Pit Bank Wench (34 page)

The pain settled to a dull ache but Emma remained leaning on the table. ‘Didn’t Mrs Hollington say anything?’

‘Not a word. Like somebody dead herself she was, not that she had much chance against that woman. Eh, I wouldn’t want
her
company for long!’

‘Be you Emma Price?’ The wind catching her skirts as the door was flung back on its hinges, Emma turned around to face a tall angular woman, hands crossed over her stomach. ‘I asked, be you Emma Price?’

‘Yes, I am Emma Price.’

‘Then you be the one has Samuel Hollington’s cash box. I’ll take it.’

‘This be Mrs Hollington’s sister.’ Daisy stepped forward.

‘No need for explanations.’ The woman’s small eyes glittered. ‘Just hand over the cash box and then you can leave.’

‘Leave?’

‘You heard me, girl, you ain’t deaf!’ the sharp voice snapped at Daisy. ‘The both of you will leave this house tonight.’

‘But we don’t have no place else, and Emma is . . .’

‘I can see what she is! But that be no concern of mine. ‘Twould have been better to have thought of the consequences afore indulging in the act! But you be all the same, trollops the lot of you, follow your own evil ways and leave the paying for ’em to other folk. Oh, I know your game. You thought you had yourself well in here, thought you could go on living off the backs of my sister and that husband of hers; always was too soft was Hollington. Well, he ain’t here no more, and your well-laid little plans be no more either.’

‘Daisy and I lived off no one’s back.’ Emma touched the other girl’s arm, holding back the anger she saw in her face. ‘We both worked hard from the moment of coming to this house.’

‘Worked hard . . . worked
hard
? Her a bit of cleaning and you sitting in the market? I’d expect harder work from a five-year-old.’

‘You would, and you’d get it too, you hard-faced old cow!’

Her mouth thinning with satisfaction, the woman looked at Daisy. ‘How right I was. I told my sister you were nothing but guttersnipes, the lowest of the low, and your language proves it.’

‘Arr missis, p’raps it does,’ Daisy flashed. ‘And while we be on the business of sayings, here’s one for you. Low I might be, but I reckon a worm with a top hat on couldn’t crawl underneath you.’

‘Like I told Sarah, guttersnipes! No more, no less.’ The little eyes glittered venomously. ‘Well, you can take your foul mouth somewhere else . . . if you can find a place that will take the likes of you. Not everybody is as soft as Hollington was.’

‘Mr Hollington was very kind.’

‘And you was very quick to take advantage, try to take over even. No sooner had he suffered that accident than you stepped in. Thought you’d have the lot, no doubt. But you reckoned without me!’

Beside her Emma felt Daisy bristle but still she answered quietly. ‘I had no thought to take advantage, I thought only to help keep the business going until Mr Hollington recovered.’

Fingers clasped together, Sarah Hollington’s sister pressed her hands more firmly across her stomach, her thin lips turning a little further inward as she stared at Emma.

‘Helped yourself more like.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You knows well what I mean.’ The words spat from the tight condemning mouth. ‘Wouldn’t be every penny that you took for meat would finish up in that box, there’d be more than a few went in your own pocket. You knew Hollington was too sick to reckon the takings and Sarah would have little time or thought for doing so while her was busy with looking after him. But I be neither daft nor too busy and I can count as well as the next, and believe me, I will. If there be a penny short . . .’

Indignation dulling the ache that nagged at her back, Emma held those glittering little eyes with her own steady stare. ‘I am not a thief.’

‘That has yet to be proved!’ The woman snorted, her hands held out. ‘Now, the cash box, if you please.’

‘Emma don’t ’ave it!’

Eyes widening, her voice almost a squeak, the woman demanded, ‘What . . . what did you say?’

‘I do not have the cash box.’ Emma’s voice was firm as she looked into the furious face. ‘I was robbed on my way home.’

‘Robbed . . . robbed!’ The woman snorted. ‘The only thief be you. If that money’s gone then
you
have taken it!’

‘That’s not true!’ Emma gasped at her accusation.

