A Mother's Sacrifice (20 page)

‘Oh, I do enjoy music.’

‘I, too. We shall dress in our best and take supper afterwards at the Red Lion.’

Laura’s eyes shone in anticipation. ‘I should like that very much.’

‘This afternoon we shall go to the draper’s. You will not mind if I accompany you?’

‘Not at all. But the High Street is steep ...’

‘I have my magic mixture, ma’am,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It carries me away on its wings and I am a youth again.’

Laura laughed. She too experienced the same euphoric feeling when she took her medicine.

‘How good to see you laugh! You have worried too much of late.’ He raised his tankard to her. ‘Let me have the pleasure of indulging you with gifts and entertainment.’

She responded with her own goblet and smiled. ‘You must not spoil me, sir.’

He held up a piece of unappetising, overcooked beef on his fork. ‘I don’t think there is much chance of that, do you?’

She laughed again. ‘Perhaps the pudding will be better.’

 

For two or three days Laura forgot her misgivings about Quinta and Top Field and her own sickness. George encouraged her to believe that all would be well because he was always so sure that it would be. She retrimmed her best bonnet and the bodice of her Sunday gown. George insisted that he buy her a fancy purse, the kind she had seen ladies with at balls, and she carried it over her arm when they went to the musical concert.

She enjoyed a perfect evening. They stayed quite late at the Red Lion in the company of others who had been in the audience and were escorted to their inn by a pair of burly ironworkers who were students at the Institute. It was an aspect of town life she had not known and she thought again about coming to market with Quinta.

The day after the concert, George spent the morning at a lawyer’s office and then he took her for dinner to dining rooms recommended by that gentleman. She continued to marvel at the refinements being introduced to a place that, since her last visit, she had regarded as evil and dirty. He persuaded her to try a tiny cup of coffee after her pudding. She tasted it and passed it across to him.

‘It’s too bitter for me.’

‘It revives the spirits well.’

‘And it is dear, so do not waste it.’

He put his head on one side. She thought his crinkly eyes were very kind when he smiled.

‘I am grateful you are here with me,’ he said. ‘The surgeon calls on me tomorrow.’

 

George stayed quite still on the bed while the surgeon examined his stiff and swollen knee. He was older than George had expected. ‘You were in the Sixty-fifth Regiment, I am told, sir?’ the sergeant asked.

‘Yes, indeed I saw service in the Persian Gulf campaign and Mauritius. We were keeping the East India trade routes open while you were defeating Bonaparte. The second battalion of the Eighty-fourth was out there, too. It is recruiting in the Riding at present.’

‘What happened to you when the war with France was over?’

‘I served the King in the West Indies until I lost my dear wife to a fever. I resigned my commission,’ said the surgeon.

‘I am surprised you have chosen to come here, to the South Riding.’

‘London society had no appeal for me without her. I am too old for the hardships of war.Yet it is those very privations that I miss. The railways and industries of Northern England are the nearest I can find to a battlefield. We took a musket ball out of this, you say?’

George winced as the surgeon examined his ragged scarring and prodded the inflamed skin with his fingers. ‘Yes, sir. It took a long while to heal and it’s never been strong since. Now I cannot tolerate the pain without laudanum. Even that does not take it away completely. But it causes me to care less about it.’

‘If you take enough to dull the pain it will dull your senses, too.’

‘Aye, and hasten my end.’

‘I fear the bone is putrid.’

‘Can you cure it?’

‘If I do nothing the poison will spread. But you have survived such fevers once before.’

‘I was twenty years younger then.’

‘You would have had a better chance of recovering from the alternative at that age, too.’

George understood what he was saying. ‘Take it off, you mean?’

‘My saws and knives are the finest Sheffield steel and I have the services here of a field assistant who came home with me from the Indies.’

‘Well, if you did, at least the pain would be gone, and a peg leg would be more use than this one. Will you do it here?’

‘It will be better for you to come to my chambers.You will need careful tending afterwards. I can arrange that for you. I have taken a house for such a purpose.’

