Read Online The Misbegotten by Katherine Webb - Free Book Online Page A

shadow inside her head; but such observations were not for sharing.
    ‘Rachel.’ Richard covered her hand with his, and smiled. ‘I want so much for you to be happy again. For us to be a family,’ he said.
    ‘I am happy,’ said Rachel, and again she felt something stir inside her, the warmth of gratitude towards him. He does truly wish to make me happy. But there was also a fleeting barb of doubt, of deceit, when she spoke. I will be happy soon , she amended, silently. When he grows to fill my heart.
    ‘We are alike, you and I. In our experiences . . . we have both lost our families, the people who raised us and loved us. I . . . it is hard, not to dwell in the past. The temptation to do so is very strong.’ He squeezed her fingers, and in his eyes was some desperation she didn’t yet understand. ‘But we all need somebody to share life with. To understand us, and carve a future with us. I am so happy to have found you, Rachel.’
    ‘And I you. But . . . your father . . .’
    ‘My father is lost to me,’ said Richard, curtly.
    ‘I’m sorry for it, Mr Weekes.’
    As a wedding gift, Richard had presented Rachel with a new book by John Keats, since he knew her love of reading. One evening she asked him to read it to her, and he took the book with a look of distaste and anxiety. He did his best, but it was clear that he did not enjoy the experience. The lines of the poems were stilted, the rhythm lost; the meaning hard to follow when read as he did – as words on a page, not as the deepest thoughts of a man, rendered beautiful with language. For as long as she could, Rachel listened to ‘The Eve of Saint Agnes’ made blunt and bewildering, but Richard’s rendition was like listening to a melody played on an ill-tuned piano, and she found after a while that her jaw was clenched tight, and her eyes too, and she longed for the noise to stop. When silence fell she looked up to find Richard watching her, his expression one of defeat.
    ‘I fear I am not a very good reader,’ he said quietly. Rachel coloured up with guilt.
    ‘Oh, no! You did fine, Richard. It’s only a certain way of speaking, and comes easily with practice,’ she said.
    ‘Well.’ He closed the book and put it into her hands. ‘It’s hard to change the way one speaks.’
    ‘Oh, I didn’t mean . . . I meant only that reading poetry is rather more like . . . acting in a play, than reading straight, as from a periodical,’ she said, trying to undo any slight he might have felt.
    ‘A skill I’ve never had call to acquire,’ he said, a touch crossly.
    ‘No more have you that call now, if you do not wish it. Shall I read to you for a while, instead?’
    ‘As you wish, Rachel. I’m very tired.’ So Rachel opened the book and immersed herself for some minutes in the wonderful images, the strange beauty of it. She concentrated, and shaped each line as best she could, seeking to delight her husband, to prove her love of poetry well founded. But when she finished his chin had sunk onto his chest in slumber. She wondered whether to wake him and lead him up to bed, but it still seemed too forward a thing to do. So she sat in silence for a long time, with only the sifting sound of ash settling in the grate for company.
    Strange and conspicuous though it made her feel, Rachel took to walking the streets of Bath alone, without an escort. But whether it was a symptom of her age, her faded looks, or the unfashionable nature of her dress, she soon began to notice looks of disapproval, appraisal, and even amusement, aimed at her as she marched along Milsom Street. She wondered if she was mistaken for a servant out on some errand for her mistress. Milsom Street was wide and airy, a parade of shops and businesses running south to north through the middle of the city, its paving stones swept cleaner than the rest. Carriages and carts and people hurried to and fro, causing a constant clatter of hooves and wheels and chatter; barrow boys and hawkers shouted