Read Online Rebecca Stubbs: The Vicar's Daughter by Hannah Buckland - Free Book Online Page A

be taken down and replaced by heavy velvet ones for the winter. The weight of yards of velvet made our arms ache as we stood on wobbly ladders. The only people who hated this change of curtains more were the poor laundry girls who had to carefully wash and store them.
    The colder weather also hailed the return of the open fires and hauling coal and logs from room to room, with all the extra cleaning involved. The daily chore of blacking the grates was back, along with the vexation of fires that failed to light or smoke that blew into the room. I liked to consider myself an expert at efficient fire lighting, but a cold chimney and an unfavourable wind could cause hours of extra work. Indeed, my precious half day off was sometimes eaten into as I became late in doing the prescribed duties, due to a difficult fire. Sometimes I secretly resorted to the forbidden trick of soaking paper with turpentine to get a reluctant fire going, but Mrs. Milton considered this wasteful and dangerous.
    The excitement of the proposed London visit and the daily grind of work did little to erase thoughts of Master Edward from my mind. I was sometimes annoyed with him and felt that he had trifled with my feelings, but then I would blame myself for exaggerating a normal friendship into a romance in my fanciful imagination. I could not talk to Emma about Master Edward, but we could discuss men in general. She had strong views on their behaviour and said that their brain was wired differently from a women’s and that we would never be quite able to understand them. The type of women men like as friends are rarely the type that they eventually marry, she propounded, and all logic and sense seems to desert them as they choose their life-partner. I wondered aloud if Christian men were the same, but Emma retorted that the best of men are men at best.
    Some winter evenings, Sarah would visit our bedroom and would curl up at the bottom of my bed; then she, Emma, and I would talk about our dreams for the future. The flickering candlelight would produce a cosy and intimate atmosphere, and we would open our hearts to each other.
    “Of course, what I want is an ’andsome man,” Emma said with a sigh.
    “Don’t we all?” I replied, laughing.
    “A young vicar would suit our Rebecca well, wouldn’t ’e?” suggested Emma.
    “I could do a lot worse,” I reasoned.
    “Well, we all know what Sarah wants, don’t we?” teased Emma, winking.
    The colour rose in Sarah’s cheeks. “What do you know?”
    “Everyone knows,” we teased her.
    She sat up. “Knows what?”
    “About your little soft spot for the under-gard’ner,” Emma said, watching Sarah’s reaction intensely.
    “Oh, you mustn’t!” Sarah pressed her palms to her reddened face.
    “Don’t be alarmed. We’ve known for a long time, and we honestly wish you well and hope you get him,” I said, feeling for her distress and knowing that I had a bigger secret to hide.
    “But what if we don’t get married?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
    “I’d be a real lady’s maid,” replied Emma. “Not a lady like one of ours ’ere, but a real one—a proper titled one who travels abroad and takes me with ’er. I would see all the sights, then meet me an ’andsome, rich man and abandon the ’elpless lady for wedded bliss!”
    We hugged our knees under the covers and laughed at this idea.
    “And what about you, Sarah?” I asked.
    “I would become a nursery nurse for a good family,” she said, looking into the far distance.
    Emma and I exchanged a knowing look – a person who cannot be trusted to dust a precious ornament without dropping it was highly unlikely to be trusted with holding an upper-class heir.
    Emma turned to me. “What if ya parson don’t turn up?”
    “Then he’ll have to mourn his loss!” I answered and immediately ducked to avoid a flying pillow.
    “You, not ’im,” Emma said with a chuckle.
    “Oh, me?” I replied in mock surprise. “Well, I would