Break of Dawn by Rita Bradshaw Read Free Book Online

resigned herself to the fact that she was destined to be an old maid. After one brief affair of the heart when she was eighteen years old, seven years ago now, which had ended badly, she hadn’t had another beau. Working all hours as she did, she rarely made use of her half-day off on a Sunday afternoon, which made the chance of meeting someone non-existent. But now the void in her life was filled with Sophy. The tiny baby – she couldn’t weigh more than five pounds – had had her heart from the moment she’d set eyes on her, still covered in blood and slime from her mother’s womb.
    ‘Aye, well, it’s a good job someone does.’ Kitty patted her daughter’s arm before turning away. ‘I’m off to bed, lass. Your da’s already snorin’ fit to wake the dead, bless him.’
    ‘’Night, Mam.’ Bridget stood looking down at Sophy for anothermoment or two before beginning to get ready for bed. In her cold little cell of a room she had always whipped off her dress and apron as fast as she could, and pulled her thick flannelette nightdress over her shift and petticoat. Even with the feather-filled eiderdown she had treated herself to a few winters back to augment the coarse brown blankets on her bed, she’d lain shivering for half an hour or more, no matter how tired she was. Now she undressed in front of the range, relishing the warmth, and was always asleep as soon as she snuggled under the covers heaped on the mattress. Sophy sometimes snuffled and sucked at her fingers but she didn’t mind that; it was comforting and flooded her with a quiet joy to know the baby was close at hand.
    After laying her clothes on one of the armchairs and pulling on her nightdress, Bridget knelt down to say her prayers. Her parents had been born and raised as staunch Protestants in Ireland, leaving the Old Country for a new life in England before she was born, and had brought their only daughter up to believe unquestioningly in a Protestant God. Kitty had been sad when there were no more babies after Bridget, but had accepted it as God’s will and got on with her life, and there was much of her mother’s pragmatic approach to life in Bridget. Her prayers reflected this. First, she recited the Lord’s Prayer as she did each night, following this with requests for protection for each member of the household, lingering longer over little Sophy. The last third of her prayers centred on her own needs and since Sophy had been born, they were simple. ‘Please let the master and mistress keep her but let me look after her because You know they don’t really want her, dear God. I love her and I know her mam would have wanted me to take care of her. Bless Mrs Lemaire now at peace with You, in Your Holy Name. Amen.’
    After putting out the oil lamp in the centre of the kitchen table, Bridget snuggled into bed by the faint light given out by the range and was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
    Not so Jeremiah.
    It was pitch black in the bedroom; Mary insisted that not a chink of light was allowed into the room, and the heavily-linedvelvet curtains at the window were closed against the storm raging outside. The storm inside his being was another matter. For the first time in his life he had been cast in the role of a transgressor and he was burning with righteous indignation.
    He lay stiff and silent, listening to his wife’s steady breathing and small, ladylike snores.
    Mary had made him feel like a sinner, like the worst kind of miscreant – and why? he asked himself for the thousandth time. Because he had wished to spare her the knowledge of his sister’s ignominy, that was all. No good purpose would have been served by offending her delicate sensibilities, and if things had remained as they were – as he had expected them to remain – she would never have known the shameful truth. He had
told
her that it had been his parents’ decision to explain Esther’s leaving with the story about warmer climes and a French