Read Online Band of Angel by Julia Gregson - Free Book Online Page A

smile was strained. “Don’t be cross with me for saying this, but we are all dreadfully worried for you. You seem so particularly out of sorts, and it’s starting to upset Father and—” A furrow appeared between Eliza’s usually cloudless blue eyes. “
Please
say sorry to him, vex him no further.”
    “I’m like a prisoner here,” said Catherine. “I have nothing to look forward to, nothing to do, and everywhere I go that woman is there, changing things and giving advice and talking to us about Nice Young Men, oh surely Eli, you feel it, too?”
    “I do, darling,” said Eliza patting her hand. “But I do believe in . . . in . . .” she looked around wildly for inspiration, “‘one day at a time,’ and, it may sound awfully silly to say this, but if you put a smile on your face, you will feel better.”
    Oh my God, her poor little sister, reduced to quoting from
The Strength of My Life
. “Oh Eli”—Catherine grasped her sister’s hand—“dear little goose. If only I was as good as you, and as nice.”
    “I’m not nice.” Eliza squeezed her hand again, it was quite an effort talking to her older sister like this, Catherine had been her heroine for so long. “I just think what would Mother have wanted?”
    “Not this,” said Catherine. “Not for herself or for us.”
    * * *
    After breakfast, she went downstairs and found Father in the parlor.
    “Sit down, Catherine,” he said. He could not meet her eye. He looked around wildly for the green velvet chair Mother had sat in near the window.
    “She’s put it near the fire,” said Catherine. “It’s a more
suitable
position.”
    He smiled at her, in a bobbing reluctant way. “Sit down there then,” he said in a low voice.
    “Thank you.” She sat down and looked straight ahead.
    “I was wondering,” he said, stroking his beard, “I mean I know—I have been thinking . . .”
    He put his head in his hand and sighed deeply. “What’s wrong, Catherine? Tell me. Get it out.”
    She fought an impulse to say the right thing, the loving thing, the thing that would smooth everything over.
    “Send her away,” she said softly.
    “I don’t want to yet,” he said. “She’s a good woman and you and Eliza won’t be here forever.”
    The plain-faced clock over the mantelpiece was ticking, making her feel more nervous than she already was.
    “Then send me,” she said in a whisper. He didn’t hear her. When she looked at him again, his own face was working against tears.
    “I am working day and night to try and get the farm back on its feet,” he said. “Can’t you see that?” His voice wobbled and died out. “She at least is trying to help, and she is my sister.”
    “You didn’t like her when she was little, old snitch, bossy boots,” she thought. She’d heard him say it scores of times.
    She longed for him to talk about Mother. Say how he missed her, and how both of them in their own ways might have done more. Anything was better than this numb dislike between them. Then they might have kissed and cried and got this sorrow from them. But he was standing up and sighing and talking about the hay in the top field.
    “Cheer up.” Father picked up his hat and walked toward thedoor. “You’ve got things to look forward to if you think about it—your grandmother’s party for instance, you’ll enjoy that.”
    “In six months time,” she almost shouted. “What am I to do until then?”
    “I’ll tell you what you do, madam.” His mouth was quivering with rage, and he had his great hands out, ticking off ideas one by one. “Needlework, shopping, gardening, bottling. It was a good enough life for your mother.”
    “It was not,” she shouted inwardly, “she was half mad with boredom and loneliness.”
    She saw it suddenly with an inward shudder. They were like two small boats adrift on a huge dark ocean. With her last ounce of self-control, she said, “Father, please let me go out this afternoon. I’ll take Juno