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

their wares above it all in voices gone ragged. Some of the shops Rachel remembered from years earlier were still in business – like the milliner where her mother had bought her a new hat, trimmed with silk roses and a green velvet ribbon. One afternoon she stopped in the abbey square. Of course the vast abbey and assembly rooms and hot baths were just as she remembered them, and it struck her hard that though they had not changed, she had. She did not belong to them in the way she once had.
    Her family had never been rich, but were better off than most. Her father, John Crofton, was the squire of a small estate of four farms, and had owned several hundred acres of rolling countryside where sheep and cattle grazed. The manor house where Rachel had grown up was long and low – built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth – with thick stone walls, mullioned windows and a roof that sagged between its rafters. An ancient wisteria snaked across the entire façade, producing a throng of hanging purple flowers each May and June. It was a comfortable home, well worn-in by centuries of habitation. In Rachel’s room the wooden floor sloped so pronouncedly that she and Christopher often used it in games – setting their marbles to roll across it towards a particular target. It was a house in which the children’s laughter was encouraged to ring out, and come echoing down the twisted wooden stair, never hushed or reprimanded.
    John Crofton was entirely happy in the midstream where he swam. He did not fret about cozening his superiors, or waste time trying to ingratiate himself with those who held themselves lofty and aloof. Instead, John and Anne socialised with friends they were genuinely fond of, so that supper parties and teas and music evenings were merry, jovial affairs. On one occasion they were invited to dine with Sir Paul Methuen at the impossibly grand Corsham Court, which seemed the sort of place from which Rachel’s parents might emerge for ever altered, chastened or mesmerised in some way. But the Croftons returned from their evening laughing about how dull Sir Paul had been, and how preposterous the other guests had made themselves, in seeking his favour. They were not invited back again, and cared not one jot.
    The two years that Rachel was away at a boarding school for young ladies, she pined for the manor house, and visited her family as often as was permitted. The three seasons that the Croftons spent in Bath introduced Rachel to a greater scale of society, and to the different fashions and foibles of city life, but the same Crofton rules applied – there was no attempt at social gain, only the pursuit of enjoyment and diversion with like-minded people. If Rachel or her parents happened to meet a young man who might be a suitable match for her, then he would be judged on his temperament, his interests and his inclination to industry, not by his name alone. She never did meet anybody there that she admired in that way, however. Handsome faces almost always turned out to be attached to vain and foolish boys. She preferred walking with her mother and friends, shopping for oddments with which they could improve a dress or a pair of shoes, or could send out as gifts; and seeing Christopher, who hated to be left behind, come bounding down the stairs upon their return.
    As Rachel left the abbey square and resumed her walking, Christopher’s face came so clearly before her eyes that her steps faltered. A thin, avid face beneath a thatch of sandy blond hair, so much darker than her own. He’d had honey-brown eyes and a sharp, straight nose that the summer sun scattered with freckles. The fever that took him was brutally quick. He complained of feeling dizzy at bedtime on Monday, and was dead by sunset on Wednesday. He’d been so vibrant, so full of life and mischief, none of them could believe it had happened. They sat with his small corpse for hours, all three of them, simply staring and trying to make sense of what they