The Angels of Pemberton is an epic nineteenth-century family saga of love, intrigue, and triumph over evil. The story takes place on the wild Northern moor of Devon, England. The book deals with four interwoven families: Laurence Wakefield, the squire of Rooks Haven, and his two daughters of opposite character; Roderick Wakefield, Laurence’s estranged brother; Sir Horatio Denning and his wild flamboyant sons; and the dairy farmer, Bixley Hollings and his daughter, Jenny, who believes that angels haunt the Pemberton Cliffs.
Adele, our heroine, and Laurence’s youngest daughter, is loving, gentle, and kind, but his oldest daughter, Vanessa, despite her great beauty, has a dark and sinister personality that Laurence tries to keep hidden. Laurence’s whole life revolved around his beautiful wife, Elizabeth, and when she died under mysterious circumstances giving birth to Adele, he was utterly grief-stricken. Thinking his newborn child had died, and fearing he would go mad if he stayed at Rooks Haven, he takes Vanessa and goes to London.
Adele is raised at Rooks Haven by generally kind but ordinary servants, and is ten when the story opens. The restrictive housekeeper does not allow the lonely Dell beyond the gates, so it is a daring adventure when she finds the gates unlocked and makes her way across the moor to see the great cliffs that plunge into the sea. Here she encounters Jenny Hollings, the twelve-year-old dairy farmer’s daughter, who comes every morning to Pemberton Cove. Jenny believes in the ancient legend that angels hover over the Pemberton Cliffs. Hundreds of years before, the legend tells of angels claiming the souls of shipwrecked sailors during a terrible storm. Jenny believes she hears the angels, and claims she has even seen a wingtip in the clouds. She promises Dell that the angels will communicate to those with faith. In the strange harmonies of the ceaseless winds that bluster around the Pemberton Cliffs, Dell discovers that there will be two men in her life, one dark and one fair, and that she will be betrayed before she finds a true and lasting love.
When Laurence discovers that his younger daughter is alive, he returns with Vanessa to Rooks Haven. Thrust together for the first time, the two sisters reveal their great differences in character. Vanessa, who has had her father all to herself, now must share him with her innocently adoring sister. She develops a dangerous jealousy towards Adele. Peepers, the old, deformed gardener, knows Vanessa’s dark childhood secret. The new governess, Miss Driskell, also discovers the terrible things that Vanessa hides behind her beauty and talent, but discovers them too late to save herself. As the daughters grow older, they both fall in love with the same man, Charles Denning, the eldest son of Laurence’s best friend, Sir Horatio Denning. Charles is dark, handsome, and extremely intelligent. But he is a rogue who has been indulged and pampered by permissive parents and wastes his life in the pursuit of pleasure.
Charles’s friend from youth, Brittan Gavin, is an orphan, but from a family of great wealth. Charles is pleasure seeking, but Brittan is studious, serious and full of idealistic dreams. His great ambition in life is to right all the wrongs at Crompton’s School where he has been a pupil and where the students have been poorly treated. He is so consumed by his zeal to transform the school after he inherits his fortune, that he nearly misses the great love of his life. When Charles falls in love with Adele, he desperately tries to change himself into a better man, but finds that his pleasure-bent life makes it hard to discipline himself. He realizes too, that Vanessa is in his blood, "like a poison," he tells his brother. Vanessa schemes to win Charles back to her with a desperate passion that becomes a murderous rage.
Lynn Keiser has woven an ingenious, fast-paced plot; a mystery to keep you riveted to the last page. It has marvelous, contrasting characters and a wonderful feel for the English landscape and the romance of Victorian times.
A light winter snow fell on Christmas Eve. It swirled in icy flakes about the porch and drifted in lacy piles on the stairs leading up to Rooks Haven’s door.
Dell knelt in the drawing room’s turret window seat and watched the snow fall from the darkened sky. Mina had dressed her in a handsome new frock of white taffeta with a golden sash of gauze about the waist. She had been ready for well over an hour for her father and sister’s arrival, but they still had not come. She feared the fresh snow might delay them if Toby had trouble getting the coach over the moorland road. She turned and looked again at the clock on the mantel. The hands had hardly moved. Strange emotions fought inside her, a terrible anxiety as well as unbearable excitement.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Harness bells, jangling to the rhythm of prancing horses, echoed in the distance. A merry cheer went up through the house. The servants rushed into the entrance hall, laughing and joking, struggling to be first in line to greet the master. With a sharp remonstrance, Mrs. Dobbs settled them in an orderly line and took her place at the head of it. Simmons scurried to the door and positioned himself in readiness to open it. Two of the new footmen followed him with lanterns to light the coach’s occupants into the house.
Dell turned to the window again to peer out. The crunching thud of horses’ hooves filled the courtyard as a coach with prancing horses came around the drive. The bells increased in volume as the coach neared the porch.
Toby reined in the horses in front of the house. The bells stopped except for a shimmer of tinkles now and then. Laurence, dressed in a top hat and a long, voluminous, fur-collared cape, alighted from the coach. He turned and lifted someone down; a young girl in a green velvet coat trimmed in white fur. Her head was bonneted with the same green velvet and the brim was edged in fur. Her hands were hidden in a white fur muff.
