Candles in the Storm (17 page)

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Authors: Rita Bradshaw

Tags: #Romance, #Sagas, #Historical, #Fiction

BOOK: Candles in the Storm
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‘Evenley House? Aunt Wilhelmina?’
 
One of the two young ladies on the chaise-longue spoke up, and such was her tone of voice that Daisy’s eyes opened wider.
 
‘Yes, Aunt Wilhelmina.’ Her father’s reply was terse.
 
‘It seems that once again your aunt is in need of a nurse companion.’
 
‘I’m not surprised.’ This from William who, in spite of his father’s furious expression, continued speaking directly to Daisy as he said, ‘My aunt averages two or three companions a year. I think the longest one has lasted is seven months. Aunt Wilhelmina is what you might call . . . idiosyncratic.’
 
Daisy hadn’t heard the word before but she didn’t need further prompting to understand what was being implied.
 
‘Thank you, William.’ Sir Augustus’s tone was icy but it seemed to have no effect on his son who sat back in his chair, shaking his head as he muttered, ‘Aunt Wilhelmina.’
 
Daisy was at a loss. She looked from William to the cold elegant woman sitting in the chair in front of the fire, but what she read in that lady’s expression of disdain brought her eyes quickly back to the master of the house. Sir Augustus was glaring at his son but as he felt Daisy’s eyes on him turned to her, and now he was every inch the master of the household as he said, ‘The position is not one which would normally be offered to someone of your’ - he had been going to say ‘kind’ but knowing how his son would react changed it to - ‘age, but in view of your service to my son I felt it appropriate. Of course my sister herself would have to decide whether you are suitable or not. You would be paid monthly, and in view of the circumstances it would be more generous than normal. Shall we say . . .’
 
He thought swiftly. His servants were paid anything from a pound a month for the scullery and chambermaids to nine pounds each for Kirby and Middleton, and in the allowance he paid his sister he knew Wilhelmina put by a monthly provision of fourteen pounds for her staff. These comprised a cook-cum-housekeeper, the cook’s husband who acted as chauffeur-cum-gardener-cum-handyman, and their daughter who was the maid, along with the resident nurse companion of the time.
 
He did not ask Wilhelmina for a breakdown of their respective wages in the accounts she had to provide each year, but if he suggested to his sister that he would be willing to pay for this particular nurse companion himself, she would most certainly jump at the financial saving she would make.
 
‘Shall we say six pounds a month?’ he said smoothly. ‘And of course your uniform, along with any other incidentals will be taken care of.’
 
Daisy stared at the tall autocratic man in front of her. She could see no resemblance to William in his father. It was a strange thought, a ridiculous one for such a time as this, the moment when she had been offered the world in one huge bountiful package. Six pounds.
Six pounds
. With six pounds a month she could pay Tilly’s rent for her and provide for her sister-in-law’s family as well as her granny and Margery. No, no - it would be better for Tilly and her bairns to come to her da’s cottage and keep that going. Her da had built his smoke house there and he had the lean-to for the wood and everything. Their cottage was much better than Tilly’s. Her granny could sleep where she’d always slept, and Tilly and her bairns could have the two big beds and Margery Daisy’s tiny bedroom. The two younger women could see to her granny, and Margery would have family round her when the bairn was born. It was the answer to everything. It was, it was.
 
But what if Sir Augustus’s sister didn’t like her? Or if William’s aunt’s house was similar to this one? Could she stand that? Could she? And when the answer came it was as though it was from someone else, someone years and years older. Of course she could stand it - what had to be endured
could
be endured. It was as simple as that.
 
Chapter Seven
 
The drive to Evenley House on the outskirts of Fulwell close to the old quarries was an uncomfortable one for Daisy, despite the luxurious carriage, although she was glad to be returning to the area she knew. Sir Augustus’s sister’s establishment was no more than a couple of miles from Daisy’s home village. Nevertheless, the seven or so miles from Greyfriar seemed to stretch on for ever, despite the swiftness of the horse and carriage in which Daisy and the Misses Felicity and Cecilia were travelling.
 
William’s sisters had said not a word - except to each other - since the carriage had left the grounds of their home, but their very silence towards Daisy was an eloquent and bitter statement of their resentment at having to accompany a common chit to their aunt’s residence.
 
They had known better than to argue with their father, however, when he had given the order after sending Daisy to the kitchen for some refreshment. Only William ever dared to do that, and he always paid dearly for it. They had watched and listened as their mother, livid with a rage that made her look years older, icily enquired of their father whether he had gone quite mad. His answer had been such that their mother had done something they had never witnessed before, leaving the room in a swirl of silk and satin and taking no heed of her husband’s command to remain.
 
They had then had to sit and listen to their father explaining to their brother the philanthropic reasoning behind his decision to inflict a fishergirl on their aunt. Neither Cecilia nor Felicity had any fond feeling towards Wilhelmina Fraser, in fact they disliked their father’s sister intensely, but that was beside the point. Impossible and difficult as Aunt Wilhelmina was, she was a Fraser, and that meant she was entitled to a servant who had been trained to a good standard and who knew their place. Whereas this baggage . . . She might look clean enough, but they wouldn’t be at all surprised if the first job their aunt’s other servants had to perform was delousing.
 
In all their murmurings, neither Cecilia nor Felicity had remarked upon the unusual beauty evident in the girl despite her shabby clothes, but it had rankled with them nonetheless.
 
