A Child of Secrets Read online

  ‘Who knows?’ The girl’s voice turned gently dry. ‘But don’t concern yourself unduly, Mr Rudd. She doesn’t look as if she’s hiding any illicit pheasants.’

  ‘Maybe not. Not yet.’

  ‘You don’t seriously suspect her of poaching, surely?’

  ‘I suspect anybody who’s in my woods and shouldn’t be,’ was the response. ‘Who is she, any road? She’s not from round here. D’you know her, Miss Clare?’

  ‘I’ve never seen her before. You’re right, Mr Rudd, she isn’t from any of the local villages. I believe I know most of the people in the parish – even those who don’t come to church.’

  After a pause, the man said stiffly, ‘I’m a chapel man, myself.’

  ‘Oh… Mr Rudd, I didn’t mean…’ She laughed, a low, melodic sound. ‘Forgive me, I had no intention of taking you to task. Gracious goodness, where you worship is between you and your conscience. My only thought was for this poor child. Whoever she is, we can’t leave her here. She isn’t very big. Can you carry her to the rectory, do you think?’

  ‘You intending to take her in, then?’

  ‘What else should a Christian do, Mr Rudd?’ was the grave reply and, after a moment, ‘I was a foundling once myself, you know.’

  Jess felt herself being lifted, tossed up in strong arms that held her safe and conveyed her along at a steady pace. Her head rested on the man’s shoulder and from his coat came a scent of tobacco smoke and open air, perhaps a hint of dog. The smell was alien to a girl more used to the tang of salt and fish, but the man was blessedly warm. His presence surrounded her with a feeling of security so strong that she let go her senses and sank down into darkness.

  * * *

  Lily Clare found herself tingling with elation as she led the way along the woodland path. This was real adventure, rescuing a lost girl. The sun dipped behind the horizon, leaving an angry glow on the underside of a dark wedge of cloud that was sliding across the sky like a shutter. Out of that cloud came the first icy flakes of snow, spitting down through the tracery of branches in the wood.

  ‘Dash!’ Rudd said severely. ‘Heel!’

  His dog, a young, black, curly-coated retriever, obediently left his investigations of the smaller King Charles Cavalier spaniel, only to have Lily’s pet follow him, wanting to play. Shivering a little, Lily bent and scooped Gyp into her arms, careless of the mud that got on to her cloak – one of the servants would brush it off when she got home; it wasn’t important. ‘How is she?’ she asked the gamekeeper.

  ‘Passed out. She’s near frozen. Who do you think she is, Miss Clare? Some gypsy?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The thought was heady, and at the same time alarming. ‘Let’s go this way, it’s quicker.’ Reaching a fork in the path, she held aside a branch while the gamekeeper passed and then she hurried after him, hugging Gyp and trying to keep her cloak from snagging in the undergrowth.

  Through thickening twilight they came to a great escallonia hedge whose green branches had been clipped back around a wicker gate which led into the rectory grounds. Beyond the gate a gravel walk ran through an orchard and crossed a plank bridge over a stream before descending through a dense shrubbery to where the house could be seen, its ivy-clad walls half hidden behind clumps of laurel, the whole surrounded by a palisade of towering elms. Rooks circled, cawing, in the last of the daylight, and a ragged skein of geese moved against the flow of slatey cloud as Lily hurried to the front door and threw it open.

  ‘Lily, is that you?’ a voice cried, and a grey-haired woman came waddling from the drawing room. ‘I’ve been growing anxious. It’s so late I…’ The sentence trailed off as she stared through oval pince-nez at the spectacle of Sir Richard Fyncham’s gamekeeper entering the house – through the front door – burdened with a limp body dressed in filthy rags.

  ‘I found her in the woods,’ Lily said, setting the spaniel on the parquet floor where he immediately pattered towards the open door of the drawing room.

  Oriana Peartree cut him off, using her foot to stop him as she hurriedly closed the door. ‘How many times must I ask you to bring Gyp in by the side door when you’ve been out walking? Look at the mud—’

  ‘Someone will clean it up!’ Lily was impatient with such trivial matters. ‘Where’s Eliza? Tell her I want her to make up the bed in the guest room. And get Dolly to light the fire, and bring some hot water. Come, Mr Rudd. This way.’ Realising that Miss Peartree was still standing there, watching her reproachfully, Lily remembered her manners, saying somewhat impatiently, ‘Please, Cousin Oriana.’

