Return to the Island: An utterly gripping historical romance Read online

  Return to the Island

  An utterly gripping historical romance

  Kate Hewitt

  Books by Kate Hewitt

  Amherst Island Trilogy

  The Orphan’s Island

  Dreams of the Island

  Return to the Island

  The Far Horizons Trilogy

  The Heart Goes On

  Her Rebel Heart

  This Fragile Heart

  Standalone Novels

  The Girl From Berlin

  When You Were Mine

  Into the Darkest Day

  A Hope for Emily

  No Time to Say Goodbye

  Not My Daughter

  The Secrets We Keep

  A Mother’s Goodbye

  This Fragile Life

  When He Fell

  Rainy Day Sisters

  Now and Then Friends

  A Mother like Mine

  Writing as Katharine Swartz

  The Vicar's Wife

  The Lost Garden

  The Second Bride

  The Other Side of The Bridge

  AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

  When You Were Mine (Available in the UK and the US)

  Into the Darkest Day (Available in the UK and the US)

  A Hope for Emily (Available in the UK and the US)

  No Time to Say Goodbye (Available in the UK and the US)

  Not My Daughter (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Secrets We Keep (Available in the UK and the US)

  A Mother’s Goodbye (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Far Horizons Trilogy

  The Heart Goes On (Available in the UK and the US)

  Her Rebel Heart (Available in the UK and the US)

  This Fragile Heart (Available in the UK and the US)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  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

  Chapter 27

  Into the Darkest Day

  Hear More from Kate

  Books by Kate Hewitt

  A Letter from Kate

  The Orphan’s Island

  Dreams of the Island

  The Heart Goes On

  Her Rebel Heart

  This Fragile Heart

  The Girl From Berlin

  When You Were Mine

  A Hope for Emily

  No Time to Say Goodbye

  The Secrets We Keep

  A Mother’s Goodbye

  Acknowledgements

  *

  Dedicated to my own Ellen, who helped me write this story (sort of!)

  and to Caroline, who agreed with me. Love you both!

  Also dedicated to Chris, because he asked—and he’s a good friend!

  Chapter One

  Amherst Island, June 1919

  “No matter how you look at it, the numbers don’t add up.” Sighing, Rose McCafferty rose from the kitchen table and went to fill the kettle.

  Ellen Copley sat at the table and gazed at the column of figures her Aunt Rose had been showing her in Dyle’s accounting books with their worn cloth covers. She could picture her Uncle Dyle sitting at this very table, the oil lamp casting its comforting, flickering glow, his head bent over the books before he looked up with his ready smile, a flash of humor always lighting his Irish eyes.

  But he was gone now and her aunt was right; the farm accounts did not add up. Like so many other small farmers in the desolation of postwar Canada, the outgoings exceeded whatever was going in. The whole world over had been wearied and damaged, and not just by the guns booming in Europe, or the influenza that had ripped across the entire world. Everyone was struggling to make ends meet, or even simply to get them to see each other.

  Yet sitting in the cozy kitchen with one of the cats curled up on her lap, the summer sunshine pouring in through the open top half of the kitchen door, the sky outside pale blue and dotted with fleecy clouds, Ellen couldn’t quite make herself believe that the McCafferty farm was actually at risk. She certainly didn’t want to believe it.

  It had been three months since she’d stepped off Captain Jonah’s little ferry boat and walked through the soft, moonlit darkness all the way to the McCafferty farm. It had been a trip, quite literally, down memory lane, for with each step Ellen had taken, she’d remembered her former life on Amherst Island, this jewel nestled in the ruffled, blue-green waters of Lake Ontario.

  She’d recalled how she’d first come to the island, shy and uncertain, nearly thirteen years old, adrift in the world with her father in New Mexico and her Aunt Ruth and Uncle Hamish back in Vermont seeming happy enough to see the back of her.

  How she’d blossomed under her Aunt Rose’s gentle care and Uncle Dyle’s infectious good humor, surrounded by her boisterous cousins, who had become as good as siblings to her. How she’d made so many good friends—two brothers Jed and Lucas Lyman at the top of that list, along with Louisa Hopper, who had accompanied her one summer to Amherst Island, admittedly to Ellen’s displeasure, and was now Jed’s wife.

  Things had changed in the fifteen years since she’d first come to Amherst Island, a shy girl growing in confidence, gaining affection. The war had changed them all. It had left its painful, often invisible mark on nearly every islander’s life in one way or another. Gone were so many of the young boys Ellen had been at school with—some forever, others changed indelibly by the war.

  She hated seeing the haggard looks of grief and despair on so many young men’s faces, men who had been but carefree farm boys a short time ago, but who now could not forget the horrors of war—horrors they’d seen, endured, and in some cases committed. Horrors Ellen knew herself, at least in some part, having experienced them while serving as a nurse in France.

