by Rosie Harris
Under Kate’s guidance they had learned how to wash and starch the most delicate lace and how to take care of their bonnets by making sure the crowns were either stuffed with soft paper or perched on polished wooden blocks before being stored away on the closet shelves in individual bandboxes.
Her advice had indeed transformed them both into elegant young ladies, poised and self-assured.
Helen hoped that Schoolmaster Barnes would have an opening for her in his school. Kate would find teaching a most fulfilling occupation, of that she was sure. She had both patience and skill; Beth and Mary had both profited from her coaching with their reading and writing.
It was one more thing that Kate had in common with David, Helen mused. She walked over to the window to catch a last glimpse of Kate as she crossed the yard to the carriage waiting to take her away from Bramwood Hall.
David had told her on several occasions that he had no interest whatsoever in the coal and iron industry their father had built up. He considered digging out coal from the bowels of the earth to be a form of vandalism. The slag heaps that scarred the mountainsides he regarded as desecration. He rated every underground explosion, or cave-in, as Nature’s reprisal, though he grieved for the men involved.
Coal was the lifeblood of their father’s empire and he regarded David’s attitude as a passing whim, something he would grow out of once he left university and began to take an active part in the day-to-day running of their enterprise.
For all his mild manner and academic tendencies, Helen knew David could be as stubborn as their father and his future troubled her greatly. If he did not conform he might find himself disinherited. Tudor ap Owen was not a man to compromise.
She had always been in awe of her father and obedient to his wishes. Dominated by him. He had not even consulted her when he arranged her marriage to Sir George Sherwood.
‘He is so much older than I,’ she had protested. Like David, she had a strong romantic streak and her dreams had been of a handsome, considerate husband. Sir George Sherwood was neither of these things.
‘It’s an excellent match,’ he told her sternly.
‘I have never given marriage a thought, I am happy enough here with you, Papa.’
‘You are turned twenty… well past marriageable age,’ he had snapped irritably, his light brown eyes sharp and direct.
‘My days are fully occupied caring for David.’
‘I’m sending David away to school.’
‘Oh Papa! He will be so unhappy.’
‘He needs toughening up. To be with boys of his own age.’
‘He doesn’t enjoy outdoor pursuits.’
‘He spends far too much of his time reading and dreaming. One day he will be running my companies and he’ll need a sharp mind when he’s in competition with men like Hanbury, Sir John Guest and Crawshay Bailey.’
‘I don’t think he really wants to be a coalmaster…’
‘Silence, daughter!’ His pointed beard stabbing the air, her father had cut short her words. ‘My mind is made up. Your marriage to Sir George Sherwood will take place just as soon as everything can be arranged.’
Her plea not to be forced into marrying a man she didn’t know, a man who was only ten years younger than her father, fell on deaf ears. She knew he was desirable in her father’s estimation because he was titled, exceedingly rich and owned extensive estates in Wiltshire, but she thought him a pompous boor. She wanted to be courted with loving, tender words, not treated as a saleable commodity.
Her loveless marriage had proved to be even more of an ordeal than she had envisaged. Having mastered the complexities of household management at Bramwood Hall she had looked forward to entertaining, but Sir George preferred to dine alone at home, except when his parents visited. His business deals were conducted at his club or in the estate office, so Helen found her social life almost non-existent.
Her romantic dreams of marriage had been shattered on her wedding night. There had been no tender words or chaste kisses. Sir George had taken his conjugal rights as a matter of course and she had submitted meekly. After the births of Beth and Mary he had ceased to trouble her, a state of affairs she accepted with relief.
The warm affection she’d witnessed between David and Kate had served to remind her of all that she had missed. Even though she knew her father would not approve, she had gone out of her way to smooth their path. It would be such a joy to have Kate as a sister-in-law rather than the formidable Penelope.
She had hoped George would not notice what was going on. When he had told her he intended visiting her father, and refused to take her and the girls with him, she should have realized what was happening.
