by Anna Jacobs
At The Golden Fleece, he helped her down and wasn’t surprised when she clung to his arm again to cross the muddy ground to the door, limping badly now.
Prue Poulter met them at the door, her face anxious. ‘What’s happened?’
Will answered. ‘Mistress Bedham has had a fall and needs to rest.’
Sarah tried to pull herself together. She didn’t need anyone to speak for her, even though he meant it kindly. ‘I shall be all right now. I must thank you again for your help, Mr Pursley. I hadn’t realised how long a country mile can seem.’
She saw him give Prue what could only be a quick warning glance. Warning of what? But the grinding ache in her hip was only too real and she knew that she must rest it for a while.
He stepped back. ‘I’ll come and take you to see the house myself tomorrow afternoon, Mistress Bedham. I can’t come in the morning, as I have someone to see, but I know my way around that house as well as anyone, and shall be happy to be your guide.’ He should know the house - he’d had to make quite a few emergency repairs lately to stop the old place going from bad to worse.
He was striding back to his cart before Sarah could say anything.
‘Well!’ She turned to the landlady. ‘Does he always take charge like that and tell folk what to do?’
Prue shrugged. ‘If there’s something to be done, you can always rely on Will Pursley to get it done. And I’ll feel better if you have him with you tomorrow, my dear.’ For she, too, was afraid that Sewell’s men might waylay the newcomer and she was uncertain whether to warn her guest about him and his bullies, or hope Sewell would not dare act against one of his own class.
Upstairs, Sarah lay down on the bed, sighing in relief as the pain eased a little once the weight was off her hip. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d seen. How forlorn Broadhurst Manor had looked - and yet, how lovely it could be, for there was a harmony to the lines of the house that pleased her greatly.
‘If it’s at all possible,’ she said softly as she got ready for bed that night, pinching out the last candle and pulling the covers cosily around her, ‘I would like to live there.’
‘There must be some way,’ she muttered a few minutes later, as she slid towards sleep. ‘There must.’
And why she should dream of Mr Pursley that night, she couldn’t think. In the morning, she had to wonder at how unsettling her dreams of him had been - the feel of his hand on hers, the strength of his shoulders, the firm line of his lips. She’d never had such dreams in all her life before. But then, she’d never met a man like him. So strong. Not a mincing town gentleman, well not a gentleman at all, but a man of character, open-faced and quietly confident of himself.
And handsome enough to turn any woman’s head.
Oh, she was being foolish! She drifted off to sleep on the less disturbing thought that tomorrow she would see her new home properly, go inside, take possession.
It would be hers for a time, even if she was forced to sell it. But she’d only do that as a final resort.
Whatever anyone said.
Chapter 3
The following morning Sarah woke early. Excitement hummed through her as she got ready, and images of the old house’s exterior kept floating through her mind. Today she wouldn’t be staring at it from a distance, but actually going inside. And if it weren’t for her stupid hip, she’d have done that yesterday.
‘Is your boy free to drive me to the Manor this morning?’ she asked Prue Poulter, who carried up her breakfast tray in person.
‘I thought Will Pursley was to take you there this afternoon?’
‘I’m not going to sit around half the day waiting for him!’
‘I - I . . ’
‘This morning, if you please!’
Prue went away, shaking her head and muttering to herself.
‘Mistress says I’m to drive you round by the farm lane,’ the stable boy offered as they left the village. ‘’Tis a bit longer, but less muddy, easier on the pony.’
‘Very well.’
Sarah watched eagerly for the first sight of her house, her face softening into a smile as they drove round a bend and on to the overgrown drive. When they drew up before the front door, she let out a long sigh of happy anticipation, allowed the lad to help her down, then told him to return for her in three hours time.
‘Mistress Poulter said I were to stay here, case I’m needed,’ he objected, edging from one foot to the other.
She set her hands on her hips and gave him a stern glance, the sort that had quelled impertinent folk in Furness Road. ‘Well, you’re not needed. And that poor animal is going to get chilled through if it has to wait here all morning.’
