THE ROSARY
This is an Edwardian romance with an English background and set at a time of unusual peace and tranquility in the country.  The main character is a society bachelor, sought after by every matron for her daughter but he falls in love with the plainest of women, three years his senior. She refuses him, knowing her plainness and his sense of beauty, as an artist would be totally incompatible.    He is subsequently blinded in a shooting accident.    She still finds it impossible to come to terms with his overwhelming passion for her.  Jane Champion is a rich woman, well travelled, happy and  content with life and part of his large set of socialites all well known to each other.  She is loved by all but treated as a sister and although she is not handsome when she opens her mouth to sing, his world stands still.	In Store Price: $AU23.95  Online Price:   $AU22.95 ISBN:  978-1-921406-30-0 Format: Paperback Number of pages: 168 Genre: Fiction
Author: Barbara Furguson Publisher: Zeus Publications Date Published: 2008 Language: English

AUTHOR PROFILE

The Rosary was originally written by Florence L. Barclay who died in 1925 and whose challenge was to write a bestseller without breaking any of the Ten Commandments. 

As a descendant of hers, Barbara Furguson, who spent her working life as a nurse and midwife in England, found the security when she married of not having to earn her own living. Then when her two stepchildren were able to stand on their own feet and leave the nest, she returned to her first love of writing.

She likes the idea of a strong, female lead in the book, not sexually motivated but being involved in real love and passion together with purity. The author has an overall vision of raising the ideals of the reader and leaving them with a deeper faith and a sense of hopefulness. 

Précis of the life of Florence Barclay 

Florence L. Barclay was born on December 2, 1862 in Surrey, England. She entered this world as Florence Louisa Charlesworth and her mother affectionately called her ‘Benny’ because her inquisitive nature reminded her more of a boy than a girl. 

She married at the age of 18 to the Reverend Charles W. Barclay and they spent their honeymoon touring the Holy Land. She and her new husband are credited for finding the mouth of Jacob’s Well beside which Christ is believed to have rested on a flat stone.

This was documented in the London Times and an official account given.

She and Charlie settled in a country parish in Hertford Heath Vicarage and by 1886 they had five children. At age 30, she was stricken by a painful illness, a form of peritonitis, and was an invalid for a year. Fortunately for the literary world, she recovered and completed her family with three more children.

In the years before her first novel was published, she spent most of her time tending to her family and the church community, organising prayer groups and church functions.

During a time of convalescence from heart strain, she wrote a short novel The Wheels of Time and began writing her most popular work, The Rosary, which was translated into eight languages and by 1921 had sold over a million copies.

She subsequently wrote 15 more best-selling novels and died at the age of 58 in that year.

She was survived by her husband and eight children.

CHAPTER ONE 

The peaceful stillness of an English summer afternoon brooded over the park and gardens at Overdene.  A hush of moving sunlight and lengthening shadows lay on the lawn, and a promise of refreshing coolness made the shade of the great cedar tree a place to be desired.

The old stone house, solid and substantial, suggested unlimited space and comfort and was redeemed from ugliness outside by the fine ivy, magnolia trees and wisteria climbing its plain face.  It was covered now with a mantle of soft green and large white blooms.

A terrace ran the full length of the house - at one end a large conservatory and the other an aviary.

There were clumps of old trees haunted by shy brown deer and beyond the wide park, through the trees, ran a graceful, winding river bordered by long grass and buttercups. 

The sundial pointed to four o’clock. 

The birds were having their hour of silence. 

The stillness seemed almost oppressive.  The one brilliant spot of colour in the landscape was a large scarlet macaw, asleep on his stand under the cedar.

At last there came the sound of an opening door. 

A quaint old figure stepped out onto the terrace, walked its entire length to the right, disappearing into the rose-garden.  The Duchess of Meldrum had gone to cut her roses.  She wore an ancient straw hat tied with black ribbons and carried a wooden basket.

If you had met her Grace in town you might have given her a few coppers to buy a meal. 

But the duchess lived alone in regal splendour having no desire for a paid companion.  Thomas, fifth Duke of Meldrum had come to a sudden, and, as the duchess often remarked, very suitable end. 

On his sixty-second birthday, clad in all the splendours of his hunting scarlet, top hat, and proper breeches, the mare he was mercilessly putting at an impossible fence suddenly refused it, and Thomas, Duke of Meldrum, shot into a field of turnips, pitched on his head and spoke no more.  This sudden cessation of his noisy and fiery life meant a complete transformation in the life of the duchess. 

Hitherto she had tolerated his boon companions who loved to spend countless days in the lovely Overdene out of friendship for them both. 