No sooner had he returned from Wales than David had been summoned home.
She didn’t for one moment believe her father needed David to deal with a dispute at Fforbrecon. For as long as she could remember he had employed an agent to handle that sort of thing.
In her mind’s eye, Helen could see him dressed in his smartly cut frock coat over striped black trousers, his shiny calfskin boots planted astride so that his portly figure was as steady as a rock.
‘Never bandy words with working men,’ he would declare in ringing tones.
‘Make the bullets but let other people fire them, that way you stay superior,’ had always been his maxim.
‘An unseen force has hidden strength. I am their coalmaster. The owner! Someone they hold in awe. If I allowed them to be on speaking terms with me then they would no longer fear and respect me. Familiarity breeds contempt!’
These were the standard statements he used in any argument and she had always known that it was pointless to dispute them. Would David be as tolerant as she, she wondered, especially when he discovered it was all part of his father’s strategy to separate him and Kate?
Helen watched as Richards, the groom, strapped Kate’s trunk on to the back of the carriage. She saw Kate turn and look up at the house, raising a hand in farewell, but she didn’t wave back. Screened by the lace curtains, she waited until Richards took his seat and picked up the reins.
As the carriage began to move forward, Helen wiped away a tear. She felt as if she had failed both Kate and David.
* * *
Once she was sure that Richards couldn’t see what she was doing, Kate opened the white envelope. The reference was written on thick crested paper and she gave it only a cursory glance, knowing that it would be couched in favourable terms.
Apart from the silly incident over the girls squabbling on the croquet lawn there was no way in which Sir George could have found fault with her work, she thought proudly.
Folding up the reference, she put it back inside the envelope and tipped out the remaining contents. Her fingers trembled as she counted the coins.
The ten separate shillings were her month’s wages, but in addition there were twenty-five gold sovereigns.
She had never handled so much money in her life.
Kate counted the coins again, then wrapped them in a handkerchief and put them into her reticule. She was still marvelling over her considerable fortune when the carriage drew up alongside the Guildhall in Mere.
‘I said I wanted Chantry House, not the square,’ she told Richards haughtily as he opened the carriage door.
‘Master wants me to collect some stuff from John Walton’s and they’m right here.’
‘Chantry House is only just down the road,’ she retorted sharply.
‘You’m not getting me down them narrow lanes.’
‘It’s not a narrow lane. Folks manage to get their carriages down there when they go to church on Sundays and turn round again with no bother at all.’
‘Well, that’s as may be, but I’m not going down there!’
Unstrapping her tin trunk he thumped it down in the roadway.
‘And don’t threaten me that you’ll tell the master since I knows you b’ain’t coming back to Bramwood Hall ever again,’ he told her waspishly as he climbed back up on his seat.<
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Gathering up the reins, he swung the carriage round and clattered across the square to the side road that led to John Walton’s emporium.
Tying the flowing strings of her blue bonnet firmly beneath her chin so that it wouldn’t blow off, Kate stared after him resentfully. Then she picked up her canvas bag in one hand and the straps of the tin trunk in the other. It was a struggle. By the time she reached Chantry House she was feeling hot and bothered and her arms ached.
A middle-aged woman wearing a dark green bombazine dress, trimmed with a white lace collar, answered the door. Her steel grey hair was strained back into a bun. She didn’t look like a servant, Kate thought as she asked for William Barnes.
‘The Barnes moved a long time past.’
‘Away from Mere?’
‘Gone to Dorchester and opened a school there, so I’ve heard tell.’
‘Oh… no one told me.’
‘Are you a relative of theirs then?’ the woman asked, seeing the look of dismay on Kate’s face.
‘Not a relative… just a friend.’
‘Indeed! Well, they’ve been gone from here this two years. Funny they never let you know if you’re a friend of theirs.’
‘I… I’ve been away.’
