A Song Twice Over (7 page)

She had told Luke that too, but felt nothing but her habitual grunt of pride in him when he stood up to her, not aggressively as he could well have done considering his height and the rough work he was used to, but with easy good-humour.

‘I reckon you'll want them to stay overnight, mother.'

‘Why should I want that, Luke?'

She enjoyed these confrontations. Perhaps because no one else, these days, ever confronted her.

‘Because Odette is a good woman. And she's been counting the hours until they got here.'

‘I've nowhere to put them, Luke. Odette knows that.' He smiled. ‘Aye. But you'll have been keeping it from her – to surprise her I reckon – that the little lad could sleep in her bed tonight. And that we could manage a chair by the kitchen fire for his mother.'

Had she found a champion? Cara, her turquoise eyes agleam, would have rushed to thank him had not his mother prevented it, placing herself between them,
her
eyes as shrewd and watchful as ever, in no mind to expose her son – a man with natural inclinations after all – to the obvious temptations of a female in distress.

Not that he required gratitude, returning with an expression of quiet amusement to his chair, stretching out long legs towards the fender where I am still sat in stunned silence by the basket of kittens, while Cara began, very ably, to defend herself.

Just a chair for the night, no need to keep the fire going. She wouldn't dream of accepting such luxury and would be gone in the morning, first thing.

‘Aye. I reckon you will,' said Sairellen. And if, in the meantime, Mrs Thackray would be so kind as to give her the address of Miss Ernestine Baker, the milliner, she would run along there this very minute to meet her mother and perhaps say a word or two of her own about the wages which, if Odette said were owing, then assuredly must be. She wouldn't be long.

‘What about the bairn?' enquired Sairellen.

‘Oh –' Cara's blue-green eyes were widely, innocently open, her mouth curving in an angelic smile. ‘It seems a shame to move him – doesn't it? – poor little thing, quiet as a mouse – and I'll only be half an hour …'

Sairellen sighed.

But a moment later Cara was running down the street called St Jude's, her mind obliterated of all anxieties but the need to find her mother, taking one thing at a time as seemed best to her at crisis points like these, when every problem was urgent, terrible, and to tackle too many at once would overwhelm her.

One thing at a time. First her mother, to be rescued from the spite of Miss Ernestine Baker, to be consoled, defended, reunited with Liam. Then Miss Baker herself, either money to be extracted from her or, if she
could
be charmed, then charmed into taking on Cara in her mother's place she must be. Then – and her heart sank at the thought of it – the sinister landlord of the Fleece, to ascertain to what portion of her wages – once she had them – he felt entitled. Then the long, slow, often humiliating rounds of anybody who might give her work. Anybody. Except the brothel keepers who would not be slow to offer, the elderly, comfortable women one saw in every railway station, every coaching inn, every town square when the daylight was fading, looking for girls to suite one sexual purpose or another.

She had never even remotely considered that. She did not consider it now and was therefore ready to defend herself when she felt a man's hand on her arm; until she saw that it was Daniel Carey.

‘Oh dear God.' And it was a lament, full of grief for what they could have been to one another, anger at the knowledge that they could not. He heard only the anger.

‘What are
you
doing here?'

She was in the most desperate situation of her life, as near the brink of total disaster as she had ever been. How could she pause now in her mad rush to salvage whatever
could
be salvaged – if anything at all – how could she possibly add to the sum total of her disaster by allowing herself to fall in love?

Not now.
Please
– let it be later. When it would be resolved, one way or another, and she would have time to think only of herself. And torn badly, most distressfully by a conflict of racing emotions – a burst of sheer, pure joy at the sight of him, an urgent need to send him away, terror that he might not come back – the tears in her throat causing her to clench her jaw as if in temper, making her voice cool – although he could not know that – she rapped out ‘Wouldn't the pedlar take you back on his cart?'

‘Oh yes. I got on, right enough. And off again.' There had been no sense to it. He knew that. No certainty even, of seeing her again that day. He had simply, suddenly, and most urgently desired to be
here
. And so, once again, he had vaulted over the tail-board of the wagon, already a mile on its homeward track, and had come back to the street called St Jude's with no specific intentions, his aim now extending no further than to draw her into the narrow passage between two darkened warehouses and then into his arms.

