Pit Bank Wench (36 page)

Swallowing a fresh surge of guilt and pain she remembered the look in his eyes when she had shaken her head, a look of hopelessness and despair. He had listened then while she told him all: told him of her father’s betrayal of Carrie, the death of her family and of her rape; told him all except the name of the man who had ruined her.

‘’Twas a mortal sin your father committed.’ Liam had taken her hand. ‘And a great one that was done against you. But you must not blame yourself and you cannot go on paying for the sins of others. You have a life of your own, Emma, a life that should bring happiness as well as sorrow. I could bring you happiness, I know I could, if you would only say yes.’

But she had not said yes. She reached a pan from a nail hammered into the wooden wall. Liam would be a good father to her son and a loving husband to her, yet still she had refused him. There were no secrets left between them, no barrier to a life with him, so what was it held her back? Paul Felton would not look for her again. He had seen his brother’s son. It was no longer the hope of marriage to Paul that held her back. But would marriage to him have brought her happiness or would the shadow of another man have destroyed it? She closed her eyes, picturing Paul’s open boyish face, but saw only dark eyes topped by darker hair through which swept two streaks of silver.

In the silence of his study Carver rested one hand on the drawer that held that paper. He had placed it there the day Cara Holgate tried her little trick. Her deception had backfired. She had gambled and lost. He could have carried out his threat, gone to Court and taken their every last farthing, but he had not. Why? For old time’s sake? No. He smiled cynically. It had been enough to see defeat on that once attractive face.

She had recognised that her tricks were over so far as Wednesbury was concerned. Carver remembered the venom spitting from green-gold eyes as Cara called down the vengeance of hell upon his head before she and Melissa had finally retired to Rugeley. But hell had already taken its vengeance on Carver Felton. Pride had driven him to commit rape, driven him to deny his brother marriage to a miner’s daughter, then pride had turned to jealousy and lies as he came to realise his own love for Emma Price, and finally to misery when it became too late to tell Paul, too late to give them what they’d both desired.

Imagine Cara’s triumph had she known. Known he had been vanquished by an enemy more dangerous and more lethal than she could ever be. He had recovered yet the disease had destroyed him as effectively as it had killed Paul.

‘
I am sorry . . .
’

The words of the doctor making his final examination rang in Carver’s mind as they rang nightly.

‘
. . . typhoid infected the testicles. It is regrettable but virtually certain: you will never be able to father a child.
’

Infertile. He almost laughed. Oh, Cara, how you would have enjoyed hearing that!

But he had let her go without learning of it, had turned his back on her as he had turned his back on the paper in that drawer. He had not read it, nor since Paul’s death had he agreed to speak to his brother’s solicitor or hear his will read.

It was his fault. If it had not been for that greed for power . . . his hand tightened on the gleaming brass handle of the drawer. It should have been he who died!

But all the self-recrimination, all the regrets in the world, would not bring Paul back. All that was left was for Carver to do what his brother might have asked, read the last words he had dictated. It was a duty that could bring him no pleasure but one he had put off for too long. The time had come to face it.

Pulling open the drawer, he drew out the paper. Slowly, the very act bringing a lump to his throat, he unfolded it. The writing scrawled uncertainly across the page relayed Paul’s last words to him. Blinking against the tears suddenly clouding his vision, he began to read.

His love and forgiveness.
Tears he had held back for so long ran freely down Carver’s face. After all the unhappiness he had caused his brother, Paul had left his love and forgiveness. Why could he not have condemned him, cursed him even? That would have been easier to read than the words of that letter.

But another power had cursed him. A power that had shattered his plans and his life with one single blow; taken his brother and his own hope of an heir. There would be no other Felton after him, no child of Paul’s to carry the name, no child of his to inherit! But that had not been all the curse settled upon him. He had learned his true reason for denying any marriage with the Doe Bank girl. He, Carver Felton, was in love with her.

Letting the paper fall to the desk he laughed softly, a dry humourless sound.