‘Thinking of staying with them, were you?’ the woman persisted, looking down at the trunk and bag at Kate’s feet.
‘No!’ Quickly Kate regained her composure. ‘I just thought I would pay them a visit.’
‘And brought all your belongings along with you,’ smiled the woman thinly.
‘I’ve only just arrived in Mere. I shall be staying at the Ship overnight.’
‘Is that so?’ The woman looked at her hot, dishevelled state disbelievingly.
‘I wanted to say goodbye to them, because I’m off to live in Wales.’
‘Well, I never did!’
‘Yes, I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning,’ Kate embroidered. ‘I’ve got a seat booked on the stagecoach.’
I can afford to stay at the Ship, with a room to myself just like one of the gentry, Kate told herself, remembering the sovereigns tucked away safely in her reticule.
She retraced her steps to the square. When she reached there she checked to make sure that the Sherwood carriage wasn’t still outside Walton’s. She didn’t want Richards to see her going into the Ship in case he told everyone at Bramwood Hall that she’d gone there looking for work.
And tomorrow morning I’ll take a seat on the first stagecoach going towards South Wales, she determined.
Chapter 8
September dusk was gathering as the stagecoach from Monmouth lumbered through the Afon Lwyd valley.
Sitting high up on the brightly painted coach, wedged between a farmer and a frock-coated lawyer, Kate Stacey was taking a keen interest in the countryside. They had just passed the magnificent ruins of Raglan Castle, and as she caught fleeting glimpses of the waters of the Afon Lwyd and River Usk, knew they could not be far from her setting down point in Abergavenny.
She shivered. The mountains in the distance were swathed in dark clouds as if a storm was brewing and she hoped she would be able to reach her final destination, Machen Mawr, before it broke.
She hoped Myfanwy Edwards would be like Helen, in nature if not in looks. Ever since leaving Mere, she had been building up pictures of Machen Mawr, hoping it would be a gracious country home, similar to Bramwood Hall. Since there was only one child, Mathew, to look after she might even be given a sitting room as well as her own bedroom.
She wondered what Morgan Edwards would be like. He sounded important. Helen had described him as an ironmaster.
What she had so far seen of South Wales had confused her. Helen had talked of the air being aromatic with wild flowers and mountain plants, of sheep grazing on the mountainside, women spinning in their cottages, but the landscape that had met her eyes since entering Wales had gradually become more and more industrialized.
The mountains that rose to the north were bare and scarred, as though their green skin of grass had been scraped from them, and on their lower slopes were row upon row of tight-packed terraced houses. Tiered up one row behind the other, it seemed that the smoke from one row of chimneys must go straight into the doorways and windows of the row higher up. And smoke there was, plenty of it, billowing upwards like a thick fog.
In the distance, silhouetted against the darkening sky, were man-made hills of black slag and coal dust. Atop them strange contraptions rose into the sky, giant wheels with ropes and pulleys dangling from them. One of her travelling companions told her that was the winding gear belonging to the coal mines.
It was such an alien world that as the coach pulled into the Angel Kate was tempted for a brief moment to turn straight round and go back to Wiltshire. She drew in her breath sharply, remembering how much of her precious money she had already spent journeying from Mere to Bristol, where she had been forced to stay overnight, from there to Monmouth where she had again changed coaches, and knew she had no choice but to stay.
Stiff from her long hours of travel, she followed the rest of the passengers into the inn.
‘Machen Mawr? Oh dear me, no! Nothing going that way,’ the landlord told her when she asked about transport for the rest of her journey.
‘So what do I do?’
‘Most people walk!’
‘I can hardly do that with all my luggage.’
‘Visiting there, are you?’
‘Yes. It’s somewhere near Nantyglo.’
‘Oh, I knows where it is all right!’ He looked at her keenly, his dark eyes raking over her, studying her fine clothes with interest.
‘So how do I get there?’
‘If you took a room here for the night I might be able to find someone to take you there in the morning.’