‘No? Well, the constables can find that out.’ The woman stepped away from the door. ‘But one thing be certain. You’ll not spend a moment longer in this place, you’ll have no more chances to rob a poor dead man. Get out! Get out now!’

Snatching her own shawl from the chair back, Daisy glared at Sarah Hollington’s sister. ‘You get the constable, missis,’ she grated, ‘and while he be sorting out who really stole your brother-in-law’s cash, get him to sort this out an’ all!’

Lifting the dish above her head, she sent it crashing at the woman’s feet.

*

‘I can’t . . . I can’t go any further!’ Pain, sharp and regular, had moved from Emma’s back into her stomach, each pang snatching the breath from her lungs.

‘Is it the crack on the head you took?’

Emma shook her head as another swift pain robbed her of speech.

‘You mean, it’s the baby! The child be coming?’ Daisy looked wildly about the darkened streets as Emma gasped again. ‘We ’ave to go on.’ She grasped her friend about the waist urging her forward. ‘I ain’t never birthed no child, I don’t know what to do!’

They had to go on. Emma forced one foot in front of the other. But where . . . where could they go?

‘No more, Daisy, no more. I can’t . . . I can’t!’

Tears coursing down her cheeks, Daisy held the half-fainting figure in her arms. Ahead the black mass of both churches rose solid against a sky beginning to give way to dawn. The Vicarages would be close by, not that she had ever been there; surely they would help Emma? But if they refused, if they turned her away . . .

Feeling hands clutch her arm as a fresh spasm of pain shot through the girl slumped against her, Daisy clenched her teeth. The risk was too great, they had to go where help was assured.

‘Not far,’ she murmured, urging Emma on again. ‘Not far now. You can rest soon.’

Turning left she led Emma slowly down a deserted Meeting Street towards the light shed by a single lantern. Reaching the low building with its pretentious pillars, she lowered Emma to the step. Glancing once at her friend’s huddled figure she tugged the iron bell pull. Then, as its clang sounded beyond the heavy oak door, Daisy lifted her skirts and ran.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Braiding her hair into one long plait, Emma fastened it with a piece of narrow white ribbon.

It was more than a year since she had come to this place, more than a year since her son had been born. Crossing to the wooden cot, she stared down at the sleeping child.

Daisy had left her there on the steps of the workhouse. Memories of that dreadful night returned in full: the pain of her labour, the bitterness of that woman’s accusation, the feeling of being utterly alone.

They had asked so many questions, the wardresses with their stony faces and grey uniforms. Over and over again they had asked who was she, who was her husband, who were her parents, where could they be found? But Emma had given no answer except to turn her head away. Her child had been born in the workhouse. She would not tell them that added to that stigma went the one of bastard.

She touched a finger to the tiny hand curled into a fist and resting against the dark hair curled close to his head.

She had lain three days in a bed shoved against a damp wall, one window high up towards the roof offering little light and no view on the outside world, her only companion an elderly woman who shuffled in twice a day with food, her eyes on the door the whole time lest she was caught talking.

Then they had brought Emma her clothes and she had dressed under the watchful eye of a wardress. She had received no answer to her queries about the baby, merely a snapped instruction, ‘Follow me!’

Eyes closing she watched pictures form in her mind, smelled again the damp cloying air as they passed the laundry room, the strong smell of scouring soda that clung to corridors and stairs.

They had come to a halt before a door marked ‘Governess’ and waited until a voice gave permission to enter. This room had been lighter than the first, tall windows giving easier access to the pale March sunlight. Opposite them a fire had burned in the grate, its surround burnished to a silver sheen.

Black on silver! Emma had trembled as she looked at it.
He
had hair that was black marked with silver.

‘Is this your wife?’

Her trembling stopped at the words of the woman sitting behind the heavy desk and Emma stood as if turned to stone. Over the fireplace an ornate clock ticked, marking the long seconds of silence.

‘Emma! Oh, my dear!’ Firm hands had taken her own. ‘I only arrived back this morning. I found the house deserted, and you . . . I’ve been half out of my mind with worry.’

The hands had pulled her close to his strong body.

