Instead, she sat hugging her knees and let her thoughts turn to Maggie. She rarely had a minute to herself, a private moment to remember her beloved sister.
How they had all got through those dark days following her death, she’d never know. First came the horror, then the blame, and most horrendous of all, the funeral, with everyone asking the same question: why would she do such a thing? Why would such a lovely young girl take her own life?
There seemed no answer to that, and Ella still couldn’t believe that her young sister was dead, that she would never again see her sweet smiling face, never hear her bubbling laughter, nor see those soulful grey eyes as clear as a mountain stream. Her patience and tolerance, her sweet nature, were legendary, and her love for her two older sisters unquestioning.
Ella’s mouth curved into an instinctive smile as she recalled how Maggie would scold Livia if she should scramble up a tree in Serpentine Woods to grin cheekily down, as if challenging them to prove they were half so agile as she. Maggie would be unimpressed, too afraid that she might fall.
She would sternly scold Ella that she really had no need for rouge or artifice, that she was beautiful and elegant, and any young man must fall in love with her at first sight.
As they had done, and she with them. But what good was beauty when her own husband saw it only as the devil’s work, and hated the sight of her?
Ella let out a sigh, heavy with sadness. Maggie had thought little of herself. She’d never claimed to have Livia’s energy, her ambition or intelligence. And she saw her own prettiness as a feeble thing by comparison with Ella’s lovely elegance. She’d taken refuge in a private world of her own. She would write little stories, talk to her stuffed toys and dolls, reveal her thoughts only in her secret diaries, and neither Livia nor Ella would ever dare to invade this need of hers for privacy. Since her death, Livia had searched every scrap of paper, trying to find a clue to their youngest sister’s state of mind. So far as Ella was aware, she’d found nothing.
The tragedy had ripped them to shreds. Livia was beside herself with grief, quite unable to remain at home. For some reason she blamed their father. Not so surprising, perhaps, since they all knew him for a bully. But what he had done to Maggie that was any different to his normal bullying – what trigger had finally made her snap so that she could bear no more – Ella had no idea. It was all quite beyond her, but the pain was no less to bear now than it was twelve months ago on that sunny autumn day when a neighbour had come galloping up the valley on his old mare to tell her the dreadful news.
Amos had at once taken her back to Angel House, and she and Livia had clung together, sobbing with bewilderment and grief. What had gone wrong? Why hadn’t they noticed how depressed she was and been able to help her? They didn’t even know what had caused the depression in the first place. So far as Ella could see, it was a complete mystery, coming right out of the blue.
But then Maggie had been far too good for this world. Ella and Livia may have grown inured to their father’s constant bullying and iron control, but it had clearly been too much for the more fragile, vulnerable Maggie. Her tolerance and saint-like patience must finally have snapped. She simply hadn’t been able to take any more.
Ella suspected she might never get over their sister’s death, that she and Livia would forever carry a sense of guilt because they hadn’t been there on that last fateful day to help her deal with her final cry of despair.
Ella returned to the farm with her water buckets, setting them in the cool of the larder and praying the rains would come soon to refill the private reservoirs closer to the house. It was a Friday and she was baking a cake for the children, who would be home this evening as usual. Wilma Jepson had given her the recipe for a Victoria sponge and it had become quite a favourite.
Ella had made some progress with Tilda and Emmett, although not as much as she would have liked. They at least talked to her now, and the older girl, Mary, was not quite so over-protective. But they maintained their distance, never wanted a cuddle or thought to come to Ella with their worries and concerns. They still attended school in Staveley and were away all week, except for Mary, who had gone into service at Whitsun, having been taken on as kitchen maid by a doctor. Ella hoped her relationship with the younger children might improve now they had only their stepmother to turn to.
Each Friday they were brought by a neighbour of their aunt’s in a trap to the end of the dale, where they were dropped off by St Cuthbert’s church. From there they walked the rest of the way to Todd’s Farm, a distance of some four miles.
Ella had been keeping a lookout for them for some time now, a pan of hot broth and herb dumplings simmering on the hob in readiness for their supper. She kept going over to the window to glance along the lane, anxiously watching the great black clouds roll up.
As she took the cake from the oven and set it to cool in the larder, she noticed that the rain had indeed started. By the time she had split the sponge and filled it with raspberry jam and butter icing, which they loved, it was coming down in stair rods; the kind of relentless downpour they were well used to in the Lake District.
When the first crack of lightening came, swiftly followed by a huge clap of thunder, Ella turned to her husband. ‘There’s a storm starting, Amos. You’d best go and meet the children. Tilda will be scared.’
Amos was seated at the table reading his Bible, as he usually was after a long day on the land. He didn’t even look up when she spoke.
Ella tried again. ‘Amos, did you hear what I said? There’s a storm brewing and you know how nervous Tilda gets when there’s thunder and lightening. They’ll both be soaked in seconds, it’s absolutely bucketing down.’
‘There’s no point then in us all getting wet, is there?’ he said, and turning over the page, continued reading.
