A Time Like No Other (3 page)

2

Lally left the house through the kitchen when she was sure that Biddy would be elsewhere, since she knew she would be questioned on where she thought she was off to!

It was a week since the funeral and the world still felt unreal. She had sat in the bedroom that she and Chris had shared, curled up in the rocking-chair, her feet tucked under the skirt of the black gown Biddy insisted on putting her in each morning, the two dogs, Chris’s dogs, Fred and Ally, beside her. The two bewildered animals huddled against her wherever she went, for she was the nearest they could get to their missing master and she was glad of their warmth and devotion. She stared with unfocused eyes into the applewood fire – there was no coal and they had no money to buy any until the rents came in – and her wandering mind wondered what she was to do with the rest of her life without Chris. She actually didn’t even knowingly do that, for her mind seemed to be drowning under roaring sea waves that threatened to swamp her and she felt herself to be doomed to spend the rest of her life curled up in her chair with the feel of Chris’s thick blond hair soft under her fingers as he lay motionless on the gate on which they had carried him into the great hallway of The Priory. It was a nightmare picture of the future without him and as she slipped down the back stairs she had known that if she didn’t get away from the house even for a little while she would go out of her mind.

She was wearing her midnight-blue riding habit, the one Chris had liked so much. It had the usual full skirt with a train that could be hooked up at the side but underneath she wore a pair of skin-tight dove-grey kid trousers so that if she felt like it she could ride astride, which she had usually done when out with Chris. Her tall top hat with the dashing bright scarlet ribbon tied round it was left on her bed. Her hair was short, curls cropped close to her skull, and beneath it her pale face was elfin and her brilliant eyes, which Chris had likened to turquoise, were dulled with painful grief. The dogs were at her heels.

The maids, Jenny and Clara, left on their own, were busy following Biddy’s directions to chop vegetables – of which there were plenty growing in the garden – ready to be made into a hearty soup for their evening meal. Biddy had gone upstairs to oversee the feeding and dressing of the babies who were in the care of Dora, Jenny and Clara’s fourteen-year-old sibling – of whom there were plenty in their large family – employed only yesterday. Their mam was glad of the work and the girl was experienced in the care of infants, for their labourer’s cottage overflowed with them since Ned Akroyd was a lusty man. Mrs Stevens, as they called her, would not be down for a while but there was to be no lolling about, she had told them and the two sisters knew she meant it. Their young mistress’s milk had dried up on the day they brought their master home and Mrs Stevens and their Dora were having the devil’s own job to get Master Alec on to the cow’s milk he lustily refused to drink.

The two maids looked up as their young mistress entered the kitchen, their eyes wide, their faces filled with sympathy, for it must be awful to be a widow at the age of twenty. Their busy hands stilled and Jenny, who had been with the Frasers the longest, ventured a word.

‘Tha’ off, Miss Lally?’ They all called her Miss Lally and had always done so, for she had never looked more than fourteen even on her wedding day.

‘Yes.’

‘’Appen Carly’ll go wi’ thi’.’

‘I won’t bother him, Jenny,’ she answered, continuing through the enormous kitchen to the back door.

Jenny looked suitably disapproving. ‘Nay, tha’ll never go alone. Not . . .’ She had been about to say ‘not at a time like this’ but Miss Lally’s expressionless face stopped her and she wished desperately that Mrs Stevens would come downstairs, for she was the only one who seemed able to manage poor Miss Lally.

‘I won’t be long, Jenny,’ Lally said tonelessly, opening the back door and slipping through with Fred and Ally close to her skirt. For a moment she remembered the day Chris had brought the two setter pups home just after they were married, laughing at her delight as he tipped them into her lap. She and Chris were always laughing.

‘What are you going to call them?’ she had asked.

‘Fred and Ally,’ he had told her solemnly.

‘Fred and Ally!’ She had inspected them. ‘But they’re both bitches.’

‘I know. Roly and I had a German teacher called Frederick and a French teacher called Alphonse and these two reminded me of them, don’t ask me why. We were rather fond of Frederick and Alphonse, Roly and I. They were so easily diverted from the lesson and one day we saw them out together strolling across the top of Skircoat Moor thinking themselves unobserved. They were holding hands!’

‘Two men?’

