by Evie Grace
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Evie Grace
Title Page
Dedication
1853
Chapter One: A Small Miracle
Chapter Two: The Golden Linnet
Chapter Three: Consommé and Garlic
Chapter Four: Kid Gloves and Canterbury Brawn
1857
Chapter Five: While the Cat’s Away, the Mice Will Play
Chapter Six: Half a Sixpence
Chapter Seven: Many a Slip Twixt Cup and Lip
Chapter Eight: A Cuckoo in the Nest
1858
Chapter Nine: Desperate Times
Chapter Ten: Desperate Measures
Chapter Eleven: All that Glisters is not Gold
Chapter Twelve: The Faradays
Chapter Thirteen: An Education
Chapter Fourteen: Pistols at Dawn
Chapter Fifteen: Like a Rose Embowered
Chapter Sixteen: An Awkward Encounter
Chapter Seventeen: An Unlaced Boot
Chapter Eighteen: Be Careful What You Wish For
Chapter Nineteen: A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved
Chapter Twenty: Spirit of Hartshorn
Chapter Twenty-One: It’s an Ill Wind that Blows No One Any Good
Chapter Twenty-Two: Pen and Ink
1859
Chapter Twenty-Three: Powers of Persuasion
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Darkest Hour
Chapter Twenty-Five: One for Sorrow, Two for Joy
Chapter Twenty-Six: Three for a Girl, Four for a Boy
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
Canterbury, 1853
Agnes Berry-Clay might have been born into rags but she is growing up with riches.
Given away as a baby by her real mother, she was rescued and raised by her darling Papa and distant Mama. Agnes wants for nothing, except perhaps a little freedom.
But as time goes on, her life at Windmarsh Court changes. New arrivals and old resentments push Agnes to the periphery of the family, and the consequences of one fateful day will shatter her dreams for the future.
Heartbroken and threatened with scandal, Agnes is faced with a terrible choice: stay and surrender, or flee and fight to keep her freedom.
About the Author
Evie Grace was born in Kent, and one of her earliest memories is of picking cherries with her grandfather who managed a fruit farm near Selling. Holidays spent in the Kent countryside and the stories passed down through her family inspired her to write her Maids of Kent trilogy.
Evie now lives in Devon with her partner and dog. She has a grown-up daughter and son.
She loves researching the history of the nineteenth century and is very grateful for the invention of the washing machine, having discovered how the Victorians struggled to do their laundry.
Her Mother’s Daughter is Evie’s second novel in the trilogy, following on from Half a Sixpence. The third and final novel is out July 2018.
Also by Evie Grace
Half a Sixpence
To Rich
1853
Chapter One
A Small Miracle
The sound of hooves slipping and scraping on the stones outside announced the arrival of an unexpected visitor at the Berry-Clays’ residence early on a cold February morning.
Agnes was eating at the table in the nursery while Nanny, wrapped in a heavy woollen shawl, sat in the straight-backed mahogany chair beside the fireplace, flicking through the pages of a book. With a quick glance to see if she was looking, Agnes abandoned her porridge and hurried to the window.
‘Miss Agnes, where are you?’
Hearing Nanny’s voice, she sat down quickly on the window seat, pulled her legs up and drew the heavy drapes closed behind her. She breathed on the ice inside the glass and rubbed at it with her sleeve, making a clear circle through which she could make out Papa’s groom holding on to a dark horse. Its rider, a man dressed in a hat and dark overcoat, dismounted and detached a brown leather bag from the saddle.
What business did he have at such an isolated place as Windmarsh Court? she wondered.
‘Good morning, Miss Treen,’ came another voice. ‘I’ve come to lay the fire if it isn’t too late. I would ’ave bin up before, but the mistress asked that I did the rooms in a different order this morning with the nursery last. The word is that the doctor’s bin summoned for.’
‘Thank you, Miriam, but we should mind our tongues when it comes to the family’s affairs,’ Nanny said.
‘It hasn’t gone unnoticed that the mistress has bin unwell for some time.’
