House of Angels (17 page)

Maggie was becoming increasingly morose, almost falling into a depression, yet could offer no explanation for her black mood. At least the sickness seemed to be passing, which had saved calling out the doctor.

Even more worryingly, they still hadn’t seen Ella, not since her wedding. Whenever Livia wrote and urged her to visit, she would give some excuse or other: the weather, the work in the dairy, or not being able to leave the livestock. Livia sighed. Ella’s letters were so vague, so unlike her sister’s usual chatty nature that she did wonder if Amos censored them. A chilling thought!

How easy it had been to make that promise to Mama to protect them, and how difficult to carry it out.

Neither had Livia forgotten her promise to Jack Flint to enquire about Mercy, the young girl who was also, apparently, a sister, albeit a half one. Livia was still coming to terms with this shocking revelation, but her father had always been secretive, in many respects. He had never divulged where he went on
the evenings he was not at home.

She’d begun her quest by talking to the shop assistants, particularly those who worked in the back rooms unpacking and sorting stock, or engaged in the making up of customers’ orders, sewing gowns or whatever.

They were all too busy, they assured her, to lift their heads from their work to ease aching backs, let alone pay any attention to what was going on around them. Or too wise to gossip. They made it very clear that they didn’t much care to be interrogated by the boss’s daughter, as if she were checking up on how effectively they were carrying out their own jobs. They seemed to believe that she meant to tell on them to her father, and she’d had to back off pretty quickly.

It was all becoming rather embarrassing and far more difficult than she’d hoped.

Livia left Miss Caraway until the last, out of cowardice she ruefully admitted, yet she was the one most likely to know the answer to the puzzle.

‘We have many girls enquiring after positions,’ the older woman responded in her usual tart manner when Livia finally plucked up the courage to ask her the question.

‘And have there been any lately, that you remember?’

Miss Caraway looked at her askance. ‘And why would I trouble to remember the tribe of hopefuls who trek through my door with little or no hope of proving suitable? They are generally of the lower classes with dirty fingernails and no brains.’

Livia stifled a sigh. Miss Caraway was at times even more snobby than dear deluded Ella. ‘And have you
ever been approached by a girl with clean fingernails and evidence of some small degree of intelligence? One, perhaps, with fair hair and turquoise blue eyes?’

‘I do assure you that the colour of hair and eyes is quite immaterial when choosing staff, and I ceased to hope for intelligence years ago.’

‘I’m sorry, Jack, but I’m not sure how much longer I can go on. I’ve done my best, but no one seems to have seen her, and old Caraway is being stubbornly vague on the subject. I’ve quite run out of ideas what to try next.’

They generally met up by the river, as they were doing now. They’d walk from Nether Bridge along Colonel Walk past the parish church where Ella had been married, and on past the old grammar school and Abbot Hall.

Today they were sitting on a grassy bank watching the ducks squabble over crusts of bread that children were throwing to them. The sun was shining on this lovely October day, and, despite the bad news Livia had to impart, she felt curiously happy and optimistic.

Jack plucked a stalk of grass and thoughtfully chewed on the end of it. ‘Why is that? Because this Caraway woman knows what happened to her and doesn’t want to tell?’

Livia shrugged, her eyes on his mouth, wondering what it would feel like to have it pressed against her own. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, although I mentioned no names, merely the barest details, so she didn’t have much to go on.’

Jack tossed the grass stalk aside to respond with one of
his captivating smiles. ‘Maybe, but
she
should remember that one day you might actually be running the store, then where would she be?’

Livia gurgled with laughter. ‘I very much doubt that could ever happen. Father will most certainly make sure that it doesn’t.’

‘You don’t have any brothers though, do you?’

‘No, but that doesn’t mean I would inherit, so you can forget that notion at once. Father would much rather leave it to some distant cousin, I’m sure, so long as they were male.’

