Virginia Henley by Enticed Read Free Book Online

but genteel fashion. Kitty almost pitied him until she saw he enjoyed the way he could make Barbara cower. He insisted that she could not give him verbal answers, but that she must write everything down on the slate.
    Kitty moved about slowly so as not to attract attention as she went about the room dusting. When she came to thegrandfather clock, she moved the hands ahead an hour, then moved over to the bookshelves and continued to dust.
    “Now, Miss O’Reilly, seeing you are hopeless in mathematics, we will put it aside and do spelling, and let me tell you, young woman, every time you make a mistake you will write it out one hundred times. That should keep you busy all evening, for from what I’ve seen, your spelling is as atrocious as your mathematics.”
    Kitty opened a dictionary and with her voice low and her back toward Barbara and Mr. Parker, she began spelling the first word for Barbara. Kitty said quickly, “Just put down what I tell you, he can’t hear me, you know, he’s as deaf as a doornail. That’s why he makes you write everything on the slate.”
    They finished the list of words and she handed him her slate to be checked for mistakes.
    Kitty kept her face to the wall. “You mustn’t be afraid of him, Barbara. He probably threatens to tell your father about you, eh?”
    “Now take a fresh slate and make proper sentences using the following words.” Mr. Parker was clearly annoyed that Barbara had made no errors for which she could be punished.
    “Employer,” Mr. Parker dictated.
    Kitty said, “Put down: Does your employer know you are deaf?”
    “Employee,” he continued.
    “Put down: Employees should not bully little girls.” Kitty moved silently over to the desk behind Mr. Parker, picked up his pocket watch and altered the time to match that of the grandfather clock.
    “Employment,” intoned Mr. Parker.
    “You are about to lose your employment,” whispered Kitty.
    The tall clock chimed twelve and Barbara arose to hand him her slate.
    “Where are you going, miss?”
    She pointed to the grandfather clock and he looked thunderstruck. He took his pocket watch from the desk, checked it and looked up, thoroughly bewildered.
    Barbara curtsied, handed him the slate and disappeared as fast as her legs would carry her, but Kitty lingered behind to see the look on his face when he read the slate.
    He looked down at the sentences and his pallor went from dirty white to dirty gray. He spluttered, “Little bitch!”
    Kitty held the feather duster to her ear like an ear trumpet and shouted, “Eh?” before following Barbara from the room.
    After the evening meal Jonathan went off to his club and Patrick decided to visit the theater. He very seldom told Bradshaw to bring the carriage to the front door, but usually went to the stables and coach house himself because he liked the atmosphere there. He had won a little on the horses and was in a good mood, blissfully unaware of how incongruous he looked in frilled shirt and tall silk hat, fondling the muzzle of one of the carriage horses. Patrick caught sight of Terry and somewhere in the recesses of his mind he was vaguely aware that he was familiar. “Who’s this?” he asked Bradshaw.
    “That’s the new lad I was telling you about this afternoon. The squire wants me to teach him how to drive the carriage, but to my way of thinking, he’s not old enough.” Bradshaw couldn’t hide the fact that he didn’t want any competition, and Patrick hid a grin. “He can come along tonight,” he said, winking at Terry, who was delighted with the plans. Patrick knew it would annoy Bradshaw, but Patrick also remembered what it felt like to be denied things because youwere too young. Patrick sat in his box at the theater considering the chorus girls very carefully. When he had made his selection he was just about to send a note backstage when the bookkeeper from the Gibraltar mill lifted the curtain and entered the box.
    “Mr. O’Reilly, thank God I’ve