House of Angels (30 page)

It took every ounce of George’s strength, with the assistance of Ella, Mercy and Mrs Rackett, to prise the gin trap off him. Once used in the dale to catch pine-martins, they were somewhat frowned upon now, because of the dangers of the kind of accident that had occurred with Amos. Had he not been wearing good strong boots his leg could well have been completely severed. Even so, the wound was dangerously deep, and pumping blood. If he didn’t get to a hospital soon, he could still lose it. Ella grabbed some bailing twine and tied a tourniquet above the savage gash while George ran to bring round the cart.

Mrs Rackett fetched blankets while Mercy kept repeating, ‘Who would do this? Who would do such a thing?’

‘This is my father’s work,’ Ella bitterly responded. ‘He must have set the trap when he called yesterday.’

Mercy said, ‘He meant this for me, didn’t he? Not your husband.’

‘What does that matter now?’ Ella was in tears, stroking his hair as Amos lay groaning in agony, desperately trying to soothe him but not knowing how to ease his pain.

‘But why?’

‘Because he’s the devil,’ Ella almost screamed at her. ‘Haven’t you learnt that yet?’

They laid Amos in the back of the cart on the spread blankets, Ella and Mercy beside him, and George drove them into Kendal, leaving Mrs Rackett to mind the farm. But while doctors rushed to tend to the patient, and Ella wept, Mercy slipped away unnoticed. There were things she needed to say to Josiah Angel, and now seemed as good a time as any.

Mercy had been waiting a long time for this moment and she intended to savour it to the full. The maid showed her into a gloomy hall, and to her surprise Josiah seemed quite jovial, almost welcoming, murmuring something about how it was indeed time the pair of them met and talked properly. Mercy couldn’t agree more.

She followed obediently as he took her upstairs to what he called his study. She thought it a bleak sort of room as he ushered her inside, looking about in surprise for some sign of a desk. Only when he turned the key in the lock did she realise her mistake, and her heart gave an uncomfortable lurch.

This wasn’t his study. This was the tower room Livia had described to her in painstaking detail, and told her to avoid at all costs. Not that she’d believed the tale when first she’d heard it, unable to accept that a man
of Josiah Angel’s standing would commit acts of such violence against his own legitimate daughters. Now she recognised that Livia had spoken nothing but the truth, for there, in one shadowed corner, complete with hook, was the cage. Mercy gazed at it in horror, a chill rippling down her spine.

And then she recalled the trauma of her mother’s death, and her anxiety to tell her daughter the truth about her birth. Mercy remembered how, even with her dying breath, Florrie had still defended this tyrant, naively believing he would help her beloved girl to find work and a new life. How wrong she’d been, which only proved how scandalously Josiah had used and abused her innocence.

Mercy turned to face him with fresh courage in her heart. ‘I thought you might like to see that I’m well, and, as you see, quite unhurt.’

He had the gall to smile, although it was more of a sarcastic smirk. ‘And your husband?’

‘He is perfectly well too. Your son-in-law was the one to get caught in the trap you laid, unfortunately. He’s in hospital, his wounds being tended to even as we speak.’

‘Amos?’

‘Yes, Amos.’

‘Damnation, that wasn’t supposed to happen!’

‘Bit careless of you then to leave a gin trap lying about where anyone could step into it. It could just as easily have been Ella, your precious daughter.’

Josiah made a scoffing sound deep in his throat. ‘She’s not precious to me, none of you are. Daughters!
Women! The bane of my life. If only Roberta had given me sons, as was her duty, none of this would have happened. Serve Ella right if it had been her, the little tart. It wouldn’t have troubled me in the slightest. I’m surprised you care anyway, since she’s having it off with your husband.’

Mercy was stunned by this bitter attack on Ella. The unexpected turn of events forced her to rethink her attitude, along with the assumptions she’d made about the Angel family generally.

‘She isn’t having it off with anyone. George just likes to tease, that’s all. He’s a flirt, yes, but devoted to me. It’s good to know somebody is, since my mam is dead, and you, my own father, care so little you’d happily see me crippled. What kind of man are you?’