Mama was sick? Agnes looked out across the yard and the walled garden where the gardener and his boy faced a constant battle to keep the surrounding marsh at bay. She could see the Swale estuary and the Isle of Sheppey on the far side of the water, clothed in its winter ochres, greys and greens, and a barge with its brown sails unfurled, heading between the mudflats towards the coast. Agnes felt a twinge of guilt that she hadn’t noticed her mother was ill, but then how could she when she hardly saw her? She hardly saw anyone, apart from the servants. She had no friends her own age. She only had Nanny for company.
She rearranged her velvet skirt and pinafore over her petticoat and hugged her knees, shivering with cold.
‘It would be a miracle if Doctor Shaw confirms our suspicions,’ Miriam went on.
‘It isn’t for us to speculate,’ Nanny said firmly. ‘Do go ahead with your duties, for we are about to freeze to death.’
‘I’ve never known a winter like it.’ Agnes heard the swish of the brush and the scrape of the shovel as Miriam began to clear the ashes from the grate. ‘Where is Miss Berry-Clay?’
‘It seems that she has completely disappeared.’ Agnes suppressed the giggle that rose in her throat as Miss Treen continued, ‘You don’t happen to have seen her? I’m beginning to wonder if she’s gone and found the tunnel this time, and got herself lost.’
‘I ’aven’t sin her,’ Miriam said, ‘although … can you see the curtain, the way it trembles without the slightest draught to disturb it?’
Agnes caught her breath. Was she about to be found out?
‘I think your imagination has got the better of you.’
‘I believe that it has.’ Miriam chuckled and Agnes began to relax.
‘Oh, but perhaps you’re right. Your eyes don’t deceive you after all.’ Agnes froze as she heard footsteps draw close. ‘The tunnel is said to be haunted.’
The drapes flew open and a grey skein of silk fell from the ceiling and landed on Agnes’s head. She screamed. She couldn’t help it.
‘It’s only a cobweb,’ Nanny said, helping her brush the offending item from her hair. ‘I believe that our talk of the tunnel has given you an attack of the frights.’
‘No, not at all,’ Agnes said, collecting her wits. She was fourteen years old, not a child. She wasn’t scared. Not much.
‘The spirits of the smugglers haunt the schoolrooms of impressionable young ladies who don’t admit the truth at all times,’ Nanny said chidingly. She was smiling, though, and Agnes realised that Nanny and Miriam had known exactly where she was all along. It wasn’t surprising, because Agnes had used up all the hiding places on the top floor of the house many times over.
‘Oh dear, the poor little soul will ’ave nightmares after this,’ Miriam said.
‘I will not,’ Agnes said adamantly. She gazed at the two women. At five foot and one inch in height, Agnes was taller than the maid and shorter than Nanny, who was wearing her uniform of a dark serge dress and black slippers. Nanny’s eyes were hazel and ringed with dark lashes, while her hair, th
e colour of the sienna in Agnes’s paintbox, was coiled in a plait around her head with a white cap on top.
Miriam was hardly the epitome of neatness. She had a smut on the end of her upturned nose, her apron was grubby and strands of her blonde hair had fallen from her bun. She was about twenty-five, and Miss Treen had once let slip that she was thirty-seven.
‘May I have a go at lighting the fire?’ Agnes asked.
‘Oh no, miss.’ Miriam chuckled. ‘That’s maid’s work. You’ll never ’ave to know how to light a fire in your life.’
‘But I should like to learn all the same.’
‘Nanny wishes you to stick to l’arning from books, don’t you, Miss Treen?’
‘Indeed I do. Our little miss is to become a lady with more servants than she needs. Although …’ Nanny paused for a moment. ‘It doesn’t hurt to know enough to make sure that one’s maids are doing the job properly.’
‘So I can light it?’ Agnes asked, watching Miriam place some dry sticks in the grate.
‘No,’ Nanny said. ‘You will soil your dress.’
Agnes was disappointed.