‘Yes, there are such . . . such things, my darling. Love is not always restricted to that between males and females . . .’ and he had proceeded to tell her of this condition. Chris had educated her on many subjects! Chris . . . oh Chris . . . what am I to do without you?

Carly was as startled as the maidservants. He had been tenderly grooming Master Chris’s gelding, Ebony, who was restless under his hand because he had had no proper exercise since his master’s death.

‘Nay, Miss Lally wheer’s tha’ off to?’ His weather-beaten face looked as disapproving as the maids’ as he did his best to hold in the beautiful animal.

‘I’m . . . not sure, Carly, but if you would saddle Merry for me I’d be obliged. I might . . .’

‘Wha’?’ Carly asked suspiciously, for he knew Mrs Stevens would box his ears if he allowed Miss Lally to go off on her own.

‘Just a ride, Carly. To get out of the house. Perhaps to the edge of Moor Wood.’

Moor Wood. That wasn’t far. In fact if he stood by the paddock gate he could keep her in sight. For a moment he hesitated; after all the poor little woman had just suffered the worst thing that could happen to a woman and at the young age of twenty, so could you blame her for feeling as she did? She’d been stuck in that bloody big house all this time with all them women and if she felt the need to have a bit of a gallop across the park who was he to stop her? She had them dogs with her, big dogs, gentle, affectionate and kind, but let anyone make a move they didn’t like against their master, and now their mistress – as he supposed they belonged to her now – they could be fierce as tigers.

He saddled the chestnut mare who greeted Lally with joy, whinnying a welcome, and when he opened the paddock gate Miss Lally had her out in the park and across the rough grass like a bullet out of a gun, the dogs a streak of black and white behind her. But she did not head for the trees as she had promised but raced across the parkland, leaping a dry-stone wall and vanishing from his sight. She was making for the moorland beyond Appleton Farm, the moorland that rose in a shrouded mist at the back of The Priory. He groaned, for Mrs Stevens would have his hide when she discovered that the young mistress had persuaded him to saddle her mare and not only that but to open the paddock gate and usher her through. Shaking his head, he returned to the fretful gelding who tried to bite him.

‘Bugger!’ he swore.

She was sitting on an old gate when he saw her, the mare tethered beside her, the dogs lying with their noses on their paws. It was mid-afternoon but already drawing towards twilight. She was gazing out across the winter moorland, over which lay a filmy veil of soft, dull mist, but it did not quite hide the panoramic view, for the sun was not yet fully set. There was a lilac hue about the tops and a robin was singing without a care in the world, the sound mixed with the plaintive bleating of sheep on the lower folds of the hills. Her eyes were shadowed and she did not seem to hear his approach until the dogs sprang to their feet and bristled, their paws splayed, their muzzles lifted, for he had Max and Dandy with him. Piper whickered a welcome to her mare and Lally turned indifferently, giving him the attention she might have bestowed on a sheep that had wandered up from the lower slopes. For all she cared it could have been tinkers, gypsies or vagabonds, the travellers who roamed the country looking for work and who would do her serious harm for the farthing in her pocket.

It was a Sunday and he had called at the Priory to pay his respects, or so he told himself, to the widow, only to find it in turmoil with the woman, Mrs Stevens, raging at the stable lad who stood sullenly at the back door, his attitude saying that whatever she berated him for was not his fault. He ran to take Harry’s horse in great relief, touching his forelock, glad to be away from the woman’s icy anger.

‘Mrs Stevens, is something wrong?’ Harry asked her as he dismounted.

‘Indeed there is, Mr Sinclair. Lally . . . Mrs Fraser has gone off on her mare and this . . . this fool allowed it. God only knows . . .’

‘Mrs Stevens, you can hardly blame the groom, for Mrs Fraser is a grown woman and mistress of this house. It is not up to him—’

‘Thank you, Mr Sinclair, but Mrs Fraser, as you must understand, is not herself.’

‘Of course, I apologise.’

The housekeeper was beside herself and her grey eyes flashed at him in annoyance, for who was he to interfere. At once he beckoned to the groom to fetch back his animal and the man did so gratefully, scurrying away into the enormous stable.

‘I’ll find her, Mrs Stevens, and bring her back safely if the groom will tell me in which direction she went.’

With the information he needed he had galloped off where the stable lad had indicated.