The sisters were well aware of their own plainness; they would have been even if their father had not referred to it at least once a week in some way, along with mentioning that their two elder sisters had managed to snare a husband each despite being afflicted with the same ailment.
 
While Cecilia and Felicity assured each other that they would rather die than take on Bernice’s ageing widower who had been three decades older than his young wife when they had married, or Susannah’s middle-class attorney who wasn’t
quite
a gentleman and whose family had links with - they always whispered this word - tradespeople, they didn’t mean a word of it.
 
A London season - which some years earlier had acquired husbands for their sisters - had come and gone without so much as the sniff of a suitor for either of them, and it had been agonising. Now, at twenty-three and twenty-four years of age, Sir Augustus’s younger daughters were facing the terrifying prospect of permanent spinsterhood.
 
 
It was just after midday when the horse and carriage stopped outside a pair of imposing iron gates set in a high stone wall. The coachman jumped down and opened the gates without being told to do so, and left them open after he had climbed back into his seat and the carriage had rumbled through. They had passed several farms on the journey, and far in the distance Daisy had caught a glimpse of the wind vanes of Fulwell Mill, but once inside the grounds of this house a border of mature trees enclosed them in a small but very private little world.
 
Daisy hadn’t been sure what she’d been expecting, but as they clip-clopped along a pebbled drive of perhaps some two hundred yards, she saw green lawns and neat flowerbeds on either side with the odd wooden bench placed here and there. The flowerbeds were ablaze with colour and there was a distinctly pleasant scent in the air. Then the carriage came to a halt and the house was in front of her.
 
Oh, it was bonny! Daisy thought of the stark grey-stone mansion she had just left, and which she had been half expecting to see again - albeit in smaller form - and instead gazed in delight at the long, two-storey whitewashed house, covered in red and green creeper and with a massive thatched roof which hung down over mullioned windows. Grand undoubtedly but bonny with it.
 
The coachman appeared and opened the carriage door, and when Daisy hesitated, waiting for the ladies to go before her, one of the women flicked her hand, holding up a lace handkerchief under her long thin nose as though there was a nasty smell in the carriage. ‘Go on, go on.’ It sounded irritable and curt, and both women drew their voluminous skirts away from any contact with Daisy’s cloak as she scrambled out, her cheeks burning.
 
She watched the coachman, the same one who had driven the carriage to Greyfriar Hall earlier, help the two ladies down from the carriage, and when they moved towards the heavy oak front door Daisy fell into step a few paces behind. Before they had had a chance to knock the door was opened from within, a small maid clad in a black alpaca dress and starched apron and cap dipping her knee as she said, ‘Miss Cecilia, Miss Felicity.’
 
Neither woman acknowledged the greeting, brushing past the maid as though she didn’t exist, and apparently the girl must have been expecting this because she said quickly, ‘The mistress is in the drawing room, the parson’s just leaving.’
 
‘Oh, lord, not the parson again.’ Cecilia didn’t bother to keep her voice down as she tossed the remark over her shoulder to her sister.
 
Daisy was inside the hall now which was large and wide with a graceful curving staircase rising from the tiled floor some yards in front of them. The doors leading off the hall and the wooden staircase itself were stained a deep mahogany, but the walls were papered in a gold and cream geometrically patterned paper which generally lightened the interior, as did the gold curtains at the windows to either side of the front door. It was bonny, Daisy thought again, watching the plump little red-cheeked maid assist William’s sisters to divest themselves of their fur capes and hats although both women kept their thick cloth coats buttoned.
 
As the maid turned towards Daisy, Cecilia Fraser snapped sharply, ‘Leave her, and announce us.’
 
‘Yes, miss.’ After depositing the capes and hats on the iron hallstand, the maid hurried along to a door at the far end of the hall, the Misses Cecilia and Felicity following at a leisurely pace with Daisy making up the rear. Corridors branched off to either side at the end of the hall, but although large, the house did not carry the same impersonal feel as Greyfriar. A pair of tables holding bowls of brightly coloured flowers stood against the far wall, and the pictures on the walls were of pleasant country scenes rather than the succession of grim portraits Greyfriar Hall had boasted. Nevertheless, the size and splendour of it all was overwhelming, and as Daisy glanced down at herself, the shabbiness of her clothes and in particular the tar stain on her skirt hit her afresh.
 
She heard the little maid knock upon and then open the door, announcing the sisters to her mistress, and as the two women swept past the girl Daisy wondered for a moment if William’s sisters expected her to follow them into the room or wait outside in the hall. It seemed presumptuous to do the former and so she stood where she was, and it must have been the right decision because the door closed, opening a few moments later as the maid exited wheeling a large wooden tea trolley on which reposed various dirty dishes and a coffee pot and cups. She shut the door carefully behind her before lifting her head and smiling at Daisy who smiled back.
 
‘The mistress had a late breakfast with the parson.’ It was said in explanation of the trolley and Daisy nodded. ‘She wasn’t expecting the family to call, you see.’ Daisy nodded again, she didn’t know quite what else to do, and was a little taken aback when the girl, after hesitating for a second, left the trolley where it was and nipped across to her side. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, lass, but don’t take no notice of them two in there, all right?’ she said under her breath. ‘You’d have to be a lord or a duchess to get a civil word from Miss Cecilia or Miss Felicity.’

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