Read By The Sea, Book One: Tess Online
Authors: Antoinette Stockenberg
Tags: #gilded age, #historical, #masterpiece, #americas cup, #downton abbey, #upstairs downstairs, #historical 1880s romance
By The Sea, Book One: Tess
"A riveting saga/mystery."
--
Rave Reviews
In the tradition of Upstairs, Downstairs and
Downton Abbey, BY THE SEA is a four-book series that sweeps from
the Gilded Age through the Gatsby Era's Roaring Twenties and then
on to the Great Depression, culminating nearly a century later in
Newport, Rhode Island, wealthy and alluring "City by the Sea." Set
against a backdrop of mansions, the glorious America's Cup Yacht
Races, and new money, the series traces the passions and adventures
of three families from three different classes.
Book One
: TESS.
From the wild
decadence of late nineteenth-century Newport comes the tale of Tess
Moran, a beautiful Irish housemaid in one of the grand summer
"cottages," who makes a dark bargain with a man of commanding
wealth — and falls in love in the bargain.
Book Two
: AMANDA.
Marrying
American money to an English title is a tradition of its own; but
Amanda Fain, a brash heiress with money to burn, has a fondness for
Bolsheviks and bootleg liquor that makes her an unlikely match for
the reluctant, ironic, and impoverished English aristocrat Geoffrey
Seton, who has been ordered to America to find someone who can pay
the bills for the family estate back home.
Book Three:
LAURA.
While the
Great Depression grinds relentlessly on, Laura Andersson, a
Midwestern farm girl with an improbable love of the sea, embarks on
a bold adventure that promises riches but delivers passion, one
that threatens all she holds dear.
Book Four:
THE HEIRS
is the
dramatic conclusion to the four-book series BY THE SEA.
Economic hard times are a distant memory in high-flying, recent-day
Newport, home of the oldest and most prestigious trophy in the
world, the Holy Grail of sport--the America's Cup. Here, the
descendants of Tess, Amanda and Laura play out their destinies,
their paths crossing in unforeseen ways: Mavis Moran, Neil
Powers, his daughter Quinta, and America's Cup skipper Alan Seton
all find themselves caught in a web of mystery, sabotage, and
conflicting desires.
"A quality novel [that]
contains many of those little epiphanies, those moments of
recognition. [Part 1, TESS,] is what makes Stockenberg's book
stand out from the rash of novels on class conflicts between Irish
servants and their Yankee masters."
—
Providence Journal
"This was my first Antoinette Stockenberg novel. I read it
not long after it was published ages ago, but her writing is so
vivid I can still picture some of the scenes from the novel. This
[was written] before the ghost or mystery plots were woven into her
novels: it is purely a story of life and relationships. I have been
a huge fan ever since."
—
A
reader
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1987 by Antoinette
Stockenberg
Glory
Newly revised and edited, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9857806-7-8
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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More for your e-Reader
by
Antoinette
An Excerpt from BY THE SEA, Book Four:
THE HEIRS
TESS
, Chapter 1
Summer 1895
"Tessie! Tessie, wake up! Master James has
spilled his port again."
Tessie Moran, eighteen and not yet in love,
was dreaming of handsome young men and moonlight. She could not
easily be roused from her enchantment.
The housemaid gave her a violent poke.
"Tessie! If you want me to be waking your sister instead, then
that's all right with
me
."
"Mmn? No ... no, leave her be. I'm ...
awake." Slowly Tess dragged her unwilling body into a sitting
position, forcing her eyes to adjust to the light of the maid's
kerosene lamp, forcing her mind to accept the fact that it was
two-thirty in the morning, the party was over, and now the linen
must be done. Her head drooped. Her hair—thick, wild,
auburn—tumbled over her shoulders, and her one thought was,
I
shan't put on a cap—not at this hour.
"Will
you be lighting the lamp, or is
it the entire night you expect me to stand here?" the maid asked in
a low hiss.
"I'm sorry, Bridget," Tess answered in a
sleepy yawn. She removed a match from its porcelain holder and
struck it. The little burst of flame lit up a complexion white and
smooth and sprinkled faintly, almost whimsically, with freckles.
The eyes, long-lashed and deep bottle-green, were expressive, and
their expression just now was of weariness, of exhaustion.
It was high season in Newport.
"Thank you for not waking Maggie," whispered
Tess as she turned on the gas and touched the match to the night
lamp. The lamp glowed and Bridget left instantly, bound for her own
garret room down the hall.
As quietly as she could, Tess changed from
her cotton nightgown into an even plainer cotton shift. The
garment, devoid of any snippets of lace or other bits of vanity,
nonetheless encircled her lovely throat, skittered around her tiny
waist, and fell over her rounded hips with alluring perfection. Not
one of the ladies at Mrs. Winward's dinner party that evening wore
a gown sewn as subtly as that cotton shift. Tess was a sorceress
with a needle, and she sewed only for herself.
