curled round a branch high up in the horse chestnut tree, caught her eye. “We’re both fugitives,” she murmured.
She summoned Jenny and questioned her about the visitors.
“Didn’t ee know, milady? That’s ’is Grace, the Duke. Ee’s been praying in the chapel since before sunrise and ’as been out searching for that fox. They be saying the war with France has finished. Perhaps that’s why ee’s come.” She bit her lip as though unsure whether to say any more and muttered, “In Ilfracombe there be talk of the Delacroix family…...”
Sarah was flayed by despair and hopelessness and, in an instant, saw her new life smothered just as it was beginning. For a fleeting moment she realised she knew almost nothing about her previously absent benefactor and wondered where he had come from and if he had now returned to live in North Devon. ‘Will I be found out today? Will I be exposed?’ Her hand trembled violently as she chose a lemon silk dress to wear.
Reluctantly she walked down the staircase, trying to push images of capture and imprisonment from her mind. Her shoes tapped sharply against the stone steps, reminding her of the drum beat at executions. Her wasp-waisted bodice was choking the breath from her body; the lemon silk floating out around her, its frills and lace contrasting almost mockingly, it seemed to her, with the gravity of her situation. There had unfortunately been no more cosmetic powder that morning and she felt very much at a disadvantage with her own natural complexion and hair, unable to hide behind her usual white concealment. The months spent at Wildercombe House resembled a dream which was now shattering into a sickening, ghastly nightmare. Her sins had caught up with her.
Carol Anne Dobson is a qualified teacher and librarian with a B.A. in English, French and Russian. She has lived in Devon for most of her life, and North Devon provides the setting for much of Storks in a Blue Sky.
Alsace in France came to be a second home when her daughter lived there for six years and it is this Germanic region of France which also features in the novel.
In 2009 Storks in a Blue Sky won the David St John Thomas Fiction Award.
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