Read Online The Bannister Girls by Jean Saunders - Free Book Online

established that London is becoming a dangerous place, with the risk of the Zeppelin raids and the strange characters roaming the city these days.’ He avoided Angel’s eyes. ‘With Stanley volunteering, Louise will be all alone in that great barn of a house –’
    â€˜Except for a score of servants,’ Ellen muttered.
    â€˜So she’ll be glad of her family’s company. It will certainly ease her mother’s mind if Angel comes down to the country, away from the risks of the city, and as for Ellen’s friend, I see no reason at all why we can’t offer hospitality to her if we’re all going to be living there. We’ll shut this house up and move down wholesale as soon as possible.’
    Clemence and Angel were still gaping at him as Ellen leapt towards him and threw her arms around his neck in an unusual burst of exuberance.
    â€˜I say, Dad, that’s jolly sporting of you! Thanks a million. Rose will be so bucked. I’ll get off now and tell her. I’ll bring her along tomorrow to meet you all, shall I?’
    â€˜Oh, of course. Bring her to tea,’ Clemence found her voice, and oozed sarcasm. ‘Bring the entire suffragette movement with you, if you wish!’
    Ellen didn’t take the bait. Instead, she grinned at her mother and blew her a kiss on her way out.
    â€˜No thanks, Mother. You wouldn’t want an army invadingthe house. And I promise you there’s enough of them to qualify for the name! See you all tomorrow, then – oh, and don’t forget that Rose is in mourning, will you?’
    Her voice sobered as she went through the door, and the little group in the drawing room felt suddenly uncomfortable. They hadn’t had to deal with grief yet. The war had barely touched their lives, for all that Bannister’s Textiles were now providing cloth for uniforms instead of fine top quality wool for ladies’ and gentlemen’s garments.
    The war was insidiously touching them now, Fred thought. His eldest daughter’s husband had enlisted; his second daughter was comforting a war widow; and his youngest had apparently had some secret liaison that was still holding her entranced as she buried her nose in the sweet-smelling flowers accompanied by the cryptic note.
    â€˜Thank-you, Frederick.’ Clemence assumed the haughty tone for which she was famous. ‘The very last thing I wanted was to encourage Ellen, and you’ve just undermined everything I’ve tried to do with one stroke.’
    â€˜Because I’ve offered hospitality to some poor woman whose husband was blown to bits in the trenches?’ He didn’t try to soften the words, and he saw her flinch. ‘Have you so little humanity in you, my dear? I thought your knitting parties and tea and soup wagons on the railway stations were in the same good cause, or am I mistaken?’
    â€˜I do those things because I choose to do them. I don’t have them rammed down my throat,’ she said stiffly. ‘And Angel – take those flowers and put them in water in your room. Their scent is making my head ache!’
    Angel escaped gladly, knowing that everything was going to make her mother’s head ache now. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Louise – dear Louise – go to her mother and place gentle fingers on her mother’s brow to soothe the pain away. Angel went to the kitchen and asked Cook for a large vase of water, and took it and the precious bouquet upstairs.
    Their perfume filled the room. Angel arranged them withas much care as if they were priceless gems. To her, they meant as much. Jacques de Ville had not seen her as a flighty piece of fluff to take to an hotel room for a night and then forget her. He had cared after all. She had known it in her heart.
    She fingered the silken petals of one of the pink tea roses and hugged the secret of her love to herself. There was no way of knowing when they would meet again, but it