Read Online Obsession by Katherine Sutcliffe - Free Book Online

you children of your own?” I asked gently.
    “Aye, we did.” She drew back her shoulders and stared into the fire. “Three of ’em. Two lads. One lass. Strappin’ boys, they was. The sort to make any ma and da proud. They was killed not long since. In the mine. Buried ’em side by side just yonder.”
    She motioned toward the little window partially curtained by thin, colorless muslin.
    “The lass, we called her Kate. Died two year ago this winter. Frail she was, from the day she was born right there on that very cot. ’Twas the smelt that killed her at last. Strangled ’er pitiful lungs.”
    I stared at her profile. “I’m sorry.”
    “Such is life. We live and we die. We learn to make do with what God grants us, and be thankful for wot we got. There are plenty t’others wot be worse off. I got a fine hoosband and a fair roof over me head. If he be taken from me tomorrow…well…I’ll make do. We take care of our own here, ya see.”
    She looked again at Maria, then at me. “Y’ve a place to stay here if ya need it. I’ll do what I can to help yer lass. I’m thinkin’ she needs a woman’s touch, frail as she is. And if it’s a job ya be needin’, there’s plenty of ’em, if ya ain’t afraid of hard labor.”
    My gaze fixed on her stoic countenance, which, only briefly, had succumbed to the grief she must have felt in her heart. Whatever tragedy had been so unjustly inflicted upon her family, it had left no bitterness upon her soul.
    ’Twas just after sunrise when I awoke to the sounds of laughing men outside the house. As I moved from the bedroom, I discovered the door open and sunlight spilling through the room, turning the interior stone to a dull golden glow. The air felt brisk but clean.
    I looked toward the cot where I had left Maria in Bertha’s care hours before. She was gone. Beside the cot was what appeared to be an emptied bowl of porridge and a last rasher of pork.
    A gang of men collected outside the house—just off their shift in the mines, faces black, so the whites of their eyes were a startling contrast. They drank pints of amber ale as they sat on crude stools, their clothes as filthy as their faces and hands.
    The wives of the men collected beneath a nearby tree, chatting among themselves, directing their fond gazes toward their husbands. It took me a moment to recognize Maria.
    Gone was the pitiful wraith I had taken from Menson. Beneath Bertha’s gentle ministerings over the last hours, she had become once again the pale angel of my dreams.
    In some distant place in my mind, I noted the sudden silence of laughter and chatter, of all heads turning at once to fix me with looks of curiosity. My gaze still locked on Maria—who sat on a quilt, dressed in a simple blue cotton dress and resting back against the tree. I moved through the grouped men like one in a trance.
    How clearly blue were her eyes—not gleaming, but bright and steady. They were fixed upon the rising sun with a sort of wonder-look, as if they could see what no one else surrounding her could see—something profoundly splendid. Such vast depths of emotion showed in them that it seemed her very spirit was shimmering from within her.
    Upon her normally colorless complexion, the brisk air had kissed a blush of color upon her cheeks. Her lips looked tinted as if she had been eating berries straight from the briar. Full they were, and deliciously red, the corners tipped up slightly as if she were reminiscing upon some fond image.
    The women remained silent as I walked to the edge of the patch-work quilt and stood staring down into Maria’s face. Her hair—clean and shining—fluffed softly around her magnificently shaped head, a soft, curling bang drifting over her forehead, nearly to her eyes.
    My throat tight, I eased to one knee and whispered, “She’s so beautiful again.”
    Bertha beamed, and the women all smiled and nodded among themselves.
    In a quiet voice, Bertha said, “She’s been havin’ a right