Pit Bank Wench (17 page)

Emma’s reaction telling her to press no further, the girl brushed at her own ragged skirts. ‘Is it all right then? For me to walk alongside you, I mean? It will only be until we get to Wednesbury, then . . . then I’ll be off.’

Where would she be off to? Emma glanced at the stick-like figure walking beside her. The Coombses had taken her from the workhouse, was that the place she planned to return to . . . was it the only place Emma herself would find? The workhouse! The very name evoked dread. People chose to die on the road sooner than be taken into such institutions. But could she make that choice? She was almost certainly carrying a child. Had she the right to kill it too? But then, hadn’t she tried once already?

‘My name is Daisy . . . Daisy Tully.’

Emma smiled into the girl’s haggard little face, realising her silence had been taken for rebuke and this was the girl’s overture of friendship. ‘Mine’s Emma,’ she said, ‘Emma Price.’

‘Emma . . . that’s a pretty name. I like it.’

‘Daisy’s a pretty name too.’

‘My mother used to say it was her favourite, that it was the name
her
mother had. My mother was pretty . . .’ The girl choked on a sob. ‘If it hadn’t been for me she would still be alive. She worked herself to death so as to keep me!’

Coming to a halt, Emma drew the girl to her. ‘Then she must have loved you very much, Daisy.’

‘Yes.’ The girl sniffed. ‘I know she did, but I wish she had put me in the workhouse from being born. She could have left me there and run off, same as the man who ran off and left her pregnant. I wish to God she had then she would still be alive today.’

‘We can’t know that, Daisy,’ Emma soothed. ‘But supposing she had left you. Ask yourself, loving you as she did, what kind of life would it have been for her after giving you up? What happiness would she have known then? Be grateful for what you had together, the love you shared. Nothing can take the place of that.’

‘I know, but I’m so lonely, Emma, and so afraid of being used by another man such as Eli Coombs.’

Emma’s grip on the girl tightened. She was beginning to know what that loneliness was like: to be without the ones you loved, entirely alone in the world. And she had already met with the like of Coombs.

‘There can be no substitute for your mother,’ she told the weeping girl. ‘But we might both be a little less lonely if we stayed together.’

‘You mean it?’ The girl’s eyes lit up. ‘You truly mean it, Emma? I can stay with you?’

‘For as long as you wish.’ She smiled.

Wiping away tears with the back of her hand, Daisy beamed up at her. ‘That will be forever, Emma. I will never leave you.’

Emma looked over to the chimneys rising tall and black from the ironworks and coal mines that dominated the town.

‘
I will never leave you, Emma.
’ Paul Felton had used those very words to her.

But he had left her!

He had been sent away by his brother. And then Carver Felton had deliberately raped her.

‘Daisy, I’m sorry but we have to do it, we have to go to the workhouse.’

‘No, Emma, we can try . . .’

‘We’ve tried everywhere.’ Emma sank tiredly to the ground. ‘There’s no one in Wednesbury will give us work or a place to sleep, and we can’t go on sleeping under hedges.’

‘But, Emma, you don’t know what it’s like to be in that place. It doesn’t just break your heart it destroys your soul. I spent five years in there and, I tell you, I would rather die than go back.’

‘That’s easy to say.’ Emma stared blankly towards the still busy High Street. ‘But what of the winter? We can’t sleep out in the open in the ice and snow. It has to be the workhouse, Daisy, or we’ll both die.’

‘It isn’t winter yet!’ Daisy’s mouth set in a defiant line. ‘Besides we have pie for supper.’

‘Pie?’ Emma looked up questioningly.

A smile breaking out on her thin little face, Daisy brought a small crudely wrapped package from her pocket.

Watching her peel back the wax paper Emma felt her stomach cramp with hunger. It was the first food she had seen since that slice of bread and cheese Liza Coombs had grudgingly pushed at her. Two days without food, her only drink being water from the horse trough in the centre of the town or from the brook that bordered the heath.

‘There.’ Daisy broke the pie into two pieces, holding out half to Emma.

‘Where did you get this?’ Reaching for the food she paused, eyes widening with horror. ‘Daisy, your hands!’

‘They don’t hurt!’ Daisy’s mutinous look was back but as Emma made to touch her hands she drew them quickly away.