Ella stifled a sharp retort. They were his children, after all, not hers, as he frequently reminded her. Their regime of school and weekend chores was as unchanging now as it had been when she’d first come to the farm. And if she ever suggested that perhaps they might be allowed a little more free time to play, it was explained to her that Todd Farm had been in the family for generations and would one day belong to Emmett. It was therefore imperative that he learn from the start what would be required of him. Tilda, too, must be taught certain chores so that when she was old enough to wed she would be a good help to her husband.
These arguments were irrefutable, but it seemed a bleak sort of life to Ella. She assumed that Esther, Amos’s first wife, had set down the regime, perhaps disapproving of bringing children up soft. And it was true in a way that you needed to be tough and self-sufficient on these fells.
But Ella was weary of Esther’s rules, which still reined supreme in this household; no books allowed save for the Bible, no games and toys for the children to play with, no fairy stories. All of this and more was apparently down to Esther’s fierce brand of Puritanism, which Amos continued to follow to the letter. Ella longed to bring some joy into their little lives, to hug them and show them some love and affection, tuck them up with a kiss and tell them bedtime stories, none of which was allowed either.
But she could at least save them from the rain.
Ella wrapped her shawl about her head, picked up a handful of sacks and without another word to her husband, lifted the latch and let herself quietly out.
Amos had been quite correct, of course. It was pitch black outside with no sign of a moon, and within seconds Ella was drenched to the skin. Nor did the lamp she had picked up as she passed through the porch offer much light beyond her own feet. As if on cue, a crack of lightening suddenly illuminated the path ahead, empty for some distance so far as Ella could see. A great clap of thunder followed almost at once, proving Kentmere must be close to the eye of the storm.
The rain was a tumult, bouncing off stones and turning the dirt track into a quagmire. The river would be flooding its banks soon, if she was any judge, and its swollen waters racing down to the weir at the foot o
f the valley. Ella pulled a sack over her head and set off on the long trek to the church. If the weather seemed bad to her, how much worse must it be for two small children?
She found the pair unwisely huddled beneath the old yew tree in the church yard, too frightened to go any further. Tilda was crying, and brave Emmett was doing his best to comfort and calm his little sister, but the presence of so many gravestones, poking out of the earth all around him like broken bones, wasn’t helping.
Ella gathered them to her in an all-enveloping hug and for once neither of them protested or attempted to wriggle free, as was their wont. They clung to her, both crying by this time. Ella did her best to soothe their fears, wiping the rain from their tearful faces, kissing their frozen cheeks, then she draped folded sacks over their heads and shoulders in a vain attempt to keep off the worst of the rain.
‘Come on, my ducks,’ she said with a cheering smile. ‘Let’s swim home, shall we?’
And with one child tucked under each arm, they set off back to the farm.
Ella did everything she could to get the children warm and dry, with some assistance from Mrs Rackett but none at all from their father. She stripped them of their wet clothes, called for hot water to be poured in the tin bath, adding a good dose of mustard as an extra precaution. Then, after a brisk rub dry, and with their bellies full of the warming broth, she tucked them into their beds, a hot brick at their toes. For the first time Ella broke her husband’s sacred rule and told them a fairy story. It was the one about the giant turnip, which she hoped would make them laugh. Long before she’d reached the part where it had to be tugged out of the ground, both children were fast asleep. And by morning it was clear to them all that Tilda was ill, very sick indeed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was amidst the poverty of Fellside that Livia attempted to come to terms with her loss. She was slowly learning how to live again. Not that it was proving to be an easy process. She’d spent much of those first weeks after Maggie’s death in a state of shock, or sobbing her heart out. It had all seemed so unreal. How could she be dead? Her sister was far too young to die, barely eighteen years old, and with so much to live for.
Every morning during those first painful days Livia would wake and feel disorientated, wondering where she was, and what she was doing sleeping on a straw pallet in an airless loft with ten other people, the stink of the night soil bucket pungent in her nostrils. And then it would all rush back to her.
Maggie had hanged herself.
Why would she do such a thing? And why had she felt unable to turn to her sisters for help? But then Livia had discovered the answer to these questions, and almost wished she hadn’t.
As if coping with her sister’s suicide and funeral wasn’t bad enough, she’d been the one faced with the unpalatable task of dealing with Maggie’s belongings. Livia had shut herself in her sister’s bedroom and with tears raining down her cheeks, had set about folding away her favourite dresses, putting her much-loved teddy bears and childhood books into boxes to give to the poor. It had been utterly heartbreaking. Quite against her better judgement, she’d also flicked through her sister’s personal papers and diaries.
It was while she was engaged in this painful task that she’d found the letter. It was addressed to herself. Maggie must have slipped it into her diary, knowing only Livia would look in there. Opening it with some trepidation, the note was even more shattering than she’d feared. In a few short sentences it stated that she was pregnant, and named the father of her child.
Shock and disbelief had misted Livia’s vision, blurring the stark cruelty of those devastating words so that she’d been obliged to read them over and over several times before she was able to accept their veracity. Then Livia had run to the bathroom and vomited down the lavatory pan.
