A Child of Secrets

by Mary Mackie

  Since Jess had her hands covered in flour, making scones for tea, it was left to Eliza to jump up from the chair where she had been enjoying a cup of tea. ‘What brooch is that?’ she asked in concern.

  ‘You know the one – my mother’s cameo brooch that I wear nearly every day. I know I put it safely away. I’m always exceedingly careful with it. It was in its velvet pouch, in my jewel box. And now it’s gone. Gone!’

  ‘Well, I hen’t got it,’ Eliza said, and sent a glinting look at Jess, who instinctively felt above her breastbone for the shape of her mother’s ring nestling safely on its ribbon. Its small roundness comforted her.

  Miss Peartree had lifted her tear-blotched face, horrified. ‘Eliza! I said it was lost, not stolen. It never occurred to me to think—’

  ‘Well, that seem to me as how that have to be the answer,’ the maid replied. ‘If you put that safely away, and now that’s gone, well…’

  Miss Peartree clasped her hands to her throat. ‘You surely don’t mean… Someone in this house?’

  ‘Why not? Someone who mebbe thought that, you bein’ so fond o’ that brooch and all, that must be worth a lot o’ money.’ Again she looked straight at Jess, who this time felt her stomach go cold. She wanted to rush up to her room and search every crevice. This was how Eliza had planned her revenge – to brand Jess a thief.

  Miss Peartree was trembling. ‘Perhaps I just mislaid it. I am becoming a little absent-minded. I’ll have another look for it later.’

  ‘Let me do that,’ Eliza offered. ‘You have a cup of tea and sit still a while. You’re all of a doo-dah. I’ll go and look—’

  ‘No!’ Miss Peartree caught hold of the maid’s sleeve. ‘No! Oh… I don’t know. I was sure I’d looked everywhere, but…’

  ‘Who have been in your room lately?’ Eliza asked.

  ‘No one! That is… apart from you and Dolly – and Jess brings me my morning tea. You can’t be suggesting that…’

  ‘I en’t suggestin’ nothin’, miss. I was on’y speckalatin’ on the possibles. That leave just us three, then. Well, I’m sure you’re welcome to look in my room.’ And for a third time she turned her clear green stare on Jess.

  You can search my room, too, Jess wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. Her throat was thick with apprehension. Where had Eliza hidden the brooch? Perhaps if Jess could get to the attic…

  ‘And what about Dolly?’ Eliza’s apron-draped skirts swished self-importantly as she strode across the kitchen and flung open the door of the cupboard where Dolly’s pallet was kept rolled up.

  ‘Eliza, please—’ Miss Peartree protested, and Jess started across to intervene, but before she could get there Eliza had dragged the pallet out and unrolled it across the floor. Dolly’s few pitiful belongings flopped and rolled on to the flagstones – her neatly darned nightshirt, a clean pair of drawers, a hairbrush, her rag doll… As the doll sprawled on the floor, something slipped from under its skirts and slid across to lie right by Jess’s feet. It was a brooch, an oval of ebony framed in gold filigree, with a likeness of a woman carved in yellowing ivory.

  ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Eliza gasped. ‘Honest, miss, I never dreamed…’

  But she was lying, Jess knew. Of course she was lying! Eliza had taken the brooch and hidden it, but it was Dolly who was the innocent target for her malice.

  Rushing to summon Dolly to the kitchen to answer for her crime, Eliza encountered the rector, who wanted to know what was going on. So the story was recounted for his edification. Jess never forgot the helplessness she felt as she stood by the green baize door listening to the rector as he stood in the hall lecturing young Dolly in his most kindly, deadly voice.

  ‘My pity is for your poor mother, Dorothy. Your poor crippled mother. What will she have to say about this?’

  ‘But, sir,’ Dolly wept. ‘I hen’t—’

  He went on as if she had not spoken, his voice crushing hers. ‘To have one of her daughters turn out this way – not only a thief, but a liar. If only you would admit to your sin, it would go better with you, you foolish child.’

  Dolly stood before him, apron bundled in her hands, tears streaming from her eyes, mouth working. She was too upset even to defend herself.

  ‘You will leave the rectory, of course,’ Reverend Clare decided. ‘At once.’

  ‘But Hugh!’ Miss Peartree cried. ‘You can’t just dismiss her. How are we going to manage without her? With Jess leaving tomorrow—’

  Swiftly, Eliza put in, ‘My sister Mary Anne’d be glad to come, sir,’ at which Miss Peartree flung her a wide-eyed, disbelieving glance.

