House of Angels (7 page)

A shudder rippled through her, as, tucking her nightie round her toes against the cold, Livia turned her mind to what it would mean to be married to Henry Hodson. To be kissed by that wet, slobbering mouth, fondled by those sausage-like fingers; to be taken to bed as his wife,
rather as her poor sister was no doubt enduring right at this moment. Livia felt sickened by the thought this might indeed be her fate, as it was Ella’s.

Why did life have to be this way? Why did she never meet decent men, real men like… She stopped, shocked by where her thoughts were leading her.

Yet she’d felt almost flattered by the way Jack Flint’s eyes had appraised her, as if in admiration. He’d made it clear that he did not dislike what he saw. And there’d been an athletic grace to his strong muscled body as he’d strode away across the garden. As exhaustion finally claimed her, it was not Hodson’s face she saw but quite another altogether, and another mouth she tasted. If she shuddered then, it was surely with pleasure.

Maggie was also far from sleep. But unlike her sisters, she had never viewed her own bed as any sort of sanctuary or safe haven. She’d tucked her diary away in its secret hiding place beneath a cracked floorboard, and now lay listening with dread to the familiar heavy step upon the stair. The sound, when it came minutes later, seemed to reverberate in her head. Maggie held her breath, waiting for her bedroom door to open.

Even as she shrank, mouse-like, into a tight little ball, she knew there was no escape, no place for her to hide. Hadn’t she discovered that fact years ago? The door creaked open, the heavy tread drew nearer, accompanied by the grunt and rasp of whisky-tainted breath. The next instant the covers were being pulled back and the bed sagged with the weight of him as he sank beside her.

Maggie’s every instinct was to turn away, to cling to the far side of the bed and press her knees tightly together, but she stayed where she was, flat on her back, knowing resistance was fruitless. She’d tried many times in the past to escape, even to run, but had learnt to her cost that it was safer to close her eyes and endure. That way it was over and done with all the sooner, and with less pain and fewer repercussions.

He’d first come to her bed when she was just eight years old. Maggie hadn’t understood back then what he was doing. She’d thought that his kisses and cuddles were meant to prove that she was special in some way, perhaps because she was the youngest; and that she was his favourite. She’d revelled in the attention, at least for a while. And then everything had changed. His attentions had grown more demanding, far too intrusive for a shy young girl, and instinct had told her that this was wrong. Trying to tell her father so, to resist these demonstrations of affection, was another matter altogether. Josiah wasn’t a man to take no for an answer.

She used to hide in the cupboard, holding her breath and covering her eyes with her hands, hoping and praying that if she couldn’t see him, then he couldn’t find her. But he always did. He’d make a game of it, a sick sort of hide and seek, where he would call her name softly as he opened drawers and doors, the lid of her toy box, and even look under the rug, saying ‘Now where can my special girl be? I know she’s here somewhere.’

When he found her, which he always did, he’d carry her back to bed and climb into it with her, start to kiss her
and stroke that secret private place, as if this were all a part of the game to prove how very much he loved her. He described it as their little secret, something special which must be kept only between the two of them. He couldn’t seem to understand that she really didn’t like what he did to her, and was far too ashamed and embarrassed to tell anyone.

There had been a time, when she was approaching womanhood and he began to demand more than simply touching and stroking, that Maggie had tried to actually fight him. She’d smack his laughing face, punch his solid shoulders with small fierce fists. At first he found her resistance amusing, then he’d smack and punch her right back, and his ‘attentions’ following such demonstrations of rebellion had been far more brutal. Thus Maggie had learnt the wisdom of obedience.

‘Shove up, my pretty,’ he said to her now. ‘Be a good girl and be nice to your dadda, eh? Let’s enjoy our little secret business.’

Within seconds he was on top of her, pushing her legs apart, his sharp nails digging into the soft flesh of her inner thighs. Maggie kept her head turned away in a vain attempt to disassociate herself from what was going on below as he fiddled and poked, stroked and licked her tender parts, grunting and panting all the while. Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, but she made not a sound, long since schooled to endure in silence.

Next came the part she hated most, when he pushed her head down under the covers till she was in close proximity to his own private parts, and it was her turn to
pleasure him. His choice of word, not hers. The sweaty stench of his hairy loins alone made her gag, let alone the thrust of his loathsome member being rammed into her mouth. Maggie did what was required of her until she could bear no more and did indeed almost vomit.

