‘That’s where I went after Lord Ravensworth died. Then I came back to find Her Ladyship married to James, the next earl dead, and a new baron installed at Ravensworth - and my wood sprite vanished from the estate.’ His look was teasing.
‘Do you see Her Ladyship?’ she asked warily.
‘Yes. That’s where I’ve come from today; Newcastle.’
‘Is she well?’
Alexander nodded. ‘She seems very happy.’
‘The marriage caused a right fuss round here.’
This made him laugh. ‘I’m sure it did. But good luck to them, I say. And let the killjoys go to the Devil!’
She looked shocked, then burst out laughing too.
‘Who would have thought? James Wadsworth!’
Alexander held out his arm. ‘Come, Kate, it’s too cold to linger. I want to hear of everything that’s happened to you this last year and more.’
She took his arm and smiled. ‘I’d sooner hear about South America.’
‘Then you shall. It might take until dusk. Can you walk that long?’
‘Till the cows come home,’ she grinned.
He squeezed her arm and led her out of the village and down the valley, skirting the wooded estate. Neither said so, but both thought it better to avoid coming across people they might know.
Kate would have carried on for ever, walking and listening to his tales of foreign travel.
‘There’s something about going to sea, Kate,’ he said eagerly, ‘the adventure, the freedom - that empty horizon beckoning. There’s no feeling like it.’
‘I prefer me feet on dry land,’ she mused. As they walked on she made him laugh with her pithy comments on life at the inn. But the short afternoon sped by too quickly and the light was already fading as they turned back for Lamesley.
‘Can we do this again?’ he asked as they approached the inn. ‘On your next day off.’
‘I’d like that, sir.’
He took her hands in his gloved ones. They were numb with cold but she did not mind.
‘Please call me Alex,’ he insisted. ‘When we’re together like this, it doesn’t seem like master and servant - not to me. Is that how you still see me?’
‘No, Alex,’ she murmured, her pulse hammering at their daring.
‘Good!’ he cried, pressing her fingers to his warm lips and kissing them. ‘I’ll call for you in two Sundays’ time. Meet me by the church again.’
‘I will.’ She smiled broadly, reluctantly pulling her hands away. She hurried towards the lights of the inn, thrilled at the thought of their next meeting. Two weeks seemed an eternity to wait!
Turning at the gate, she could still make out his tall figure, a shadow in the dark, watching her. She waved and he raised his stick in farewell. Kate rushed inside, unable to keep the grin of happiness from her face. She had to tell someone about this afternoon. Even Mary would do. She could not keep such a secret to herself or she would burst with the excitement and joy that bubbled inside her.
‘Mary!’ she gabbled to her sister, finding her in their attic room. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
***
Alexander strode back to the station, warmed by the thought of Kate’s eagerness to see him again. What rashness had seized him? He felt light-headed, as if his actions weren’t his own, but those of a bolder man. His father would take a fit if he knew of the association. But what harm did it do? He enjoyed Kate’s company and she his. There was nothing more to it than that. He would choose his own friends.
Yet as he waited for the train in the frosty dark, he felt a pang of misgiving. In all the long conversations this afternoon, he had made no mention of Polly De Winton or the promise he had made to Jeremiah that he would propose to Polly come the New Year. It had just been to keep him from the constant nagging about settling his future.
Alexander had been happy to court Polly that autumn; she was pleasant company. But to him, their marriage would be little more than a business arrangement to please his father and hers. It was nothing to do with love. And he needed love. He would take it where he found it.
Only after he had climbed on board and was passing the lights of the Ravensworth Arms did it strike Alexander. The sweet pain in his chest that he felt when he thought of Kate, the longing inside; it was love. He was in love with the blue-eyed maid from Ravensworth.
Chapter 19
The next time they met, Alexander drove a small pony and trap. ‘I’m taking you into Gateshead,’ he declared. ‘We’ll walk around Saltwell Park and take tea. I want to treat you.’
