Leah noted the swift tinge of pink rise to colour Ann’s wan cheeks. She had not believed the gossip surrounding this girl, whispers uttered behind her back. That practice never sat well with Leah Marshall, even less so when it came from that particular source. The lies had no doubt been brewed by one who was a master at covering his own doings.
‘Thank you, but I . . .’ Ann stumbled over the reply which would make the woman withdraw her offer, yet it had to be said. ‘The purpose of my being evicted, what the people believe of me . . .’
‘You don’t say no more.’ The bonnet, tied on with a bow almost as large, bobbed precariously. ‘Leah Marshall be a body likes to make her own decisions regardin’ folk and that be what I’ll be a doin’ along of you and the lad should you choose to be teken my offer.’
Meeting the steady gaze Ann felt something she had not felt in many months, a quick indefinable lift which said Leah Marshall was a woman she could trust.
Chapter 2
Leah Marshall watched the various emotions chase across the face of the young woman accepting her offer of a home. She knew very little of her except for the odd snatches of gossip overheard in the market place and those were no sound basis for judgement, but she did know enough of the world to see it had not treated Ann in the best of ways and the weeks spent in that house had in all likelihood played a part.
‘I’ll bide ’ere ’til y’ be ready to go.’ Leah took a step back from the open doorway of Chapel House, a determined pull of the shawl draping her shoulders a clear indication of her intent.
The woman was no longer young; she should not be asked to stand in the open. Uncertain as to how to phrase this concern Ann hesitated.
Leah had read the look. ‘Set y’mind to rest. Leah Marshall don’t be so old her can’t go standin’ for a few minutes nor her legs so weak her be needin’ of a chair.’
‘I’m sorry, I did not intend any slight.’
She would find no disagreement in that. Leah acknowledged the sincerity of the apology. ‘There be none teken, so like already be said I’ll bide ’ere while you gathers of your belongin’s.’
Ann glanced to where a small bundle lay just inside the room. A change of underclothing was all it held. The thief who had taken her suitcase had left nothing behind. The small amount of money she had thought safely hidden beneath her clothes, the cheap trinkets her grandmother had purchased for her at the town fair and even the photograph of her mother, the one she had freed from the clutch of her dead father’s hand, all had been stolen. Alec had found the photograph. Partly damaged by being ripped from the frame it had been thrown mindlessly aside yet even though the horror of robbery had numbed her, she had thanked God for the mercy which had saved for her the one memento she had of the mother she so loved. She sighed at the memory, took up the bundle and said quietly, ‘They are already gathered.’
Tucking the ends of her shawl beneath her breasts Leah turned again to wondering what was the background of the girl she was taking into her home. From the few possessions she had it could be thought she followed the way of the gypsy wandering the roads to wherever they led yet her speech, her dress, the very look of her said nothing of the Romany. So where was she from? If the lad she spoke of was not a relative then who was he and how come they were so close?
Such questions she would not ask yet. Leah nodded towards the house. ‘Then if there be naught of you or the lad left inside I suggests you be closin’ o’ that door and we waits of him along of the street.’
Thomas Thorpe had insisted the key be handed over immediately and had taken it away with him. Fears of his return, of another ordeal such as the one she had been subjected to being repeated, had kept sleep away, every sound of the night, each creak of roof timbers, every sign of branches tossed by a gathering breeze setting her nerves jangling. Thankfully the hours had passed uneventfully. She had told Alec nothing of what had happened, saying instead that a minister might be appointed quite soon and so they must leave. Why had she lied? As at so many times since departing from St Petersburg this was one more thing she would keep to herself.
Ann shut the door firmly and turned to join the waiting Leah.
Please heaven, the night just passed would be the last of her nightmares.
‘They trusted me, they trusted me as they would no other man.’
Seated at the window of the bedroom Leah Marshall had provided for her use, Ann stared at a high slow-moving moon.
‘I gave my word and they honoured me with their trust; they asked I take into my keeping their most precious possession with the prayer it be kept safe, and now . . .’
In the night silence it seemed she heard again the rough rattle of hard-fought-for breath, heard the gasp which followed, felt the clutch of the hand grasping at her arm.
‘. . . do it . . .’
It had been a whisper, words breathed even as pleading eyes were glazing over.
‘. . . do it for me child, keep . . . keep my promise for me.’
He had died in her arms, the father she loved yet had barely known.
His employment by the Foreign Office had involved her parents in much travelling and so they had decided their daughter would stay with her grandmother, be educated in England and in due course rejoin them wherever they might be. That place had been St Petersburg.
But it had not been the happy reunion she had dreamed of during that long sea voyage.
A bank of cloud drifting over the golden orb of the sky plunged the small room into darkness, as that terrible day had plunged her world into darkness. Ann’s fingers tightened in her lap.
She had arrived to find her father a heartbroken man. The love of his life, the wife he adored, had been struck down with some mysterious illness, one which had swiftly claimed her life.