For herself, and for her sister Maggie, who
lay peacefully, for once, in the small metal-framed bed opposite
her own. Maggie had slept through Bridget’s interruption, and the
dry, hacking cough that had plagued her nights lately remained
undisturbed. Tess hovered over her sister, longing to caress her
feverish brow but not daring to wake her. Maggie was two years
older than Tess; she might have been ten. Shy, never robust, seldom
joyous, Maggie was in every way Tess's opposite. She seemed to Tess
not to fuss very much about this thing called life; her attitude
was of one who waits, simply, and sees.
During their early years in Cork, and then
later at the comfortable Meller estate in Wrexham, and now at the
palatial Winward summer "cottage" in Newport, Maggie, of all the
Moran family, had chafed the least at her domestic situation. In
Ireland she'd been the meekest of scullery maids; in England, the
gentlest of dairy maids; in Newport, the most resigned of laundry
maids. Whether her mistresses were kind or harsh, Maggie smiled her
faraway smile and did her work quietly.
That amazed Tess. Looking down at her frail,
beloved sister, her brow damp, her thin chest rising and falling
with the effort of breathing, Tess clenched her fists and swore an
oath that was anything but meek. It was cruel: anyone could see
that Maggie was too weak for the grueling job of laundry maid at
such a large house. But when Tess had pleaded with the head laundry
maid to assign Maggie less physical work like sorting and mending,
she had been angrily dismissed from the interview. In retrospect,
it had been a—what would her ladyship have called it?—a faux pas. A
misstep. Tess had succeeded not only in alienating the head laundry
maid by her impertinence, but she had drawn attention to her
sister’s illness besides.
Un faux pas. Absolument.
Maggie's eyes fluttered and opened. "You're
dressed, Tessie." It was said without emotion. "They've done with
their cigars, then?"
"Shhh. Back to sleep. Yes, they've done, and
it's only the merest bit of a spill."
"Mother Mary—not the damask, is it?"
"Yes, it’s the blessed damask, and it's
nothing at all for you to worry over."
The damask tablecloth, twelve yards long and
imported from London, weighed nearly as much as Maggie and cost far
more than the entire Moran family had so far earned in their
service to the Winward family.
Maggie struggled to get up, but Tess pushed
her gently back onto her pillow.
"Margaret Moran, stop jumping about like a
flea on a rug and listen to me. Don't I have the strength for two?
And are you thinking that your influenza is a joking matter, by any
chance?"
"Oh, Tess ..." A tear slid down Maggie's
thin cheek. "It isn't influenza, is it."
Tess swallowed a lump as hard as a diamond.
"I surely don't know what else it could be."
Maggie's voice dropped to a threadbare
whisper. "Tessie, I spit up ...
blood
this morning." Her
wide eyes in her pale face looked not so much fearful as
guilty.
"Ah!" exclaimed Tess with a righteous anger
she did not feel. "And whose toothbrush is it that's always dry as
a bone? Whose apple is it on the nightstand, all shriveled and
uneaten? If it's your gums that are going to bleed, you've only
yourself to blame." Tess forced her mouth into a stern, motherly
smile as she tucked the blanket around her sister.
The two exchanged a long, infinitely sad
look. "Yes ... it must be my gums," Maggie said in soft
agreement.
Tess, not trusting her own voice, kissed her
sister gently on the brow, took up the night lamp, and stole out of
the room.
A kind of desperate anger scorched the edges
of her thoughts as she made her way quickly down the three flights
of stairs to the wet-laundry room. Maggie
would
get well, if
only she had enough rest. Her lungs needed the cool dry air of the
dairy house on Lady Meller's estate, not the wet, steaming
oppression of Mrs. Winward's laundry room. A soft word, a friendly
smile—if only they'd never left England! The Moran family were as
happy in Wrexham as they'd ever been in their lives. Except for her
mother, all of them had flourished under Lady Meller's care: Will
had learned his ciphers, and Tess, to read and write fluently, and
when Maggie was laid low with scarlet fever, it was Lady Meller
who'd nursed her, and actually got Maggie to laugh and joke about
her bright strawberry tongue.
If only they'd never left Wrexham!
"Well,
you
took your own sweet time,
princess." It was one of the underfootman, a short, hostile young
man, seated on one end of the laundry room table, his legs crossed
with casual insolence. He was smoking a cigarette, which would earn
him an instant dismissal if the head footman happened to come upon
him.
Tess ignored his baiting greeting and walked
past him to the laundry chute. The bin was filled almost completely
by the damask tablecloth. Very carefully, Tess began to unload the
heavy, figured linen, conscious of the scrutiny of the footman
behind her.
Without turning around she said, "You
needn't wait for me. I'll turn down the lights after."
"I'm in no hurry," he said lazily. "Besides,
this is the best view in town."
Tess stiffened, and he added, "Where's your
sister, anyway?"
"She'll be down soon," Tess lied.