Kate grinned with delight as he helped her up and was glad she had put on her best dress; one that Suky had given her in a flush of generosity after becoming pregnant and too big to button it up. It was deep blue and matched a hat Kate had bought at a village bazaar that had belonged to the stylish Mrs Fairish, wife of a master baker.
She felt like a lady, riding into town beside her handsome companion. They walked around the public gardens, arm in arm, stopping to listen to a brass band playing Christmas carols under the gilded bandstand. Afterwards, they warmed themselves by a roaring fire in a nearby tea room and ate hungrily through a plate of currant bread and cherry cake.
‘My favourite cake,’ Kate mused. ‘Reminds me of being happy as a bairn - before my father died.’
‘I like to think your father was the William I remember - the kind man who took me to the circus with his pretty wife.’
‘So do I,’ Kate smiled wistfully. ‘I’m sure he must’ve been to a circus, ‘cos he made a lion and cage out of old wood for my older sisters. It’s the only toy that didn’t get sold—’ She stopped herself quickly. ‘I mean, it’s the only toy I remember my mam keeping. Our Jack used to play with it.’
‘Is your mother pretty, Kate? With daughters like you and Mary, she must be,’ he flattered.
Kate thought of her mother’s tired, dark-ringed eyes and sallow square face, her once full mouth permanently set in a thin grim line. She hobbled and wheezed like an old woman. Only the treasured faded photograph of Kate’s parents and their young family showed that her mother had once been beautiful. She kept the photograph wrapped in brown paper and hidden under her mattress, for fear of inciting Mary’s jealousy. It had been taken on a rare trip to the seaside, before her youngest sister had been born. It depicted a happy family of which she had never had the chance to be a part.
‘My mother was bonny once,’ Kate answered. ‘But life’s been hard for her these past years. Likely you wouldn’t recognise her, even if she was the woman you met as a lad.’
‘Maybe one day I’ll drive you over to see her - give her a surprise.’
Kate felt alarm. She could not imagine taking Alexander to the squat little railway cottage above the cutting. Yet her mother kept it tidy and the front garden neat and he seemed to find something charming in the way working people lived: he was forever drawing them outside pit cottages or in the fields. Kate could not understand it. Perhaps it would be possible to take him there and show him off to her mother, she daydreamt. As long as she could be sure John McMullen would not be there to cause a scene or give offence.
She smiled and said nothing. It excited her that Alexander spoke about future meetings. Could it be possible he intended courting her? Kate dared not hope. He might enjoy spending the day with her once in a while, but he lived in a different world that she could not hope to enter. She would have to content herself with these delicious snatched moments together when they could play at being equals.
December came and Alexander grew bolder. He called at the inn and had meals there whenever business took him to Ravensworth or Newcastle. He made no secret of knowing Kate and kept her in conversation when she served him in the taproom. The landlord was wary at first, but seeing how it pleased his free-spending customer, did not scold h
er. Still, Kate could tell Bram Taylor was uneasy when Alexander stopped by at the inn on her next Sunday off.
‘I’m on my way to the castle,’ he said breezily. ‘Would you like a lift in my carriage, Kate? I know your aunt would be pleased to see you.’
Kate flushed at the brazenness, but, avoiding Mary’s scandalised look and the landlord’s frown, went with him.
Once down the lane, he turned to her and grinned. ‘A fine day for walking in the hills. You can visit your aunt another day, can’t you?’
She nodded and he set the pony to a brisk trot. Up on the moors they walked along an old wagon way in the sharp frost, knocking at an ale house he knew for a mug of warmed beer when the low afternoon sun began to dip.
They sat by the innkeeper’s fire, sharing the drink. Kate had never tasted beer before - the smell reminding her of her drunken stepfather - but sitting next to Alexander in the isolated cottage decorated with holly for Christmas, she found the drink warming and intoxicating. She felt so happy she started to sing, songs pouring out of her in a torrent. The family of the house stopped their chores to listen and join in.
