The Promise of the Bells

By Elizabeth Ellen Carter

Young Richard Whiting comes from a poor family but he's given a golden opportunity - to move to London to further his education. On the way there, he is befriended by Lord Ambrose and his young daughter, Catherine 'Cat' Swanston, and Richard and Catherine become sweethearts.

In order to make his fortune, Richard is pulled into a different life but the young couple vow beneath the tolllng bells of the churches of London to always be there for one another.

Years later, now an up and coming barrister, Richard learns that Catherine needs help. Her father is missing, and His Lordship's business partner refuses to provide any information. It will take Catherine's bravery and Richard's legal cunning for there to be a happily ever after...

The Promise of the Bells is a retelling of Dick Whittington set in Regency London and is part of the A Legend to Love series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Business Communications Management
• Release date: Nov 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780648385226

Elizabeth Ellen Carter

Elizabeth Ellen Carter is a historical romance author whose works frequently contain elements of high adventure. Her published titles include the Regency adventures ‘Moonstone Obsession’ and its sequel ‘Moonstone Conspiracy’, set in England and France during the French Revolution, and ‘Warrior’s Surrender’, set in 1077 Northumbria. In 'September Harvest', her contribution to the anthology Second Chance Cafe, she paints a sensitive picture of life and growing up in rural Kent in the late 1800s. Other short stories include 'Moonstone Promise', 'Three Ships' (in the anthology A Season To Remember) and The Tin Bear. Elizabeth Ellen Carter lives in Australia with her two cats and editor husband.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

London, 1823

Dearest Richard,

Given the circumstances of our parting, I don’t know how this letter will be received.

We have been apart for three long years so I fear I overstep myself even now to ask for your advice or even press a friendship I’m sure has been long forgotten.

I returned to England from Jamaica nearly a year ago. Given the emotion of our parting, I couldn’t bring myself to seek you out although I have followed your cases in the newspaper.

I doubt you think of me at all, but, if you do, I hope it is with some fond remembrance for me as well as my father.

It is on his affairs and for his welfare I write.

It has been nine months since we expected father to return from our plantation in Jamaica also, but there has been no word and I am exceedingly concerned.

Father's man of business has exhausted the funds at my disposal and creditors are beginning to make enquiries.

I am at my wits’ end. I even had it investigated whether or not Rathdowne is entailed, as much as it pains me to consider selling the place. It holds so many happy memories of my family – and of us.

Gilbert Frobisher has proposed marriage as a way out of our family’s present difficulties, and, excepting my love for you, I have no good reason to refuse him.

I am pressed to make a decision by mid-summer with the wedding to be held as soon as the banns are read.

Please advise me, dear Richard. You may see a way forward which, in my misery and desperation, I cannot.

Yours kitty-Cat always,

Catherine Swanston

The sound of nearby church bells announcing a wedding mocked Richard Whiting as he read the letter.

He’d always taken great stock in the message of the bells – a little superstition he’d carried with him from the day he arrived in London.

Today they heralded happy tidings to two young lovers eternally united – but to Richard, they had a different portent.

A letter from home, sir? his clerk asked.

Yes, he answered. A personal one, not business.

The young man nodded and left Richard’s study, understanding that his services would not be required to dictate a reply.

It was mid-morning on a Saturday; many of Richard’s colleagues had, no doubt, finished their work and were about their leisure. His concession to the day was to work from his house, rather than from his chambers at Lincoln Inn.

He glanced at the letter once more.

Vincent! he called. The young clerk, aged about eighteen and full of earnest enthusiasm, as he himself had been at that age, poked his head around the door.

If you’ve finished the correspondence, deliver it to the post office and take the rest of the day off.

Vincent did his best to hide his surprise and delight. Richard didn’t consider himself a hard man to work for – at least he didn’t think so – but, rather, business had consumed him for so many years that he often lost sight of the fact some people enjoyed something called leisure.

It’s too nice a day to spend it inside, Richard continued. I’m sure there are things you’d rather be doing, instead.

Yes, Mr. Whiting! Thank you!

Richard abandoned the letter on his desk and opened the French doors which let out to a small balcony. The noise woke Mog from her place on the sofa. The cat stood and arched her back in a stretch which, frankly, left him envious.

He imitated the black, tan and white-patched cat and raised his arms until his hands touched the lintel of the door.

With a mrrupp, Mog dropped to the floor and approached the open door, wrapping her tail around Richard’s leg as she passed. His near constant companion of five years leapt onto the round wrought iron outdoor table and meowed once to get his attention.

Richard stroked the cat around the chin and was rewarded with loud purrs of approval.