  Was that what this was all about? Jess wondered – a plot to get Eliza’s sister a job at the rectory?

  ‘Oh, I don’t understand any of this.’ Taking off her spectacles, Miss Peartree waved them helplessly. ‘I can’t believe Dolly would do such a thing. Not intentionally. It was a mistake, a moment’s lapse.’

  ‘To steal a valuable brooch and hide it away among her things?’ The rector was incredulous. ‘No, Oriana. Christian charity has its bounds. Dorothy has betrayed our trust. I will not have a thief in my house.’ As Dolly began to turn away, he laid a big hand on her shoulder. Her eyes glittered like a frightened rabbit’s as she twisted sideways to peer up at him. ‘Before you go, Dorothy, I want you to clear your conscience. Confess that you took the brooch.’

  For a moment Jess could hardly think. A red veil of blood blinded her as memory came – Merrywest, holding her as the rector was holding Dolly, speaking so low and meaning so vicious. Dear Lord!

  Unable to bear the look on Dolly’s face, she started forward, saying, ‘Mr Clare, she—’

  She was stopped by a look so sharp it felt like a lance at her breast. ‘Don’t interfere, Jessamy!’ he ordered, and she saw his fingers tighten on Dolly’s shoulder in a grip that made the child wince. ‘Well, Dorothy?’

  ‘I done it!’ Dolly cried. ‘I took the brooch. I do confess.’

  His grip eased as a smirk of satisfaction played round his mouth and he glanced at the trembling Jess, and at the silent Eliza, as if to call them to bear witness to the truth of his justice. ‘Very well. Since you admit your sin, and because of your poor mother, I shall not call the constables. Not this time. But if in future, Dorothy, I hear that you have repeated this crime, or anything like it, then I shall be forced to speak of what has happened today. Do you understand me?’

  Dolly was sobbing into her apron. ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good! Then you may go. Gather your things and leave the rectory.’

  Weeping wretchedly, Dolly wrenched away from him and came blindly down the hall, blundering into Jess, who threw her arms around the child and started to comfort her, but—

  ‘Leave her!’ Reverend Clare snapped. ‘No one is to speak to her. She has betrayed my trust and now she must take her punishment. Stay where you are, Jessamy!’

  Once, she might have obeyed, but this time she faced him squarely with her head high. She had nothing to lose; she too would be leaving tomorrow. And she hated bullies!

  ‘You’ll forgive me, rector, but the child needs someone to go with her. If you send her alone in all this snow, in the dark, Lord know what’ll happen to her. No, I intend to go with her.’

  His pink face seemed to swell and redden as he held his breath and suddenly made a chopping gesture. ‘Very well! Then take your own things, too! Go now. Go – both of you! You make me regret my generosity in ever taking you in. If this is how you repay me, then… be gone, Jessamy Sharp.’

  ‘Oh, Jess.’ Dolly clutched at her. ‘You shouldn’t’ve…’

  ‘’Course I should,’ Jess comforted, giving the rector a look of icy loathing as, with an arm round the child, she led her away.

  Nine

  As Jess told the gist of the tale, Susan Upton occupied herself brewing a pot of tea, while her mother rested on her couch and Dolly sat huddled on a little stool by the fire, her arms clutched tightly round her rag doll.

  ‘We a
ll know you didn’t do it, Doll,’ Jess said.

  ‘Of course she didn’t!’ Mrs Upton was quietly furious. ‘Miss Peartree have always been special kind to Dolly. Why on earth would the little mawther now steal her precious brooch? That’s what hurt me most – that Miss Peartree do believe she’d do it.’

  ‘She don’t,’ said Jess. ‘Miss Peartree don’t know what to think. She’re an innocent old soul.’

  Mrs Upton had been watching Jess closely. She said, ‘It was that sly-boots, wa’n’t it? Oh, you hen’t said so, and that’s to your credit, but I know. Eliza Potts took that brooch just to get my poor gal dismissed.’

  ‘That seem so,’ Jess agreed with a sigh. ‘Trouble is, that was her word against Dolly’s, and the rector believed Eliza.’

  ‘He would!’ Dolly muttered with venom, burying her face in the rag doll. The silence seemed to sing, waiting for her to say more, but she only rocked herself to and fro, curled in with her unhappiness.