Even learning that had come too late. Emma Price was married. She was as forbidden to him as he had forbidden her to his brother.

Leaving the letter where it had fallen, Carver rose and left the room. There was still one duty he could perform for Paul. He would hear his brother’s will and see that it was carried out.

‘There are a few bequests . . .’

Carver sat uneasily in the solicitor’s office. This was something he did not want to do; it would finally mark Paul’s passing.

‘I do not need to hear them.’ He spoke tersely. ‘Whatever my brother wished is to be adhered to, to the very letter.’

‘Of course, Mr Felton.’ The man nodded, looking at him over heavy horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘The smaller bequests, those to his household servants, can be dealt with immediately, but . . .’

‘But?’ Carver’s eyes rested on the man who suddenly seemed less at ease.

‘The final bequest.’ The spectacles slipped forward on his nose as the solicitor bent over the papers on his desk. ‘Perhaps it would be better for me to read it out to you?’

‘Finally . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘Finally, I leave the remainder of my estate in its entirety to my brother’s son . . .’

Driving back to Felton Hall, Carver laughed long and loud. It was nothing more than he deserved. Paul had left everything to a child that could never be. He had thought his brother would marry and beget a child at some future date. The irony of it! He laughed again. Not only could Carver never beget a child, he could never marry the woman he loved. Had Paul’s letter to him carried a curse it could have been no more bitter than this knowledge.

‘I said for you to be away about your business!’

Emma reeled from the blow that caught her cheek and sent her sprawling to the ground.

‘I’ll have no woman interfering in mine, and you’ll do no more of it with any man once I be through with you!’

Raising one fist above his head, the brawny Irishman reached the other to the neck of her blouse, using it to drag her to her feet.

‘And I will have no man strike a woman!’

Ice cold fury in every word, Liam caught the man by the shoulder, spinning him into the hard fist that waited.

‘You have struck your last against a woman or against a lad!’ Blow after blow followed his words as Liam’s temper broke. ‘Try a man for a change, Michael Flynn. See how you fare against one as big as yourself – and beg the little people to help you for I swear this day ’tis yourself will be beaten to a pulp!’

‘No!’ Emma scrambled to her feet as the man who had struck her measured his length beside her. ‘No more fighting, please, Liam!’

‘This man has asked to be taught a lesson long enough.’ He breathed hard. ‘Now he is to be given the teaching of it.’

‘No, Liam.’ Emma clutched at his arm. ‘No more!’

‘You hear that, Michael Flynn?’ He stood over the fallen man who was wiping blood from his mouth. ‘The woman you attacked asks you be given no more of the hiding you deserve. But you will be gone from here within the hour, for ’tis a brave man you’ll be to stay.’

After watching the man slink away, he followed Emma into the wooden building he and the rest of the men had erected as a canteen where she could cook and serve the meals they were glad to buy.

‘Be you badly hurt, lad?’

‘I didn’t play my mouth, Mr Brogan, though Michael Flynn said I did.’

Watching the lad, no more than twelve years old, wince as Emma held a wet cloth against his cut face, Liam felt his fury return. He should have ignored Emma’s plea, should have dealt with Flynn as Flynn had dealt with the boy. As for striking Emma . . . He glanced at her, at the red weal that would become a bruise . . . He should have killed the swine!

‘Get you back to my hut.’ Liam smiled at the lad as Emma applied a soothing ointment to the boy’s cuts. ‘Rest you there for the day, none will disturb you. Go along now and don’t fret over your work, you’ll not lose by the leaving of it.’

‘He’s little more than a child,’ Emma said as the boy left. ‘He should be home with his mother, a boy needs a mother’s love.’

As a man needs the love of a wife. His heart aching with the need to hold her, Liam watched her place a fresh towel against her cheek.

‘That was the cause of his beating. The men tell me the lad was talking of his desire to be home, one he has spoken of many times since coming to England. That riled Flynn, who I think feels the same but is afraid to say so. That was the true cause of his hitting the lad.’