Josiah pulled a walnut from his pocket and cracked it in his palm. ‘A powerful one! A man determined not to see a lifetime of endeavour destroyed by stupid females.’ He threw away the shell and crunched on the nut with sharp yellow teeth. ‘You’re nothing to me. Just a bit of flotsam that has chanced by, that I can throw away as easily as that shell.’

Mercy moved a step closer, that familiar dark curl of anger starting up deep inside. ‘A bit of flotsam, am I? Your contempt for women revolts me. Any decent man would feel ashamed of the way they treated my mam, but you don’t know the meaning of the bleeding word. I understand that now, after what I’ve witnessed today. I suppose you saw my mother as just some bit of skirt for you to have fun with, and me, your own child,
as an inconvenience. Is that the way it was?’

His lip curled in derision. ‘Florrie knew what she was about when she opened her legs for me, and no doubt a dozen others before and since. And you’ll follow in her footsteps, whore that you are.’ He took a key from his pocket and moved over to the cage.

Mercy watched him, mesmerised; fear and fury warring for supremacy within, yet not for a second would she allow him to see that she was afraid.

‘Is that what you want, for me to prove your theory that women are contemptible? Would it please you if I were a whore? Would you feel justified then in your treatment of Mam and me? Well, you’d be wrong! The truth is, everyone who knew Florrie would recognise it for the lie it is. She was a good, honest woman, just far too loving and trusting. She made the bad mistake of falling in love with a devil instead of a prince. And I’ll make sure everyone is made aware of that fact.’

He actually laughed out loud at that. ‘You think I’d allow some workhouse brat, born on the wrong side of the blanket, to bring me down?’

‘Oh, I’ll bring you down all right. I’m going to blacken your name and make you sorry you ever clapped eyes on Florrie Simpson. I’ll tell everyone the truth about how you used her, then abandoned her with a young child. I’ll tell them how she wasn’t the only woman you enjoyed, tell them about this room, and this flaming cage.’ She was spitting the words at him, spewing out all the fury that had festered in her over the last year or more. ‘I’ll prove to the whole world that Josiah Angel
is really a devil in disguise. See how bleeding powerful you are then.’

‘Perhaps you would, if ever you got the chance. Unfortunately, I’ll make damn sure that you don’t.’ Apparently unconcerned by her threats, he calmly inserted the key and unlocked the door of the cage, checking that the hook was still in place. Then he turned to smile at her, looking like a cat about to gobble up its prey. ‘I can see that you’re very like your mother in many ways. You have her sense of humour, and her ferocious courage. She always had guts, did Florrie, and the sweetest little fanny in the business.’

Mercy flew at him, nails outstretched like talons, screaming like a banshee. But he was too quick for her, knocking her to the floor with a careless flick of one hand. She lay winded for only a second before scrambling to her feet, her bravery undaunted as she yelled her rage at him. ‘I’ll make you pay for what you did, I swear it.’

Josiah ignored her, his concentration focused on locating the chain he would use to bind her wrists. He caught sight of it curled on the floor of the cage, and, picking it up, turned to her with a grimace of pure evil on his ugly face.

Mercy stiffened, determined not to tremble and reveal how very afraid she was. ‘And what did you do to your other daughters? Was it true that you beat them with a strap? Did you hang them in that thing, like Livia said?’

‘Oh, I did much worse than that.’

‘What, to that one who died?’

‘Poor Maggie. Not the prettiest of my daughters, being
somewhat plain, like her mother, but all cats are grey in the dark.’

Mercy gasped. ‘You’re despicable, vile. But then you already know that.’

Josiah took a step nearer, the chain forming a bridge between his hands, held out like a ligature. A band almost as tight suddenly gripped his rib cage, effecting his breathing so that he staggered, feeling slightly giddy and light-headed for a moment.

Mercy instinctively retreated, keeping her back to the window. She was thinking fast. Knowing she was trapped, the door locked. Josiah Angel was far too big a man for her to tackle head on, yet a mouse could beat a lion, if he had the wit. What could she do? What weapon did she have, what skill that he hadn’t? Keep him talking, that was the first thing. Maybe George was looking for her even now.