‘How soon can you do it?’

‘Tomorrow, if you wish.’

George was silent for full two minutes. The surgeon did not press him. Finally he said clearly, ‘Very well. It is time.’

‘Come in the morning when the light is good.’

Chapter 14

Quinta had made gooseberry cheese with elderflower cordial and honey and she served it on pastry circles that she cut out with the rim of one of her mother’s valued wine glasses.

Patrick leaned back in her father’s old chair, the one she had once offered to Farmer Bilton, and smiled at her. He looked so very handsome in the twilight. His teeth and light eyes contrasted starkly with his sun-darkened skin. She wondered if he took his shirt off in the afternoon heat and guessed that he did as it was hardly soiled. His back must have been sorely scratched by the bundles of reeds and brambles he carried away from the pond.

‘I should show you the gun before the light goes completely. Do you still want me to?’

‘I do.’ In fact, Quinta looked forward to brandishing it at Farmer Bilton. It would surely stop him coming over here and bothering her. Patrick stood up and went to the cowshed, returning to the front door with his rifle. She wondered where he had hidden it for she had looked in there since his father had left and could not see it. She had even moved old straw and tools but still could not find it.

‘Come outside,’ he said, ‘and get used to the weight first.’

She did and almost dropped it, it was so heavy. The barrel was so long it tipped forward, hitting the front step.

‘Careful! Try and stand the butt on the ground. If you hide it near to hand, all you need to do is lift it up, step outside and pull the trigger. Like this.’ He showed her the movement, making it look so easy, and then added,‘Keep it pointing towards the sky. Here, you have a go.’

Her eyes widened. It had seemed a good idea this morning. Now she wasn’t so sure.

‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘It’s not loaded. A shot at this hour would surely bring the gamekeeper round.’

She heaved the cumbersome weapon upwards and placed her finger on the trigger nervously. It clicked harmlessly and she practised several times until she was used to the way it moved.

‘I’ll load it in the morning and leave it in the house when I go to the pond. Remember, if you have to fire it, point it in the air. Oh, and the noise will be very loud and frightening.’

‘Well, that’s the idea, isn’t it?’

‘For Farmer Bilton, not for you,’ he said seriously. ‘I’ll come as fast as I can if I hear it.’

He was a man of his word and she trusted him. ‘Thank you. Will you stay and talk awhile tonight?’ She thought he might, but he hesitated.

‘I want to be up at first light. There is much to do.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Quinta was aware of disappointment but she understood for she was weary herself. She said, ‘It’s been a long day.’

‘Yes. Good night then.’ He made no move to leave.

Eventually she responded: ‘Good night, Patrick.’ She did not stir either. The gun was heavy in her hands but she hardly noticed it as she stared at him silently for what seemed like an age.

He gazed back at her but in the gathering gloom she could not see his expression and she wondered if he wanted to stay with her as much as she wanted him to. Then he stretched out a hand towards her and said, ‘I’ll take the gun with me, shall I?’

She lifted the heavy weapon off the ground. He took it from her and said, ‘Bolt and bar the door and you’ll be quite safe tonight.’

As he said it, she realised that she wanted Patrick inside with her. In the house with her, close to her. She felt secure when he was near and it was nothing to do with the gun or Farmer Bilton. It was everything to do with Patrick himself and she could not totally comprehend it, for she had once been quite fearful about his presence.

He turned and walked away with a resolute stride, holding the gun under his arm. She watched him disappear into the cowshed without a backward glance. She stayed outside telling herself she needed the air. She imagined him settling down for the night.

He had made their humble lodging neat and tidy, if not exactly comfortable. He slept on a blanket on the stone flags in one of the cleaned out, wood-lined cow stalls that her father had built. He had banked up old straw to give warmth and comfort for his father, but he had to wash in a bucket of cold water from the stream and cook over an outdoor fire.