By the time he entered her, pinning her down on the bed with his strong hands and his cumbersome, ageing body, coming to a violent and brutal climax, Maggie was beyond caring, beyond thought or emotion of any kind, save to wish that the sheer weight of him might crush her into nothingness. Maggie loathed her father for what he did to her, and loathed herself even more for allowing him to do it. She ached to disappear completely, to sink into some hole in the ground and vanish for ever; longed for it with all her heart. Maybe one day she would succeed and find some way to escape and make herself disappear altogether.

The sun was high in the sky by the time Ella woke that first morning, indicating that it must be quite late. She stretched and stirred, savouring that warm half-doze for another few moments, that half awareness which made her imagine she might be in her own bed. And then she remembered. The bed, the place, her situation, was entirely new and strange. She was married. She was a wife, in name if not in truth.

Last night Ella had lain shivering in the marital bed, although whether with cold or fear was hard to define. It felt like a combination of both. She certainly didn’t experience the sense of excitement and joy a bride was supposed to feel on her wedding night, and she’d dared not even allow herself to think of Danny.

She’d left the mutton stew largely untouched, its greasiness making her come over all nauseous so that she’d had to run outside and vomit into the bushes, much to her shame. The housekeeper, a Mrs Rackett (strange name for such a silent old crone) had been most disapproving.

‘Waste of good food to chuck it up minutes after you’ve eaten it,’ she’d complained. Ella couldn’t argue with the logic of that. But the woman had put the rest of the untouched stew from Ella’s plate back into the pot, which had made her retch all the more.

Ella hadn’t troubled to unpack but collapsed into bed, dreading the moment when she heard her husband’s tread upon the stair. She’d waited with her heart in her mouth, very much as she would listen to the approach of her father to the tower room when he intended to use the strap on one or other of her sisters. She hadn’t suffered this fate half as often as Livia, but the memory was sharp all the same.

Would this man, her new husband, be another such? Would he use her kindly or take what he wanted without a care for her own feelings? Ella curled herself into a tight little ball and waited.

But he had not come. Sleep had claimed her instead. Now it was morning and she stumbled out of bed, splashed her face with cold water from the jug and pulled on one of her prettiest gowns. It was a pretty print sarsenet with a pin-tucked bodice. But Ella had trouble with the long line of buttons at the back so was obliged to take it off again and find something simpler and more sensible. A skirt and blouse came to hand and she dragged those on with a sigh of irritation. She did so like to look pretty.

Pinning up her hair took another age without a maid to assist and Ella grew flustered and frustrated, cursing her father for not having spared her Kitty. He could easily have got himself another parlour maid. But he’d
insisted that a farmer of modest means could not afford the luxury of a ladies’ maid for his bride.

‘But
you
could easily afford to pay her for me,’ she’d stubbornly pointed out. Very reasonably, so far as Ella could see. To which plea her father had snorted his contempt, informing his daughter that it was no longer his responsibility to spoil her any more than he had already, and that she must speak to her husband on the matter.

Now, dropping hair pins all over the floor and being decidedly dissatisfied with the result when she’d finally tucked every lock of shining, silver fair hair into some sort of order, Ella made a vow to do exactly that at the very first opportunity. Really, it was quite unreasonable to expect her to manage without the assistance of a maid.

The kitchen was empty, the great table scrubbed bare by the time Ella emerged some time later, still rubbing sleep from her eyes. There was no one in sight, not even the
sour-faced
old crone. She found a heel of bread languishing in the bread bin and poured herself a mug of fresh milk from the jug in the larder. Then she began to ransack the shelves in search of some other delicacy: peaches perhaps, or cold sausage, youthful hunger suddenly returning with renewed vigour after her prolonged fast.

‘Breakfast was over and done with hours ago.’

The voice made her nearly jump out of her skin, Ella having thought herself quite alone. She swung around, the two eggs she’d been considering putting in a pan to boil flying from her fingers and smashing to the slate floor. Amos frowned at the resulting mess, and silently
handed his young wife a cloth. Ella dropped quickly to her knees and began to wipe up the pool of sticky yolk and albumen.

