Longbourn by Jo Baker Read Free Book Online

along with the answers.
    Where had he learned his craft?
    He had done similar work before.
    What work exactly had he done, though, Polly wanted to know, and where had he done it?
    Mrs. Hill shushed her.
    He said he didn’t mind, and that Polly was a clever girl, and this made her blush and smile, and slowed down her questioning for a little while. He had worked on a farm, he said, and then as an ostler, and then as a general servant in a house much the same size as this.
    “Which house, though—I mean, whose? Maybe we know them—maybe the Bennets visit there.”
    The house was beyond the neighbourhood, of course; the farm was just over the distant hills; the inn where he’d worked as an ostler was out past Ashworth, and on a few more miles. All of it was just out of reach, Sarah noted: all the places he mentioned were just a little too far away, for there to be any connection or shared acquaintance between his previous situations and his new one, here at Longbourn.
    This was what Sarah had always wanted: something—anything—to disturb the quiet, to distract her from the sounds of Mr. Hill’s revolving mastication, and the prospect of another spiritless evening, and the monotony of her own voice reading three-decker novels and three-day-old news. But now change had come to Longbourn, and Polly was staring at it as if she were a simpleton, and Mrs. Hill kept topping up its glass, and even Mr. Hill was smiling and glancing at it and then shyly away, and Sarah was left heartsunk and ignored, and wishing that this change, with its dark hair and its hazel eyes, and its skin the colour of tea, had never come to Longbourn at all.
    Sarah felt even lower the following morning, when she stumbled her way down to the kitchen, Polly dragging along three steps behind. The warm glow of her candle illuminated the stairway, the bare treads and the green distempered walls, the candle’s own greasy drips, and her cracked hand carrying it, the skin dark with dried blood and patched with chilblains that she must not scratch however much they itched.
    First chores: fuel and water to be fetched, the hearths swept and the range to be blackleaded, and then her hands scrubbed free of blacking and soot before the day’s work could properly begin. Outside, the iron chill of the pump-handle awaited her: she’d almost rather pluck hot coals from the fire.
    Polly sat down at the table and rested her cheek on her folded arms. Sarah, still dozy herself, took up the hearth brush and was about to hunker down and sweep the fallen cinders, but then she stopped short. The hearth was clean, the range gleamed, the fire was bright and crackling with new wood. She glanced at the log basket: it was full.
    Someone had been up early.
    Water next. She leaned into the scullery to lift her yoke. Candlelight fell through the open doorway, and caught on the inner shells of the wooden pails. She crouched to touch: her fingers came away wet. Straightening, she brushed her hand down her apron, then crossed over to the water-tank and laid her hand on the lead. She could feel the cold weight of water pressing out against the metal skin. Someone had mended the fire, and then fetched the water; they had filled the tank right up to the brim.
    A brownie. A helpful little lubber fiend. They’d never had one of them at Longbourn before.
    “Polly—”
    But back in the kitchen Polly had fallen asleep again, head on her arms, curls falling across her face. Sarah stood, hands on hips, looking around the room. For a moment she was lost. Because there was nothing, for the next little while at least, for her to do. An hour had been freed for her, had been presented to her like a gift.
    She grabbed the old pelisse that hung by the back door, and ducked out into the peppery-cold morning. Pulling on the coat, her fingers fumbling with the frogging, she strode out of the yard and across the paddock, the frosted grass crunching and the rime kicking back up over her toecaps. She