Free The Tenth Gift by Jane Johnson

Robert is one, and you should look to him while you may, before your reputation is sullied beyond repair.”
    Cat had little time to think on this strange speech: After supper that night, Polly the footmaid came to fetch Cat from her room. Her eyes were as big as saucers; her nose red from sneezing. “Madam says you are to come at once to her sitting room. Sir Arthur is there, too. He has left his guests.”
    But when Cat presented herself in the little low-beamed room the lady of the house used as her own, she found not only Lady Harris and her husband present, but Robert, too, in his best doublet, with his wild blond hair slicked down. He would not meet her eye when she gazed upon him, questioning.
    Ten minutes later she was out again in the long dark corridor, trembling in outrage and with Sir Arthur’s words ringing in her ears.
    “We will call the banns next Sunday. You and Robert shall have the cottage behind the byre. Tomorrow Matty will start to help you in putting it to rights.”
    So that was to be her life: stuck here at Kenegie forever, married to her dull cousin, living in a hovel behind the cowshed. That night, Cat prayed for the Lord to take her in her sleep. She never wanted to wake up again.
    After tossing and turning for hours, she lit a candle, turned to her pattern for the altar frontal in her book, sharpened her plumbago stick with the little knife she kept for the purpose, and by the guttering light added a clear caricature of Nell Chigwine’s sly face to the serpent.

CHAPTER 7
    So that ys to be my lyf, trappd for ever here at Kenegy wed to my dull cozen Robert living in a hovel behynd the cow-sheds, large with childe year after year, rasyng a pack of brattes & dying in obscuritee. I can not beare to think about it. I must away from heere. The Countess of Salysbury is to visit Lady Harrys in Agost. If I can compleat the Altar Frontal before then & thus perswade her to take mee away with her, may bee there is a chaunce of escape…
    T HE HARSH RINGING OF THE TELEPHONE JOLTED ME OUT of the seventeenth century.
    I went into the kitchen and stared at it as if it might suddenly manifest Michael out of its din. But the voice that started to leave a message was not Michael’s, or any other man’s.
    “Julia?”
    It was my cousin Alison.
    “Alison, it’s brilliant to hear from you. How are you? I’ve been meaning to call you. Life’s not been too great—”
    “Julia, for God’s sake, shut up and let me speak.”
    I stared at the phone, shocked. Alison was such a gentle soul usually. I applied my ear to the receiver again, only to hear her breathing heavily, as if she had run a mile.
    “It’s … it’s Andrew—” And she broke down into great, racking sobs.
    I waited, not knowing what to say. Had he left her again? Andrew Hoskin had always had a roving eye; they’d moved down to Cornwall in part because of some work affair he’d had, but that had been a while ago. Had she left him? She’d been threatening to for years but never had, and I could not imagine that she ever really would.…
    “He’s … he’s dead.”
    “Oh, Alison, no! I’m so sorry. Are you okay—sorry, of course you’re not okay. My God, what happened?”
    There was a long pause as Alison gathered herself. “He … ah … he hanged himself. In the attic. I—” The explanation became the wail of an animal in unbearable pain. It shivered in my bones.
    “Oh, God, Alison, that’s terrible. Stop, stop, please. I’m sure it was nothing to do with you.”
    Why had I said that? I had no idea. Of course it had something to do with her: He was her husband. At the other end there was a sudden ominous silence.
    “Alison? I really don’t know why I said that. Alison?”
    She had put the phone down. I tried to call her back at intervals throughout the day but only succeeded in getting the answering machine. At last I left a message of abject apology and gave up.
    That night I did not read Catherine Tregenna’s little book