‘We allus has us breakfast reet after milking. Six sharp. I didn’t wake thee since it were your first morning, so I’ll let thee off this time. But see thou isn’t late again.’

She didn’t quite understand what he meant by ‘let thee off’. After all, at Angel House she could rise when she pleased, take breakfast or not according to her mood and appetite. No one would ever presume to wake her. And did he always talk in thee’s and thou’s? Ella had never noticed that in him before, but then she’d hardly exchanged half a dozen words with her husband, save for the few words he’d spoken on their journey here, and hearing him read his Bible at the kitchen table last night.

He was still speaking, issuing further instructions, or so it seemed. ‘Now tha’d best get theesen over to the dairy.’

She looked at him askance. ‘The dairy? But it’s Saturday.’

‘There’s still work to be done. It’s not Mrs Rackett’s job to do it, not now we’ve got thee.’ He glowered down at Ella’s ineffectual efforts with the broken eggs. ‘Nor is it her job to clean up after thee. You might find a drop of water would help.’

Ella considered this, wondering where she might find such a thing as a tap.

‘The pump is outside,’ Amos informed her, reading her mind.

She looked at him blankly. ‘Pump? Outside?’ As if she couldn’t quite work out where that might be, or what, exactly, a pump was. Angel House was equipped with the very latest in bathrooms and plumbing, even in the kitchen. Ella suddenly recalled that the privy, once she’d finally been allowed to relieve herself the night before, was tucked behind the house amongst a patch of nettles. She shuddered at the recollection. What sort of a place had she come to?

‘Aye, where else would it be?’ Amos was saying. ‘And look sharp about it,’ he grumbled, turning to walk away. Ella remained on her knees for a full heart beat, then jumped up to hurry after him. ‘But, Amos, what is it, exactly, I’m supposed to do in the dairy?’

He blinked at her as if she were suddenly speaking an unknown language. ‘Churn butter, mek cheese, do whatever needs doing a’ course.’

‘B-b-but…’ She was stammering now, uncertain, fearful, as she had used to do when she was a child and her father had been cross with her over some supposed misdemeanour. ‘I’ve no idea how to do those things, how to make b-butter or cheese.’

‘Then tha’d best look sharp and learn,’ he calmly informed her. ‘This isn’t Angel House, and we don’t have no servants here. As well as the dairy, there’s the calves to feed, and the hens to see to. Mrs Rackett will show you what’s what, so look sharp.’

Looking sharp, by which he seemed to mean the necessity for both speed and the facility of learning, appeared to be his byword, although what all the rush
was for, Ella really couldn’t imagine. Even had she the first idea how to set about making butter, didn’t she have all day in which to manage it? What else was there to do in this godforsaken place? She could quite see herself being bored out of her mind by nightfall.

Watching her husband stride away in his lolloping gait, Ella thought that perhaps this might not be the moment to mention the problems she’d encountered dressing and attending to her hair by herself, or to ask for a personal maid.

Instead, she toasted two slices of bread at the kitchen fire for her breakfast, spread them lavishly with fresh butter and honey, and began making plans for a visit to town. She certainly had no intention of languishing here for very long, nor of spending her days churning butter. Nor did she have any intention of becoming involved with whatever it was you were supposed to do with calves or hens. The very idea made her shudder.

Ella chose to ignore his instructions to find either Mrs Rackett or the dairy, and went back to her room where she set about unpacking her few belongings. She shook out her dresses, left in a crumpled heap after her indecision over what to wear, and hung them in the cavernous wardrobe beside Amos’s best Sunday suit and an old tweed jacket. She put the few books she’d brought with her on the table by the bed, and her shoes and other possessions, such as her writing case and sewing box, in an empty chest which stood at the foot of the bed.

If she’d known how stark her surroundings were going to be, she’d have brought much more. She started writing a list of what she would bring the very first time she visited Kendal.

The room itself afforded little in the way of home comforts, with its uncarpeted bare boards that were rough to the feet, the shuttered windows with no sign of curtains, and basic, rustic furniture. Ella supposed a bedroom was not a place a farmer would have much time to linger, since the nature of his work demanded he rise early. She nursed a wild hope that perhaps she could make the room into her very own little hideaway, somewhere she might escape to, to read her romances or write letters home to her sisters.

