Angel Meadow (11 page)

“Lovely day, sir.”

“Indeed it is, Evie.”

“The washing’s dry already,” she went on, sticking out her hip to draw his attention to the basket of snowy linen, and at the same time to her small waist.

“I’m not surprised. Let’s hope the rain keeps off.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” she answered, with what seemed heartfelt emotion.

They were walking away from one another by now, she towards the kitchen door, he to the arch let into the high wall over which already roses were beginning to clamber. The arch led to the stretch of rough grass that stood before the stables. They were in full view of the kitchen window where stood a ramrod-backed woman with iron grey hair drawn into so tight a bun at the back of her head it dragged the skin of her forehead taut. She wore a floor-length black frock of great severity and she frowned as she watched the little exchange beyond the window. She could not hear what was said and if she had could not have taken exception to its content but it was apparent she did not at all care for what she saw.

She tutted to herself, then, as Evie entered the kitchen, turned towards her, rattling her housekeeper’s keys menacingly.

“You’ve taken your time, my girl,” she said, as though even before the laundry-maid spoke she was prepared to call her a liar. “Don’t ask me to believe that it takes ten minutes to unpeg a line of washing.”

“I ’ad ter peg out another lot, Mrs Harvey,” Evie protested.

“Don’t you argue with me, girl,” Mrs Harvey hissed, her flinty eyes narrowed suspiciously, for though there had been nothing untoward in the appearance of the laundry-maid and the master’s son, Evie’s smile had been too warm for Mrs Harvey’s liking.

Evie bit her lip to prevent the next words of protest from tumbling out. She stood, her head hanging, her poppy mouth clamped mutinously shut and in the chair by the fire where she was smacking her lips over her midmorning cup of tea, Cook shook her head sympathetically. Cook was younger than the housekeeper, with a lighter spirit, an inclination towards good humour, a bit of a laugh and, she admitted it to herself, would have allowed the maidservants, if they had been in her charge, which they weren’t except the kitchen-maid, the scullery-maid and the skivvy, more leniency than Mrs Harvey showed. More freedom to gossip and giggle and stand about idly which would not have done at all, but then she had been married and, despite her use of the title, “Mrs” Harvey had not. Cook had found in her long career that women who had never known a man’s touch were often harsh on those who had. Not that young Evie was married and, as to the other, it had not gone unnoticed that the laundry-maid and the master’s elder son smiled at one another a lot. Mind, Evie was a good girl, a bonny girl, an innocent girl, Cook would have sworn to it, with glossy dark curls that constantly escaped the severe cap Mrs Harvey insisted upon, and the loveliest laughing blue eyes. She had cheeks on her like a ripe peach and a mouth that looked as though it had just been kissed, which it probably had if the young master’s smiles were anything to go by, and it was as well that Mrs Harvey was as strict as she was. No followers, she told the maidservants, and it was a rule that was strictly adhered to, though who they met, or where, on their day off, was their own business.

“Now, if it’s not too much trouble I’d be obliged if you’d get on with the ironing, girl,” Mrs Harvey told Evie sharply, “or the morning will be gone and not a blessed thing done.” This despite the fact that Evie had been at the washtub for the past three hours.

“I haven’t had me cup o’ tea, yet, Mrs Harvey,” Evie was unwise enough to say and at once Mrs Harvey’s face flushed a bright, brick red and for a moment Cook thought she would strike the girl but she quickly controlled herself.

“You’ve the impudence to expect to sit about drinking tea after wasting half the morning idling in the yard! I’ve never heard the like and what girls of today are coming to I don’t know. In my day we were lucky if we managed to sit down for our meals let alone a cup of tea. Many’s the time I took my dinner on the move we were that busy. Now, Jeannie’s seen to the fire for you and brought in the box irons to be filled. The embers are ready and so should you be. Now, not another word, d’you hear. I’ve to go up to see Mrs Hayes about the arrangements for the dinner party at the weekend but when I come back I want to see them shirts done at the very least. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mrs Harvey.”

“Very well, now get at it. Keep an eye on her, will you, Cook?” Just as though the minute her back was turned the laundry-maid would be lolling in Mrs Harvey’s chair in Mrs Harvey’s sitting-room drinking tea from one of Mrs Harvey’s china teacups.

