The Long Walk Home

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Authors: Valerie Wood
Tags: Fiction, Sagas
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if she wanted to please him and so enjoy a happy and successful marriage. She had even provided him with a son and daughter in the proper order.
    Eleanor shrank away from the stair rail as the morning room door opened and first her mother and then her father came out. 'I will not discuss the matter before luncheon,' she heard her father say. 'You know that my digestion suffers if I am contradicted over any issue.'
    'I did not mean to contradict you, Edgar.' Eleanor had to strain her ears to hear her mother's submissive voice. 'I only meant—'
    'No more!' he snapped. 'I said no!'
    Eleanor, listening, flushed and then grew cold; she shouldn't have been eavesdropping. Her father would be furious if he found out. But she was curious. What was it that her mother had said or asked that made her father so irritable? Was it something about her? Had she done something wrong? Anxiously, she tried to analyse her morning's activities. Had she unthinkingly done something to displease one or both of her parents?
    But I haven't seen Mama this morning or Papa either, so perhaps they were not discussing me. Maybe it was Nanny! She had once heard her father debating what the old lady cost them in food, and it wasn't until her mother had pointed out that she saved them the expense of another servant to look after Eleanor— for Nanny didn't have wages, only her bed and board— that he had reluctantly conceded that on this occasion she was right.
    If Nanny should have to leave, then I would run away, Eleanor thought, for I would be quite alone. She sat with her back to the wall as she deliberated. But Mama wouldn't want Nanny to leave. Nanny had always been there as a comfort to Mama as well as to herself, and once, when Eleanor had caught her mother in tears, she had seen that Nanny had had a consoling arm round her. If only Mama and Nanny and I could find a nice little house to live in, and leave Papa here. I'm sure he would be perfectly happy with just the servants to look after him.
    She daydreamed for a while and mentally arranged the imaginary little house with a cosy parlour and a kitchen for the cook, for they would have to have a cook, although perhaps they could manage with just one maid to do for them since she, Eleanor, wouldn't mind doing a little dusting now and then to help. And perhaps there might be a little dog or a cat to play with.
    'What are you doing, Eleanor?' So engrossed had she been that she hadn't heard the dining room door open or heard her father as he quietly strode upstairs. Now he was standing in front of her.
    'Nothing, Papa.' She scrambled to her feet. 'I was— I was memorizing my tables,' she invented. 'Miss Wright is unwell and I thought I would learn them ready for tomorrow— if she is better.' She fell silent and hung her head.
    'And why can you not learn them in the schoolroom instead of cluttering up the landing?' He stared down at her. 'This is not the place for lessons.'
    Eleanor swallowed. She had run out of excuses. 'I— I thought that if I had a change of view, it might focus my mind better.' Miss Wright had often told her about focusing.
    Her father looked down his nose and pursed his lips as if considering her statement, something she imagined he did in court. 'Hm,' he said. 'And did it?'
    She was astonished. Her father never asked her opinion. 'Perhaps it did,' she said meekly. 'But I think I'm ready to go back now.'
    With a wave of his hand he dismissed her and it took all of her willpower to walk sedately along the landing and up the next flight of stairs to where the schoolroom and nursery were situated, when really she wanted to scoot away out of his forbidding presence as quickly as she could.
    She sought out Nanny and confided that she was worried that perhaps she had misbehaved in some way, for her father had seemed cross about something. She was careful in her choice of words, bearing in mind that Nanny, though not exactly a servant, wasn't family either.
    'What makes you think he was

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