‘I thank you for taking such good care of my wife and for the delivery of our child. It is, I trust, in good health?’

Afraid almost to breathe, Emma had stood with lowered eyes and listened to the voice she knew so well.

‘Your son appears perfectly healthy.’

His son! She had trembled then but the arm that had circled her pressed down warningly upon her shoulders.

‘Then once more my thanks, and allow me to reimburse the parish.’

She had caught the glint of a gold coin as it was placed on the desk, and the governess’s murmur of thanks.

Then they had brought her child, swaddled in strips of blanket, but not until they were in the hansom that bore them away had she looked at the man who had come for her.

Emma opened her eyes. Liam had told her then. Told her how Daisy had run all the way to Plovers Croft, had sought him out and told him all that had happened. It had taken less than half a day for him to track down a man who was throwing money at tavern keepers like it was sawdust, one who was quick to confess to robbery when helped by a little persuasion. The constables found the box in his lodgings and that had put an end to the accusation against Emma.

It was Daisy who’d suggested leaving her a day or two where at least she would have a bed to rest in, then when he had insisted on bringing her from the workhouse had advised he call himself her husband.

Emma had wanted to protest. Much as her child deserved a father, she could not go with him. Yet against his determination her strength had failed. And now she was here in his house, in the wooden hut Liam had built for himself.

In the months since her son’s birth he had built on to the hut, adding bedrooms for herself and Daisy, while in return he’d asked nothing though his eyes, whenever he looked at her, begged for her love.

But how could she be sure what he felt for her now would be so in the future? What would he feel as he watched the child grow, knowing he was another man’s son?

Emma loved Liam, loved his kind, gentle ways, but she could not risk hurting him more by marrying him.

Bending over the cot, she touched her lips to the tiny hand. ‘You will never have a father, my darling,’ she whispered against those tight-curled fingers, ‘but I will love you, I will love you all my life.’

Climbing into her own narrow bed, she turned down the lamp. The name her child would bear would be that of the preacher man. One so innocent, the other so wicked. As wicked as the man she’d met in Felton woods!

Tiredness carrying her into the realms of sleep she moaned softly as black eyes regarded her, the silver streaks on his head glinting as he laughed. But the voice in her head was Jerusha’s.

‘
. . . he will bear his father’s name . . .
’

Carrying her stool from the house, Jerusha set it beneath the branches of a tree heavy with summer foliage. The months since the passing of winter had been hot and dry and the smell of earth closets hung thick on the evening air. Settling herself on the stool, she looked out over the parched heathland towards where Plovers Croft had once held a covey of houses, to where she had spent the years with Joseph. She fingered the empty third finger of her left hand. But now all of that was gone and soon she would be gone also. But where old life fades, a new one springs; and such a one had been born in the town where two churches watched over it from a hill top.

The silence had told her of it long months since, as it had told her many things; the heartbreak of a woman, the ambitions of one man, the despair of another, and of a fear that would soon sweep the village, taking more than one into the arms of death.

Drawing a slow, deep breath she squinted into the setting sun.

The end was nigh.

There had been no word from the man he had made his head groom. Paul Felton stared out over the gardens of Beaufort House. There had been no word of a message to his brother from Doe Bank and in the week since his return he had failed to find any sign of Emma Price.

Carver had done a good job of keeping him away from home, always having some business or other that was of the utmost importance, always insisting it must be his brother who attended to it, and always wielding his authority as guardian.

But now he was of age. Carver could no longer threaten him with an institution, nor send him anywhere against his will. He would have no more to do with the business until he had found Emma.

Turning on his heel, Paul strode out of the house and across the yard to the stables.

Carver, it seemed, was sole owner of all the shares in the new canal venture. Paul wiped one hand across a brow moist with perspiration. It was easy to guess how he had acquired Langton’s portion, the man was an inveterate gambler, but Arthur Payne? That man was more of a fool than ever his father had been, but to relinquish such a prize . . . he would not have done that easily. Carver must have had some hold on him, but what he would not say. In fact, his brother had said remarkably little about the entire affair, and had fallen into total silence whenever the subject of Emma had been raised.