‘I thought it was just me you had it in for, but it’s the whole bleeding human race, isn’t it? Women, in particular. You care only for number one, for yourself, not for me, not for your daughters, not for anyone except Councillor Josiah Angel, future member of parliament for Westmorland. The thing is, you can’t kill us all.’

‘Oh, yes I can.’ He lunged at her, hands outstretched, still holding the chain wrapped about his huge fists. He came fast and furious, roaring with rage, a grotesque kind of fury contorting his face. The expression changed only as it dawned on him that she had stepped aside, quick and agile as a monkey, while his momentum carried
him onward to crash through the tall gothic window, his balance affected by his chained hands and the fierce, blinding pain in his chest. The sound of his infuriated roar as he fell was followed by a sickening thud, and then deathly silence.

It was reported in the
Westmorland
Gazette
that Councillor Josiah Angel had tragically taken his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed. Quoted in the local paper under the heading
A
Double Tragedy
, Josiah’s contribution to the town as councillor and mayor was lauded with the kind of approbation he would have loved, had he been around to read his own obituary.

‘Sadly, this self-made businessman never quite recovered from the loss of his youngest daughter, who also committed suicide. A double tragedy indeed.’

The truth as to why Maggie had killed herself remained private, Livia deciding that revenge of that kind would hurt no one but themselves, now that her father was dead. She did, though, finally reveal her sister’s pregnancy to Ella, and to Mercy.

Mercy seemed to have learnt some of the facts already during her confrontation with Josiah, but for Ella it came as a terrible shock, and she was still trying to come to terms with it.

Mercy had given them a full account of what had occurred in that tower room, and, knowing their father as they did, they thought she’d done well to get out unscathed and alive. She swore to them that she’d never laid a hand on him, that he’d charged at her, she’d stepped out of the way, and he’d been unable to get his balance and prevent himself falling through the window. It felt like a kind of justice.

A huge weight had been lifted from Livia’s shoulders, with even Henry in France, and no longer a threat.

Hodson had also waived his demand for repayment of any loans he’d made to his erstwhile colleague. Quite rightly, in Livia’s opinion, although Jack still had a fancy for stringing him up from the nearest tree.

The court had appointed a receiver to oversee the sale of Angel House, although Mr Blamire, the family solicitor, had assured Livia that once the mortgage, overdraft and major creditors were paid, he saw no reason why Angel’s Department Store couldn’t be saved. Everything possible would be done to keep the business afloat, and any outstanding debts to creditors could be paid over a period of time, under the supervision of the receiver. Livia meant to learn all she could about the business, and perhaps be able to help her friends develop theirs.

She had no sentiment for Angel House and would be glad to see it sold, unlike her father, who would much rather sell off his daughters than his palatial home. Livia decided to live above the store, as she would have no other home, and couldn’t impose upon Jessie any longer.

‘Love and happiness is found in people, not
possessions,’ she told Jack, when they finally got around to talking about their future.

He was full of apologies for doubting her, but although they were still very much in love, Livia tactfully explained that she didn’t yet feel ready for marriage. ‘There are things I need to do first. Debts still to be paid off, a store to revitalise, and a new sister to get to know.’

Jack grinned at her, ‘That’s just as well, since I’ll be busy helping Mam to build a business of our own. But I would like to make an honest woman of you one day, Livvy, if you’ll let me.’

She kissed him, deep and soft and languorous. ‘I shall give it serious consideration. In the meantime, I’m quite willing to risk a scandal, if you are.’

‘Scandal of that sort doesn’t trouble me in the slightest. You know what a devil I am with women.’

And Livia was able to laugh, knowing that it wasn’t true, and that the real devil in her life had gone, tragically unmourned.

Best of all, so far as Livia was concerned, all differences between the three girls now seemed to be a thing of the past. There were now four Angel sisters, and although one was forever absent, darling Maggie would always be loved, and never forgotten.

