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She married at age eighteen and died three days after
her twentieth birthday having left behind a grieving husband and a newborn
son. She'd asked him to be named Adrian after her deceased brother. It had
been done.
A rare beauty of mind, soul and face, brown hair, dancing grey eyes and
never displeased with the world. She had come up hard - early. Her Welsh
father had died in a mine. Her English mother had succumbed to influenza
when she was three. Sarah Gilmore Kaighin was, in fact, a cousin of
Langley Gilmore - the current master of Gilman Manor. They had been close
as children and he had been devastated by the news of her death. Others in
his family had disowned her when she fell in and married for love -
Kesiah's father Henry. "Beneath her," they'd said. But Langley knew and
loved her - his cousin Sarah - and could not help but bring the child here
to live. He couldn't bear to have her farmed out to an orphans home, or
worse.
Gilman Manor was her home, all she ever really knew. She never really knew
her parents, but she remembered her brother. Never could recall her Welsh
home, except what she could recall of him - Adrian. He was older by eight
years - had been apprenticed out - and died like their father in the
mines. It was he who taught her to read early; to laugh at herself and the
world; to not take everything so seriously. She remembered every word he’d
ever spoken to her. He was her caretaker for too short a time.
Her life to womanhood had been here in this coastal English county
surrounded by pomp and status. Intelligent and always uncommonly pretty,
she'd ignored convention. The powers that be blamed her father's lineage.
Langley knew it was her mother. She had been the same.
She was not unaware that the expectations for her life would be to have an
unprecedented education, marry well, have children and die leaving the
world with heirs to carry on the name. As a young girl she hated the
notion. Why all the learning if you were going to waste it? She wanted to
travel, see things, learn everything she could and go on new and exciting
adventures. She would beg and plead and roll her eyes bringing her smile
and twinkling eyes to the fore when Uncle Lang was going to London or
Paris. She had won a few times over the years. She had met Queen Victoria
and Albert and a few of the children. It had fascinated her that under all
that glamour was a family like hers. Later she realized it was all a
pretense in her mind. She really had no family. Just Uncle Lang. The
Gilmore’s had no children themselves. And she wasn't theirs, he and his
wife, Aunt Helena. Though she didn't feel total dislike from her, she
never felt welcome. The feeling manifested itself when she was given the
family name - sanctioned legally and religiously. Helena had objected
Langley had won.
But all things change. She met Giles Cavender when she came to Eastbourne.
He was not quite three years her senior. They started running around the
estates, the fields, the meadows, the hills when she was five. By the time
she was twelve he was away at school most of the year and she found
herself watching the roads when word reached Gilman that he was expected
home. Each time he had changed. Each time he was more handsome and she was
drawn closer to him. At eighteen they had married. Her heart left her no
other choice. And now she was gone. |