Truth to tell, she preferred to be on her own today, with neither the lad from the inn nor Mr Pursley, whose shrewd eyes had missed nothing the previous day, to witness her feelings. Indeed, she felt remarkably like weeping for joy already as she slowly mounted the shallow stone steps, studying the entrance.
Varnish had faded unevenly from the wood of the door and the hinges were rusty. It looked as if it hadn’t been opened for years. A hole in the wall suggested that the bell pull was broken and hadn’t been repaired, which seemed a strange thing to happen.
‘Poor house!’ she murmured, stroking the brickwork as if it were a living creature. She knocked on the door and waited for a minute or two, then hammered on it again, but there was no sound of life from inside. And yet, Mr Jamieson said there was a caretaker of sorts.
The door was firmly locked, so she set off to look for another entrance. A path which was only slightly less overgrown than the drive led round the side of the house. In summer it would be almost hidden by foliage, but now most of the plants showed only bare twigs, with some of them in bud. Here and there stood an evergreen shrub to cheer the eye, but they were growing untidily and clearly hadn’t been trimmed for years.
As she followed the path, she began to get an uneasy feeling, as if someone was watching her. She stopped and looked round, but could hear nothing. ‘Is anyone there?’ she called. There was no answer. She was just being silly, she decided.
However, as she was about to start moving again, there was a rustling sound behind her. She spun round. There was someone following! Her heart began to pound and she moved to stand with her back against a tree. ‘I know you’re there!’ she called, more loudly this time. ‘Come out at once!’
Heavy breathing was the only answer. It sounded like an animal in distress, not someone out to attack her, but she bent and picked up a stick to defend herself with, just in case.
When no one appeared, she decided surprise was the best strategy. Rushing forward into the shrubbery, she pushed her way past the tangles of branches and there, behind one of the evergreen shrubs, she found a man in ragged clothes crouching. She stopped, holding the stick at the ready, but he remained where he was, hands clasped protectively over his head, as if he expected her to hit him. He looked up, whimpered, but made no attempt to speak to her.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
As she took another step towards him, he gibbered with fright, then lurched to his feet and ran away round the house, crashing through the shrubbery. When she called out to him to stop, he only sobbed and ran faster.
He was more afraid of her than she was of him, she decided then, feeling a little better. She was astounded at her own rashness in confronting him, but it was her house, after all, and she had every right to be there.
As she followed the path towards the rear of the house, she noticed that the brickwork here didn’t match that at the front and paused to study it. From its dilapidation, she guessed this part must have been built at an earlier date than the rest, for the walls were sagging visibly, the mortar crumbling from between the bricks.
Rounding another corner, she found a paved courtyard enclosed by the wings of the house, with tumbledown stables and outhouses filling in most of the fourth side.
Limping on, still feeling apprehensive, Sarah finally came to wha
t looked like the kitchen door. Inside she could hear a woman’s voice scolding, such an ordinary sound that she closed her eyes for a moment in thankfulness before calling, ‘Is anyone there?’
As she knocked on the door, the voice stopped abruptly and footsteps come shuffling towards her. The door opened a crack and an old woman, dressed in clothes as ragged as the man’s, peered through it, brandishing a carving knife. She sighed in audible relief as she saw Sarah and let the knife hand drop.
‘You'm missed your way, mistress. Village is down t'other end of the lane. There be no gentry livin' here now.’
She made as if to shut the door and Sarah put out a hand to stop her. ‘I haven’t missed my way. I’m Sarah Bedham.’
‘Ah.’ She stared hard at Sarah. ‘Will Pursley said you were coming today, but he said this afternoon, not this morning. Said he were bringing you.’ The woman peered around, as if expecting to see him nearby.
Sarah tried to be patient, though she was longing to go inside and the doorway was still blocked. ‘Well, I’ve come on my own. I didn’t want to wait.’
As the woman studied her face again, the fear and hostility faded from her eyes, and she let the hand holding the knife fall by her side. ‘Be you truly Miss Elizabeth's daughter?’