‘What will it cost me?’
‘Two shillings for a bed and another shilling for a good hot supper and a fine cooked breakfast.’
Kate shook her head slowly. She was tempted, but she had already spent more of her money than she intended.
‘That’s for a bed to yourself,’ the landlord went on. ‘If you are willing to share then it would only be a shilling.’ His eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down. ‘Or even less…’
‘I want to get there as quickly as possible.’
‘Visiting the Edwards family, are you?’
Kate nodded, refusing to be drawn into any explanation.
‘Well,’ he scratched his head, ‘there’s only one person likely to take you and that’s Dai the Milk. He’s got a cart, see. Take your luggage and all, like.’
‘Where can I find him?’
‘He’ll be in here any minute for his ale. Why don’t you take a glass of something while you wait?’
Dai the Milk proved reluctant.
‘Horse is tired, see,’ he protested. ‘Just finished for the day and needs her rest. We both have to be back on the road at daybreak.’
‘I’ll pay you well.’
Again Dai the Milk hesitated.
‘Just you, is it?’ He pursed his lips in concentration.
‘And my luggage.’
‘To the Edwards’ place, you say.’
‘To Machen Mawr.’
‘Urgent, like, is it?’
When Kate nodded, he drained his glass and slapped it down on the counter. ‘Wait here then and I’ll rouse old Betti. She won’t like it, mind you.’
Kate sat by the window that overlooked the street, nervously twisting her handkerchief, wondering if he would come back.
As soon as she heard the clatter of hooves on the cobbles outside she was on her feet. Her heart sank at the sight of the conveyance. It was a high-sided float, holding three milk churns, with a single plank seat for the driver.
She would have done better to have heeded the landlord’s advice and stayed where she was for the night, she thought apprehensively, as Dai the Milk loaded her tin box and canvas bag on to his cart. In the morning, she could have left her belongings at
the inn and walked to Machen Mawr. It had been the landlord demanding two shillings for a bed and another shilling for supper and breakfast that had deterred her.
The drive was nerve-wracking. The road was rough, and she was jostled and bumped on her hard wooden seat until she felt bruised all over and again she wondered if she had acted too hastily. Arriving in the dark on a milk float was not the sort of first impression she had intended. Who would believe that she was Miss Kate Stacey, nanny to Lady Helen Sherwood’s two daughters. Myfanwy Edwards might even refuse to see her!
By the time they reached Machen Mawr her nerves were stretched to screaming point.
As she counted out the fare demanded by Dai the Milk, she debated whether to ask him to wait until she was sure she was welcome. Before she could do so he unceremoniously dumped her belongings on the front doorstep, turned his float around, and disappeared into the darkness.
The house loomed darkly but she was heartened to see lights at several windows. Summoning up her courage she tugged on the bell pull.
The jangling died away but there was no sound of approaching footsteps. She reached up and banged loudly with the iron knocker and waited in trepidation. When nothing happened she hammered yet again.
After what seemed an interminable time the door opened. The middle-aged man who stood there, holding a candleholder aloft, was wide-shouldered yet thin and wiry, with a heavy thatch of dark hair and a square-trimmed beard. He didn’t look like a servant, yet, from the carelessness of his dress, she didn’t think he could be the master of the house.
‘May I speak to Mrs Myfanwy Edwards,’ she demanded, holding herself stiffly, hoping he wouldn’t notice that she was shaking with fear.
There was a long silence. The man’s eyes were like two glow-worms as they reflected the light from the candle.
‘Mrs Myfanwy Edwards,’ Kate repeated. ‘I’ve been sent by a friend of hers, Lady Helen Sherwood…’
‘You’d better step inside,’ the man said curtly.
For a moment she felt dubious, not sure even if she was at the right house. As she hesitated, a thin, pale-faced boy came running down the hall. He stopped short at the sight of her, then timidly started to inch backwards, one foot at a time.