Free The Silver Touch by Rosalind Laker Page B

holiday and dismissed each in turn, deciding that since he would never want to stay with any of them, he could not see that Hester would benefit either. Eventually he hit upon a solution. She should have more time off until she was herself again.
    ‘You shall have a full half-day off twice instead of once a month,’ he told her without consulting Martha. ‘Get out and enjoy yourself. I want to see some roses back in your cheeks.’
    It was a measure of her low state that his kindness brought a swim of tears into her eyes. ‘Thank you, Jack.’
    He took her face between his big hands, rumpling her hair and speaking to her as if she were still a child. ‘Cheer up, then! Let’s have a smile instead of those tears.’
    She managed to smile for him and he was pleased, thinking her as good as cured from whatever had ailed her. For herself, the hollow ache inside her persisted unabated as it had done since she had finally forced herself to accept that John had made Caroline his choice and was never coming back to her.
    Martha did her best to baulk Hester’s new liberty but Jack put his foot down. ‘She’s no good to you or herself or the Heathcock if she’s under par. Just let her be for a while. I believe that’s all she needs.’
    Hester found the extra time to herself healing in its own way. On fine days she went to St James’s Park and sketched the birds that flew between the trees and hopped on the grass around her. For a while she was able to forget all else and at the end of the afternoon packed her drawings away in the same battered leather folder she had originally brought from home.
    With an extra evening free as well, she saw more of the friends she had made over the years. They were mostly daughters of shopkeepers and merchants in the Strand area. With them and their beaux she began to attend the open-air dancing, which had been resumed with the milder weather, and she was never without an escort on these occasions. London boasted of over seventy pleasure gardens, some quite small, others spread over several acres, and the price of admission was within the means of most working people not weighed down by too many children or drunkenness in the family, which was the lot of many.
    On any expedition beyond the tavern she wondered if she would see John. Large though London was, and it was said to be the most populous city in Europe, the chance remained that one day she might meet him face to face and she both longed for and dreaded such an encounter, knowing it would rip her to shreds all over again. There had been many weeks when she had wanted to die, all meaning gone from life, for she had loved him, and still loved him, with a passion that possessed her completely. Since she could not have him she wanted no one else, which was why men amorously inclined towards her met every time with total rebuff.
    There were ten in the party on the June evening of the expedition to Cuper’s Gardens. It was one of the city’s oldest pleasure gardens and had much to offer in the way of entertainment with many booths for refreshments, a playhouse and a pavilion of sideshows. People from all walks of life went there, no class barriers existing in these public places, and it gave spice and excitement to the atmosphere, nobility and working folk rubbing shoulders together in the glow of coloured lanterns and leaping flares. Hester’s escort that evening was Alan Marshall, a friend’s brother, who was betrothed to a girl who lived in Cornwall, which meant she could enjoy his company in the knowledge that there would be no unwelcome tussles to fend off. They often paired up for these occasions, both missing someone else in their lives, his common knowledge and hers secret.
    ‘I feel like dancing this evening until I have holes in my shoes,’ she declared gaily as they arrived, music floating out to meet them.
    ‘Then let’s waste no time,’ Alan said with a smile, leading her ahead of the rest of the party along an