‘I had to see you, Cara. Now. I couldn't risk going back to Leeds and then tomorrow finding you gone. I couldn't wait.'

Nothing had ever equalled the ferocity of her gladness. He was all she wanted. For the brief moment in which she allowed herself to rejoice in him, to live
as
herself
for
herself wholly and fully, she knew that there could be nothing more wonderful anywhere in the world than the love and passion and folly vibrating from his body, his mind, to hers.

And then it was the folly, after all, which really counted. The folly she had sworn never to commit again. And how could she give in to it now? How could she?

She could not.

But, choked by her tears and frustrations, she could not tell him so. Nor could he – as unused to love as Cara, although quite comfortable with passion – understand her muttered fears as she began to resist, pushing him away with one hand and holding him with the other, refusing his kisses and then abandoning herself to them almost, never quite, entirely; increasing his fever.

‘Cara – come with me …'

‘Where?' She was scandalized.

‘Just with me – away – Anywhere.'

He had forgotten her parents and her child, forgotten the business which had brought him to Leeds. All he saw was Cara Adeane who did not resemble in any way the kind of girl he had expected to love. And yet it seemed that he loved her. Unwisely. Far too suddenly to be able to cope with it, to go beyond the astonishment, the unease, and convert it to tenderness.

He had been tender, sometimes, with other women in a light-hearted, highly enjoyable fashion, had teased and cajoled and usually had his way. What seemed to matter now was that she should not escape him. And the only way he could be sure of her was physically to possess her. After which – calm in the knowledge that she was his – he would soon learn how to tell her what was in his heart.

And caught up in the heat of his own new emotions, he was angry with her for not understanding this, angry with himself for his sudden inability to communicate.

A moment more and they were bitterly quarrelling.

‘You don't think I can look after you,' he accused her. No, of course she did not.

‘You don't trust me.' It surprised her, even in her condition of near hysteria, that he could think she might. Men did not exist to be trusted. Nor were they put on the earth to look after women. She was very sure of that. They could be loved, of course. They
were
loved.

‘You won't see me again,' he told her.

‘Well – I won't die of that.' But as he turned away white with anger, and strode off down the street, she felt that he had killed her already.

She had not told him of her plight. Once he had turned the corner she would have no way of finding him. And who knew where she might be herself tomorrow?

‘Daniel …' But it was only a whisper with no hope of reaching him, spoken only to comfort herself as she leaned for a moment, feeling sick and shaken and totally desolate, against the stone wall.

And then, slowly, deliberately, she tidied her hair, smoothed her skirts, straightened – almost an inch at a time – her suddenly aching back.

One thing at a time. And she must steady herself now, compose herself, in order to achieve it. First her mother. Then Miss Baker. Then the landlord of the Fleece. Then somebody, somewhere – Please God – to employ her.

But the name in her mind was Daniel.

Gemma Dallam would always remember the first time the Irish girl came to call as the day on which she made up her mind to marry Tristan Gage, her mother's godson.

Not an easy decision. Nor – above all – in the least romantic. But, as the threads came together in her mind, oddly natural.

She must marry someone. She and her mother, for rather different reasons, were both agreed on that. And since she was plain, rich and, at twenty-two no longer in the first bloom of youth, being of a practical disposition and quick wit, short of stature but high in her financial expectations – a combination which made it unlikely that she would ever be courted for love – then surely, among the several who had offered, it would be better to take shallow, charming, undemanding Tristan than a man of greater substance who would exercise the right, with which marriage empowered him, to demand a very great deal.

Better Tristan who was poor and who, having no home of his own, would be glad to remain here in the ancient, inconvenient but – to Gemma – uniquely beautiful manor house her father had purchased with the profits of his weaving sheds, rather than Ben Braithwaite, young autocrat of Braithwaite & Son, worsted manufacturers, who had inherited a tall dark house to go with his mill, complete with Braithwaite family traditions, a tribe of Braithwaite relatives to be entertained, Braithwaite interests to be first and foremost considered; even the vague malice of a widowed mother.