Evie got her cup of tea, though she had to swallow it down quickly before Mrs Harvey came back or not only she, but Cook, who slipped it to her in the laundry-room, would have been for it.

The cause of it all was at that precise moment thundering round the loop in the River Irwell which ran at the back of his home. In fact it was so close it almost passed through the garden of Riverside House. Riding low on the neck of his new chestnut mare, which he had named Copper for obvious reasons, he galloped beside the river, then turned right abruptly, racing across field after field, putting the high-spirited mare to hedges of hawthorn and may, the fragrance of the newly opened blossom disturbed into a haze about him as Copper’s hooves clipped the top of the hedges. The fields were a spring miracle of silvery green, crimson, white and yellow where poppies and kingcups mixed with field mouse-ear in the tall grasses that brushed the horse’s belly as she and the rider hurtled onward.

When he reached Kersall Dell, a dense grove of beech trees which were already clothed in their bright, pure, spring foliage, he checked the mare slightly, for the smooth, silver grey trunks of the trees, like the soaring columns of a cathedral, were very close together. The trees, forced to grow tall in their constant struggle to reach the light, made a perfect hiding place and he smiled reminiscently at the memory of some moment pleasing to him. The grass was short and soft, as he well knew, muffling the mare’s hooves and he slowed right down to a walk. Layer upon layer of leaves circled each tree-trunk and as summer progressed the dense shade cast by the foliage would strip the ground of growth, leaving only the rotting carpet of last year’s dead beech trees.

Josh slowed only for a moment then turned the mare south towards the small pedestrian bridge at London Place Print Works which stood on the northward loop of the river. He crossed it, the animal’s hooves making a great clatter, causing heads in the print works yard to turn curiously.

He was down to a graceful canter now, both he and the horse sweating in the warm air. He wore no jacket or tie, just a fine pair of caramel-coloured doeskin breeches, a cream, open-necked shirt with the sleeves rolled up and well-polished riding boots. His back was straight but not stiff as he rode, his head up, his feet straight forward, looking every inch the superb horseman he was.

When he reached Suspension Road he urged his mare into a gallop again, clattering over Suspension Bridge until he was on his own side of the river once more. He was riding through water meadows now which led down to the river and backed on to the houses on Lower Broughton Road, houses with long gardens, growing longer as the river took a lazy turn away from them. There were no cotton mills or dye works here, for this was where wealthy men of cotton had built their homes and his father was the wealthiest of them all. His house, when his son came to it, stood on a rise of land twenty acres in total, consisting of lawns and flowerbeds, terraces lined with potted shrubs, stone steps leading here and there, a small pond in which golden fish lazily turned, a walled vegetable garden, a herb garden, with woodland and fenced paddocks which ran down to the water’s edge.

Josh slipped from his mare’s back, leaving her to crop the sweet grass, her head lowered, for she was tired after her wild gallop. He sank to his haunches, his arms across his knees, staring sightlessly into the slipping, silvery river, his expression thoughtful, then he smiled, as he had done earlier, as though at some pleasing memory.

She had almost let him do it last night, the deliciously pretty young girl who was his mother’s laundry-maid, and though he knew he shouldn’t play so close to home – all his instincts and the oft-repeated advice of his friends told him so – he had been unable to resist the rosy innocence, the dimpled sweetness, the soft adoration in her vivid blue eyes which was directed at him whenever he appeared. She was so lovely, soft, full-breasted, with a handspan of a waist and a full womanly hip. She came up only to his chin, her arms clinging about his back, her face lifting to his, her mouth opening beneath his in a way he found quite irresistible. She loved him, she told him so a dozen times as his hands pushed the bodice of her gown off her shoulders and his mouth found her full, rosy-peaked breast. She moaned softly in her need but he could get no further with her than that. Despite her status as a maidservant in his mother’s kitchen she was a decent girl, as well brought up and guarded, as pure and ignorant as his own eighteen-year-old sister, Milly. She had been protected as savagely by her labouring father as Milly was protected by Edmund Hayes until she had been forced by circumstances and the yearly increase in the size of her family to become laundry-maid at Riverside House. Her mother was a laundress, she had told him naïvely in one of the “conversations” she liked to have before he melted her into his arms with soft kisses and laughter, and had taught Evie all she knew. God almighty, he had groaned to himself a dozen times, he knew he should leave her alone, for the risk was great, not only for him but for her if they were found out. At best she would lose her position, flung out without a character; at worst, the same but with a child inside her.

