The Woman In The Golden Dress. Nicola Cornick
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International bestselling author NICOLA CORNICK became fascinated with history when she was a child, and spent hours poring over historical novels and watching costume dramas. She studied history at university and wrote her master’s thesis on heroes. Nicola also acts as a historical advisor for television and radio. In her spare time she works as a guide in a seventeenth-century mansion.
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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019 as The Woman in the Lake
Copyright © Nicola Cornick 2019
Nicola Cornick asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9781474064712
This Edition: 2019-11-26
For Julia, a Swindon girl
Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Contents
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Extract from The Forgotten Sister
Prologue
Eustace
April 1765
I know what they will say of me when I am dead. I will be cast as a madman and a fool. They will blame the divorce, so scandalous for a peer of the realm, and claim that it drove me to misery and delusion, that it turned my mind. They will rake up all the old gossip and call my wife a whore.
It pleases me that society will slander Isabella over again. I will gladly tolerate being painted a cuckold and a weakling if it hurts her. I wish I could hurt her more but she is beyond my reach now, more is the pity.
There are those who call me a wicked man. They are wrong. True evil requires intent and I never had the will or the cunning to be truly wicked. Only once was I tempted to commit murder and even then it was not my fault, for I swear I was possessed. It was the golden gown that moved me to evil and the gown that led to that most terrible mistake.
I remember the horror of it to this day. I still see the scene so clear before my eyes. She was walking ahead of me, through the dappled moonlight, and I recognised the gown and hastened my step. I swear I had no fixed intention, no thought of murder, not at that moment. I wanted to talk, to reason with her. Then, on the path by the mill, she seemed to stumble and fall and all of a sudden I was seized by the thought that this was my chance to be rid of the threat for ever. I could not bring myself to touch her directly so I nudged her body