  ‘That’s better,’ Miss Peartree grudged.

  The maids were summoned. The guest room bustled with activity. Lily sat on the window seat supporting Jess, helping her drink some water, while Eliza put fresh sheets on the bed and young Dolly built a fire. Leaving the women to tend their charge, Rudd took his leave and headed back to his game preserves.

  Miss Peartree stood blinking unhappily at Lily. ‘But who is she, my dear? Where does she come from?’

  ‘Does it matter? Cousin Oriana, she’s a child in need of help. Isn’t that enough? Eliza… fetch one of my warmest nightgowns. Then give the poor girl a good wash. That will make her feel better.’

  Miss Peartree still looked worried, but she too was swept up in the need to care for the unfortunate. She went to prepare a hot drink that would soothe and settle an empty stomach.

  ‘Your father wants to see you,’ she said when she returned. ‘You’d better go at once, Lily Victoria. I’ll take over here.’

  Reluctantly, but feeling she ought to explain to her father what was happening, Lily returned downstairs.

  The Reverend Hugh Clare was in his lamplit study, seated behind a big mahogany desk strewn with books and papers. Quill pen poised in his hand, he had been working on a manuscript which was set out before him. As he gazed at his daughter the expression on his pink face, topped with wispy white hair, was of studied, condescending patience. ‘What is the cause of all the commotion, Lily Victoria? You know I’m trying to work. How can I concentrate with—’ He winced and glanced at the ceiling as something thumped on the floor above. His study was directly below the guest room, and near to the stairs which had seen a good deal of coming and going on Jess’s account.

  Knowing better than to argue, Lily said meekly, ‘I’m sorry, Papa. It will all settle down very soon, I promise you. I… I discovered a poor child, lost and frozen in the woods.’

  ‘Frozen?’ His mouth pursed, bushy white eyebrows lifting as he questioned the exaggeration. ‘Then she must be dead. One cannot remain alive and be frozen.’

  ‘Half frozen,’ Lily amended dully. Taking her words literally was his way of reprimanding her habit of embroidering some truths with the colours of fancy. ‘She was shivering with cold, wearing nothing but rags, and near starved.’ There, that was cold fact. ‘What was I to do, Papa? I had to bring her home.’

  In a fleshy face which fell by nature into a misleadingly mild expression, his eyes were pale blue. Frosted blue, Lily always felt. They conveyed permanent disapproval of her. ‘I cannot help but wonder where this will end,’ he said. ‘Birds with broken wings… a sick squirrel… stray cats… and now a lost urchin. The rectory is becoming a home for waifs and strays, Lily Victoria. How can I work amid such cacophony?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Papa.’ She shrivelled with misery, feeling as if she had been whipped. Nothing she did was ever right, not as far as the Reverend Hugh Clare was concerned. His work was his all, teaching in the school, or sitting as a magistrate; he spent his spare time writing, another volume of his Words of Wisdom for the Worthy Poor or Sermons for the Good Servant or whatever it might be. Lily often thought he would have been happier as a single gentleman, living alone in a house where he could demand permanent quiet and solitude. A wife he had tolerated, barely. A daughter was an intrusion.

  Except that I’m not his daughter! she thought fiercely. Hoorah, hoorah, I am not his daughter. And when my real father comes…

&
nbsp; When her real father returned, everything was going to be different!

  ‘Very well, you may go.’ He waved a hand at her, dismissing her with fat pink fingers, his gaze already returned to the manuscript in front of him as he reached his pen to the ink well.

  Lily went out quietly. She drew the door behind her, until it was open only an inch or two. Then she closed it sharply, making it bang. A shocked ‘Oh, no!’ came from the study, and ‘Lily Victoria!’

  ‘Papa, I’m so sorry,’ Lily apologised, looking round the door. ‘It slipped out of my hand. I’m so sorry.’ He had, she saw, made a great blot on the page. The pen must have jumped in his fingers, shedding its load of fresh ink. Oh dear… ‘I hope you haven’t spoiled the page.’

  ‘I shall have to write it out again. Oh, really, it’s too bad…’

  Retreating, Lily closed the door with extreme care, so that barely a click could be heard. She stood holding the shiny round knob, its brass polished daily to a high golden sheen, while she laid her forehead against the hard, cool wood of the door and closed her eyes, sighing. She hadn’t meant to cause him extra work, but she was reduced to playing tricks in order to win his attention. Not that it made any difference. He had never loved her. He never would.