She groaned as a wave of homesickness struck her. It already felt like days rather than hours since she’d last seen them, her wedding day having gone by in a blur.

Why had she ever allowed herself to be bullied into this match? Why had her father turned on her, the one daughter who had always been his favourite, or so she’d believed? And all because she’d fallen in love with a groom, a working man instead of a man of property. Why was it that he valued land, money, his business, everything in fact, above his three daughters’ happiness? It was so unfair.

Amos made no comment on her defection from her duties, perhaps because it was a Saturday, and her first day at the farm. Ella read for a while and worked on her list; she ate bread and cheese with Mrs Rackett and three silent children at lunchtime, then took a walk as
far as the clapper bridge in the afternoon, desperate for a breath of fresh air.

A flock of pink-tinged grey clouds chased each other across the blue sky, as if lining up to take turns crossing Lingmell Fell. Perhaps they were heading for Scotland via High Street, the old Roman track that traversed the tops of the fells. Ella longed to go with them. Better still, she wanted to go home, to Livia and Maggie. She so longed to keep walking, on down the valley through the village of Staveley and beyond to Kendal, that it took every ounce of effort to turn around and walk back to Todd Farm.

Her courage was further tested that night as yet again she lay in the cold marital bed, waiting for her husband to come to her. The click of the latch was like a gunshot in the quiet of the night.

Dear God, what had she done?

He looked smaller and thinner by the light of the candle he carried, like a cadaver rather than a living, breathing man. Setting the candlestick down on a washstand he poured water from the jug into the basin and began to wash his hands. Ella was surprised by this, knowing Amos had already washed and shaved in the outhouse before supper, using the cut-throat razor and strop that hung behind the scullery door. Whatever he had found to do since then, which would necessitate this further thorough scrubbing and washing, Ella really couldn’t imagine.

When he was finally done and towelled dry, he sat on a bentwood chair to remove his boots and socks. Shadows
loomed as he moved about, but she was grateful for the semi-darkness as he began to peel off his clothing. Seconds later she saw a white nightshirt billow over his head, and fear clutched at her stomach.

Ella’s heart beat slow and hard in her breast. What would he do to her? Would he be gentle and patient? Or had Father given the impression that she was no virgin, that she was very much a woman of experience, which was not at all the case. Should she remind Amos of that fact now? Ella opened her mouth to explain but as quickly closed it again. How could she possibly discuss anything so intimate with this man, this stranger?

Once ready for bed, she expected him to extinguish the candle and climb in beside her. Instead, he took his time smoothing out the towel, hanging it to dry on a wooden rack that stood close by. Next, he knelt beside the bed and began to pray. His prayer was largely silent, little more than a mumble with few words distinguishable beyond the obvious, such as ‘Father in Heaven’ and ‘cast your eyes upon a poor sinner’.

There must have been several prayers for he took an interminably long time over the task before finally he blew out the candle and climbed into bed beside her. The flock mattress sagged beneath his weight but he brought no warmth with him, and precious little comfort. Still without uttering a single word, he turned towards her, tugged up her nightdress, and lay on top of her.

Ella stopped breathing. Was this how he intended to go about it? Were there to be no preliminaries, no soft kisses such as the kind Danny would shower over every
glimmer of silky bare flesh he could find: her mouth, her eyelids, behind her ears, even the inside of her wrist, oh so deliciously sensitive.

She really mustn’t think of Danny, not right at this moment.

Ella could feel something soft and warm against her thigh, which surprised her. She might lack experience with regards to the actual act itself, but she was by no means totally ignorant, and well accustomed to the hardness of Danny’s manhood, as well as the way he struggled to control his need after all those sweet kisses. Amos seemed to have an altogether different problem.

There was much grunting and gasping, pushing and shoving. He indicated that she should part her legs for him, and obediently she complied, although still he didn’t speak. Ella could feel the heat of him through the thick stuff of his nightshirt, and prepared for the worst as her husband began to sweat.

Would it hurt? she worried. Would there be blood on the sheets to prove her virginity? She rather hoped there might be, if only to prove her innocence. Amos pawed at her breast, squeezing one as if testing a fruit for ripeness. He sucked at her nipple, which startled her but did nothing to light any burning desire within her belly, or bring that familiar pulsating glow between her legs. And his penis, flopped against her thigh, remained stubbornly inactive.