‘Lally.’ He spoke now to her unheeding back, his voice gentle, for this woman was grieving badly. ‘Your Mrs Stevens is in a fearful state, giving what for to your stable lad for saddling your horse and allowing you out of the yard.’

‘Is she? Well, I’m sorry about that but I knew if I told her where I was going she would have stopped me. You see I had to get away, Mr Sinclair. The place is empty without . . .’ Her voice trailed off and there was silence as though she had forgotten what it was she was talking about.

Harry tied up his own animal and very carefully climbed up on the old gate and sat beside her. The four dogs settled uneasily on the tufted grass. There were some cows in a field further down the slope who stared at the two humans, watching them with a keen interest until one of the dogs stood up, slipped under the gate and advanced in their direction and the cows retreated.

‘I hoped for a cup of tea,’ Harry said casually.

‘What?’ She turned to look at him as though he had spoken in Swahili.

‘I called at the Priory for afternoon tea. Is that not the custom? Fifteen minutes and no more and on no account leave your hat or stick in the hall. My mother was, apparently, a stickler for the conventions.’ He grinned endearingly and her mouth twitched at his attempt at humour.

‘My mother was just the opposite. We never knew who would call or when. That’s why I’m as I am.’

‘And how is that?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t give a damn for the rules of society and neither did . . . did Chris. That’s why we . . .’

‘Roly’s the same,’ he said quickly.

She did smile this time as the memories of Roly, Chris and herself washed over her for an enchanted moment, then the smile slipped away and with a polite nod in his direction she climbed down from the gate. At once he was beside her, reaching for the reins of her animal, handing them to her, ready to continue his gentle approach but suddenly he knew that would not do. She must be made, even this early in her widowhood, to set her feet on the path towards the future for herself and her children.

‘I thought I might also help you with the farms. You have no agent, I believe, and there must be . . . be many things that need attending to.’

She turned to stare in astonishment. ‘Things, what things?’

‘Perhaps I could ride with you to call at each farm and see what needs doing. I admit I know nothing of farming but the tenants should know there is still someone in authority keeping an eye on things.’ Though God knows, he wanted to add, Chris Fraser was the most lackadaisical landlord in the county and the tenants had probably paid not a farthing in rent for months, or even years. The old man, Chris’s father, had been the same and if the tenants were not supervised as he supervised his own labourers, they would drift along, week after week, with no planting done, beasts left to themselves except for their most basic needs, and if Chris Fraser had paid no heed to the state of the farm buildings they would probably be falling down around their ears.

She looked confused and yet, as on the day of the funeral when he spoke to her in the conservatory, a small gleam shone in her eyes. It was like a tiny light that lifted the darkness, not enough to illuminate a tunnel but which nevertheless showed perhaps a way to go on.

‘Your boys must have something to inherit, Lally. I know they are young yet, babies really, but someone has to look after their inheritance until they are able to do so themselves and there is no one but you.’

She winced and he knew he had been brutal but with that woman at the Priory so protective of her and all the servants treading softly about her in order not to upset the new widow someone must drag her away from her sorrow, fresh as it was, and set her on a road that would not only give her a purpose in life but be of value to her children and to her.

‘Mr Sinclair, you seem to forget I have just lost . . . lost the only man I have ever loved . . .’

His own heart flinched then and he turned away from her so that she would not see the expression on his face. What the devil was the matter with him? Why should he feel the gnawing in his chest which her words had caused him, for this woman, whom he had hardly seen since her marriage to Chris Fraser, was nothing to him. And why was he offering to help her run her farms, he who knew nothing of farming and, besides, had his own three mills to run? He must be off his head. What was he doing here skulking about on the moor when he had work he could be doing at High Clough where several new power looms had just been installed and a carding engine, the largest machine in the industry, was giving his overseer some problems. Taking afternoon tea! Bloody hell, if his competitors in the industry could see him now they would think he had lost his mind. But something about this girl, this woman, drew him to her, to her sadness, which he wanted to alleviate, but she had just lost, as she said so forlornly, the only man she had ever loved and how could he expect her to snap out of it in a matter of days. No more than a fortnight, less, since wild Chris Fraser had broken his foolish neck and his young widow could not be expected to . . . to . . . what . . . ? He didn’t know.