  But it didn’t matter, she assured herself, straightening her shoulders with a little toss of her head. Her own father – her real, true father – would love her even though she had a wayward spirit and funny, odd eyes. Even though everybody else stared at her, or laughed at her, or feared her. They would learn not to be so unkind when her real father came. He would make them treat her with the respect that was due to his daughter.

  ‘Lily Victoria…’ Cousin Oriana was coming down the stairs. ‘I thought you said you’d found a child.’

  ‘So I did.’

  Oriana Peartree tutted impatiently. ‘She’s not a child at all – she’s a young woman. And she’s in a terrible state. Heaven only knows how she came to be in the woods, or what drove her there. No…’ As Lily would have rushed past, Oriana grasped her arm. ‘No, don’t go up now. Let her rest – which is more than I shall do until I know exactly who she is and what she’s doing here. I declare, when I came to nurse your poor mama I never dreamed what a legacy she was leaving me. You never stop to think, that’s your worst fault. You rush in on impulse and…’ But seeing Lily’s face she stopped herself and sighed, reaching a mittened hand to pat the soft cheek. ‘But there. It’s the way you are. And it’s caused by kindness, I know. But really… you will have to learn to curb your impulses, my love, or one day something will rebound on you. Badly.’

  * * *

  Jess came slowly back to life, disturbed by the sound of someone making up a fire. When she stirred and lifted her head, a small aproned figure went flying away in a panic, shouting for someone named Miss Peartree.

  A pale glow came from the fire, where yellow tongues were starting to lap round fresh coals. Otherwise the room was dim, its window shaded by heavy curtains, but a wash of grey daylight crept in through the left-open door. Jess was lying in a bed – a big, soft, warm bed such as she had never slept in before. Even her mother’s prized feather mattress had never felt as soft as this, nor the covers so thick and cosy. And the room around her seemed cavernous. She was used to the cramped quarters of the cottage in Salt’s Yard, two up and two down – and that was roomy, compared to other homes around the Fisher Fleet. This house must be huge. A mansion. Someone had, she recalled, mentioned a rectory.

  Now she remembered being carried here, brought to this room, people coming and going, curious but kindly. Most of them, anyway. The person who had helped her out of her clothes and into a flannel nightdress had not been very kind, or gentle. She recalled a drink of some kind, hot and sweet, fed to her in sips that had trickled all the way down and made her stomach feel warm.

  But that had been last night. Now it was morning. Now, she’d be expected to give some sort of account of herself.

  Oh, whatever was going to become of her? She didn’t ought to be here. She struggled to sit up, planning to leap off the bed and run for it, but her body wouldn’t obey her. When she got half up her head went all fuzzy and she felt sick. So she lay down again, sinking into sweet-smelling pillows. Lavender, she thought. It was lavender, that scent. It took her back to the apartment over the butcher’s shop in Lynn, where she’d been maid-of-all-work. Mrs Bone, the butcher’s wife, a notoriously fussy-particular woman, had had little sachets of dried lavender flowers in her underwear drawers. The memory made Jess’s chilblained fingers ache with echoes of soda and endless scrubbing.

  Other memories wanted to come crowding on the heels of that first one. Darker memories. Frightful memories. But she blocked them out. She didn’t want to remember. Not yet.

  Someone was coming, stumping unevenly up the stairs and along the passage, breathing hard as if the climb had tired her. Cowering under the blankets with just her nose showing, Jess peered through her lashes as the woman came into the room and went to the window, to throw back the curtain with a noisy rattling of brass rings. Sharp white light bit at Jess’s eyes, making her pull the blankets over her head.

  ‘Well, now,’ the woman said, stumping back to the bed. She took hold of the covers and pulled them down. ‘Come along, none of that nonsense. I know you’re awake. Well, well. So how are we feeling this morning?’

  Blinking against bright daylight, Jess peered up into a lined face with oval spectacles perched on a sharp nose. Grey hair was tortured into a frizz of curls on her forehead and near her ears, the rest covered by an old-fashioned lace cap.

