Miss Clarkson's Classmate by Sharon Sobel

Author:Sharon Sobel [Sobel, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101568446
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

On the day Daniel Lennox’s father died, a messenger came down from Gleneyrie and remained closeted with the prosperous mill owner for several hours. Daniel, only eighteen years old at the time and home from Oxford on holiday, feared the arguing and shouting coming from the mill office would tax Francis Lennox’s strength and felt it his place to stand with his father against this unexpected assault. But Laura, his sister, pulled him away from the locked door and shuttered windows.

Later, the visitor made good his escape, nervously looking over his shoulder as if expecting an attack from the rear. And Francis Lennox, pale and silent, emerged from his office and looked at his four children—for by now Eleanor and Miriam had joined their older brother and sister on the stone wall facing the closed door—like a stranger. The warmth and affection with which the widowed man customarily greeted his children was gone and he turned from them to walk down the path toward the river.

Daniel had only seen his father look so once before, in the days after their mother died, and then the company of his bereft children had seemed his only comfort. Without a word, Daniel reached for his sisters’ hands and pulled them along after him.

For reasons he could no longer fully justify to himself, he held them at a respectful distance from their father and stopped short when the man climbed atop a large rock overhanging the falls. It was a popular spot for local lovers and small boys; a depression had been worn into the stone and the place proved somewhat safer than it looked.

Therefore, Daniel could not have been more shocked when his father suddenly clutched his heart, bowed from the waist, and slipped headlong into the Fell. Laura cried out, and held tightly to her brother’s arm, knowing as she must how Daniel would plunge into the swirling waters after him.

Daniel shrugged himself out of his jacket and his sister’s frozen hold, and dove in from the embankment. His clothes hindered him, but no more than the crashing water and the complete lack of visibility. He floundered a bit, though never thinking himself in danger of drowning, and searched for his father’s dark head.

Francis Lennox never had a chance. Where the great wheel of the cotton mill thrust out of the foaming river, the body of the mill owner was pulled into its crushing grip, and he remained caught beneath the surface of the water until his son drew him from the depths.

Dr. Cafferty determined the incident an accident, but nothing would ever dissuade Daniel Lennox from the firm belief his father’s heart stopped as he stood over the river and he may have already been dead before he hit the water. And Daniel knew it had been no accident: The duke’s messenger had given their father so much pain with his errand, he had brought on the attack. In all the years since, highest on their list of grievances against the old man, the mill owner’s children listed their father’s death.

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