Livia felt a faint stirring of unease that Jack should think in that way about her – as someone who might inherit a thriving business. But then he was probably only teasing her in that droll manner of his. She really mustn’t be quite so sensitive, and he was, after all, her friend.

At least that
was
all she wanted from him, wasn’t it? Friendship. Lounging on the grass with his long legs stretched out, Livia experienced a great longing to lie beside him, to feel the warmth of his body curl about hers. She tucked her arms about her knees and quickly changed the subject.

‘So what shall we do about poor Mercy then? I seem to be getting absolutely nowhere by asking these questions, except to make a nuisance of myself. And I’m nervous of arousing Father’s suspicions if I push too hard.’

They sat in glum silence for some long moments, contemplating possibilities. Then Jack’s face cleared and he sat up, suddenly fired with an idea. ‘Why didn’t I think of it before? Florrie provided Mercy with a letter
of introduction. What happened to that, I wonder?’

Livia frowned. ‘Father would have thrown it away, surely?’

‘What if he didn’t? What if he just left it lying about? Maybe you should look for that letter instead.’

Livia was appalled. ‘You want me to sneak into my father’s office and start searching through his papers? Are you mad? How do you imagine he’d react if he caught me snooping?’

Jack had the grace to look concerned by this prospect, nevertheless his answer brought little comfort. ‘You’ll just have to make sure that he doesn’t.’

‘Thanks!’

He brushed the back of one hand against her cheek in a gentle caress. ‘I wouldn’t want you to take any risks, so choose your moment with care, when he’s safely off the premises.’

Livia was so taken aback by the touch of his fingers against her skin that she could scarcely formulate her thoughts into any sensible order. ‘I will…of course…I – I’ll take care.’

‘He hasn’t…hit you again, has he?’

‘No.’

He frowned. ‘Sure?’

‘Absolutely. I promised to marry Henry, after all, so he has no reason to.’

He sat up to stare at her in startled surprise. ‘You did
what
? You aren’t serious?’

‘It was the only way to stop him from harassing me, and to protect my sister, who isn’t too well.’ Her brow
puckered with concern as she thought of Maggie. ‘Not that I’ve any intention of fulfilling my promise,’ she blithely continued.

‘So the word of you nobs can’t be trusted, is that it?’

Livia chuckled. ‘It was only a little white lie.’

‘It was a whopping big black one. Still, I’ll let you off in the circumstances. You had me worried for a moment.’

‘Why should it worry you whom I marry?’ Livia regretted her question almost the moment she’d voiced it, as it sounded so arch and contrived, as if she were fishing for compliments. And could that be a flush creeping up his neck? Had she embarrassed him? Or stirred something else in him, something rather wonderful? His face suddenly seemed to have come much closer to her own, so that she could see the reflection of her own image in his big brown eyes. But then he half turned away with a casual shrug of the shoulders.

‘I suppose everything you do concerns me, at the moment anyway. Aren’t we friends, united in a quest?’

‘Because of Mercy, you mean?’

He held her gaze for some long seconds before answering. ‘What else could I mean?’

Livia was now the first to break the gaze. ‘You’ve no need to worry about me. I’ve no intention of marrying at all, not Henry, not anyone.’

He smiled. ‘You intend to remain a spinster stuck on the shelf?’

‘I hate both those expressions. I am not a spinster, whatever that might be, and I’m certainly not stuck on any shelf. I intend to do other, more useful things with my
life than pander to some male,’ she said, her tone ringing with resolve and self-satisfaction. ‘I’ve had enough of that sort of thing already with my father, thank you very much. I’ve certainly no intention of exchanging one bully for another.’

‘Not all men are bullies,’ Jack said, in that low, husky voice which had such an odd effect upon her insides.

Livia fixed her gaze firmly upon the ducks as she mumbled that really she had no intention of taking the risk. If only he wasn’t sitting quite so close. His very nearness was making her feel flustered. Spinster indeed!

‘You might change your mind, about marrying I mean.’