Dell strained to see the girl’s face through the panes of the window, but it remained hidden behind the brim of her bonnet.
Laurence helped another person down from the coach, a tall, austere woman in a black coat and black bonnet. Then another gentleman alighted with a giant muffler wrapped around his neck. He drew out a mountain of boxes from the coach and followed Mr. Wakefield and his daughter to the door. Dell guessed the man might be Findley, her father’s personal valet.
Dell moved quickly back to the sofa. She watched as Simmons opened the front door. A gust of wind carrying with it flakes of snow flew into the entry as Laurence entered the brightly lit hall. The others followed close upon his heels. Simmons closed the door quickly against the inclement weather and took Laurence’s cape and top hat with a deep bow and a face beaming with welcome. Findley climbed immediately up the stairs with the packages.
Mrs. Dobbs hurried up to Laurence and curtsied deeply. "A happy Christmas to you, sir."
"And a happy Christmas to you, Mrs. Dobbs." Laurence’s deep voice rang cheerfully in the hall.
Dell’s breath quickened as she watched her father. Her child’s heart felt ready to burst with love at the sight of him. He was a god to her. How tall and handsome he looked. His face glowed with ruddy color, not the gray shade of grief that had tinged it on their first meeting in the library. He looked young and happy, as if he had dropped ten years.
Laurence surveyed the decoration in the hall. "You’ve outdone yourself, Mrs. Dobbs." He nodded approvingly. "How grand everything looks. Is that roast goose and gingerbread I’m smelling? It’s making my mouth water already. I think with all the changes I have made in the house, I shall be very happy here." He took off his gloves and handed them to Simmons.
Mrs. Dobbs fluttered up to the young lady who stood by Laurence’s side. The girl slowly unclasped her green velvet coat. "And this must be our Miss Vanessa," gushed Mrs. Dobbs. "How you’ve grown, my dear. What a beauty you are. I should be proud to serve you in any way I can."
The girl made no reply but doffed her bonnet, exposing an array of shining, raven-black ringlets that fell down to her shoulders. She let Simmons help her remove her coat. She stood in the middle of the great hall dressed in the most beautiful gown Dell had ever seen. The sumptuous velvet dress matched the girl’s coat. The skirt had tiers of gathered scallops and was trimmed in lace and ribbons. Her back remained turned to the drawing room door and Dell could not see her face.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dell stood slowly from the sofa. She wanted to run to him and throw her arms around his neck, and yet, something held her back, a strange bewilderment that made her feel as if it were not quite right to do so in front of Vanessa.
She glanced helplessly at Laurence and then her eyes riveted to Vanessa. Her heart skipped a beat. Vanessa was the most glorious creature she had ever seen.
Her face was flawless, as if a master sculptor had chiseled it in a perfect piece of marble. The red lips were curved in a half smile, half smirk. Her eyes, fringed with thick black lashes, flashed emerald with an odd mixture of curiosity and aloofness, even of disdain, as she surveyed Dell with a sweep.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dell hung back by the bedpost and watched her beautiful sister’s reflection in the mirror. "Mrs. Dobbs is very fond of you. She speaks to me all the time about you."
"Does she?" Vanessa picked up one of the brushes and smoothed the shining, black hair at the crown of her head.
"I’m so glad you’ve come back," said Dell. "I’ve wished to see you ever since I can remember."
"I would much prefer staying in London with all its fascinating delights than being buried alive here in the country with nothing of interest to do. But Papa assured me that he had redone the whole house and made it very beautiful just so that I should be happy here. He says the country has almost as many parties and social events as the city. I certainly hope that will be the case."
"I hope you and I might find all sorts of wonderful things to do together." Dell ventured a step closer to the adored object that graced the stool. Her sister’s reflection in the mirror was so breathtakingly lovely that Dell could hardly speak for worship.
Vanessa slowly put down her brush. "I hope you will not expect me to be too affectionate, even though we are sisters. I do not know you. We are strangers after all, and I am much older than you. My interests are quite beyond your childish pleasures."
"It will take time for us to become acquainted, but then -- perhaps -- "
Vanessa’s emerald eyes flickered. "Papa says that I am to be kind to you and to treat you with the respect you are due because you are a Wakefield, but you hardly deserve such respect because you have been brought up by servants and have not developed refined habits as you ought." Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "I obey Papa in everything because I love him more dearly than anything on earth, and he loves me in return, better than anything or anyone else on earth." She turned on her stool to face Dell. "But I shall find it very hard to love you, because you are the reason I have no mother. You killed her, you know."
Dell stood in stunned silence, her heart pierced as if the sharpest lance had stabbed it. To think that this glorious creature found it impossible to love her because she had caused their mother’s death by her very existence was bitterer than gall to her.
Vanessa turned back to the mirror and resumed brushing her hair. "You must go now and leave me alone. I need to change my gown for dinner. Papa always likes me to look my best."
Dell backed away to the door. She choked as if her throat had been seared by fire. "I’m sorry, Vanessa, so very sorry."
Dell stumbled out into the gallery feeling dizzy and faint. She slumped against the wall for a moment, then ran blindly to the nursery and collapsed onto the window seat. Great wrenching sobs made her chest heave with sorrow and violent pain.
