Home for Christmas by Lizzie Lane Read Free Book Online Page A

pictures.’
    ‘Lydia?’
    ‘The doctor’s daughter. I can telephone her.’
    Her mother did what she always did when she was agitated and not quite sure what to do. She began moving swiftly around the room, rearranging ornaments, straightening pictures, opening a drawer, tidying it, slamming it shut again and moving on to the next.
    She shook her head before peering into the water pitcher sitting in its matching bowl on the washstand.
    ‘This room needs a thorough spring clean,’ Sarah murmured, mostly to herself.
    Agnes sighed and clutched her chin more tightly. ‘I have to have feelings for someone and I don’t have any for Harry.’
    ‘Think carefully, Agnes.’ Her mother’s gaze was intent and her brow furrowed with concern.
    ‘I have thought about it. I only have feelings for Robert.’
    Her mother spun round to face her.
    ‘Well, you can get that idea out of your head, young lady. It will do no good you setting your sights on the likes of him. He’s of a different class. He’s gentry and we’re working people. Nothing is ever going to change that unless the world itself changes. Get it into your head that the highest you’re likely to achieve is ending up as a cook like me. That is all you’ll ever be to Robert. Just a servant.’
    She sounded angry, breathless and her neck was flushing red above the high collar of her cream lace blouse.
    ‘That’s not fair!’
    ‘You’ll learn as you get older that the world isn’t fair. That’s the way it is.’
    Her mother turned from brushing away dust with her bare hand, dragged her off the bed and on to her feet.
    Agnes winced. The redness of her mother’s neck had travelled up to her face. Her expression was unreadable and oddly guarded and when she began to speak, she drew in her breath as though she were afraid of the words she had to say.
    ‘You’re not listening.’ She delivered her words slowly and precisely. ‘You have to understand that he won’t ever marry the likes of you. He won’t. You should know that. I know he won’t. I know it for sure because …’
    Sarah Stacey, Agnes’s mother, stopped herself from saying anything more and turned her face towards the window, seemingly watching the brisk wind that was blowing dead leaves up and over the rooftops.
    She hated to disappoint the daughter she loved so much, but it had to be; not that she could tell Agnes the whole truth. A dreadful secret lay behind her warning, a secret few were privy to and she had sworn never to reveal. The truth was Sarah Stacey had difficulty dealing with Agnes; Sir Avis dealt with her far better.
    ‘She’s just like my Aunt Peridot,’ he was fond of saying to Sarah. ‘She was a wild one when she was young. So was I, come to that,’ he’d added with the boyish grin that had first seduced her.
    Sarah Stacey knew Sir Avis far better than most. She knew he’d been a wild young man, an out and out womaniser and pursuer of pleasure. Sarah had been one of his pleasures, but there had been others, quite a few others.
    ‘I don’t believe anything you say,’ shouted Agnes as she bolted for the door.
    There was a swishing of layers of petticoats as her mother headed after her.
    ‘Come back here, young lady. Come back here this minute,’ she shouted.
    The vibration from the slammed door shook loose plaster from the ceiling.
    Sighing, Sarah sank on to a chair and rubbed her aching forehead with her long, white fingers.
    She eyed the closed door. It had not been easy bringing Agnes up, and not at all easy deciding to keep her. Sir Avis had been good about it all. Few would have been so generous to a servant like her. Women who got pregnant by the master of the house usually had a bleak future. They lost their position and the income that went with it. Some ended up in workhouses, some on the street. The lucky few were paid a fee for their silence and were taken in by their families.
    Sarah had been very lucky. Sir Avis had genuinely cared for her, and paid for her