  The worst, though, was the blankness she often saw on her cousin Peter’s face, as if he were indifferent to everything around him, a visitor in his own house, and one who would be leaving shortly, while Ellen herself finally felt as if she’d come home.

  Three months ago, when she’d arrived at the McCaffertys’ door, Aunt Rose had swept her up into a hug before bursting into tears. She’d held her apron to her face, dabbing her eyes and trying to laugh.

  “Oh Ellen, what a welcome! I am sorry. It’s just I’m so very, very glad to see you. It’s been so long. Too long. And I thought… I feared…” Rose shook her head, not wanting to put that terrible fear into words. She’d dropped her apron, her eyes still filled with tears even as she gave Ellen the most wonderful smile. “I really am so glad. It’s been so long, with all your years in Glasgow.”

  For the three years before the war had started and Ellen had enlisted as a nurse, she’d been studying at the prestigious Glasgow School of Art, a life that now seemed like the most distant of memories.

  Back then, before the war, she’d been looking forward to a future as a lecturer in drawing. A future that had glittered with promise: she’d had an exhibition at one of Glasgow’s best art galleries, and she’d also had a fiancé, or almost. All of it was long gone now, noth
ing more than memories and regret.

  “I always wanted to come back,” Ellen had told her aunt. “I always meant to, and I’m here now, Aunt Rose.”

  “So you are,” Aunt Rose had murmured, and hugged her again tightly. “So you are.”

  The truth was, though, that Ellen had not entirely thought through her return to the island; it had been an instinctive decision, borne from her heart rather than her head. Amherst Island was where she belonged, more than Glasgow, more than Seaton, where her Uncle Hamish lived, and more than with her father, who was still working the rail yards out in New Mexico. The island was her heart’s home, the place where she felt most herself, most comfortable and most alive. Coming here after the ravages and heartache of war had felt not only right, but absolutely necessary.

  Within just a few days, Ellen had realized there was no question about whether she would stay on the island, at least not in her own mind. Although she could have gone back to Glasgow, where she still had friends and a house of her own, despite it being the country of her birth, it had never been home the way the island was, with its tree-shaded lanes and gentle hills, surrounded by the shimmering blue-green waters of Lake Ontario.

  Aunt Rose had made up the bed in the little room at the back of the house that had always been hers and Ellen had settled into farming life almost—almost—as if she’d never left. Seven years on and she felt older, wearier, wiser, and so very glad to be home.

  She’d soon learned that the farm had struggled in the last year, since her Uncle Dyle had taken ill. He’d left fields fallow, and with Peter fighting in France, the crops had withered or rotted where they lay. Rose had done her best to keep things going, but it was too much for one woman even with the help of her children, now mostly grown and away from home. Caroline, or Caro as she’d always been called, was twenty-two and while she had stayed and helped with the farm work, Sarah, now twenty-one, had gone to Gananoque on the mainland to be a schoolteacher. At nineteen Gracie was on scholarship at Queen’s, determined to become a modern career woman and Andrew, the youngest at sixteen, went to high school in Kingston but wanted to leave school and help at home. Rose had forbidden it, determined that all her children would get an education and have opportunities, especially in these troubling times.

  Between Ellen, Rose, Caro, and Peter, they had just about managed to keep things afloat, the crops planted in May before Ellen had arrived. But wheat prices had fallen and the money they received for the milk they sent to the cheese factory in Emerald, on the far side of the island, was not enough to keep them clothed and fed.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Rose said now as she poured them both cups of tea from the big brown pot. “Part of me thinks I should just sell up, buy some little place in Stella or even on the mainland, but I hate the thought of leaving the home that Dyle and I made together. We came here twenty-five years ago now, Ellen, with nothing but hope in our hearts and a few worn coins clanking together in Dyle’s pocket. And, in truth, I don’t know if anyone would buy such a poky place as this. Dyle managed to eke a living out of it, but…” She shrugged helplessly, sorrow and worry clouding her faded blue eyes. “These are hard times for everyone now.”

  “I know,” Ellen answered quietly. The newspapers were full of the discontent that had seized Canada, along with much of the world. Workers’ strikes, food still rationed, and no jobs to be had for the returning soldiers, often embittered as well as weary. It was the same hard story everywhere, with no solace to be found.

  “What do you think I should do, Ellen?” Rose asked as she joined her at the table and poured milk into both their teacups.

  “Oh Aunt Rose, I wish I knew.” Ellen smiled tiredly. She knew her aunt sorely missed the guidance of her husband Dyle, and Peter, as eldest son and now twenty-three years old, was not yet fulfilling his filial duty and interesting himself in the farm—or in anything. But that was something neither of them liked to talk about. As Rose would say, with a brave smile, “Peter’s only been back from France for a few months. It’s early days; he’ll come back to himself, once he’s settled in.” She always said this with brittle determination though, and never in her son’s hearing.