‘I won’t.’ She looked at him, her eyes fierce. ‘Not ever. Men are not to be trusted.’

‘We’ll see, shall we?’

‘In the meantime,’ Livia said, ‘I’ll search for that dratted letter and do what I can to locate your friend. Where the hell do you think she is?’

Mercy and Georgina, or George as she preferred to think of him, had become firm friends and happily shared secrets and gossip. He said little about his own background and Mercy had the sense not to ask, but she confided in him her grief over the death of her mother. One afternoon as they circled the ward together, shuffling round and round in their usual listless fashion, she told him the truth of her birth, and how she’d taken Florrie’s carefully penned letter to Josiah Angel’s Department Store in a bid
to secure a job from the man she’d discovered was her father.

‘So when you stepped out in front of him on the day he came visiting, you were speaking the truth?’

Mercy shrugged. ‘I was a fool. Speaking the truth sometimes isn’t such a good idea. I should’ve realised he didn’t give a toss.’

‘So you went to him to ask for help and all he did was send you to this place?’ George was outraged.

‘Like I say, I’m stupid.’

‘But he’s your da. Not that mine was much better.’ George told her then how he’d spent his youth avoiding his own father’s heavy hand. ‘Which had a habit of landing on my backside. We lived out in the wilds beyond Keswick, where he worked in the lead mines. One day, when I was about thirteen, I stupidly told him I’d no intention of following his example and going down the mines. He nearly killed me. There was a carter leaving that night for Kendal, so I went with him.’

‘Didn’t you manage to find work here in Kendal either?’

‘Nope. I didn’t have no character, did I? No reference, no training, couldn’t read and write, useless I am. I nicked a pie off a market stall and got caught. It was either the clink or the workhouse. I opted for the latter, pretending to be soft in the head, threepence short to the shilling.’ George chuckled as if it were all a fine joke, then quickly sobered as he went on to apologise to Mercy for his high jinks on the day she’d arrived, which was what had got her into trouble in the first place. ‘I didn’t mean you no
harm, I just like playing practical jokes, hence the dress. It lightens the boredom.’

Mercy looked bemused. ‘But why would a
good-looking
man like you want to dress like a woman?’

George laughed. ‘I find it helps to appear more stupid than I actually am.’

Mercy’s eyes widened. ‘Why? I’ve certainly discovered that what Prue told me was true. If you want to survive in this place, don’t fight, don’t argue, and keep your mouth shut. But I never thought you’d need to pretend to be something that you’re not.’

George winked. ‘Being classed as an imbecile has proved very useful, I can tell you. Better than breaking stones or being sent to the reformatory. They think I’m so stupid that I can’t even find my way around this place, which I encourage by constantly “getting myself lost”. Such excursions have allowed me to check out the layout pretty thoroughly, and I have, in fact, learnt of a way out.’ He half glanced over his shoulder to check there were no eavesdroppers. ‘Why don’t we make plans to leave, eh? There’s a whole world out there, Mercy, just waiting for you and me to grab it by the throat.’

Mercy was the one laughing now. For the first time since the birching and those terrible dark days in solitude, she felt a lifting of her spirits. Maybe she did have some strength left in her, after all. ‘You’re on,’ she said. ‘Just show me the way.’

The moon looked pale as a pearl in the black velvet sky, the stars a scattering of diamonds as Ella crept up the stairs to the attic. Ever since her walk to the river to join her husband fishing, which had led to her secretly watching him bathing, Ella had been tormented by the image of him standing proud and naked before her, albeit unaware of her presence. He was a man not given to demonstrations of emotion, a private man who preferred to keep his grief and private worries to himself. But he was her husband, and Ella understood that if this wall he’d erected between them was ever to be breached, she must be the one to take it down, brick by brick if necessary.