  ‘H’m.’ A cool, dry hand settled on Jess’s forehead, testing her temperature. ‘You’re a tad feverish. You’ll do better with something inside you. Could you drink some tea? I’ll send Dolly up with some. Then perhaps a little arrowroot and a soft-boiled egg. Best things for a delicate stomach.’

  The young maid, Dolly, brought a cup of sweet tea which helped to restore Jess’s spirits. Dolly was no older than Jess’s brother Sam, who was twelve years old, but there was another, grown-up maid, with a sniffy looking-down-her-nose sort of sneer on her face. Wearing a more amiable expression she might have been handsome, for she had a good figure and thick brown hair, swept up in a bun. She it was who had so roughly undressed Jess last night.

  Sent to assist now with washing the patient’s hands and face, the older maid wielded the flannel with a hard hand, evidently furious at being expected to play nursemaid to such a scrawny mawkin.

  ‘Help the girl sit up, Eliza,’ Miss Peartree instructed as she returned, accompanied by the younger maid with a breakfast tray. ‘Well, plump the pillows properly. Really, do you have to be told everything?’

  Eliza’s hands bit into Jess’s arms, yanking her upright; then the maid bent behind her, pummelling the pillows with unnecessary force, breathing angrily through her nose.

  ‘That will do, Eliza.’ Miss Peartree dismissed her with a sharp glance. ‘Go back to your duties.’

  ‘Not much wrong with her as I can see,’ the maid muttered.

  ‘I don’t recall enquiring for your opinion,’ said Miss Peartree. ‘And I want that drawing room properly cleaned today, not just whisked over. My eyes may not be what they were, but even I could see you hardly touched it last week. I could write my name in the dust under the dresser.’

  ‘I got called away last week!’ Eliza protested. ‘I never had no chance to go back to it. Do this, do that. I can’t do everything.’

  ‘You’re bone idle, that’s your trouble. I’ve had maids who could do twice the work in half the time. You’re not setting a good example for young Dolly. Unless you mend your ways I may have to speak to Reverend Clare again, and next time he might not be so forgiving.’

  There was a silence that tingled, then, ‘Yes, Miss Peartree,’ but her voice was flat and her expression truculent as she went out.

  Miss Peartree sighed, coming to straighten the bedcovers. Light slanted across her spectacles as she looked at Jess
with faded blue eyes and forced a smile. ‘Well, well. You’ve a little more colour in your cheeks, I see. Are you ready for breakfast?’

  Jess never forgot lounging there in luxury, being waited on and given food like she’d never had before. First came the arrowroot, which tasted strange – ‘It’s flavoured with sherry wine,’ Miss Peartree said as Jess spooned the mixture from a tumbler. Sherry wine! Jess thought in amazement; she wasn’t sure she liked the taste. And then there was the soft-boiled egg and the thin bread and butter. Lord, this was a dream, but she was determined to enjoy it while it lasted. Sooner or later the questions would start, and then she’d be out on her ear, if not carted off to jail in chains, on her way to the gallows. But for now… for now it was wondersome.

  Sitting up, she could see trees beyond the window. Every branch bore a thick layer of snow. That explained the whiteness of the light. There must have been a heavy fall in the night, and from the leaden glower of the sky there was more to come. Were the lanes impassable? Did it mean that any pursuit would be halted?

  Did it mean that her escape was cut off?

  There was a commotion somewhere below, a dog’s excited yipping, and then footsteps on the stairs, someone coming in a hurry. In a whirl of velvet and lace, the girl Jess had encountered in the woods erupted into the room, pink-cheeked and breathless.

  ‘Gracious goodness, why didn’t someone call and tell me she’d woken up? I told you I wanted to know.’

  ‘But you didn’t say where you were going,’ Miss Peartree replied. ‘If you go out without saying—’

  ‘I was only in the garden. Building a snowman. The snow’s so deep! There’s a great curl of it, taller than I am, along near the wall. Like a frozen wave.’ She flung herself on to the window seat to peer out. ‘Look, you can see the end of it from here. It’s wonderful!’

  ‘Yes, dear, I’m sure, but…’ Miss Peartree sighed, shaking her head so that the ribbons on her cap shook like wattles on a cockerel. ‘Lily Victoria, how many times do I have to ask you please not to come upstairs in your outdoor shoes unless they’re perfectly clean and dry? And your skirts are all wet. You’re dripping everywhere.’