LITMIR.BIZ

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her a bit?’ Rebecca suggested with a wheedling smile at the squint-eyed old groom, as her lacy scrap of handkerchief again found its way to her perspiring brow.

      ‘Just beat the stupid animal,’ was Lucy Mayhew’s heartless instruction to the granite-faced old retainer, who served as a stablehand for her stepfather now that advancing years had numbered his farm-labouring days. Bert Morris stared straight ahead not deigning to react at all to this outrageous proposal of treatment for his old Bessy. He fished in his shirt pocket, removed a clay pipe and began to stuff the bowl of it with some foul-looking dried grass extracted from the same source.

      Rebecca alighted nimbly from the one-axle carriage and immediately flexed her cramped limbs. The worn benchseat was barely wide enough for two people travelling in comfort. For three packed close together in this stifling early afternoon heat, it was unbearable. The fact that Bert Morris smelled as though he not only groomed but slept amongst his treasured horses had largely added to the discomfort.

      Rebecca bestowed a sympathetic look on the exhausted elderly mare who refused to travel up the steep wooded incline towards the Summer House Lodge in the hamlet of Graveley. As though aware of observation, the animal swayed her head round. Such solemn, apologetic eyes, Rebecca thought, before she lifted her face towards the breeze, closed her eyes and, momentarily, savoured the wonderfully refreshing sensation. Soft cooling air disturbed honey-gold hair clinging in damp tendrils to her slender, graceful neck. Then she gazed up into the carriage where the old man smoked stoically, apparently undisturbed either by circumstances or the heat. Lucy Mayhew returned her a sullen look, swiping a careless hand across her forehead to remove beading perspiration.

      ‘We can walk from here,’ Rebecca encouraged her with a smile. ‘It’s barely a quarter of a mile and mostly through woodland. The shade will be delightfully cool and most welcome.’ She anticipated objection but Lucy had gathered up her cotton floral gown in eager hands and jumped from the carriage in a trice.

      Rebecca reached up behind the benchseat, grasping her own and Lucy’s travelling carpet bags. Old Bert Morris stirred himself enough then to aid her attempts at unwedging them, dropping them carelessly to the dusty ground.

      ‘You will ensure that the trunks are delivered as soon as possible?’ Rebecca enquired of the old man. He grunted some unintelligible noise past the pipe clenched in stained teeth which she took to be an affirmative.

      Rupert Mayhew had testily decreed that a carpet bag of essentials must suffice today and the trunks be forwarded later in the week. Had they travelled in a sturdier carriage pulled by an energetic pair they could have brought all with them and would now be alighting at the familiar white-boarded doorway of her Summer House Lodge.

      Without another word, Bert Morris clicked encouragement at the tired mare to back step along the narrow path. The animal did so with amazing briskness, considering its previous lethargy. Soon the small trap had turned in the clearing and was making good progress back towards the village of Crosby.

      With a smile at her new charge, Rebecca directed brightly, ‘Now you take one of the handles to your bag, Lucy, and I shall take the other. Thus we can share the load as we walk, for the woodland path is a little on an incline.’

      ‘What of your bag?’ Lucy asked doubtfully. ‘Will you manage that too?’

      ‘There’s little in it,’ Rebecca reassured her with a smile, surprised and heartened by the girl’s concern. Lucy had hitherto on the hour-long journey from Crosby displayed nothing apart from a scowling profile and a great reluctance to be drawn into any light conversation. Uncomfortable silence had been the prevailing feature of the journey: the blistering heat and her travelling companions equally to blame.

      Rebecca stole a quick glance at her new pupil, trying to ascertain her mood. Lucy’s small hand was fastened on the crown of her poke bonnet, shielding her face from the sun’s fierce rays as she dragged her bag across shrivelled yellow grass. Rebecca took the same sensible precaution, settling her own straw headgear firmly on her golden head.

      With an encouraging smile, Rebecca lead the way towards the cool, inviting wooded pathway.

      Rebecca sensed that the girl now might chat, but her attention was sidetracked by the painful-looking bruising shadowing one of Lucy’s eyes. An aged yellowing could be glimpsed amongst the fresh purple and Rebecca’s heart went out to the young girl.

      Lucy informed her abruptly, ‘He did it…but you know that, don’t you.’

      ‘I guessed…yes, that your stepfather must have chastised you.’

      ‘Chastised me?’ Lucy repeated with a sneer coarsening her voice. ‘I don’t mind it when he hits me,’ she muttered vehemently before changing the subject abruptly. ‘Do you always collect your new pupils from their homes? I would have imagined you to be too busy. Where are the other pupils? Who’s looking after them?’ she ran on, barely pausing for breath.

      ‘Well,’ Rebecca began, troubled by Lucy’s attitude to her stepfather but glad she displayed an interest in her fellow pupils, ‘to answer the first part of your question: No, I rarely collect my pupils from their homes. They are usually delivered to the Summer House by their parents. But while my school has been closed for the summer months…There,’ she interrupted herself, ‘I have answered the second part of your question first. The school has been closed since July and the boarders now gone. I have only a very small school premises and board only one or, at the most, two girls at a time. You will be boarding alone. But there are day pupils too,’ Rebecca hastily added, keen to let Lucy know she would have company and perhaps make friends. ‘I have spent two months in London, visiting my elder sister. Elizabeth has recently been blessed with her first-born son and invited me to stay with her for company while she was confined.’ And a little fetching and carrying, Rebecca could have added but didn’t and felt uncharitable for even thinking it. ‘Since I was travelling back through Crosby today, I informed your stepfather that it would be no hardship to break my journey and collect you.’

      Lucy was gazing around at tangled undergrowth during this explanation. She abruptly threw back her brunette head, scouring the canopy of shivering greenery entwined above them. ‘It’s very quiet,’ she breathed conspiratorially.

      ‘And very refreshing after the heat on the road,’ Rebecca commented.

      A magpie flew with a raucous cry between treetops, contradicting Lucy’s words. Within seconds its colourful mate joined it in the whispering foliage.

      ‘That’s an auspicious sign. Sighting a pair of magpies signifies good fortune, Lucy. You shall obviously enjoy great success at the Summer House,’ Rebecca said lightly with no thought for her own future. Her aqua eyes fixed on the birds as she recited softly, ‘One for sorrow, two for joy…’

      Rebecca’s vague smile faded as she noticed the poignancy on her young companion’s face: a wistful mingling of misery and hope.

      Aware of observation, Lucy became petulant. ‘I’ve never been superstitious,’ she sneered, pointedly turning her face away from Rebecca. The bag held between them swung savagely before Lucy dropped her side to the ground. She stalked off and started exploring the perimeter of matted undergrowth.

      ‘I’m hot and thirsty,’ she flung back over her floral cotton shoulder. Yanking at the ribbons beneath her chin, she carelessly flung her bonnet down on to peaty ground. Plump fingers raked through her thick, auburn hair, lifting it away from her neck. Then she swirled around, holding the skirt of her pretty, summer dress away from her warm legs.

      The two bags Rebecca held slid to the ground and she sighed. It was still hot and sticky, even within this shielding woodland, and she had to admit that she too was thirsty.

      ‘We can have a short rest, if you like.’ Following Lucy’s example, she undid the ribbons on her own straw hat. Golden tendrils of hair were loosened from her moist neck by a pale hand. ‘There’s a pretty pond close by, to your left a bit. We could sit there a while.

      It was a sizable pond too. Fed from a spring as well as from the tinkling stream that ran through the gully from the hamlet of Graveley,

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