Quaint and rough old diamond she might appear but at heart she was a true gentlewoman and could always be trusted to say and do the right thing. 

The late duke’s language had been sulphurous and some of it transferred to the bright macaw! At first the duchess contented herself with gardening and making the aviary but after a while her natural inclination to hospitality and her humorous enjoyment of other people, a delight in parading her own foibles, led to a constant succession of house parties at Overdene which soon became known as a place to meet anyone you wanted to meet and to find every facility for enjoying your favourite pastime. 

You would be fed and housed in perfect style and spend some of the most ideal days of summer, never dull, never bored, free to come and go as you pleased but with the delight of never knowing what the duchess would do next.

Of all her many pets, Tommy the scarlet Macaw was prime favourite. 

He opened one eye and watched her pass, gave a loud kiss as she reached the gate, laughed to himself and went to sleep again.

After the demise of the duke she had found it very depressing to be invariably addressed with suave deference by every male voice she heard.  If the butler could have snorted or the rector had rapped out an uncomplimentary adjective, the duchess would have felt cheered. 

As it was, a settled melancholy lay upon her spirit until Tommy began the full use of his vocabulary.  And when the duchess came sailing down the stairs, ten minutes after the gong sounded for meals, and Tommy, flapping his wings angrily, shrieked at her, ‘Now then, old girl!  Come on!’  She went in to meals considerably more cheerful than she had been for months.

The only done of her relatives who practically made her home with the duchess was her niece and former ward, the Honourable Jane Champion. 

She was allowed to invite herself to Overdene or Portland Place, arrive when she likes, stay as long as she pleased and leave when it suited her convenience.  On the death of her father when her lonely girlhood in her Norfolk home came to an end, she would gladly have filled the place of a daughter to the duchess. 

But the duchess did not require a daughter; certainly not one with pronounced views, plenty of backbone and a beautiful figure.  So she could stay as long as she likes, having complete liberty but with no responsibilities.

Jane Champion was now in her 30th year.  She had once been described as a perfectly beautiful woman in an absolutely plain shell.  No man had as yet looked beneath the shell and seen the woman in her perfection. 

No one had drawn near enough to experience the wealth of tenderness of which she was capable, the comfort of the shelter of her love, the perfect comprehension of her sympathy.  No man had, as yet, with far seeing vision enough, had had the marvellous joy of winning and wedding her. 

It had always seemed to be her lot to take a second place, on occasions when she would have filled the first to perfection.

She had been bridesmaid at weddings, godmother to her friends’ babies, she who was richly endowed with the qualifications for wifehood and motherhood.  She had glorious voice but as her face did not match it, its existence was rarely suspected. 

So Jane gladly took second place and accompanied to perfection.  In short, all her life long Jane had never known what it was to be absolutely first with any one.  Her mother’s death had occurred during infancy so, although she tried occasionally to imagine it, there was no recollection of any maternal love or tenderness.  Jane saw little of her father, who found it difficult to forgive her, firstly, for being a girl when he wanted a son; secondly, being a girl, for having inherited his plainness rather than her mother’s beauty.

In after years, when she became her own mistress, one of her first actions was to advertise for Sarah Matthews, her mother’s elderly maid and engage her as her own.  Sarah Matthews was able to tell her many stories of her mother’s care- how she would kiss her finger calling them ‘rose petals’ - her heart full of memories of the sweet babe on whom she and her lady had lavished so much love and care.  She had found a tall, plain girl with a frank and boyish manner.

The hero of Jane’s childhood, the real friend of her girlhood and the closer of her mature years, was Deryck Brand, only son of the rector of the parish and her senior by nearly ten years.  But even in their friendship, close as it was, she had never felt herself first to him.  Jane’s strong character and original mental development interested him and her devotion pleased him but later on he married a lovely girl, as unlike Jane as one woman could possibly be to another. 

Still their friendship held and deepened and now, when he was rapidly advancing to the very front of his medical profession, her appreciation of his work and understanding of his aims and efforts, meant more to him than even the royal favour he knew. 

Jane Champion had no close friends among the women she knew.  Her lonely girlhood had bead in her a frankness towards herself and other people, which made it difficult for her to understand or tolerate the artificialities of society.  She couldn’t comprehend the trivial weakness of her own sex.  But of men friends she had many especially the young men just out of college the duchess always invited to her special parties.  Jane knew perfectly well they called her ‘old Jane’ or ‘dearest Jane’ among themselves but she believed in the harmlessness of their fun and the genuineness of their affection and gave them a generous amount of her own in return.

Jane Champion happened just now to be paying one of her long visits to Overdene and was playing golf with one of these boys when the duchess went to cut blooms in her rose garden. 

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