What were she and her son so afraid of, Sarah wondered? ‘Yes. And you are, I think, Mary Hames. Mr Jamieson told me you were living here.’
Mary nodded and glanced at Sarah again. ‘You don’t look like Miss Elizabeth.’ Then she saw the locket and reached for it. ‘But thass hers, right enough. I seen it many a time. Her godfather give it to her when she turned eighteen, Lord Tarnly.’
She studied Sarah again, then clapped her hands together triumphantly. ‘You d’look like Old Master, thass who! Your great-granfer, not your granfer. He were a big man, Sir James, wi' grey eyes like yourn. I remember him well. There’s a painting of him in the long gallery upstairs.’ Tears tracking down the wrinkles on her cheeks, she reached out to tug at Sarah’s arm. ‘Come in out of the cold! And welcome home, mistress! Welcome home!’
So at last Sarah entered her house, and she cared not that it was by the back door. Her heart was too full for speech as she moved slowly inside, and once there, she could only stand and look around, swallowing hard and willing herself not to weep for sheer joy.
It was a large, square room with a bright fire of logs burning in an enormous grate over whose iron cooking rails hung an assortment of hooks and a kettle crane holding a big, blackened kettle trickling steam. There was a window on the yard side of the room, though the panes were dusty and some cracked. The floor was paved with great square stone slabs and those nearest the door had hollows worn in them, as if countless feet had left a lasting impression of their passing.
Sarah moved across to warm her hands at the fire. At one side stood an old-fashioned wooden settle with a high back and cowering behind it was the man who had run away from her in the shrubbery. He whimpered and hid his face in his hands as he saw her looking at him.
Mary came to stand at Sarah’s side, ‘Don’t ee be feared of the lady, boy. She’s our new mistress.’ She turned to Sarah. ‘My Petey's nervous of strangers, mistress. I know he ent got all his wits, but he wouldn’t harm anything, that boy wouldn’t. An’ he’s a good worker if you do but take the time to tell him slow what to do, an’ maybe watch him do it once or twice.
‘Will Pursley hires him sometimes for a day's diggin' or to help wi' the harvest an’ he wouldn’t pay out good money unless he got value for it! Yes, he’s a good lad in his own way, is my Petey, but they boys in the village do torment him so! Then he hits out at them. S'only natural, that is, to defend yourself!’
‘Yes, of course,’ agreed Sarah. She had seen people bait idiots before and it had always sickened her. ‘I’m sure he is a good - er - boy.’ Petey looked to be at least thirty and his hair was starting to go thin on top. ‘Mr Jamieson told me you two had been looking after the house.’
Before Mary could answer, the back door crashed open and a burly man with dark hair and a high-coloured complexion strode inside.
Petey shrieked and dived back behind the settle. Mary whimpered and edged closer to Sarah.
‘Who’s this, then?’ the newcomer demanded, striking out with his riding crop and sweeping some things from the kitchen table.
Sarah was so stunned by this that she could only gape at him for a minute.
‘Got us another idiot here, looks like,’ he called to someone outside and another man stuck his head inside the door. He was thinner than his friend, with sparse, straggly hair and a front tooth missing, but he had the same cruel, gloating expression on his face.
Sarah recovered her voice. ‘How dare you burst in here like that!’
‘Oh, she has got a tongue, then!’ the man mocked, using his riding crop to send another wooden platter crashing to the floor.
Before she had thought what she was doing, anger drove Sarah to forward to grab his riding crop. She took him by surprise and wrenched it away from him before he realised what she was doing. ‘Get out of my house at once, you!’
He had stretched out his hand as if to grab his crop back, or maybe to seize hold of her, but as her words sank in, he stopped and stared. ‘Your house? And just who are you to claim ownership?’
‘The granddaughter of Squire Bedham, that’s who. And I demand that you leave my house immediately.’
He let out a slow whistle of surprise. However, within a minute he was scowling at her. ‘You’re lying. There aren’t any Bedhams left.’
