Saddle the Wind by Jess Foley Read Free Book Online

Kelsey and he’s had a word with Mr Savill. Afterwards he said – Dr Kelsey – that I’ll be paid well enough so that I can let Esther have something for her trouble. I don’t doubt she’ll be glad of it.’
    ‘Ah, I daresay she will.’
    ‘And Mr Savill will pay me well – so the doctor says. It might help us all, Ollie.’
    ‘Yes, it might.’ His tone was grudging. He picked up a trowel that lay on the bench beside him. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to get back to work.’
    ‘Yes – and I must get back home and see to Blanche and the others.’ She looked up at him entreatingly. ‘You don’t mind too much, Ollie, do you? Please, say you don’t.’
    He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter much whether I mindor don’t mind. And seeing as Mr Savill pays my wages there’s not a lot I could do about it if I
did
.’
    When she reached the foot of the hill Sarah didn’t go straight to the cottage but went next door to the home of the Hewitt family. Knocking on the scullery door she found Esther cleaning the floor. In the warm kitchen Blanche lay asleep in a nest of cushions and pillows while Arthur and Agnes quietly played nearby. Esther made tea. She was a small, round, agreeable woman with red cheeks and a broad smile, the wife of Jack Hewitt, a shepherd in John Savill’s employ. They had one son, David, who was Ernest’s age. An older son had died of scarlet fever some five years earlier. As the two women sat at the kitchen table Sarah, keeping her voice low, told Esther of what had transpired, ending by asking for her help in the situation. Esther readily agreed and by the time the teacups were empty the matter was settled between them.
    Sarah then did her best to explain matters to Agnes and Arthur as far as they were able to understand. They protested at the news that she would be sleeping away from home for a while, but after assurances that she would be coming back to see them during the daytime they came nearer to accepting the situation. She left them then to go next door where she packed the things that she and Blanche would need. Then, returning to Esther’s cottage she wrapped Blanche warmly against the cold and, with kisses and goodbyes to the children and promises to see them soon, set off back up the hill towards the house.
    That night in the nursery at Hallowford House she lay in the bed beside the crib in which Blanche and the Savill baby lay sleeping. It wouldn’t be long, she knew, before they were awake and demanding to be fed.
    The pillows beneath her head were softer and fuller than those at the cottage and, like the sheets that were drawn up to her throat, were without darns.
    As she lay there in the silence she thought of the children at home in their own beds, and of Ollie. It was an odd feeling lying there alone. It was the first time she and Ollie had slept apart since their marriage. She missed the warmth of his body beside her and the ever present feeling of the children being in the next room. Stranger than the strange bed and the strange room was her separation from everyone.

Chapter Four
    With Arthur and Agnes beside her, Sarah walked up the hill towards Hallowford House.
    August had gone out, and now they were in September. On the heathland over to her right the late-flowering heather was in full bloom while the bracken was turning sere, the hawthorn berries red, and the tall, pink blossoms of the rosebay willowherb had changed almost overnight into candles of cotton-wool-like seeds that drifted away and floated on the breeze like snow. Another summer was dying. Time passed so swiftly. At the end of the previous year Britain had gone to war, fighting the Boers in the Transvaal. It had ended quickly – with Britain’s astonishing and humiliating defeat, a defeat soon followed by the granting to the Boers of ‘complete self-government’ – subject to several attached strings and Her Majesty’s suzerainty.
    To Sarah and many like her some of the events happening in the world outside