‘Daisy, they
must
hurt, they’re red raw. What on earth have you been doing?’

Squatting beside Emma, the girl pushed the pie towards her. ‘I been cleaning, that’s all, just cleaning. The woman that keeps the pie shop in Union Street said she would give me a couple of mutton pies in return for scrubbing out the shop. I scrubbed all day yesterday while you was looking for work. Then when it came time for her to close up she said there was nothing left, not a crumb, so I was to go there today for what was owed me. Then when I went this morning she said she would pay me what was settled on together with a shilling if I scrubbed the rest of the house. I agreed. Well, I had to, a shilling isn’t to be sneezed at, only when time came to settle . . .’

‘She didn’t break her word again?’

‘No, but that don’t mean she didn’t try.’ Above the mutinous set of her mouth the girl’s eyes twinkled. ‘Said there was nothing left, just like afore, so I told her I would take the eightpence two pies sold for along with a shilling for the cleaning. Well, that wiped the smirk off her face, but I could see she was thinking of a way to get out of giving me the money, so I told her if I wasn’t paid what we’d agreed then come the morning there would not be a whole pane of glass in her windows.’

‘Daisy!’ Emma tried not to smile. ‘You didn’t?’

‘I bloody well did!’ Daisy bit into her share of the pie, chewing with noisy satisfaction. ‘That old bag weren’t going to cheat me again. I said I was happy to leave it at that if she were; that it would cost more than a shilling and eightpence to get her windows put back in. She threatened to call for the bobbies but I gave her a small reminder that changed her tune.’

‘A reminder?’ Emma stared at the girl who suddenly seemed so much older than herself.

‘Arrh.’ Her mouth full of pie, Daisy nodded. ‘I reminded her there be some things that even a bobby has to turn his back to and while his back is turned . . . Anyway she could tell I were taking no more of her fancy dealings so she paid up.’

‘But you still got only one pie?’

‘That be true.’ Daisy smiled. ‘This time there were only one left. It were the one she’d laid aside for her own supper!’

Emma took the pie the girl still held towards her, mouth watering with hunger.

‘Then the woman did cheat you?’

Picking each separate crumb from her skirts and popping it in her mouth, Daisy licked each red finger with a slow appreciative tongue.

‘She’d have to be smarter than she is to do that, Emma. I only got one pie, true enough, but I got the fourpence in place of the other one. Mind, it would have been worth taking a penny less just to see the look on her face. Eh! If looks could kill, the preacher man would be saying his words over me right now.’

The preacher man! Emma’s hand dropped from her mouth, food forgotten, as the horror of that night flooded back in stark reality. The preacher man. That was what the whole of Doe Bank had called him. The man who’d helped sort out problems, who’d preached in the Chapel. The man who’d quoted the Bible while abusing his own child.

‘Emma, be you all right?’

Daisy’s anxious voice brought her back from the edge of the darkness that beckoned. ‘’Twould be better if you ate that pie rather than nursed it. Lack of food has made you feel faint.’ Anxiety sharpening her voice, Daisy fumbled once more into her pocket, drawing out a small bottle she had filled with water.

‘Jackson’s chemist’s shop,’ she explained, pulling out the cork. ‘He weren’t looking so I borrowed a bottle. We’ll give it back when we’re finished.’

The water helped clear the awful shadows from her mind. Emma handed back the bottle.

‘I . . . I must be more hungry than I’d thought.’ The explanation failed to bring the smile she had intended. ‘But I’ll be fine once I have eaten.’

‘Then stop talking and get that pie inside of you. Then we’ll talk about that workhouse!’

‘He is very handsome.’ Melissa Gilbert studied her own reflection in the triple mirrors of her dressing table. ‘Those silver streaks in his dark hair lend him quite a devilish look.’

‘And you like that?’ Cara watched her cousin pull a brush through long chestnut hair that gleamed in the gaslight.

‘It helps make a man more interesting, and Carver Felton is certainly that.’

‘Carver . . . or Carver’s money!’

Melissa smiled into the mirror. ‘I find both more than a little interesting.’

‘Forget Carver Felton!’ Cara snapped. ‘He would do you no good.’

Laying the brush aside, wide swathes of soft shining hair falling over her shoulders, covering shapely breasts hidden beneath soft white silk, Melissa twisted about on her small gilt chair. ‘Maybe he would not, Cara, but his money most certainly would.’

