Read Online The Misbegotten by Katherine Webb - Free Book Online
Authors: Katherine Webb
Tags: Fiction, Historical fiction
Ads: Link
could use, but all contained oddments of dress and accoutrements – worn-out gloves and stockings, boot buckles and tobacco boxes and combs with broken teeth. In the end she moved everything in the top drawer to one side, and put in a few of her own possessions. She did not have much – handkerchiefs and gloves, her sewing box, hairpins and what few beauty compounds she used: a small pot of rouge with a tiny, shell-handled brush to apply it; some heavy cream, scented with roses, for her hands; a pot of Lady Molyneux’s Liquid Bloom, which had been a present from Eliza at Christmas last. For you sometimes appear so pale at breakfast, it’s like you’ve died in the night and not realised. But the gift, meant as a criticism of sorts, had rather backfired on Eliza, because a few drops of the stuff rubbed into her cheeks did in fact make Rachel look lovely. She laid an old handkerchief on top of the chest and set out her hair brushes on it, and then unpacked her most treasured possession – a musical silver trinket box.
Her parents had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday, before any stain of scandal or hardship had touched the family, and the grief of losing Christopher had softened somewhat from the dagger strike of his sudden death. It had been her mother’s and her grandmother’s before it was hers; an item only as big as one of her hands, standing on little lion’s feet. The top was patterned with vines and flowers, forming a vignette around a brightly enamelled peacock; when the lid was lifted, providing the screw underneath was wound tight, it played a lullaby. The inside of the box was lined with deep blue velvet, and a lock of her mother’s tawny hair, tied with a ribbon, was pinned carefully to one side. Rachel touched it gently with her fingertips. The hair was straight, and smooth, and cold. She shut her eyes and tried to recall Anne Crofton’s face in every detail, even though she knew it was a cruel thing to do to herself, and only reiterated her mother’s absence.
Also in the music box was the only other precious thing she owned, which had also been her mother’s – a pair of pearl drop earrings with tiny diamonds on the studs. She’d hidden them in her bodice as the bailiffs had taken everything out to their wagon, past her father on the front steps, sitting with his boots unlaced and his face gone slack in shock. The bailiffs would have taken his boots too, if Rachel had not come out to stand over him, fierce as a lioness, shaming them into a retreat. She wanted to keep the box on display, but she hesitated. It seemed somehow boastful, like a deliberate attempt to show up the plainness of the room. Reluctantly, she wrapped it in its linen cloth and put it back in the drawer. Then she rose, and went to stand by the bed to watch out of the window. There was a small, foxed mirror on the wall; she positioned herself so that her reflection hovered in the corner of her eye, and at once felt a little less alone.
Richard was away from the house or ensconced amongst the barrels in the basement for much of the day, but for the first two weeks of their marriage they ate supper together every night, at the small table in the kitchen, with their food and faces lit by the yellow warmth of an oil lamp, discussing the housekeeping, the business, their hopes for the future. One evening, when Rachel had been talking about her parents, she looked up to find Richard watching her with a compassionate expression.
‘You miss them a great deal, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes. In truth, I do. My mother has been a good many years with God, but still I feel her absence, and the lack of her advice, her . . . good sense and her kindness. And that of my father, of course. But I can do nothing but try to accept, and not rail against the loss. I can remember the happy times we had together, when Christopher was still with us, and I was very young.’ Young and full of feeling, not numb and quiet, as now , said the
Her parents had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday, before any stain of scandal or hardship had touched the family, and the grief of losing Christopher had softened somewhat from the dagger strike of his sudden death. It had been her mother’s and her grandmother’s before it was hers; an item only as big as one of her hands, standing on little lion’s feet. The top was patterned with vines and flowers, forming a vignette around a brightly enamelled peacock; when the lid was lifted, providing the screw underneath was wound tight, it played a lullaby. The inside of the box was lined with deep blue velvet, and a lock of her mother’s tawny hair, tied with a ribbon, was pinned carefully to one side. Rachel touched it gently with her fingertips. The hair was straight, and smooth, and cold. She shut her eyes and tried to recall Anne Crofton’s face in every detail, even though she knew it was a cruel thing to do to herself, and only reiterated her mother’s absence.
Also in the music box was the only other precious thing she owned, which had also been her mother’s – a pair of pearl drop earrings with tiny diamonds on the studs. She’d hidden them in her bodice as the bailiffs had taken everything out to their wagon, past her father on the front steps, sitting with his boots unlaced and his face gone slack in shock. The bailiffs would have taken his boots too, if Rachel had not come out to stand over him, fierce as a lioness, shaming them into a retreat. She wanted to keep the box on display, but she hesitated. It seemed somehow boastful, like a deliberate attempt to show up the plainness of the room. Reluctantly, she wrapped it in its linen cloth and put it back in the drawer. Then she rose, and went to stand by the bed to watch out of the window. There was a small, foxed mirror on the wall; she positioned herself so that her reflection hovered in the corner of her eye, and at once felt a little less alone.
Richard was away from the house or ensconced amongst the barrels in the basement for much of the day, but for the first two weeks of their marriage they ate supper together every night, at the small table in the kitchen, with their food and faces lit by the yellow warmth of an oil lamp, discussing the housekeeping, the business, their hopes for the future. One evening, when Rachel had been talking about her parents, she looked up to find Richard watching her with a compassionate expression.
‘You miss them a great deal, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes. In truth, I do. My mother has been a good many years with God, but still I feel her absence, and the lack of her advice, her . . . good sense and her kindness. And that of my father, of course. But I can do nothing but try to accept, and not rail against the loss. I can remember the happy times we had together, when Christopher was still with us, and I was very young.’ Young and full of feeling, not numb and quiet, as now , said the
Similar Books