A floorboard creaked as she stepped into the room and she halted, holding her breath in case he should wake. No sound came, and stepping softly on the soles of her feet, Ella edged forward. The bed he slept in was narrow, made for one, not two, but as luck would have it he was turned with his face to the wall, the blankets rucked up.
Very slowly and carefully, Ella pulled back the covers and slipped in beside him.

A shaft of stray moonlight coming through a narrow window cut into the roof above revealed that he was naked from the waist up. He wore nothing but his long johns. Ella lay silent beside him, her breathing soft and quiet as she struggled to control her nervousness. Very gently she rested the flat of her hand against his back, then she placed her lips against his warm bare skin and kissed it. Next she slid her hand around his waist, caressed the hardness of his belly, the velvety smoothness of him, and heard him groan as he turned to her. Then he was kissing her, every bit as demanding as that very first time when she’d been frightened of the rats in the barn, and he’d surprised her with a kiss. He was pulling her beneath him, his breathing growing ragged with need.

Ella stroked the hair at his nape, wrapped her legs about his narrow hips and flung back her head in sheer delight as he caressed each nipple with the tip of his tongue. So he did want her after all, as much as she now wanted him. The preacher man was full of surprises.

And he hadn’t even thought to wash his hands first.

He was warm and strong and hard, and possibly still half asleep. Ella didn’t care whether he thought this a dream or not. Like a miracle, he slid inside her and took her as sweetly as though they’d been made for each other. She cried out in ecstasy, knowing she’d longed for this moment ever since she’d seen him in the river that day, and as they moved together with an instinctive rhythm, her heart sang.

Could this be love? Was this how it felt to really love someone? Full of awe and fear and pulsing excitement?

When it was over, they lay with limbs entwined, utterly spent. Ella waited for him to speak, to tell her how beautiful she was, but was disappointed instead to hear once more the steady rhythm of his breathing. Her husband had fallen asleep. Smiling softly, she tucked herself into the curve of his warm body and slept too.

It was Ella who woke first, with shafts of a pink dawn piercing the darkness as she turned to kiss him on the tip of his nose. It was as if she had branded him with a red hot iron. He leapt from the bed in an instant, one moment contentedly asleep beside her, the next standing shivering on the bare boards, glaring down at her. ‘What the… What are you doing in my bed?’

Ella made no attempt to move. She merely grinned at him and pulled the blankets up to her chin. ‘I am your wife. I believe I’m fully entitled to be in your bed.’

He made a grumble of contempt deep in his throat. ‘“With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him.” Get ye gone.’

Ella sat up, not caring that the blanket fell back to reveal her to be bare breasted, although she heard his quick indrawn breath. ‘I forced no one. I am not the devil, Amos, my father was for marrying me to you when he knew there was no love between us.’

She saw how his eyes were riveted to her nakedness, hot with need. ‘Who do you think you are, woman, Eve, or Bathsheba?’

Ella chewed on a fingernail and pretended to consider. ‘Wasn’t Bathsheba seduced by David, rather than the other way around? And I believe you too had a part to play in last night’s events.’

Amos changed his line of attack.

‘Thy father informed me of your fall from grace. I have yet to meet a virtuous woman, one who is not willing to steal into a man’s bed and bring him down like an ox to the slaughter, as it says in Proverbs, chapter seven—’

‘Oh, stop that at once, Amos.’ Ella was out of the bed in a second, standing before him with not a hint of embarrassment as she stamped the floorboards with one bare foot. ‘Stop hiding behind the scriptures and be a man, why don’t you? But all right, if you don’t want me, so be it. Stay in your narrow little bed with the company only of your narrow little mind, and see if I care. To hell with you, Amos Todd, and your moralising.’

And she stormed off, tears rolling down her cheeks, quite forgetting she’d left her nightdress behind. Amos snatched it up as if to chase after her with it, but then changed his mind and buried his nose in it instead, breathing in the essence of her.

Mercy was trudging across open fields, doing her best to keep pace with George’s long-legged stride. They’d been walking for days and she was bone-weary, her feet a mass of blisters and every muscle screaming with pain.

