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

lying-in at a handsome nursing home in the country. He’d also had her back to work for him. Sir Avis was genuinely fond of her just as she was of him. They were closer than many a man and wife no matter their class or status in life.
    Sarah fiddled with the cameo brooch at her throat, gazing out to where a blood-red setting sun barely peered over the rooftops. She couldn’t help feeling unnerved. Agnes was no longer a child. The time was coming when she would have to be told the truth.
    Sarah looked down at her fidgeting fingers. There had been instances when she could have told, but her courage had failed her.
    On her daughter’s birth certificate, in the space reserved for the name of the father, were the condemning words,
Father Unknown
. There was no Tom Stacey. Sir Avis had promised her nothing. ‘I cannot even acknowledge the child as mine whilst Julieta is alive,’ he’d said to her. ‘Should my wife die, then I will reconsider.’
    He never spoke of marriage, but then he wouldn’t. Despite his professing to be a modern, forward-thinking man, he knew society would shun both him and possibly his family if he married his cook.
    Unfortunately for Sarah, Julieta appeared in the very best of health. It seemed there was nobody to place his name in that box marked
Father Unknown.
Yet she desperately wanted there to be a name, even if it meant marrying someone willing to insert their name, even if they were not Agnes’s natural father. So far, George Jarman was the only candidate worth considering. However, she’d got used to being unattached – at least in the accepted meaning of the term.
    The last rays of the setting sun finally disappeared. Sarah sat and took deep breaths. It had hurt her to quash any aspirations her daughter had towards Master Robert, but very necessary. Firstly it was Sarah’s dearest wish that her daughter should benefit from her own experience. Secondly, she was privy to a very dark secret she had sworn never to reveal.
    Sir Avis freely admitted that he loved women. The fact was that they loved him too. He could charm the haughtiest woman off her feet and into his bed. Lady Julieta, his wife, had been one of many; a vibrant, black-haired creature, daughter of an American industrialist of Hispanic descent sent to England to find herself a titled husband.
    Besides her beauty, her fortune had been the key to Avis’s heart. However, it had not altered his habits; one woman was never enough.
    ‘But I will never share a house with any woman save you. But then, you are the best cook I’ve ever had,’ he’d said to Sarah.
    As usual, she had swallowed the stinging comment, accepting that cook and mistress was all she would ever be to him.
    She loved him with all her heart, but had no wish for her daughter to fall into the same trap, although with Robert there was no question of them marrying.
    Sarah was no fool and was in no doubt as to who Robert’s father really was. She’d seen Sir Avis exiting Lady Jacintha’s bedroom whilst her husband, Avis’s brother, was still in Australia. There had been no issue up until that stage, no son to carry on the name or daughter to marry well. Robert had been born almost nine months later.
    In time, Robert would marry a young woman of his class and approved by his family. Agnes would find somebody of her own class to marry and the secret would stay a secret.

Chapter Four
    During winter, it was the duty of the student nurses to crack the ice on the water used to wash the patients and to add a little hot water to the bowl.
    ‘Just enough to take away the chill. Too hot is as bad as too cold,’ instructed their matron, a heavy woman named Sister Bertha who was a deaconess in the Lutheran church as well as being a highly qualified nurse.
    The women’s wards occupied the east end of the building, the men’s wards at the other end. In between were the children’s wards, Lydia’s particular favourite. At the very far end of the east wing was the nursery