The burial had been over and finished before the ship had docked, the approach of winter meaning the ground would soon be too hard for the digging of graves. Her father could not stand the thought of his wife’s coffin being stored, as was the practice, in some frost-bound ‘Waiting House’ which every city, town and village in the whole of Russia had to keep in order to house the dead until the coming of spring released winter’s iron-hard grip on the land.
He had not meant to be distant. Tears traced Ann’s cheeks. He had been used to a home where his wife had been his sole companion, so a daughter he had not seen in the twelve years since leaving her in the care of a grandmother had in the darkness of his sorrow been . . . no, not ignored. Ann shook her head at the thought, her father would not have deliberately ignored her, yet how could she deny even to herself that during those long lonely days it had seemed that for her father she might not exist?
They were to return home to England.
Beyond the window cloud retreated, allowing the brilliance of moonlight into the bedroom again but in her memory Ann was standing once more in the small sitting room of a poky little house in an unfit back street of St Petersburg. The embassy did not house its less important members in grandeur and the post of clerk was least grand of all.
She had found the note lying on a narrow table jammed into a hall which begrudged it every inch of space. The paper, folded once across, bore one word, ‘Priority’. The handwriting had caught her eye. Delicate yet also strong, letter flowed into letter, each joined to the other, in beautiful copperplate style. She had not seen it before that moment; the letters she had received at her grandmother’s house had always been in the tight, almost bunched hand she knew to have been her mother’s.
Was the paper something he had meant to take with him? Had he put it there on the hall table then forgotten to pick it up? Ought she to read it? The business of the embassy was not meant to be seen by those not employed in its service! But surely ‘Priority’ indicated the paper was of some importance, so maybe her father would be in trouble with his superiors for having left it behind. This thought decided her. Whatever might be written on that solitary sheet, it belonged with her father. She had donned her coat and fur hat th
en fastened a scarf about her shoulders; the ends of it had brushed against the note sending it fluttering to the floor. Had her gloved fingers been clumsy as they retrieved it, was that how suddenly the note was opened?
It bore no salutation, but was, clearly meant for herself.
The premises will be vacated in two days’ time. Have all luggage ready for collection at two p.m. on the fifteenth.
There was no one else living in that house, no one that brusque instruction could have been left for.
No name! Ann breathed deeply as tears squeezed beneath her tightly closed lids. He would barely acknowledge her presence in the short time it took to eat the evening meal she prepared against his return from work; there was no smile on seeing her, no ‘goodnight’ as he left the dining table to shut himself away in his room and definitely no kiss. When had her father last kissed her? When had he last held her in his arms? She could not remember when!
He had left those instructions for his daughter, a daughter for whom he had no love. She had tried to put his behaviour down to grief at losing his wife, but she too had been lost and unhappy. With a smothered sob Ann turned from the window. She must not blame him, a man so unused to having a child about him, a man who during that child’s whole lifetime had spent no more than a few hours in her company because the demands of his work were his priority.
Priority! As she slipped into bed the word danced in Ann’s mind. It was one she would not forget.
She was gone, she and the lad along with her. Thomas Thorpe stared about the neatly ordered living room of Chapel House. Grand though the name the congregation had chosen for the property their hard-earned coins had bought was, it was simply a two-up and two-down cottage at the rear of the chapel itself. For some of the worshippers parting with pennies and halfpennies would mean going without a meal, yet he had not discouraged the offerings, quite the opposite. Thomas Thorpe smiled to himself.
His sermons on the selflessness of giving, the blessings the act of charity brings, had proved quite an inducement, a practice that he had followed until the tumbledown house had been restored by the free labour of male chapel members, their womenfolk providing cloth which they had sewed into curtains, covers and even linen for the beds. A home fit for the minister they hoped to see appointed. But that day had not arrived; it appeared no man was eager to come to the smoke-ridden town of Wednesbury. This suited Thomas Thorpe. So long as the position remained unfilled then this house was virtually his, the congregation happy to leave the question of occupancy to him.
The smile died, leaving in its wake an expression of displeasure. He had sold them the idea of letting the place to that woman, had them accept it as easily as they had accepted his exhortations on the rewards of charity. He had fully expected the reward for that particular act to be his. The woman was alone except for a young lad, there was no husband, no father, in fact no man to bring bread into the house. She was in need of a friend who could not only help with the problem of where to live but also with finding work. Help of course would give rise to gratitude, to appreciation.
He had played the friend, careful in the presence of others not to be overindulgent towards her, never ready with more care or advice than he offered elsewhere. But with every meeting the attraction she had held for him since first seeing her in the chapel grew a little stronger. Even so he had waited until Fate presented him with the perfect opportunity.
She had been alone in the house, a fire of a few sticks almost dead in the grate, a candle in place of the paraffin lamp lending barely enough light by which to see. Most telling of all, he had detected no smell of food cooking in the fireside oven. He had deduced the reason immediately. Employment of the sort she looked for was not easily come by in Wednesbury, the few residents wealthy enough to engage others to wash and sew for them already having domestic staff covering those duties.
