‘In answer to your first question, no, I don’t ’ave a boyfriend,’ Amber said a little tetchily. ‘An’ in actual fact I didn’t get this job till a couple o’ days before we all set off to come ’ere.’
‘So what did you do before that?’
Amber sighed, a little tired of all the questions. ‘Actually, I was workin’ at the harbour wi’ the Scottish herrin’ girls before that. But the job came to an end when they moved on so I took this one. It’s only till we get back to Whitby, though. The boys will be goin’ off to boarding school then, an’ before you ask – no, I ain’t decided what I’ll do next.’
‘Oh!’ Daisy looked disappointed. She’d hoped that she’d see more of Amber in the future when the boys visited their grandparents but it didn’t look like that would happen.
‘Well, you could allus get a job ’ere,’ she suggested but Amber shook her head.
‘I suppose I could but to be honest I’ve missed me home. I reckon London is a bit busy for me. Still, I’m sure somethin’ will turn up.’
Daisy nodded in agreement and they hurried on their way, keen to get back to the house before darkness set in.
*
The next weeks passed in a blur. The boys kept Amber busy and she was pleased to be included in the sightseeing trips that their parents and grandparents took them on. She saw Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament and many famous landmarks that she had only ever heard about. Then suddenly Christmas was almost upon them and her feeling of homesickness intensified. She had never been away from her family for the Christmas celebrations, but then, she thought, she was earning good money and it was only for the one year, after all. She also thought of her baby and wondered what sort of first Christmas she would have, but the thought was so painful that she tried to push it away.
The week before Christmas a huge Christmas tree was delivered to the house. It was so tall that it almost reached the high ceiling of the drawing room where it was placed in a large barrel of earth, and Amber and the boys spent a happy afternoon decorating it with their grandmother’s beautiful glass baubles and hundreds of tiny candles.
‘You’ve done a lovely job of that,’ Mrs Temple praised when she came down to dinner, standing back to admire it. ‘But would you get the boys to change now please, Amber? They’ll be dining with the family this evening.’
Amber didn’t mind at all. When the boys dined with their family, she had her meals with the staff in the kitchen and she got on well with them. In fact, it was soon more than obvious that Thomas, one of the young grooms, was smitten with her.
‘You lucky devil,’ Daisy sighed enviously. ‘I wish it were me he were sweet on. Don’t you like ’im?’
‘He’s very nice,’ Amber told her cagily. ‘I just don’t want a boyfriend.’
Daisy raised her eyebrow but didn’t comment. All she ever thought about was getting married, having her own little home and having babies, but then she supposed it was each to her own and thankfully she stopped teasing about it.
A couple of days before Christmas, Mrs Temple allowed Amber to have a few hours off to go and do a little Christmas shopping and she set off with Daisy in a happy mood. Amber bought small gifts for each of her family and once again, as she thought of being away from them at Christmas, she felt a severe wave of homesickness. She had decided some time ago that she would never want to live in London. Compared to Whitby it was sooty and noisy and nothing like she’d imagined it would be. She missed being able to stroll up to the ruins of Whitby Abbey on a balmy evening to watch the ships out at sea and feel the wind in her hair. And she missed the sounds of the waves lapping on to the beach and the good clean salt air. But she also wondered what she would do when she got home.
It was hard to believe that not so long ago she had been happy in her job at Greenacres, until the master had started to take an interest in her and everything had changed. Now she knew that her life was never going to be the same again. She would never be able to trust another man and fall in love and even if she did, she knew that it could only end in tears when they discovered that she’d given birth to an illegitimate child. So what did the future hold for her? At the moment it looked very bleak indeed. Not a day went by when she didn’t think about her baby and yet deep down she knew that she had done the right thing by letting her go. What sort of life could she have offered the child? But it didn’t stop her hurting, and so she just took it a day at a time as she counted down the days until she could go home again.
The one good thing to come out of this job was that after a not so good start she had now got a good rapport going with Harry and George and surprisingly she knew that she would miss them when the job finally finished.
When she and Daisy got back from their shopping trip, Amber took the gifts she had bought up to her room to find Harry waiting on the landing for her. She smiled and went to walk on but he fell into step beside her asking, ‘Did you get everything you wanted?’
‘Yes. I found me mam a lovely shawl on the market and I got me dad a new pipe. He likes to sit outside the cottage of an evening and have a smoke when the weather allows. Then I got socks fer me brothers. Theirs have always got ’oles in ’em.’
He courteously carried the bags to her bedroom door for her before saying pensively, ‘George and I will miss you when we go away to school, Ainsley.’
‘I shall miss you too,’ she responded. ‘But I’m sure you’ll love it at school when you settle in.’
She paused to take the parcels back off him and blushing, he asked, ‘Will we ever see you again?’
‘Oh, I’m sure you will. You’ll be coming back to yer ’ome fer the holidays an’ seein’ as we live in the same town, we’re bound to bump into one another at some point.’
He nodded and with his shoulders drooping he sadly made his way back to his room leaving her with a frown on her face. If she wasn’t mistaken the boy had developed a little crush on her. But it didn’t trouble her unduly. She had no doubt he would soon forget about her once he started school.
Chapter Eighteen
‘How would you like me to carry you down to dinner in the dining room tomorrow? It will be Christmas Day after all,’ Barnaby suggested to Louisa as he stood at the side of her bed on a cold and frosty evening.
She turned her face away. ‘When will you get it into your head that I’m not well enough to get up? Why don’t you spend the day with your children? They’re the ones who seem to demand all your attention nowadays.’ Her voice was dripping with sarcasm.
Barnaby glanced at Mrs Ruffin, who was pottering about the room dusting the furniture, but she merely shrugged and he felt the colour flame in his cheeks. He had done everything he possibly could to please Louisa since they had brought the babies home. Only the week before the Harley Street doctor Barnaby had been corresponding with had come to the house to see if there was anything that could be done to help her regain her health. But after examining her the man had shaken his head.
‘I’m afraid your wife’s condition appears to be as much mental as physical,’ he had told him in hushed tones. ‘There is nothing that can be done about the continued bleeding, although I do feel it might help if she could resume her normal lifestyle as much as she’s able to. Lying in bed never did anyone any good. She’ll lose muscle power and become even more depressed.’
