Today, 5th December, sees the release, or rather the re-release, of my first published book, “Yorkshire.” I’ve rewritten it a fair bit, taking out extraneous characters and intensifying the romance. The book means a lot to me, and not just because it was the first one I had published.

It was when I visited Calke Abbey in Derbyshire that I got the first inklings of the story. When I looked at the devastated nursery, I knew I had to write something about it. Calke Abbey was the first property the National Trust didn’t restore to pristine splendor when they acquired it. It was wrecked, the family who owned it one of Britain’s craziest aristocratic/gentry families. They used the place, dumped precious items in rooms next to old beds with rusty bedsprings, and one particular treasure, the State Bed, was left in its original boxes, never even unpacked. Apart from unpacking the bed and putting it on display, the Trust preserved the building but left it as it was, right down to the mould stains on the upper floors where the rain had seeped through over the years. They acquired the property for the Park, with its rare examples of wildlife and plants, and found the house an amazing place. Sleeping Beauty’s Palace come to life.

I couldn’t not write it, really I couldn’t. My imagination peopled this run-down frozen in time place and before I got home I had Rose in my mind. Add to that a visit to Haddon Hall, one of the most intensely atmospheric places I’ve ever been to. It has a rocky, wavy cobbled courtyard I love, so I put that in front of my Hareton Abbey.

Then I dreamed Richard, I really did. I woke up with the vision of a Georgian dandy in full get-up standing on a rough cobbled courtyard in front of a decaying country house. I ignored husband, children and everything else, sat at the family computer in the hall and typed it up. Six weeks and it was done. Like my other stories, I planned to put it away, but this was the first story I’d written at the computer, so I took the floppy disk, had it printed out and sent it off.

That was the start, and it hasn’t stopped yet.

So here’s what I saw in that dream:

The house was rendered in grey Yorkshire stone, formidable and forbidding. It had not been cleaned except by the weather, nor repaired where pieces of the stone had shattered in the frosts of winter. Pieces still lay on the ground. They must have lain there disregarded for some time. The main part of the building towered in front of us. Its air of abandonment was almost tangible: you could almost hear the house crumbling.
“Rose…” Lizzie whispered.
I glanced at her. “Dear God. What have we come to?”
Her face reflected my own apprehension. “I don’t know. This is Hareton Abbey, isn’t it? We haven’t come somewhere else by mistake?”
“It has to be,” Martha said. We spoke quietly; afraid of awakening echoes. “Don’t forget, James and I have been here once before, but it didn’t look like this the last time we came.”
“Lord, no.” James murmured. Martha clutched his arm as if she might never let go. “It’s supposed to be one of the show houses of the county; whatever can have happened?”
The rumble of wheels on the drive behind started us out of our shock. We stepped back to see what was coming, and to get out of its way.
Into the dilapidated courtyard bowled two travelling carriages, as different from our hired vehicle as possible. They were clearly private vehicles, bang up to date in style, bearing emblazoned crests on their doors. The shiny new black paintwork contrasted strongly with the dull, weathered finish on our carriage. The windows were glassed in, but despite their fashionable comfort, the bodies of the vehicles jolted and swung just as much as ours had. The horses pulling them were matched thoroughbreds. They must have cost a fortune.
They came to a brisk halt in front of the house. We watched liveried footmen leap down and run to let down the steps. “The Southwood party,” Lizzie whispered, awestruck. The cream of society, the top of the tree. Her ideal, her dream.
From the first coach alighted a figure that made my mouth drop open in disbelief. A vision of male gorgeousness, a sumptuous feast of a man. Lizzie gasped, but I didn’t turn to look at her. I kept my gaze fixed on the mirage before us.
He wore scarlet velvet, dressed for the Court. He would be sadly disappointed here. His white powdered wig was set just right, his waistcoat was a dream of embroidered magnificence. He swung around to help a lady descend from the vehicle, and when I again glanced at Lizzie, I saw she had temporarily lost all faculties of speech. No doubt remembering her manners, she closed her mouth.
This younger lady was attired-dressed would have been too clumsy a word-in a French sacque of blue watered silk, embroidered down the hem and the robings in fine floss. Frills and furbelows seemed to take on a life of their own, romping over her petticoats. Pearls gleamed at her neck. “Dear God,” whispered Lizzie.
Behind these visions of fashionable excess, another man climbed down. He wore his fair hair simply tied back; his clothes were just as well cut as the other gentleman’s though not as extravagant, and his attitude far more natural. “They’re twins,” Lizzie told me, back in control of her voice.
“I know,” I said. “You told us. More than once.”
To see the Kerre brothers was a different experience to merely reading about them.
The only identical twins in polite society, they made themselves more conspicuous still by creating scandal after scandal. Lizzie’s information continued, “The younger went abroad after eloping with a married woman. He’s only lately returned, after twelve years away. I wonder which one it is?”
“The peacock.” It had to be. The other looked far too sensible.
They glanced at us. The gorgeously dressed gentleman turned back to the coach, and said something only his brother could hear. His twin spun on his heel, the gravel grating under his foot and stared at us for one impolite moment before he looked away. I guessed the popinjay had said something like “country bumpkins”, and I resented the comment while at the same time agreeing with it. We were in a hired coach, and hadn’t thought to make a stop to change into better clothes as the other party obviously had. I smoothed my hand over my worn, brown wool gown.

From “Yorkshire,” by Lynne Connolly. Out on 5th December at Samhain Publishing.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/lynneconnolly//Yorkshire.html