  Mrs Upton shook her head. ‘She’re wholly done up about this.’

  But it was more than that. What, exactly, had Dolly meant? She knew far more than she was saying. Maybe that was why Eliza had got her dismissed – Dolly had been in the way; so she’d been dispensed with.

  ‘It was good of you to stick up for her,’ Mrs Upton said. ‘You’ll stop the night with us, of course. Yes, Jess, you will. And tomorrow we’ll go to chapel and hold our heads up. We hen’t got nothin’ to be ashamed of.’

  Mrs Upton slept on her couch in the living room while the sisters and Jess shared the bedroom above. It was warm from the chimney breast which came up from the fire in the main room, and it was companionable, talking quietly to Dolly and Susan, then listening to them breathe as they slept, reminding Jess of her own family home. But she herself remained wakeful. She was just beginning to realise that she’d left the rectory for ever. Tomorrow her new life at Hewinghall would begin…

  * * *

  Dolly was reluctant to face her neighbours and friends at chapel, afraid that they would believe her to be a thief.

  ‘They’ll think even more if you don’t go,’ her mother said. ‘It’ll do you good, Doll. Jess’ll walk with you, too. Won’t you, Jess?’

  Though she was anxious to support Dolly, Jess hadn’t been in a chapel since she fled from Lynn. ‘Well…’

  ‘Oh, good!’ Mrs Upton beamed from the chair where she sat with her twisted legs covered by a blanket. ‘Jess, that do my heart good to think of you bein’ with us afore the Lord’s table. You three girls can walk together. I have to go in the cart along o’ Fred Trainer – on account of my legs. Howsomever, do you have good legs that’s not so far.’

  Jess was wearing the best of her clothes as she and Dolly and Susan set out to hike the four miles along snow-deep lanes, skirting Hewinghall estate, passing through Syderford village and on towards the coast. On the way they met up with other groups bound for the same destination, so a merry throng arrived in the village of Martham Staithe, which boasted the only Methodist chapel for miles around.

  The little chapel, recently built of red brick, stood at the end of a row of cottages on the edge of the fishing village. Jess gazed with fond eyes on the boats lying in muddy creeks waiting for the tide, though here was no sheltered estuary haven like that offered by the Fisher Fleet. Here, the north wind blew direct from the Arctic. The inlets, and the sandy wastes between them, were dotted with wading birds, the skies awheel with gulls braving the cold wind. But inside the chapel a stove was going, offering a welcome. As yet, no word of Dolly’s disgrace had reached beyond the rectory, so she was able to tell her own side of it, laying the blame squarely on Eliza.

  ‘Well, what can you expect from a Potts?’ was the general consensus. ‘Never see them in chapel, do you?’

  Jess was accepted with friendly curiosity and soon the harmonium was wheezing and she joined in gratefully as hearty voices raised praise in familiar words, to familiar tunes, stirring the blood. The preacher spoke of God’s love and forgiveness and Jess prayed hard. But her prayers seemed to go up into nothingness. If God was there, he wasn’t listening to her.

  Maybe that was because she wasn’t truly repentant. And if that was so, then she’d have to stay outside the fold. Because, deep in her heart, calmly and coldly, she knew that, if she had it to do again, she would still kill Nathanael Merrywest. She hoped he was even now burning in hellfire…

  After the service, as gossiping groups gathered outside, still chewing over Dolly’s misfortune, she saw a shaggy black retriever tethered to a fence. Just as she was wondering if it was Dash or the similar dog she had seen at Hewinghall, Reuben Rudd came up to untie the leash. She’d been so concerned about what folk might think or say or do that she hadn’t noticed him in chapel. Dash was delighted to see his master. So, to her consternation, was Jess. But her instinctive rush of pleasure raised all her defences – she didn’t want to feel that way, about him or any man.

  Doffing his cap, he brushed back a lick of brown hair and stood smiling at her with those bright hazel eyes that had the power to make her feel as if she was the only woman he’d ever smiled at in quite that way – foolish, she knew. ‘I thought it was you,’ he said, ‘though I was too far back to tell for sure, especially when you’re wearing that smart hat. You look a bobby-dazzler. How are you, Miss Jessie?’

  ‘Fair to middlin’,’ Jess replied with a shrug, watching Fred Trainer carry Mrs Upton to his cart while Dolly held the horse steady. ‘And what’re you doin’ so far from home, Mr Rudd?’