It was Christmas day at Todd Farm. The big farm kitchen was all decked out with sprigs of holly and mistletoe, a tree trimmed with paper chains made by the children stood in one corner. They’d each put up a stocking in which they’d been so excited this morning to find an
orange, a bag of sweets, and a silver threepenny bit in the toe. There was also a doll for Tilda, a toy train for Emmett, and a brush and comb set for Mary, who had been allowed home for the holidays.

On Christmas Eve the entire family had gone into Staveley for a party at the Temperance Hall, where there’d been a lucky dip in a bran tub, coconut shies, sandwiches, cakes and jelly. Jessie, Jack and all the Flint children had come along too, so it had been a noisy, lively affair.

The most exciting part for Mary was when her father had thrown nuts all over the floor and the children had to scramble about on their knees to pick up as many as they could. She’d never seen him laugh so much. But then he had plenty to be cheerful about. He was recovering well from his accident, and had promised her, most faithfully, that he would soon be out of that wheelchair and walking again.

She smiled as Tilda jumped up from the rug, where she’d been dressing her doll, and ran to him now for a hug; pride and love in her eyes. It had been so long since he’d shown them any affection, but now he was forever giving them cuddles.

After the party, they’d all got wrapped up in their warmest clothes, with hats, and scarves, and gloves, and gone round the village singing Christmas carols. People would invite them inside for mince pies and something called a hot toddy for the adults. Emmett had nearly been sick he’d eaten so much. On their way back up the dale, walking arm in arm still singing, they’d called in at St Cuthbert’s church for the traditional Christmas carol
service held around the manger where a china doll lay masquerading as baby Jesus. Mary had felt so proud when her father had read one of the lessons.

Now it was Christmas Day and her young sister seemed beside herself with excitement. But then even Mary had never known such joy in all her short life. Everyone was here, seated like one big happy family round the long pine table. She felt pretty and almost grown-up in the new blue velvet frock with its eau-de-nil lace collar that Father had bought her. Jessie Flint and her many children were here, and Aunt Molly too of course, as well as their new relations. They were all wearing silly paper hats, even Mrs Rackett.

There was her father carving the turkey cooked by Ella, the stepmother she’d resented for so long; Beth, the old collie, standing by, tongue lolling, for any scraps that might come her way. Mary had warmed to her new mother now, and knew that Tilda loved her dearly, as did Emmett. She rather liked Ella’s sisters too, who were going to be their new aunts.

Livia was funny, and full of passion and big ideas. She looked so happy pulling that cracker with Jack, even though she claimed to be tired out with working so hard in the run-up to Christmas. Mary hadn’t got to know her terribly well yet because she was learning how to run Angel’s big department store in Kendal all by herself, without even her father to help since he was dead. She thought that was terribly brave. Maybe when she was a grown woman, Mary would be able to do something equally daring.

They saw Aunt Mercy quite regularly, as she was living in Staveley with Uncle George. The pair of them still came most days to help Father and Ella on the farm, but also worked in the new woollen business that Jack Flint and his mother were starting up in the old mill yard.

So from only having one parent, all depressed and miserable after their mam had got sick and died, they now had a whole new family. Which was so wonderful it made her head go dizzy with joy!

A plate of turkey and roast potatoes with all the trimmings was placed before her, and Mary sighed with pleasure. Oh, but she was so happy! She didn’t even mind having to eat Brussel sprouts. How could she not be happy when Father looked so relaxed and content? He’d even played Snakes and Ladders with them the other night. And Ella had promised that one day she might actually teach him to dance. Now that would be something to see!

About to tuck into her Christmas dinner, Tilda suddenly gave Emmett a nudge, and whispered in his ear for him to look at their father, who was kissing Ella again. They seemed to be doing that quite a lot these days. The two children clapped a hand over their mouths and fell into fits of giggles.

Mary smiled, then tucking their napkins under their chins, gently told them to behave and sit up nicely to eat their dinner.

Oh, but everything was suddenly so lovely and exciting, and the little ones were to start school here in Kentmere
in January, with Ella taking them there and back in the pony and trap, so it was worth putting up with a bit of soppy kissing now and then, wasn’t it? They had a happy family at last, and Father was laughing again. What more could they ask?