  Soon after she had arrived back on Amherst Island, Ellen had offered Aunt Rose her own modest savings, given to her by her almost-fiancé Henry McAvoy upon his death seven years ago, with the sinking of the Titanic, although no one, not even Aunt Rose, knew about that sorrowful chapter in her history. Ellen had never had a chance to accept his proposal, as he’d made it before sailing. She’d promised to give her answer upon his return, but he never had returned and so her acceptance had remained unspoken.

  The relationship had been so fragile, so secret, even from his disapproving parents, that Ellen had never felt comfortable telling anyone the truth. Sometimes she wondered what the truth even was. Had she loved Henry, or could she simply have learned to love him, in time? Now she would never know.

  She’d bought a small house in Glasgow with the money he had left her and invested what little was left. Her old friend Ruby and her brother Dougie lived in that little house, dear friends whom Ellen still missed, even as she remained determined to stay on the island, at least until the situation with the farm was stable. In any case, Rose had done as Ellen had expected and stoutly refused her offer.

  “I’m not going to take your money to keep this farm afloat, Ellen. You’ll need it yourself one day.”

  “This farm is my home,” Ellen had insisted. “I want you to take it, Aunt Rose. For my sake as much as yours. I can’t think of a better way to spend it.”

  But her aunt would not be moved. “There has to be some other way,” she’d stated firmly. “I won’t be taking the inheritance of my niece, especially when you’re as good as my own daughter. Not for this. Not for anything. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Despite her aunt’s protestations, Ellen had tried to help where she could, using her own money to buy a few treats and trinkets for Caro, and sending parcels of cake and lemonade to Gracie and Andrew in Kingston. But such small gestures did nothing to help the greater issue of the McCaffertys’ failing livelihood.

  “What about selling off only some of the farm’s acreage?” Ellen suggested hesitantly as she took a sip of tea. “Just a few acres, to tide you over until the harvest? We aren’t able to farm all the land this summer as it is…” Several fields lay fallow because Rose hadn’t had the manpower to plant them all. Neighbors had helped when they could, but everyone was struggling.

  “Oh Ellen, I’ve already thought about selling some of the back pasture.” Rose took a sip of tea, her face drawn in weary lines. “As much as I hate the thought of breaking this place up, it might be the only answer. If someone will buy those acres. I don’t know if anyone on the island will. I’m not the only one thinking of selling, you know.”

  “What about Mr. Lyman?” The Lymans’ farm adjoined the McCaffertys’, and John Lyman worked the land with his older son Jed, who had returned from the war damaged in both spirit and body; he’d lost an arm in the evacuation of Villiers-Cotterets, the field hospital where Ellen had been serving as a nurse. Since his return to the island a few months ago, he’d retreated into himself, and become more taciturn than ever, much to her dismay.

  Always a man of quiet reserve, Ellen feared he’d become positively surly in the wake of his own tragedies, understandable yet no less concerning. During the war, he and his wife Louisa had become estranged, and she’d moved back to Vermont when Jed had enlisted, returning only when he’d come back wounded near the end of the war. Then, right on the eve of the Armistice, they’d lost little Thomas—their first and only child—to the terrible influenza. It was a great deal of sorrow for them both to bear, and after the funeral here on the island Louisa had returned to her parents in Seaton. Although still married, they did not live as husband and wife, and Ellen wondered if they ever would again.

  She had only seen Jed a handful of times since she’d come back to the island, while his brother Lucas
she hadn’t seen at all. After he’d been demobbed he’d gone straight to Toronto and back to his old life as a junior lawyer at a successful practice, although he’d written her several letters since she’d returned.

  Thinking of the two Lyman men always made Ellen feel tangled up inside; once she’d believed herself in love with Jed, but years ago he’d married Louisa instead. As for Lucas… he’d always been a dear friend, but when he’d declared his own romantic intentions towards her during their days in Kingston, an unhappy awkwardness had sprung up between them that even four years of war hadn’t quite erased. The last time she’d seen him, while nursing in France, he’d as good as declared his intentions again, and Ellen had not known how to respond… or even how to feel about it.

  “Do you think John would want more land?” Rose asked with a dubious shake of her head, taking Ellen out of her troubled reminiscences.

  “He’s got some hired men helping him, and I’ve heard he’s talked about acquiring more livestock. He might want the pasture for the cattle.” More and more, it looked as if the future for farming might be in livestock rather than dairy or wheat, but the farms on the island were too small to have the hundreds, or even thousands, of cattle required to be truly prosperous.