He had seen her hand linger over the rent book placed ready on the dresser, heard the quickly stifled sniff of threatening tears as her glance had lighted on the coins laid neatly beside it.
This was the moment he had watched and waited for, the chance he had ached for, and now it was his, he had only to grasp it.
His body had quickened with that awareness, his flesh thickening with the promise at hand yet despite the flare of emotion he had picked up the book, marked the weekly payment then had let the coins lie. She had queried this omission with a puzzled frown.
Had it been those eyes that had banished all caution? That soft velvet look, blue as sky after summer rain? Had that caused him to toss the slim volume aside and catch her to him, his body pressing close against hers?
In his memory he felt again the hard jerk, the drive of tautening flesh that had ripped through him when at last that enticing body had touched his own. He had heard the soft cry as she came into his arms, felt the quiver running through her as his mouth closed over hers become stronger as his hand closed about her breast. He had begun to release the buttons of her dress, the tremor rippling along her spine a silent testimony to the pleasure of his touch.
‘There is no need of money,’ he had released her mouth just long enough to say, ‘payment in kind is much more satisfactory.’
There had been a tangled moan as his mouth again took hers, a sound he had taken to be that of acquiescence.
But it had been no sign of compliance.
Snatching up the rent book he stared at it, anger coursing along his veins. Her words throbbed in his brain, adding to the resentment of rejection.
‘Get away from me . . .’
She had twisted from his arms, almost running to the far side of the cramped room. An obvious shudder had shaken her whole body as she looked at him.
‘Take the money and go, don’t . . . don’t ever come here again, I will bring the rent to the chapel every week.’
But that would have given rise to talk, speculation as to the reason why she would give up the tenancy of a comfortable home when she had nowhere else to go. What had decided her on such a move? Such conjecture might conceivably become enquiry and that he could not allow.
And so he had lied and she had been evicted.
He had thought that would be an end to it, the threat of what she knew gone along with her from the town.
Except she was not gone from the town. A fresh wave of anger surged hot but beneath it there was another feeling, a slow ebb tide of anxiety.
Ann Spencer and Leah Marshall. His fingers tightened about the slim book, screwing it up into a tube. Two women sharing one house; two women either of whom could cause the downfall of Thomas Thorpe.
Chapter 3
‘Let the lad find his own way, it’ll go easier for the both o’ you if he don’t feel tied down.’
‘But farm work is heavy and I don’t think he is used to that.’
‘Hmmph!’ Leah’s snort echoed along the whitewashed walls of the small outbuilding she had turned into a dairy. ‘He won’t never get used to it neither lessen he be given the chance. Seems to me the lad has more’n a fair share o’ common sense, should a task prove too much then he’ll say it do.’
But would he? Ann gathered wooden pats she and Leah had used to shape rich golden butter into small rectangular blocks and carried them into the house. After placing them in the scullery’s shallow brownstone sink she went to fetch the kettle from where it hung above the living-room fire. When she reached for it a spurt of steam gushed from the spout, the same pressure setting the lid clanging noisily, and in the instant she was back in Ploschad Morskoy Slavy, the great Square of Maritime Glory in St Petersburg, the harsh cry of horns announcing the arrival and departure of ships, the steam from their funnels hissing like enormous terrifying sea creatures of fairy tales. That dreadful scene had however been part of no fairy story but a frightening reality.
The Russian language had proved almost impossible to learn, so that her trips to the market to purchase food became a daily struggle to make herself understood; the walks she had taken around the city to alleviate th
e loneliness of that tiny house got her lost many times, including that day walking to the seaport in order to save what she could of her money.
Ploschad Suvorova, Aptekarsky, Bolshoi, Prospekt, names difficult to interpret in themselves made the more so by many of the Cyrillic letters appearing what to her was the wrong way round. It had proved virtually useless to ask direction of people hurrying about their business; most had shrugged, shaken their heads and moved on, others had simply walked past without a glance. So it had taken what seemed like hours but at last she had found her way.
‘Sankt Peterburgsky Morskoy Vokzal,’ a guttural voice had muttered at her as she stood staring about a wide square whose right side was graced with a pair of small identical crown-headed towers. ‘Morskoy Vokzal.’ A lined face had frowned beneath an astrakhan hat, a gloved finger pointing towards an impressive archway inscribed on which were more mysterious letters.
She had thanked him, though his information had done nothing to help, then the sound of a horn blasting the air made her realise he had been telling her she was standing at the entrance to the port. The man had hurried on his way but she had stood, suitcase in hand, while a sound other than those of the streets and the port surfaced in her mind.
‘. . . they asked I take into my keeping their most precious possession . . . do it . . . keep my promise for me.’
Her father’s words. Ann swallowed hard. He had made a promise but could not keep it; his dying words entreated her to do it for him. She had not been able to tell him she would, but she had murmured it as she held his dead body close. In the days which followed she had searched each of the rooms of that small house but found nothing she would remotely have termed precious. Maybe the officials at the embassy would be able to help, perhaps the item her father had been requested to take charge of had been deposited there, so he could bring it away with him when his service finally ended.
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