‘Amelia?’
Amelia stared ahead with sad, shining eyes. To his horror he realised they were tears.
‘Amelia? Is having a view so important to you?’
She looked at him and smiled. ‘I can wish, can I not?’
Talek studied her for a moment. She was not crying. She was smiling. It must have been a trick of the light or the wind causing the unshed sheen, he told himself. Or at least he hoped it was.
‘What other wishes do you have?’ he asked, gently. It was a fruitless game, but he knew she would enjoy playing it. His sister looked doubtful so he smiled to confirm his interest. ‘Tell me,’ he coaxed. ‘I want to hear them all. We have a long journey ahead and it will help fill our time.’
Chapter Three
‘I hope I never see him again.’
Grace’s declaration caused her mother to look over her spectacles at her as she bit her sewing thread in two. It made a reassuring snapping sound which instantly transported Grace back to her childhood; when she spent cosy evenings by a warm fire listening to her mother tell stories as she sewed. Back then her mother had no need for spectacles for close work. She had resisted wearing them for years, until it became impossible to thread a needle. Finally, Grace’s father had persuaded her to try them and she had relented. Vanity hadn’t been the cause of her refusal, Grace later learnt from her father, but a fear that she was going blind. She had once been a lady’s maid to a blind woman and the deterioration of her own vision had ignited a fear in her that she never knew she had. These days she donned her spectacles for close work without a second thought and, at moments like this, she used them to her advantage by effectively making a point. The point today being that she wasn’t convinced by what Grace was saying. Her mother didn’t need distorted glass for her to see right through her.
Grace tried to refocus on the job in hand. Bills and invoices littered the table in front of her and in the centre lay Kellow Dairy’s account book. It lay open, its spine creaking under the weight of the tightly bound pages so that the book never really lay flat. It made it difficult to write close to the margin and required Grace’s full concentration, at least that is what she told herself. After a full minute, Grace glanced up to find her mother still watching her.
‘We left them to admire the view, although why they chose such an out of the way place is beyond me.’ Grace selected a sheet of paper to study it. ‘Charling is charging more than last month. If he increases his prices again we should go elsewhere.’
Her mother returned to her sewing. ‘It’s the first rise in two years. He’s reliable, but he has had some bad luck recently and been forced to raise his prices. I would rather pay a fair price then buy cheaper elsewhere and suffer shoddy workmanship or unreliability.’
Grace knew her mother was right. Everyone thought her father ran the business. He did, but behind the scenes it was her mother’s acumen that had turned it into the success it was. ‘She has sound judgement,’ her father often said, and he was right. No wonder he valued her opinion above all others. Together, they made a formidable team.
Grace returned her attention to the account book. ‘I hope I never see him again,’ she mumbled again.
Her mother rested her sewing on her lap and took off her spectacles to examine the glass in the firelight. ‘You tell me that you dislike Mr Danning,’ she said, tilting them slightly before polishing one lens with a handkerchief, ‘but his name is never far from your lips.’ She glanced up at her daughter. ‘Don’t look so surprised. It’s been two weeks now, yet you have mentioned him, or at least moaned about him, every day since.’
Grace felt affronted. ‘I have not.’
Her mother looked at her through her lashes, reminding her of her former schoolteacher. ‘Yes you have.’
Grace pressed her lips together and returned her attention to the accounts. She would not speak of Mr Talek Danning ever again. She noticed her mother’s attention was back on her sewing and was thankful the conversation had come to an end. Or at least she thought it had.
‘Why was he carrying his sister?’
A vivid memory of him carrying Amelia came to her mind. She had blurted out the very same question at the time. Silence had hung in the air before the arrogant man had replied. Even now, sitting alone with her mother, she still experienced thesame flush of heat she had felt when his eyes had dropped to the sodden hem of her dress, lingered there and finally replied.
Grace sniffed noisily. ‘He said he was protecting the hem of his sister’s dress.’
‘That was very gentlemanly of him.’
Grace snorted. Her mother looked up in surprise.
‘Do you have a cold?’
Grace shook her head.
‘Ahh . . . You don’t believe him. Strange. Your father quite liked him.’
Grace shut the book noisily and leaned back in the chair. Her back felt stiff and she had a sudden need of fresh air. ‘I’ll finish this tomorrow, when I sort out the wages.’
Her mother frowned. ‘You look out of sorts, Grace. What is the matter?’
In truth, Grace didn’t know. She felt restless and dissatisfied with her lot, and although she often felt the former, she had never felt the latter before. All she could muster in reply was a childish shrug, which was not like her at all.
‘I know what it is,’ replied her mother, selecting a reel of thread and withdrawing a length. ‘You want to set up a home of your own. It is only natural. I was married and had you by the time I was twenty-five.’