‘I wonder how long the doctor will spend with the mistress,’ Miriam said, taking the tinderbox from the mantelpiece and striking the flint. ‘Do you think that it’s possible after all this time?’ The flint sparked and soon a curl of smoke rose from the kindling in the box. Miriam blew on it gently and transferred the flame on a thin taper to the sticks in the grate.
‘It’s no use asking me – I’m not a medical man,’ Nanny said briskly.
‘I thought you might ’ave some idea. You are the most l’arned person of my acquaintance.’ Agnes, Nanny and Miriam watched as the flame took hold of the sticks.
‘That’ll do,’ Miriam said eventually, and she tipped the coal from the scuttle on top.
‘Thank you. Please remove the breakfast dishes.’ Nanny looked towards the mantel clock. ‘This will not do. We are already five minutes late for our lessons. Agnes, sit down at your desk. You will practise your letters first.’
As the maid left the room with the tray of breakfast dishes, Agnes sat down and opened the lid of the desk, a miniature version of Papa’s, and took out her writing materials: paper, pencil and pen, ink and a wooden rule. She pulled up the upholstered stool, blew on her fingers and began to draw lines across the page. The second line wasn’t quite parallel with the first, and in a fit of annoyance she scribbled it out.
‘Oh dear,’ Nanny sighed. ‘It’s going to be one of those days. It’s only natural to be concerned about your mama, but you mustn’t let it get in the way of your lessons. Is there anything you’d like to ask me? I shall answer if I can.’
‘Well, yes, I’d like to know if Mama is going to die.’
‘My dear child, of course she isn’t! There’s no danger of that.’ Nanny smiled as she placed an open book on the desk. Mama’s opinion was that she was suitably plain, but Agnes thought her quite pretty when she smiled. ‘I should like you to copy this poem in your best copperplate and curlicue, before committing Mr Wordsworth’s verse to memory.’
‘Why?’ Agnes said. ‘Why should I have to learn it when I could read it straight from the book?’
‘Really, you are becoming quite rebellious.’ Nanny cocked one eyebrow, making Agnes smile. ‘Suffice to say, we all have to do things we don’t want to do. You would be wise to practise obedience until it becomes a habit. When you marry, you will be required to carry out the duties of the lady of the house without question or complaint.’ She walked over to the window seat and sat down to do some sewing.
Agnes tried to concentrate, but the clock was ticking and the lace on her collar was pricking at her neck. She ruled lines on a second piece of paper, wrote an ‘I’, and was halfway through ‘wandered’ when she became aware of a shadow falling across her work. She looked up.
‘Are you ready to recite this poem to me? No, I thought not. Make haste, or we will have no time to study geography this week.’
She looked towards the cupboard on the far side of the room where Miss Treen kept the globe locked away. Papa had brought it home with him one day in payment of a debt owed to the brewery and Agnes had fallen in love with it: the colours of the lands and oceans; the names of the magical-sounding places far away. Mama disapproved of geography – she said that young ladies had no need of such knowledge. Their horizons should be limited to accomplishments suitable for the drawing room, such as painting, music and deportment.
Perhaps it was for that reason and because she was always cooped up at Windmarsh Court that geography had become Agnes’s favourite subject. The threat of missing out was enough to ensure that she became familiar with Mr Wordsworth’s daffodils very quickly. When the clock struck ten, Agnes recited the poem, keeping to the rhythm of the beat of Miss Treen’s rule against the desk.
‘You spoke that beautifully,’ Nanny said when she had finished. ‘You will do it again for your parents this evening to demonstrate your progress.’
They were her adoptive parents, not her mother and father by blood. Papa had never kept it a secret from her. He had taken pity on a poor orphan infant dressed in rags whose mama couldn’t look after her and brought her back to Windmarsh Court, where he had kept the names Agnes Ivy that had been given to her by her true mother, and honoured her with the surname of Berry-Clay.
‘I think they will be very proud of me,’ Agnes said.
Nanny frowned and shook her head. ‘What did we talk about the other day?’
‘Paris?’ Agnes said, her thoughts drifting back to the globe.
‘We discussed the importance of being humble.’