‘Then why not let the boy return to Ireland?’

‘It’s not the easy thing you be thinking.’ Liam shook his head. ‘The boy came here to find work, work that would keep his mother from starvation.’

Emma’s thoughts flashed to the child who had been born to her. Was he not the most precious thing in her life? Would she not gladly starve rather than have him unhappy? Would not the boy’s mother feel the same love for her son?

‘I think she would rather have him home,’ Emma said quietly.

‘Even so, he could not travel alone, the docks be none too safe a place for a lad as young as him.’ Liam shook his head. ‘And there are none here ready to return, we all have families who need the money we send.’ He could have added that he would gladly have taken the lad back to Ireland if only Emma would come too, as his wife. He could have said it but he let the words remain where only he could hear them.

Turning away, he returned to the digging. He loved her too much to cause her to feel guilt, or to have her marry him just to end a boy’s homesickness.

‘There is a way he might get home.’

The last of the meals served and the dishes washed, Daisy sat listening to Emma’s account of her day. Her own anger had flared as she heard about Flynn striking Emma, but now she spoke more calmly.

‘Brady . . .’ She blushed prettily. ‘He was telling me only yesterday that the priest up at the church on the hill . . . the one whose spire be green . . . well, he’s travelling to Ireland this coming Thursday. I bet he’d take the lad.’

A priest! Emma’s thoughts moved quickly. No one would rob or harm a lad travelling with a priest.

Reaching for her shawl, she gathered her son into it.

‘Well now, Daisy Tully.’ She mimicked a soft Irish brogue. ‘Why don’t we be after asking?’

‘And what church do you attend?’

Holding the sleeping child close against her, Emma heaved an inward sigh. They had sat for almost an hour answering one question after another.

‘I attended Chapel until . . . until two years ago, but not any longer.’

Seated opposite her, his clerical robe reaching his boots, four-cornered hat on a nearby table, the priest fingered the crucifix hung on a gold chain about his neck.

‘’Tis as well,’ he snapped. ‘Chapel’s not after being a true church. Heathen, that’s what it is, heathen!’

The child stirring in Emma’s arms, Daisy inched forward on her chair, her voice sharp with impatience. ‘Father James, we just want to know, will you allow the boy to travel with you to Ireland?’

‘All in good time!’ The priest crossed one booted foot over the other. ‘All in good time. There be questions yet needing an answer. Tell me, young woman, what religion was it yourself was brought up in?’

Daisy’s exasperation flared. ‘I don’t see what this has to do with letting a lad travel home with you!’

‘Maybe you don’t,’ he answered blandly. ‘But you’ll answer all the same, supposing you wish me to take him.’

For several moments Daisy stared incredulously at the man regarding her. Then she was on her feet, eyes afire.

‘I’ll tell you the religion I was fetched up in!’ she flashed. ‘The religion of the workhouse. There was little time there given over to prayer, other than the one asking you survive near starvation and the punishments that were meted out, and no time at all spent bowing and scraping before an altar. Hard work was the Gospel they preached and obedience the Creed; but then, there was no priest either, desiring to know all the ins and outs of a person’s life before offering a helping hand to a child. That is your religion, Father. It’s one you’re welcome to and one I can well do without!’

Treating him to a scalding glance, Daisy threw her shawl about her. ‘I’ll wait for you outside, Emma. The air there might be laden with the smoke of foundries but I find it more to my taste than the stink of hypocrisy!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Emma apologised as Daisy stormed out. ‘My friend is a little overwrought . . .’

‘No need to say more.’ The priest held up one hand. ‘Servants of Our Holy Mother Church have long been subjected to the abuse of the Godless.’

‘Daisy has a faith as strong as any.’ Emma rose to her friend’s defence. ‘She has love in her heart for the Lord, though she was not taught it in church, and what is as important to Him, she also feels a love for her fellow men. I believe you have given me your answer, sir.’ Her own childhood teaching strong in her she did not give him the title ‘Father’. ‘I thank you for your time. Goodnight to you!’