Escaping from the workhouse had turned out to be far easier than she’d feared. George had shown her a tiny window with a loose catch in the boiler room, just big
enough for her to squeeze through. George himself, tall and broad-shouldered, couldn’t possibly escape that way. Instead he’d adopted his Georgina role, and in dress and bonnet managed to somehow mingle with the visitors and walk out of the door as bold as brass. Mercy thought it a miracle he wasn’t spotted, or even searched – though if any of the staff had seen him, they might have assumed it was Georgina being simple again. Whatever the reason, and against all the odds, the plan worked.

‘We got away with it!’ she cried, when he’d hunkered down beside her on Kendal Green.

‘Not yet,’ he’d warned. ‘We still need to get down into town and find transport.’

In fact, they’d been fortunate to discover a line of farmers’ carts trundling up Windermere Road, and it was the simplest thing in the world to hitch a lift. They’d pretended to be mother and daughter on their way home from market. That first cart took them as far as Windermere, where George had divested himself of the dress. Beneath that he was wearing the trademark canvas trousers and shirt that marked him out as a workhouse inmate, but a scout around the backstreets soon produced a washing line with a pair of trousers and shirt that fitted.

They walked for several miles to Ambleside, following the shore of the lake for part of the way, before slipping under the tarpaulin of yet another farm cart as it lumbered past.

George reckoned they must now be in the Langdales, the most westerly range of mountains in the Lakes, and
that the last village they’d driven through a few miles back was Chapel Stile. When the cart had slowed for the driver to open a farm gate, the pair of them slipped out over the tailgate and hid in a ditch until it had gone.

‘Now where are we?’ Mercy cried, gazing around at the sweep of brooding mountains. It looked very much like alien territory so far as she was concerned, yet she was transfixed by the sheer beauty of the boulder-strewn landscape: by the purple carpet of heather, the looming mountain peaks, the spindly pines that leant into the wind, and everywhere she looked there were sheep. Dark and round-bellied with rough white faces, they didn’t look like proper sheep at all.

George told her they were called Herdwicks, and were believed to have been brought over to Lakeland by the Vikings many hundreds of years ago. ‘They’re
thick-boned
, provide good wool and the sweetest meat you’ve ever tasted.’

Both their mouths watered at the mention of food. George had managed to steal half a loaf of bread from the dining room, and Mercy a hunk of cheese from the kitchen. They sat down at once to eat a little of this, saving the rest for later, knowing they would be even hungrier by then.

‘Once we find shelter, a barn or something, I’ll set a trap for some real food,’ George promised.

That had been yesterday, or was it the day before? Mercy was beginning to lose track of time. One night they had indeed found a barn and had slept well, warm as toast,
another time they’d slept under a hedge, and last night they’d huddled close together for warmth beneath the canopy of an old beech tree.

But now the valley and the stream where they’d quenched their thirst and finished the last of the bread and cheese at breakfast were miles behind them. Mercy noticed a lone buzzard circling overhead and fell to her knees in fright, thinking it a vulture, which amused George greatly. But then she’d lived all her life in Kendal, on Fellside. She wasn’t used to wild places.

George didn’t seem in the least troubled by the remoteness of the spot. The mountains were rugged with high peaks and crags that seemed to tower over her. He named them for her: Langdale Pikes, Bowfell and Crinkle Crags, and promised to take her walking up them one day. Mercy declined.

‘I prefer to keep my feet firmly on solid pavements and cobbled streets, thanks all the same, not slippy, sharp rocks that hang over a precipice into which I might fall and crack me skull.’

She was almost glad when heavy clouds obscured the mountaintops in a thick fog. George might call them noble but Mercy saw them as menacing, and made sure she kept pace with him as he strode along, nervous of getting left behind.

‘We need to keep off any main roads, just in case someone should come looking for us.’

