Drop of the Dice by Philippa Carr Read Free Book Online

long time before Benjie came back with the doctor.
    When he saw her he said: ‘She will lose the child.’
    Those were sad days at Enderby. Damaris recovered but she was in despair.
    ‘It seems I shall never have my own child,’ she said.
    Priscilla came over constantly to see her but it was Anita who nursed her and made herself indispensable in the household. Benjie stayed on. He would not go until he knew that Damaris was out of danger.
    I heard the servants whispering.
    ‘It’s this house,’ they said. ‘It’s full of ghosts. How did the mistress come to fall? I reckon it was someone, some thing— that pushed her.’
    ‘There’s never going to be no luck in this house. There’s tales about it that go right back into the past.’
    I began to wonder whether there was anything in it. When it was quiet in the house I would stand below the minstrels’ gallery and fancy that the shadows up there took shape and turned into people who had lived long ago.
    Benjie rode over often during that spring and summer, and during one of his “visits Anita came to me in the schoolroom looking radiant.
    ‘I have news for you, Clarissa,’ she told me. ‘I’m going to be married.’
    I stared at her in amazement and then suddenly the truth dawned on me. ‘Benjie!’ I cried.
    She nodded. ‘He has asked me and I have said yes. Oh, most joyously have I said it. He is the kindest man I ever knew. In fact, he is a wonderful man and I can’t believe my good luck.’
    I hugged her. ‘I am so pleased… so happy. You and Benjie. It’s obvious… and absolutely right.’
    I felt that a great responsibility had been lifted from my shoulders. This concentration on responsibility was becoming an obsession. Benjie was no longer someone to whom I owed something. He had lost Carlotta and myself—well, now he would have Anita.
    Arabella’s comment was: ‘Harriet would have been pleased.’
    They all agreed that it was the best thing possible for the pair of them.
    ‘Of course,’ said Priscilla, ‘we shall have to think of getting a new governess for Clarissa.’
    ‘We shall never get anyone like Anita,’ sighed Arabella.
    Damaris said she would teach me in the meantime and added that Anita must be married from Enderby, which was, after all, her home.
    So the wedding took place. The preparations absorbed Damaris, for she was determined that Anita should feel that she was one of the family. I think we were all especially happy for Benjie’s sake. He had changed; his melancholy had dropped away from him, and it was wonderful to have something happy taking place.
    So they were married and Anita left Enderby Hall to set up house with Benjie at Eyot Abbas. I had passed my eleventh birthday when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. There was a great deal of relief about that because it meant that the war was over. Great-Grandfather Carleton discussed it constantly and at the dinner table at Eversleigh Court we heard little else. He would bang the table and expound on the iniquities of the Jacobites and how this was their coup de grâce.
    ‘Best thing that could have happened,’ he said. ‘This will teach those traitors a lesson. Louis will have to turn them out of France now. There’s no help for it. We shall have them sneaking back to England.’
    ‘Everyone has a right to his or her views, Father,’ Priscilla reminded him.
    He looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows and growled: ‘Not when they’re treacherous Jacobite ones.’
    ‘Whatever they are,’ insisted Priscilla.
    ‘Women!’ muttered Great-Grandfather Carleton.
    We were all glad that the war was at an end, and as Philip of Anjou was now King of Spain it all seemed pointless that it had ever taken place. Priscilla’s brother Carl would probably be home now, for he held a high position in the army, and that would be a source of delight to Arabella and Carleton.
    The year passed peacefully. I went in the summer to Eyot Abbas and was delighted with the change since