A snatch of breath marking her irritation, Cara Holgate’s handsome face darkened. She had not expected this. She had not thought Melissa and Carver Felton would meet.

‘You can do better for yourself than him. There are plenty of men with money enough to make him look like a pauper.’

Melissa smiled in the way she knew would heighten her cousin’s annoyance. She had always been able to get under Cara’s skin. Ever since they were children she had played this game, and she had always won.

‘But do they have his looks?’ she asked softly, grey eyes following every nuance, every shade of emotion that flickered across the other woman’s face. ‘I prefer a man I am considering as a husband to have both those qualities: money and a handsome face.’

A husband? Cara felt her nerves quicken. If Melissa and Carver were to wed, where would that leave her?

‘Carver Felton your husband!’ She laughed lightly. ‘My dear girl, how can you even think it? He’s a womaniser. He has made love to at least a dozen women I can put a name to, and probably as many again that I cannot!’

‘Including yourself, Cara?’

A smile painting her mouth like rouge, Melissa waited for the reply, inwardly congratulating herself. The question had obviously taken Cara off guard.

‘I . . .’ she stuttered. ‘I . . . that has nothing to do with it!’

‘I agree.’ Turning back to the mirror, Melissa took up the brush once more, drawing it through the rich thickness of her hair. ‘The number of women Carver Felton has had or who they are is of no importance. I want only his name, his money and the position that goes with them. The other things that go with marriage can be found elsewhere. By Carver and myself.’

‘So, you are thinking of Felton for a husband?’ Cara stared back at the smiling grey eyes while inside her jealousy tumbled like rushing waters.

‘Only thinking of it, Cara.’ Brush held in mid-air, Melissa watched the effect of her answer on the older woman. ‘At the moment.’

Aware of the iron will beneath her cousin’s smile, Cara turned away, walking to the other side of the room before answering. ‘I would have thought that had you to choose a husband from among iron masters and colliery owners you would have chosen someone younger. Someone like Arthur Payne, for instance.’

‘Arthur Payne?’ Touching the back of her brush to her mouth, Melissa adopted a pensive look. ‘He’s younger, of course, and is handsome in a pretty boy sort of way. But then, I do not care for men when they are quite so young. They’re so . . . so gauche, don’t you think, Cara?’

‘No, I do not,’ she snapped. ‘What I do think is that you would be a fool even to consider Felton. He would only take what he wanted then drop you. And think how
that
would go down in the drawing rooms of Wednesbury, not to mention Rugeley.’

‘It would cause a stir. But then a woman has merely to change her gown to set this town talking.’

‘I am glad you see that. So unless you wish to be the centre of attention you will cease throwing yourself at Carver Felton!’

Turning once again so her gaze was on the mirror, Melissa shrugged her silk-clad shoulders. ‘If being the centre of their attention means I have all of Carver’s, then so be it. I suppose a woman must be prepared to suffer a little censure to get what she wants.’

‘Or a great deal of pain getting what she deserves!’ Cara’s eyes blazed angrily. ‘Play your games if you must, Melissa – and, God help us, we both know you must – but don’t play them with Carver Felton. He is not for you!’

Setting the brush on the dressing table, Melissa watched the older woman’s reflection, saw the fingers curl and uncurl at her sides, the full mouth tight as a drawstring. This was far enough for now. Annoy Cara further and she might just send her packing back to Rugeley, where it was doubtful Felton would follow. He was only just sniffing at the bait; he had to swallow it before he could be reeled in.

‘You’re probably right, Cara, maybe he’s not for me. But you must agree he would make an excellent catch for somebody?’

That he would. Cara watched her cousin rise from the small gilt chair, shapely body moving sinuously beneath its silken sheath, the wealth of chestnut hair gleaming against skin that might be mistaken for alabaster. Melissa was beautiful but that beauty would not be wasted on Carver Felton. Melissa would never become his wife.

‘I was being silly.’ Her pretty mouth drooping, Melissa held out her hands to her cousin. ‘You shouldn’t let me tease you so, Cara. You have always been like a sister to me, letting me say and do the most hurtful things and never once reprimanding me. I feel dreadfully ashamed. I know you and Carver have an understanding, that you are to marry in the future. I have behaved stupidly. Forgive me, Cara, please?’