‘Who are you to know that?’ She could feel Mary trembling beside her and Petey was still curled up in a moaning heap of rags.
‘I’m the man who’s going to stop cheats like you trying to lay false claim to this place.’ He held up one hand to protect his face and came a step closer. When she lashed out at him with the crop, he fended off the blow with his arm and wrenched the crop back from her, laughing scornfully. ‘Looks to me like you need a lesson about lying, mistress, and I think we’ll send you on your way with a warning not to come back.’
Until now, anger had sustained her, but suddenly she began to feel afraid. Tall as she was, she would be no match for two of them, and neither Mary nor Petey was making any attempt to help her. This man was very muscular, for all his bulk. Although she fought back instinctively, shoving at him with all her might, she could not push him away or stop him fondling her body.
‘Come and help me, Izzy’ he called, laughing. ‘She’s a comfy armful, if a mite scrawny. Ouch! You’ll pay for that, wench!’
There was a cry from outside and then a voice roared from the doorway, ‘Let the lady go at once!’
With a curse, the man shoved Sarah aside and turned to face Will Pursley, who was standing with clenched fists half-raised as if ready for a fight. Beyond him, the other intruder lay sprawled in the mud of the yard.
Sarah seized the moment to give the man next to her a shove that sent him flying towards the door. By the time he turned round with a snarl and an upraised hand, she had grabbed a stool and was holding it between herself and him. She jabbed its legs at him and he retreated a step. Her mother didn’t know half the tricks she’d had to learn to defend herself in Furness Road. The main thing was to show no fear and to take the initiative. And at the moment anger was burning so hotly through her veins that she wanted to hurt him in return for what he’d done to her.
As she glanced towards the doorway, she saw the man in the yard scramble to his feet and dive towards Will Pursley, so called out a warning. There was a short scuffle, then Will knocked the man down again and he lay there groaning. When the fellow near her would have gone to his companion’s aid, she jabbed the stool at him again to distract him.
As soon as he had disposed of his opponent, Will Pursley came running back into the kitchen and grabbed the burly man from behind.
When another fight began between the two of them, Sarah didn’t wait to see who would win, but snatched up a wooden platte
r, waited till the intruder’s back was towards her and hit him hard on the head. He roared in pain, staggered and stopped fighting to clutch his head.
For a minute it was touch and go whether he’d attack Will again, then he glared at them both and began edging sideways towards the door. ‘I won’t forget this, Pursley.’
‘Neither will I, Tensby. You’re trespassing and if I find you here again, disturbing Mistress Bedham, I’ll have you up before the magistrate.’
‘I’m here at Mr Sewell’s behest and he won’t forget your behaviour, either!’
‘He has no rights here.’
‘He’s buying the rights - not trying to steal them like she is.’
Breath hissed into Will Pursley’s mouth and his fists clenched again, but he held back. ‘She’s the rightful owner,’ he said.
‘We’ll see about that.’
The man outside got to his feet, clasping his jaw. For a moment, the two bullies stood shoulder to shoulder, and the malevolence on their faces made Sarah shiver. Then they turned and strode off. A minute later there was the sound of horses trotting away.
Will rounded on Sarah and asked angrily, ‘Why did you not wait for me at the inn today?’
She blinked in surprise at his sharp tone. ‘I had no intention of wasting the whole morning - and how did you know I was here, anyway?’
‘I saw you drive past the farm, so finished what I was doing and saddled Dolly.’ He ran a hand through his hair in a vain attempt to smooth it back and brushed some of the dust off his jerkin.
She felt obliged to say, ‘I’m grateful for your intervention.’
For a moment a grin creased his face. ‘I should thank you as well. Not many ladies would have been so – er, resourceful.’
She smiled back, then felt the smile fade as the worries returned. ‘ Who are those men and why do they feel they can just - walk in here and attack people?’
By now, Mary’s son had crawled out from behind the settle. ‘Hit him on the head, the lady did,’ he announced, beaming at Sarah and miming her action. ‘Hit him hard. Bang!’