She stood outside the kitchen for a long time in the gathering gloom, until eventually she accepted that the cowshed door was firmly shut for the night. How could she sleep now? When her need for him was so acute? She wanted him to come back to her, be beside her, near enough to touch, not across the yard in the cowshed. As she went indoors and locked and bolted the door, she imagined him rolled in his blanket and fast asleep.

 

Patrick had been shaken by the landlord’s attack on Quinta. Seeing her being attacked by that ogre had made him realise how much he had come to care for her. She was strong and intelligent, but she was vulnerable to a selfish brute like Bilton, who believed he had an absolute right to treat his tenants as he pleased. He remembered landlords like that in Ireland, often Englishmen, who cared only for their profits and nothing for the people trying to scratch a living off their land.

He wanted to look after her, not just through this harvest but for ever. Perhaps his travels were truly over and Top Field was destined to be his future? It was a future he welcomed, but, he admitted, only because Quinta was part of it. For even if he could not save the tenancy for them, he would not be able to walk away from Top Field at the end of the summer unless Quinta came with him. She meant too much to him. As he tossed and turned in his blanket, he realised what his father had seen so clearly but he had not. Until now.

He was attracted to Quinta more than he had been to any woman before; in a way that surprised him. It was not just a physical appeal. He recognised that feeling well enough and knew how easily it was satisfied. But with Quinta it was more. His emotions towards her ran deeper.

Oh, he wanted to bed her, he had no doubt about that, and had acknowledged that from the first time he set eyes on her. But this feeling that had taken him over was more. Was this the love his father spoke of? The passion his father had felt for his mother? He relived the moment when he had clasped her to his body, wanting above anything to protect her from the coarse pawing of her landlord. Her womanly form in his arms had felt so right. This is where he wanted to be. This is where he wanted to stay.

Should he tell her now? He wished his father were here to advise him. He half rose to go outside and see if a candle still burned in the cottage kitchen. But after her ordeal today, a knock at the door in the dead of night would alarm her further and he did not want that. He lay awake, gazing at the vestiges of moonlight pushing through the gaps in the wooden window shutters.

For weeks he thought she had shunned him as a traveller. He wondered what had changed her mind. Her mother’s approval, of course, yet he became uneasy that even now she might not return his affection. But tonight, surely, as they had faced each other in the twilight, she had felt the same desire as he? An urge to be together, to touch, to kiss and - and to love.

 

The kitchen fire burned low. Quinta leaned over it to light a splint for her candle stub. The cottage was so quiet without her mother. She climbed the stairs to the bedchamber slowly and stood by the window staring at the cowshed outlined by moonlight. She was wide awake. Was Patrick asleep already? She thought so. After showing her the gun he had retreated quickly to his bed. He had toiled hard in the fields and must be tired out and anxious for his rest.

He did it all for them, she thought, for their smallholding, for their future; hers and her mother’s. But what of his own future, she wondered? What did he want for himself? She had thought he wished to move on, to find steady work in town, near to the Dispensary for his father. She had thought she wished him to leave, too. But now she realised that she did not. It seemed to her that he belonged here.

She wanted him with her, kissing her, loving her. It did not matter that he was a traveller, her heart yearned to beat with his. How could she go to sleep with this longing for him to hold her to his chest as he had done earlier?

The chamber was hot, stiflingly so, as it was situated over the kitchen. The heat was welcome in winter, but not tonight, when Quinta’s heart was racing and her head was feverish with this new-found desire. She placed her candle on the window ledge and wrestled with the catch to open it and let in some cool night air. But the wood was old and warped and she could not budge it. Hastily she unbuttoned her gown and unlaced her corset, letting them fall to the floor. She shook her chemise free and it fell away from her skin. She wet her hands in the basin on her washstand, spread the cooling water over her face and neck, and wandered back to the window to pick up her candle and place it by the bed. Then she retrieved her gown and as she straightened she saw him.

The moonlight lit up his form. He was standing outside the cowshed shed, still fully clothed, watching the cottage. He must have seen her. She pressed her hands to the glass and he started forward. She did not move as he continued to walk towards the kitchen door. He stopped a few yards away and continued to stare at her.