‘She’s my nightingale,’ Alexander boasted in merriment.
The wife gave Kate a knowing look, which made her blush.
The woman thought she was Alexander’s fancy woman! Kate decided it was time to leave. She was uncertain when he suggested meeting her in a fortnight, frightened of the feelings he stirred in her.
‘It’s too near to Christmas. You’ll be busy at home, won’t you? Christmas dances and that, with your own kind?’ she tried to joke.
Alexander tipped her chin so she had to look into his face. His eyes blazed.
‘My kind? I don’t give two pennies for the dull gentry of the county, if that’s what you mean. It’s your company I want, Kate!’
Kate’s heart thudded. They were so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face.
‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘I’m not good enough for you.’
He grabbed her hands and held on, his look fierce. ‘By God, you are! You’re the kindest, prettiest, most loving girl I’ve ever met, with the sweetest singing voice in the world. It’s me who isn’t good enough for you, Kate. Say you’ll see me again!’
She trembled at his touch and the passionate words he spoke just for her. Or were they just for her? an inner voice cautioned. Did he act like this with other girls, other women in different towns? She did not know. But the words made her heady and she wanted to believe them.
‘Don’t leave me broken-hearted,’ he protested. ‘You do want to see me again, don’t you, Kate?’
‘Aye, I do,’ she confessed, ‘more than anything.’
He gave her the warm smile that made her insides somersault. Then briefly he leant forward and kissed her on the cheek for the first time.
‘Till we meet again, sweet Kate,’ he said tenderly.
Chapter 20
Rose prepared excitedly for the girls coming home for Christmas, or to be exact, Boxing Day. With the luxury of Jack’s new wages from the docks, she had bought a leg of pork from a local farmer and a bagful of vegetables from Harry Burn. She had to be careful when she spoke to him, for ever since Mrs Burn had died the previous winter, John was suspicious of her conversing with the widower.
It amazed Rose that John could still be jealous over her. She had long ago stopped looking in the stained mirror that hung in the scullery where Mary used to preen every morning and apply her Ponds cold cream. At forty-six, Rose knew her looks and figure were gone. She had the slow painful gait of a much older woman and had long given up trying to mount the stairs to the loft.
Rose felt her stomach lurch in anticipation of the visit. It was over a year since the family had all been together. She had decorated the room with streamers of coloured paper and holly that Jack had helped her pick from along the railway cutting. She glanced at the clock yet again.
Sarah would be here first from Hebburn, with the mince pies that she had promised and to help her cook the festive dinner. Rose had not seen her eldest since she had turned twenty-four. Sarah was courting and happy; everyone knew except John.
‘When can I meet the lad?’ Rose had asked in the summer.
‘I’m not bringing him back here!’ Sarah had declared. ‘Father would kill me - or him.’
Rose had no answer. Sarah’s sweetheart was a miner and John thought them the lowest form of life. He was suspicious of men who chose to crawl underground for a living and never see daylight. He cursed them for their readiness to strike for better conditions, calling them lazy, whereas William would have blamed the pit owners. John only cared that the disruption in the coal supply could bring the mills and yards grinding to a standstill and make men like himself idle.
‘ ‘Tis the fault of the pitmen we have no work on the river,’ she had often heard him rail, whether there had been a strike or not. ‘They can’t be trusted with owt.’
Once she might also have disapproved of Sarah being courted by a miner, thinking the match too lowly. They were a breed apart, rough and dirty, and kept closely to themselves. Rose had grown up with such views. But Sarah’s stories of her pitman and his family were quite different. She spoke of kind, generous folk and a spotless kitchen despite the grime that the men tramped in. Besides, Rose had learnt from experience that you could not judge a man by his outward appearance. Her head had been turned by the sight of an army coat and a strong handsome face and look where it had got her. She did not object but worried for Sarah if John should find out.
