CHAPTER ONE
Phoebe Kingston looked across the bed at her sister with a mixture of amusement and irritation. It was just like Jane to arrive and start issuing orders. She had always been like that, but since her marriage had become even more autocratic.
- Jane Bradshaw was tall and had been stately as a girl. Now, approaching her thirty-fourth birthday, she had grown stout and regal. She favoured highly embellished gowns in dark colours, puce, pewter and chocolate being her favourites. The stoutness could be ascribed to her presenting her husband with six pledges of her affection within little more than twelve years, but Phoebe thought it might also have something to do with the large meals her husband Reginald, a Yorkshire mill owner, demanded.
- Phoebe herself was tall, but slender. The sisters both had dark hair which refused to curl. How their fair-haired, diminutive, delicate mother and red-haired father had produced two such tall dark daughters was a mystery. Both, they were told, took after Doctor Kingston's father.
- Mrs Kingston, lying in the bed, was so tiny she barely raised the blankets. She spoke now, in a hoarse whisper. 'I knew you would help us, Jane.'
- 'Well, of course. Reginald and I always meant to help you, after Papa died, but you wanted to be independent. I would have come earlier but for my lying-in. I came as soon as I could safely leave little Hubert with his wet-nurse. Reginald's sisters are quite capable of dealing with the servants, though they are not as strict as I am. However, as soon as you are well enough for the journey, I will take you to Yorkshire. We have an excellent doctor and I will hire a competent nurse.'
- Phoebe pressed her lips together tightly. She would not rise to Jane's provocation. Did she think they had no good doctors here in Buxton? And as for a nurse, none could have cared for her mother with the same devotion she had used during the past two months.
- Mrs Kingston had contracted a chill in September, which had turned to an inflamation of the lungs, and was only just recovering. Doctor Watkins had praised Phoebe for her dedication, and said that without her Mrs Kingston would not be alive today. The medicines she had needed, and the invalid food, had eaten into their tiny income, however, and it had been to save her mother fretting about how they would manage that Phoebe had written to Jane to ask if she would invite Mrs Kingston to stay with her for a few months.
- She had not, however, anticipated Jane's response that they must both come and make their home with the Bradshaws.
- 'You are living here in two rooms, since you had to give up Papa's house. How can you entertain your friends properly in such inferior lodgings? And look at your clothes, they are not at all fashionable.'
- Since Jane's clothes were anything but fashionable, according to what Phoebe had seen in even last year's copies of La Belle Assemblée, given them by a friend, she ignored this slur. Jane automatically disapproved of everything Phoebe did, ignoring their straitened circumstances.
- 'All our friends are here in Buxton,' she protested. 'We could never entertain them at your home. The rooms may be small, but we are content.'
- 'You will soon make new acquaintances. We have a wide circle amongst the Yorkshire gentry and mill owners, and we entertain regularly, for Reginald's commercial interests, you know. As for being content, how can you be without some of the refinements of life? You cannot even afford to pay for the subscription library, or attend the theatre or concerts.'
- 'We could before Mama was ill, and needed so many medicines.'
- Jane snorted. There really was no other word to describe it, Phoebe thought, suppressing her sudden desire to laugh. She was eleven years older and had dominated the nursery and schoolroom. When she married, ten-year-old Phoebe had celebrated by making a bonfire of every possession Jane had left behind her. Clothes, books, sketch books and painting materials had all been heaped on the smouldering embers of the gardener's bonfire, and it had been stirred to glorious life. Phoebe had been discovered capering round it, chanting what she fondly imagined were magic incantations against Jane's ever returning, and tossing the leaves of Jane's diaries onto the flames.
- Her punishment had been severe. Papa had never previously thrashed her, and the most she had ever been confined to her room on bread and water had been a day. The week of solitary confinement during which she had nursed her bruises had, she defiantly maintained, been worth every minute.
- Jane, when told of the wickedness, had claimed to forgive her, but in the thirteen years since had rarely let any meeting pass without some reference to it. If she had not teasingly thanked Phoebe for destroying her diary's youthful indiscretions, it had been a laughing reminder that Reginald had been forced to buy new clothes for her on their return from their wedding journey.
- 'When will Mama be fit to travel?' Jane now asked Phoebe when they left their mother to sleep and retreated to the drawing room. 'I do not wish to leave Reginald and the children for long. And it would be better if you could be settled before the Christmas festivities.'
- 'Doctor Watkins says she must not travel for at least another two weeks.'
- 'I cannot remain here for so long a time. If the weather is clement I will send the carriage for you in two weeks, with a maid I can trust to help you if I have not by then hired a nurse. Fortunately it is only forty or so miles, and if you start early you can do it in a day, while taking it easy for Mama's sake. But my coachman can be trusted to take good care of you.'
- 'Thank you, we are grateful,' Phoebe said. She had to be. There was no alternative, and if her mother wished to remain in Yorkshire it would certainly ease their dire financial situation. Until her illness they had, with care, managed on the tiny income her father had left them. Perhaps her mother would not find it as irksome as she would to be forever grateful to Jane and Reginald, and expressing this gratitude in suitable terms every day.
- 'It is my duty,' Jane said. 'As for you, Phoebe, you can help me by teaching the children. Their governess has given notice, the ungrateful wretch. Just because I asked her to teach Mary, when she said she had only been hired to teach Reggie and Anne. As though a three-year-old made any difference! And the older boys are at school during term time, but she objects to looking after them during the holidays.'
- Phoebe gulped. She had always hated the idea of being a governess, but to be such to Jane's children, spoilt brats as they were, would be intolerable. 'What salary are you offering?' she asked.
- 'Salary? Don't be ridiculous. How can I pay a salary to my own sister? When I offer you and Mama a home the least you can do to repay me is help with the children.'
I hope you enjoyed it and want to find out what happens. If you want to read on, order from a bookstore or ask at your local library. Now also available as an ebook from Amazon, Sony, Kobo, and W H Smith.
- Robert Hale 2009
- ISBN 9780709088325
- Ulverscroft Large Print June 2010
- ISBN 978-1-44480-177-4
- Copyright © 2009 Marina Oliver