  ‘Far?’ Laughing, he gestured expansively. ‘Why, lass, this is all my beat – all Hewinghall land. Sir Richard’s father built these cottages, and Sir Richard himself had the chapel put up only a few years ago. See, it’s written up there in the brickwork – R.B.F., for Richard Baines Fyncham – and the date, 1886.’

  She stared up at the letters and figures and when she glanced again at Rudd he was surveying her face and figure, admiring what he saw – and not the least abashed to have her catch him at it.

  Hazel eyes alight, he said, ‘Well, Miss Jessie, it’s right good to see you. I hear you’re joining the staff at the big house.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I think you’ll enjoy it there. They’re a good crowd of folk. You’ll like Mrs Roberts, the housekeeper – and don’t you already know Sal Gooden? She’s a nice lass. Aye, you’ll do right well at the big house.’

  ‘I was doin’ all right at the rectory,’ Jess said.

  Rudd’s gaze held hers, seeming to read her mind. ‘Were you?’

  Tilting her chin, she said, ‘Miss Lily liked havin’ me there.’

  ‘Miss Lily’s a strange one, though, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’ll not hear a word against her!’ Jess retorted. ‘She’ve been a good friend to me – whatever Eliza say.’ Disturbed as ever by her reaction to the man, she glanced around for Dolly, hoping for moral support.

  Gossip had stopped as all eyes turned to watch another man approach, a good-looking young man, sporting a fancy waxed moustache and one of the new ‘bowler’ hats. A proper toff, Jess thought – and one whom she had seen before.

  His grin widened as his glance fell on her and, altering his course slightly, he made straight for where she was standing with Rudd beside her. As he came, he doffed his cap to the group of spectators. ‘’Morning, all.’ Most of them turned away and resumed their conversations, though some continued to watch him from their eye corner. Only one man replied, with a courteous ‘’Morning, Jim.’

  The newcomer must have noticed the extra frosting on the morning, but his smile didn’t falter. He seemed to be enjoying the discomfiture he was causing. ‘’Mornin’, Mr Rudd,’ he greeted pleasantly.

  ‘Potts.’ The gamekeeper’s reply was so clipped that Jess glanced at him and found him returning the other’s smile with shuttered face and hostile eyes. This was another Reuben Rudd, a hard man – a man you wouldn’t want to cross.

  Potts turned his green eyes on her. Familiar
green eyes, somehow. ‘You must be Jessie Sharp, then,’ he said. ‘Our ’Liza’s told me about you. Name’s Potts, Jim Potts. Nice to meet you, Miss Sharp.’

  Eliza’s brother!

  As Jim Potts held out his hand to her, Rudd said, ‘Clear off, Potts.’

  The sparkling green eyes held Jess’s. ‘Be he your keeper, then? I hen’t heard as you was walkin’ out, together.’

  ‘I’m warning you, Potts!’ Bristling, Rudd placed himself in front of Jess. ‘Be on your way. This young lady wants nowt to do with you.’

  To Jess’s dismay, most of the people lingering by the chapel were now watching with increased interest, awaiting developments.

  ‘Mr Rudd!’ she objected. ‘Next time I need a guardian, I’ll know where to send. Until then, hold you hard. As for you, Mr Potts… where I come from, a gentleman do wait to be properly introduced afore he start makin’ silly-bold remarks to a lady. Seem like folk hereabouts hen’t got no manners at all. If you’ll excuse me…’ Nose in the air, she walked away.

  Behind her, Jim Potts laughed out loud, though she fancied it was with approval.

  Catching up with her, Dolly was agog over the incident. ‘I thought Mr Rudd was a-goin’ to sole him. I hen’t never seen him so mad. My! That’ll set Eliza’s nose out o’ joint. She think Mr Rudd have eyes for her.’

  ‘Seem to me as how Reuben Rudd have eyes for anythin’ wearin’ a skirt,’ Jess said loftily. It was flattering to have two men squaring up on her account – not that she was interested in either of them.

  She glanced back to see Jim Potts stepping out of the way of the cart as it set off. Reuben Rudd was striding in the opposite direction, with Dash at his heels. He looked as if he was trying to put as much space between himself and Jess as was possible.

  Jim Potts had other ideas. The girls and their companions hadn’t gone far before he caught them up, saying, ‘Mind if I walk along?’