Free The Best of Daughters by Dilly Court

Daisy’s heart as she let herself in and made her way slowly round to the back of the house. She felt a terrible sense of loss but she knew that she had done the right thing. To marry Rupert simply as an escape from the life she was compelled to lead would have ended in disaster for them both.
    She did not enter the house immediately, choosing instead to walk around the garden. It was quiet and peaceful and she needed a few moments to compose herself before she faced the family. The lawn spread before her like a green blanket, smooth and evenly trimmed, stretching as far as the orchard where apples ripened in the summer sun. Soon it would be time to pick them and the blackberries that festooned the hedgerows. This year Daisy intended to make jam and to experiment with chutney using the tomatoes and onions that she had cultivated in the vegetable patch. Her father had bought chickens and a rooster and theyresided in the ancient hen house at the bottom of the garden. It was a ramshackle affair, patched and nailed together in a haphazard manner, but it kept them safe from the marauding foxes. They were pecking about in the run, but soon she must lock them up for the night and collect any eggs that Bea had missed that morning.
    Daisy sighed, pushing thoughts of Rupert to the back of her mind and stifling a niggling feeling of regret. She could have taken the easy way out, she thought, as she walked back to the house, but that would not have been fair on either of them. Besides which, she had responsibilities now. She was no longer a lady of leisure, planning her day around social engagements. Dinner would not appear on the table as if by magic as it had in the old days. There were vegetables to prepare and lamb cutlets to cook. Her father and Teddy would be most upset if there was not a hearty pudding on the menu. She must hurry if she was to get everything done by seven o’clock when the family assembled in the oak-beamed dining room for their evening meal. She entered the house through the scullery door and was pounced upon by Ruby.
    â€˜Where’ve you been all afternoon, miss? Your ma’s been fretting and fuming because you was supposed to make a plate of fancies for her blooming stall at the church bazaar on Saturday.’
    â€˜It’s only Thursday. She ought to realise by now that my baking day is Friday.’
    Ruby sniffed and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Your ma lives in a different world from the rest of us,miss.’ She picked up a bucket of kitchen scraps. ‘Shall I go and feed the chickens? That’s one job less for you.’
    â€˜Thank you, Ruby. You are a jewel by name and a jewel by nature.’
    â€˜Ta, miss. Flattery always works with me.’
    â€˜I meant it,’ Daisy said earnestly. ‘And please don’t call me miss. No one thinks of you as a servant. You’re part of the family.’
    â€˜I’m as much a Lennox as the clock on the wall, but it don’t bother me one bit. I know I’m priceless.’ Ruby gave her a saucy wink, picked up the bucket and went outside with it looped over her arm.
    Daisy went through the scullery to the large airy kitchen, which overlooked the back yard and the garden beyond. The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the diamond-paned windows, warming the quarry-tiled floor to wine red. She took off her hat and hung it on a peg behind the door, next to the bell board once used to summon the servants. She smiled grimly. How times had changed. She plucked a pinafore from its hook and put it on, rolling up her sleeves to begin preparations for dinner.
    She had just finished peeling the potatoes when the bell labelled
Drawing room
jangled on its spring. She ignored it at first but the insistent ringing set her teeth on edge and she threw down the knife and marched out of the kitchen and along a narrow corridor to the square entrance hall. She entered the room to find her mother sitting on the sofa with an