Free House of Angels by Freda Lightfoot Page A

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’dinsisted 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 silentlyhanded 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.