From his vantage point, he could see the spire of the church, but not its entrance. He silently wished the couple well. After Lord Ambrose Swanston refused to grant him Catherine’s hand in marriage, Richard had refused to entertain the thought of wedding anyone else.

Indeed, he’d given up on the idea of love and marriage altogether. His career would be his companion, and his talents as a barrister were now being recognized for his unstinting work in social reform. It hadn’t made him a fortune, but he lived very nicely indeed.

Besides, what had a bachelor need of great amounts of wealth?

Mog butted her head against Richard’s hand, encouraging him to renew his pats after silent rumination stilled his hand.

No, this calico cat was the only female companion he needed. She understood his solitary existence.

He thought of his kitty-Cat and her letter – so many memories...

Richard shook his head and went back inside but he left the French doors open, bringing with it the smell of early blooming roses and the warmth of a spring day.

Catherine’s letter had come out of the blue, he hadn’t even known she’d returned home from Jamaica. Did any of their old circle of friends know Catherine was back in London? Richard thought that somehow he ought to have known that she’d come back. Shouldn’t he?

They had been so much in love back then. Their parting tore him in two.  He glanced over at the brandy decanter on the sideboard by the fireplace. It was too early for that.

Sitting on the mantelpiece was an ornament quite at odds with the understated and elegant pieces he picked up on his travels. A box of hammered silver from India; a pair of vases from Italy were the choices of a grown man. The object which fell to his hand now, however, was a little piece of molded porcelain, naively painted.

It was a blue and white cat sitting on a green glazed cushion. It was an inexpensive piece, a frippery really – a beloved trinket belonging to a child.

As he was, and indeed they both were, when he and Catherine first met.

How old was he? Nine-years-old? Ten?

CHAPTER ONE

Gay go up, and gay go down,

To ring the bells of London town

Fifteen Years Earlier

August 1808

Bah! Be away w’it ye! Flea-bitten bag o’bones!

The skinny tan tabby cat paid no mind to the equally skinny woman who shooed him while she bustled around the scarred and worn kitchen table.

Richard Whiting leaned forward on his chair, his legs dangling an inch from the floor and tried to coax the animal closer. He received a rap on the knuckles for his trouble.

Now don’t you be encouraging it, his mother scolded. "I’ve just got you clean and looking respectable and mind you stay that way. These are your best clothes. You are not to get them stained or dirty.

Mr. Sutton will meet you at the coaching inn – you remember him, don’t you?

Richard swallowed his irritation. Of course he knew – he was ten year old, very nearly grown up. Mr. Sutton was a school teacher friend of Mr. Proctor, his school master.

A new school and a new start – for the both of you, Mr. Proctor had said when he made the introduction last month.

A new school.

All the way away in London.

The cat, with her eyes the color of amber, blinked at him as if to say goodbye before she nimbly jumped to the counter, then to the sill and out into the spring sunshine through the open window.

Margaret Whiting wrapped a freshly baked barmbrack bun in a clean linen. She only usually made the dish during the holidays, and they were Richard’s favorite. The fact she made it for him now was not just out of love.

She knew, as well as he did, it might be a very long time before they saw each other again.

Her back was to him, hunched over, as it had been so frequently since father’s death.

Richard wanted nothing more than to hug her and tell her everything would be all right, but he didn’t. He knew his mother needed him to be the man of the house, to be strong and not give in to displays of emotion. It was now up to him to provide for his two younger sisters.

And what an opportunity he had been given! A scholarship to a respectable public school in London. It was a once-in-a-lifetime gift. He could not squander it.

Richard ran a hand through his sandy-copper hair – a legacy from his Irish mother. But his temperament he had received from his father – methodical and steady. A quick mind that was also quick to find joy and express it with a smile.

He accepted his mother’s gift with thanks and stowed it in his satchel.

Faintly at first, as though he had imagined them, he heard the bells from the factory tower, announcing the end of a shift.

Come on, stop your mitherin’, lad, his mother said gruffly, dabbing an eye with her sleeve. Peering around the corner into the kitchen, two sets of eyes looked at him. Mary, who was four, held the hand of Jean, aged two.

Come ’ere, Richard said to the both of them. Give us a hug before I go.

Mind not to get his clobber dirty, Mother warned.

Ye nearly be forgetting this, Dickie, said Mary.

She slipped him a tapestry bookmark. He had earned it when he was five years old – a first prize for his Bible reading, given to him by Mistress Chance, the choir mistress. She had stitched the decoration herself – a supine cat with an outstretched paw resting on an open book. He slipped it into his blue frockcoat pocket.

Thanks, our kid, he said, giving his sister a second hug. "You’ll learn your letters and reading, won’t you? I’ll be writing lots of letters