Mercy thought this highly unlikely but what alternative did she have except to follow him? Besides, she trusted him implicitly, even if it did sometimes feel as if they were
going round in circles. He, at least, knew where he was going.

In this she was sadly mistaken. George had been lost for some time, but had kept on walking out of necessity, or habit, hoping he’d come across a village where he might find work, or a likely spot for them to settle for a while, then he could catch them a rabbit for supper. He had a box of matches in his pocket for lighting a fire, which he’d thieved from the boiler room, and his belly felt as if it was sticking to his rib cage. He could tell Mercy was hungry too because her pace was slowing. Tonight he meant to make them a proper lean-to shelter, in case those threatening clouds fulfilled their promise and brought rain.

They came at last to a copse by a small tarn. The rich colours of the rowan, heavy with their scarlet berries, looked so beautiful they warmed Mercy’s heart. A thin mist was creeping down the fells like an old man’s beard and she could hear the clear bright song of a robin, the gentle bleating of the Herdwicks, and the rustle of
windblown
leaves.

‘And where are we now? I swear I’ve seen that mountain before.’

George was looking distinctly uncomfortable, wondering if she was right. ‘Even if we are lost, isn’t this better than being locked up in that flamin’ workhouse? It’s beautiful. I can’t think why I ever went south to the town in the first place? I must have been mad.’

‘If you hadn’t done that, you’d never have met me.’

‘True, which would have been a pity.’

Something warmed inside her at his words, and she grinned back at him. ‘We were destined to meet, you and me, eh? Still, this place is desolate and we belong in the town. We’ll starve out here with no food, and it’s getting colder by the minute.’

George was beginning to feel desperate for some rest and flopped down on a hillock of moss, closed his eyes and was almost instantly asleep. Mercy had never known anyone with the ability to fall asleep quite so quickly. She envied him this as she stood looking down at him, shivering in the chill wind, but then she too sank down onto the mossy bank and snuggled up against the warmth of his bulky body.

She liked George a lot. He was good-looking in a rough and ready sort of way, though his nose was a bit crooked and his brown eyes deep set. His mouth was wide and full, the kind she would very much like to kiss, had she not still nursed doubts about his fondness for wearing that dress.

She heard a rustle in the undergrowth and, glancing up, spotted a deer. It was quietly feeding in the dusk, unaware of her presence, and Mercy kept very still, anxious not to startle it. As she sat watching the creature in awe, she suddenly caught sight of a feast of blackberries cloaking a thorn hedge, and gave a little squeal, quite unable to stop herself. Startled by her cry, the deer leapt away into the undergrowth.

Undeterred, she gave George a shake. ‘Look, look, brambles. Supper!’

They ate till their mouths were black with the berries
and their stomachs could take no more. By the time they’d collected branches for a makeshift shelter it was already growing dark and George had grown oddly silent. Mercy brought bracken to use as a mattress, laying it under the lean-to just as the rain started, relishing the prospect of curling up beside him as they had done on previous nights.

George set a trap using his bootlaces and some forked twigs, since that was all he had, in the vain hope of catching a rabbit for breakfast. Then he lay down beside her. Mercy snuggled close, fitting herself against the warmth of his body like a pair of spoons in a drawer.

She was almost disappointed that yet again he didn’t try anything on. Proper gent, was George. Or else his desires ran in an entirely different direction, which troubled her more than she was prepared to admit. Mercy was beginning to suspect that she was falling in love with George, which wouldn’t do at all, if that were the case.

The bracken was scratchy and not half so soft and comfortable as it had appeared when she’d first laid it down. Nor was the lean-to shelter as waterproof as they’d hoped and the rain soon seeped between the branches, soaking them through. After a largely sleepless night, they woke at dawn to a biting cold, gnawing hunger and a still empty trap. Even George no longer saw their escape as a romantic adventure and agreed there was only one answer. Today must be make or break. They either found themselves a job, or tomorrow they must return to Kendal.