Better Tristan who took little in life very seriously beyond the set of his lace cravat, the cut and quality of his jacket, than Uriah Colclough, master of Frizingley Ironworks and
Non
conformist lay preacher who would require
her
to conform, nevertheless, and most strictly, to the very letter of his moral principles.

Tristan, who saw her fortune only in moderate terms of thoroughbred hunters and good living and would think it ill-bred to question her own expenditure, rather than Jacob Lord of Lord's Brewery who was over-meticulous with money, or the heir to a certain local baronet who, while making her Lady Lark of Moorby Hall would also use her last penny to keep his crumbling, ancestral home intact, and to purchase for his half-dozen noble brothers, a seat in Parliament, a commission in a crack regiment, a sugar plantation in Antigua, appointments in the Foreign Service and in the English Church.

Tristan, who did not love her but would be polite about it, who, like a cat of high and indolent pedigree would require nothing from her but a silk cushion to recline on, a prettily served quota of fresh cream, rather than all those other men who had wanted her to be a
wife
, to be the ‘angel'in her husband's home, the source of his pleasure and procreation, his freshly laundered shirts and hot dinners; to submit herself absolutely to his protection and authority, having no desires beyond his gratification and no opinions beyond those he might choose to give her; to yield sweetly and innocently to his religious beliefs and his sexual whims and fancies; to relinquish everything she owned or might inherit into his grasp, becoming herself
his
possession entirely. So that he might, with truth, be able to say ‘My wife and I are one. And
I
am he.'

As Gemma's mother – and most happily – had chosen to belong to her father.

But Tristan Gage was too light in weight and heart
and
aspirations for that, too much the grasshopper flitting through a lifetime of summer meadows to trouble himself – or her – with such cumbersome thoughts as possession or conjugal authority; and had no particular opinions on anything which mattered to Gemma for her to echo.

Tristan, then, who would never do anything of note in the world but grace it with his charming presence. But who would allow her space in which to breathe. And grow.

She was standing in her father's garden among the late roses, gathering full-blown petals for pot-pourri as the thought struck her. Tristan. Of course. To marry him seemed suddenly not only the best but the obvious solution. And it was as she lay her flat, straw gardening basket down and went into the house to find him and tell him so, that she was waylaid by her mother's iron-grey housekeeper, Mrs Drubb, with the information that ‘a person'had called, asking to see ‘the ladies'.

‘A
person
, Mrs Drubb?' And perhaps it was curiosity alone which led her to the small parlour behind the kitchen where callers who could not be shown into the drawing-room were entertained. For Mrs Drubb made short work, as a rule, of those she judged unworthy of Dallam attention, so that Gemma was interested to find out why this one appeared to have evaded her net.

‘A sewing-woman, Miss Gemma.'

‘Good Heavens – why should I want to see one of those? Is my mother not at home?'

‘She is. But I'd not care to trouble her with a stranger.'

A difficult stranger, perhaps? Fearsome indeed if she had managed to intimidate Mrs Drubb. Or else exceedingly pitiful if she had succeeded in touching
that
crabbed old heart. She must take at least a peep.

‘What kind of woman, Mrs Drubb?'

‘Talkative, miss …
Very
.'

Had she
wheedled
her way in, then, past this cynical and unyielding guardian of her mother's privacy? How very surprising. Clever, too. Yet the first thing she noticed about the ‘person'standing beside a battered carpet-bag and an old wooden hat-box with what looked like French words painted on it, was something which would not have counted with Mrs Drubb at all. Her beauty. Not ‘ladylike'beauty, of course. Not the fine porcelain complexion and soulful eyes, the dainty figure and discreet attractions which Gemma's mother called ‘fashionable', but a gipsy boldness of colouring and carriage, a dazzling contrast of ebony hair, amber skin and long, incredibly turquoise eyes. Too much beauty, perhaps – and too obvious – which any woman of breeding would have toned down to a becoming subtlety so as not to make herself
too
disturbing,
too
much stared at in the street.