He was playing with fire, and it was not the first time, and if his father became aware of it there would be hell to pay. The last time it had been the compliant daughter of a small farmer up towards New Town, and only his father’s influence and the fifty guineas that had changed hands, enabling her to buy a farm-labourering husband who was willing to father the child, had kept him out of trouble. He liked women, and not just for the pleasure their bodies gave to his, and they liked him but try telling that to the old man as an excuse for what his father described as his wild and licentious ways and which, so his father told him, would break his mother’s heart if she knew.

He sighed deeply, straightening his tall frame and turning to click his tongue softly to the horse. He took the bridle and began to lead her towards the house, the chimneys of which could be seen above the trees that stood at its back. He moved through the small patch of woodland and on to a well-mown lawn, skirting the rose gardens and another row of trees, pines this time, which shielded the stables from the house. The mare went with him amiably enough, crossing the wide, gravelled path to the stable yard.

“Miss Millicent’s bin lookin’ for yer, Master Josh,” Charlie, who was head groom at Riverside House, told him, taking the mare’s bridle from him and leading her away across the yard.

“Did she say what she wanted, Charlie?” he asked, perplexed.

“Summat about an exhibition that you was—”

“Jesus Christ, I’d forgotten all about the bloody thing.” Josh stood for a moment with a look of comic dismay on his face then he pushed his hand through his thick hair, fingering it off his brow so that it stood up like a yard brush. “God almighty, I’ll be in bloody hot water now,” he muttered as he set off at a furious clip across the stable yard.

“Aye, yer will, lad,” the groom murmured softly against the mare’s neck, “an’ ’appen if yer were ter let yer brain lead yer instead o’ yer cock yer might do better,” for Master Josh’s fondness for milk-maids and laundry-maids was well known among the men-servants. He turned to stare disapprovingly after his master’s son.

They were in the hall, his parents and his sister, his father looking wrathfully at his watch, his face nearly purple with his rage, his mighty bellow at the front door heard by every servant, inside and out.

“Where in hell have you been, damn you? Do you realise that your mother and sister have been waiting for ten minutes? Your manners are appalling, lad, and if it wasn’t for your mother’s intervention I would give you a thrashing, big as you are.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I . . . well, I . . .”

“Daydreaming as usual, I suppose, but I’ll take no excuses, so save them for later and I warn you they’d better be good. Now, go and change. We’ll give you five minutes then we’re going without you.”

“I wish to bloody hell he would,” Josh murmured in an aside to an astonished maidservant who was coming down the stairs and who pressed herself against the wall as he ran lightly up to his room. It was only the thought of his mother’s distress that kept him from saying it out loud, from defying his father. His father’s threat of thrashing him was an empty one, for it was a long time since Joshua Hayes had been of a size to take a beating from Edmund. Instead of visiting the damned exhibition he would dearly have like to idle and daydream about in his room, take his time and stroll downstairs, defiant in the face of his father’s wrath, but it would only upset his mother of whom he was deeply fond. Sighing, he stripped off his breeches and shirt, struggling with his boots until he was naked. He had a beautiful male body, with long, graceful bones and flat muscles that flowed smoothly from the curve of his chest and shoulder to the concavities of his belly and hard, lean thighs, a horseman’s thighs. He had a sprinkling of fine dark hairs on his chest and belly, growing into the thick dark triangle that protected his genitals. Though he was not powerfully built he was strong and arrow straight, each part of his frame in perfect proportion to the rest, his legs long, his feet narrow.

Within the allotted five minutes he had changed into a morning coat of fine grey merino, under it a matching waistcoat, the coat with broad tails and a velvet collar. His trousers were tight, showing off the fine calf of his leg and he wore an immaculate lawn shirt with a large and fashionable neckcloth. His hair was brushed and, as he kissed her cheek in repentance his mother whispered, “Very nice, dear.”