It couldn’t be true. Surely such depravity was beyond even her father’s capacity, much as he enjoyed inflicting hurt on his three daughters. Yet there it was, in black and white. And as if to prove it, Maggie was dead. She’d preferred to take her own life rather than live with the consequences of what her own father had done to her. Livia couldn’t find words strong enough to express the horror she felt at this discovery. Her lovely sister must have felt debased, corrupted, her young life ruined.
That very same day Livia had packed her belongings and left with only what she could carry in a Gladstone bag and a string parcel. She’d run from her childhood home in a state of shock, without even pausing to speak to her father. Unable to think where else to go and with no money of her own, no aunts or cousins to turn to, she’d come to Fellside, where Jessie and Jack had welcomed her into their home without the need for any explanation whatsoever.
Livia had made a pact with herself that day, vowing she’d keep this particular vile piece of information to herself, for now at least, until she could find the strength to decide how best to deal with it.
Her first reaction had been one of disgust and mind-numbing anger. She’d wanted to go in search of her father, to drag him from whatever debauchery he was indulging in while his youngest daughter had hanged herself, and force him to confess his crime. But then the anger had drained away leaving her spent and shaking with shock, far too overcome by grief to have the stomach for any confrontation with him right then.
But this was incest, for God’s sake!
The torment of her grief had very nearly destroyed her, her mind teetering on the brink of madness as Livia faced the reality of what that man had done to his own daughter. All those years in which she’d imagined she was protecting Maggie from his beatings, shielding her from the worst of his sick punishments. While all the time… Livia could hardly bear to think of it.
She told herself to shut it out of her mind, to put it in a box and lock the evil away until she was able to deal with it. Livia thought she might never forgive herself for letting Maggie down so badly. But then why should she hold herself responsible for her father’s evil? She was but a young girl, ignorant of what had gone on. How could she have stopped him? Yet in her heart, Livia was convinced that she’d failed her vulnerable young sister. Why hadn’t she paid more attention when it was obvious she was troubled over something, when she was being sick? Why hadn’t she investigated further? Her own naivety was a bitter pill to swallow, and one she must live with for the rest of her life.
She considered rushing straight over to Ella, to tell her sister what she’d discovered and share the agony with someone who loved Maggie as much as she did. But somehow she couldn’t quite bring herself to do so. Hadn’t Ella enough to contend with? A cold husband and sterile marriage foisted upon her by that very same father, stepchildren who resented her presence in their home, and grinding hard labour on a farm out in the wilds. A life far from the luxurious one a frivolous young Ella had once dreamt of enjoying.
Livia decided that she really couldn’t burden her with more misery. Wasn’t grieving for the loss of her sister bad enough? The whole truth was far too dreadful and best kept secret, for now. Until one day it could be used against the person who really was to blame: their vicious, corrupt father.
A few short months after Maggie’s death, Josiah Angel was appointed town mayor. It made Livia sick to her stomach to see him preening himself in his new role. He wallowed in the sympathy of the townsfolk of Kendal, as if he wasn’t the one responsible for this terrible tragedy, and for the destruction of his entire family.
People talked, of course they did, puzzling over the whys and wherefores. They couldn’t understand why Maggie had chosen such a terrible path, why rumour had it one sister was deeply unhappy in her new marriage, and the other had run away from home.
Let them talk. Livia didn’t care what anyone said or thought. Although what they would have to say if they knew the whole story, she couldn’t begin to imagine.
From the day she’d walked out of Angel House, Livia felt that she was on her own, or would have been were it not for the generosity of the Flint family. For the rest of her life she would be e
ternally grateful for their kindness, despite the sight and smell of the place making her gag at times. They may be living in squalor, but her new friends at least had a code of morals way above those of her own, much richer, parent.
Jack Flint had become an important part of her life. There had been much flirting and covert sideways glances, and an acute awareness of him whenever he came into a room. They enjoyed laughing and talking endlessly together, content in each other’s company. And on Sundays, when Jack was free, they spent the whole day together.
Things had gone on this way for months. In the end Livia realised that this attraction between them would remain unacknowledged unless she did something about it. Jack Flint, for all his confidence and pride, his courage when it came to fighting for his rights and protecting his family, was less certain when it came to crossing the boundaries of class. Unfortunately, he saw Livia as someone above him in status.
Livia knew she couldn’t grieve for ever, and Maggie wouldn’t wish that for her. And she could barely be in Jack’s presence for more than five minutes without wanting to touch him. Livia was mesmerised by him, dreamt of him day and night, ached to taste the heady sensation of his mouth moving over hers. Longed to be held in his arms and loved.
She made the decision that it was up to her to make the first move.
Livia chose a Sunday afternoon in late October, just twelve months after her beloved sister’s death. She suggested a walk over Scout Scar, from the top of which they would be able to enjoy wonderful panoramic views of the Lake District. To her delight, Jack agreed, and as she’d warned Jessie in advance of her little scheme, the older woman managed to deflect the children from begging to go too with the bribe of an ice cream if they’d walk with her by the river to the church and back.
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