Rose had to accept that she could not offer hospitality to Sarah’s young man. Anyway, the romance might come to nothing, so it was not worth riling John’s temper over the matter. For her husband’s ill humour had got no better over the three and a half years they had lived at Cleveland Place. His attempts at sobriety had not lasted long and when in work he would often get no further than the pubs on Learn Lane, a stone’s throw from the dock gates, forgetting about his long walk home. Many was the time she had had to send Jack searching for him late in the evening, for she was too lame and would not have suffered the indignity of entering a public house.
Jack, a tall, wiry youth, was often repaid with a ‘smack in the gob’ for his efforts in trying to prise his belligerent father from the cosiness of some bar.
Rose would try to comfort her son after such bouts of violence. ‘Your day will come,’ she promised him. ‘He’ll not be the stronger one for ever.’ The saints forgive her, but she almost willed the moment to come when Jack would stand up to his father and gave him a taste of his own medicine.
Sometimes Rose worried about Jack. He had become increasingly moody and withdrawn since his sisters had left home, especially Kate, who had always been openly affectionate with her half-brother. He had moped for months after she left, long after he had stopped asking when his sister was coming home. But faced with John’s constant criticism at his lack of hardness or teasing about girls, Jack kept to himself, disappearing on his own to trap rabbits or fish the streams.
He would shadow the local farmer when he went out to shoot crows, and once or twice the man had let Jack have a go with the gun. Jack seemed to gain more pleasure from this than any amount of socialising. The boy had a good aim and had once returned from a fair with four coconuts with which Rose had not known what to do.
Rose often wondered if she had been right to bring them out of the overcrowded town to their semi-rural retreat. She had been in despair at the evictions and flits forced on them by John’s boorish behaviour and frightened at the yellow fog of chemical fumes permeating their last home, which had been slowly suffocating young Jack. Perhaps now Jack needed more company; he was turning into a loner. But better that than a fighting, cussed drunk like his father. Not one day did Rose regret the move for her own sake. Even in the depths of winter, when she had to break the ice
on the pail to get water for the kettle and struggle through the snow to search for tinder, she thanked the saints for her primitive cottage.
Like an animal in hibernation she had rested her bruised spirit, slowly reawakening to the world with a new inner strength. She delighted in spring rain, summer birdsong and autumn sun as if she was experiencing them for the first time. While she tended her garden, the earth seemed to nurture her in return. During these years when she had often been on her own for long hours at the cottage, Rose had rediscovered a sense of worth after years of degradation. She kept hens and grew giant rhubarb and strong onions. She exchanged these with her neighbours for jams, relish or firewood. She bartered produce with itinerant pedlars for buttons, hairpins, or Emerson’s Bromo Seltzer, which she forced on John when he complained of sore head, stomach or bowels.
Rose would take Jack with her blackberry picking along the railway line and gather elderflowers and wild mint for cordials. Her son would return from his wanderings with crab apples and nuts, the occasional rabbit or wood pigeon for the pot. On rare occasions, John would return early and in good mood, and they would eat together and walk out along the embankment to view the trains, and Rose wished life could always be that tranquil.
Certainly, it had been easier this last year without Mary in the house. Kate had saved the day by finding her work at the Ravensworth Arms. When Mary heard that this was no common hostelry but the hub of social life for the staff at the castle, she lost no time in boarding the train for Lamesley.
Rose glanced at the clock again. Kate and Mary might be at Lamesley station at this very moment, waiting for the train to take them to Gateshead and then on to South Shields. They would get off at Tyne Dock station and walk up the hill. Jack had gone down to meet them and carry their bags ...
It had been one of the best decisions of her life to send Kate to Lizzie’s, Rose felt sure of it. She noticed how Kate held herself with a new dignity and spoke with assurance in a voice that had subdued the rough edges of her speech. Rose was secretly proud of her daughter’s ability to improve herself, despite John’s teasing and Mary’s mimicry. Even though Kate no longer worked at the castle and was only a barmaid at the inn, Rose still felt a sense of triumph.
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