‘Did we?’ Agnes felt her forehead tighten as she tried to remember. It was all very well, but what was the point of being deferential when she was only speaking the truth? ‘Isn’t the truth more important than being humble?’
‘My dear child, people warm to those who don’t brag about their accomplishments.’
‘Mama isn’t humble,’ Agnes said.
‘It isn’t our place to offer that opinion,’ Nanny corrected her gently, and for that tiny indiscretion, she condemned Agnes to a discussion of etiquette for a whole hour before luncheon.
‘This instruction will serve you well in the future,’ Nanny said, as though reading her mind. ‘I hope that one day you will recall fondly how your nanny taught you how to be the perfect hostess, for I am sure that when you are married, you will entertain all kinds of interesting guests at your house.’
‘I don’t wish to be married. I should like to become a nanny and governess like you.’
‘You are destined for better things.’ Nanny smiled ruefully.
‘Don’t you like being a governess, then?’
‘Oh, I like it very much. I have loved you since I first set eyes on you when you were a baby.’ Nanny stopped abruptly. ‘That’s enough. I believe you are trying to distract me from my purpose.’ She ran her finger down one of the pages in her book and began to read again. ‘A gentleman may take two ladies upon his arms, but under no circumstances should a lady take the arms of two gentlemen.’
‘Why should that be so? We are all blessed with two arms,’ Agnes said lightly.
‘It would be improper for a lady to conduct herself in such a manner. Ladies are expected to behave with decorum. Gentlemen, especially the younger ones, are allowed more latitude when it comes to how they deport themselves.’
‘I don’t think that’s fair.’
‘Life isn’t always fair, my dear.’ She put the book down beside her with its cover facing upwards and its pages spread out. Agnes reached out to pick it up and close it properly as she had been taught, so as not to break its spine. What was wrong with Nanny today?
‘Oh, I can’t concentrate on etiquette either,’ Nanny admitted. ‘Why don’t you fetch the globe and we will look for the capital city of Italy?’
‘Italy?’ A frisson of excitement ran down her spine. Mama owned a piece of Italian glass from Murano, a vase that glinted i
n the sunshine and cast rays of different colours across the windowsill in the drawing room. Its exotic appearance hinted at royal palaces and shimmering heat, far away from the ditches and dykes of the bleak Kentish marshes.
‘We will learn about the history of Rome and the canals of Venice.’
‘How do you know so many things?’
‘I was attentive in lessons at school.’
‘Was that the school for downtrodden ladies?’ Agnes said, even though she had heard Nanny’s stories before.
‘It was a charity school run by Mrs Joseph for young ladies whose families had fallen upon hard times.’ Nanny touched the corner of her eye as if she was pressing back a tear. ‘My poor father lost everything through no fault of his own, God rest his soul.’
Agnes didn’t ask about Nanny’s mother. She had broached the subject once before and Miss Treen had become very upset.
‘You have an uncle still living. Is he well?’
‘Oh yes. I shall visit him and my cousins once removed quite soon.’ Miss Treen’s mood brightened again. ‘Samuel – Mr Cheevers – paid for my education. I’ll always be grateful to him for making sure that I acquired the means to make my own way in the world.’ She took a key from her pocket and handed it to Agnes, who went to unlock the cupboard.
Her heart beat faster as she wheeled the globe on its brass castors and mahogany stand to the centre of the schoolroom. Nanny lit one of the oil lamps and held it up close to the magnificent painted sphere, illuminating the text inside a circle in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean: The new Terrestrial Globe, exhibiting the tracks and discoveries made by Captain Cook; Together with every other improvement collected from Various Navigators to the present time.
‘Can you find Italy?’ Nanny asked, lighting up the northern hemisphere.
Agnes pointed at the toe of Italy’s boot which had kicked Sicily into the Mediterranean Sea.
‘You have remembered well,’ Nanny said, before going on to tell her about Venice and Rome, the Sistine Chapel, the mountains and lakes.
‘May I look at another place?’ Agnes asked when they had exhausted Italy.