“What’s the trouble?” The haughty woman had appeared again.
“She’s trying to take our supper, Mama.”
That did it. Rena had borne much patiently but suddenly enough was enough.
“Once and for all,” she said, “Clara is mine, and I am taking her with me.”
She looked at the four of them ranged against her.
“If you take her from me,” she said, slowly and emphatically, “that will be stealing, and I shall report you to the constable.”
“Who’s to say who it belongs to?” the unpleasant young man demanded. “That animal is parish property, and the constable will say the same.”
“No, he won’t,” Rena flashed, “because he’s met this chicken before (she could have bitten her tongue out for the idiotic words). In fact, his mother gave it to me.”
“Which means,” she added, recklessly casting aside Papa’s teaching aside, “that he’ll know that this is a den of thieves. Ask yourself how your brother will like that on his first day.”
In sullen silence they stood back to let her pass. Still keeping a firm hold on Clara, Rena had to use her other hand to put one bag on the table, fitted her arm over it, and lifted the other with the hand of that arm.
She was horribly aware of what she must look like, staggering out of the house, laden down. It took her an hour to limp through the village to her destination.
But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that she had stood up against bullying and won. She could have cried hallelujahs.
Thus it was that Miss Colwell returned to The Grange in triumph, carrying all her worldly goods under one arm, and a chicken under the other.
CHAPTER THREE
Luck was with her. She found the front door of The Grange unlocked, and was able to slip inside. The house was in darkness, so she guessed that the Earl was still carousing in the tavern. That meant she could settle herself in peace.
Dropping the bags, she made her way to the kitchen, keeping firm hold on Clara, who was making contented little mumbling squawks, as though signifying that she felt safe now.
With Clara safely deposited in the kitchen, she lit a lamp and went hunting for a place to lay her head. She could find a proper bedroom tomorrow.
It was dark in the house with only the lamp, and the huge place seemed to echo about her. Suddenly she could hear how full it was of creaks and strange noises. It had stood here for hundreds of years, and seen all manner of history, births, deaths, perhaps even murders. Was it really fanciful to imagine that a ghost or two might walk?
Well, suppose it did, she thought. She was drunk from her victory, exhilarated at giving free rein to something too long repressed in her nature. She had stood up for herself. And she had won. She was ready to take on any ghost.
It felt like being reborn as another person, and she wished there was somebody that she could tell. But who would understand?
He would, she thought suddenly. She had known the Earl for only a few hours, yet instinct told her that she could confide this new feeling to him and he would sympathise.
If only he would return home so that she could talk to him!
Now she had a chance to contemplate him at leisure, which she found herself very willing to do. There was delight in considering his tall, upright body, hardened by years on active service in the Navy.
She liked too the way he held his head, as though there was nobody alive whose eye he feared to meet. That was how a man ought to look.
His face was pleasing with its blunt, good looking features, and the amiable grin that was seldom far from his lips. His eyes were full of warmth and humour, and he seemed to laugh as easily as he breathed.
That had been startling at first. He spoke with a kind of half comical inflection, as though a remark could be amusing or not, depending on how his listener took it.
And Rena had discovered that dear Papa must have been right all along. She really did have a shocking inclination to levity, for part of her instinctively responded to this way of talking with a humour of her own.
Nothing in her experience had prepared her for a man like this. In fact nothing had prepared her for men of any kind.
The only man she had known well had been her father, who had taken life and the world with great earnestness.
Her parents had been devoted to each other. Rena had liked nothing better than hearing Mama tell how she and Papa had fallen in love.
It had been just like Romeo and Juliet, for the Sunninghills had not been at all pleased when their daughter fell in love with the young clergyman who had come to assist the elderly vicar in the church they visited every Sunday.
“Your father was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen,” her mother said. “He told me he fell in love with me from the moment he saw me moving into the family pew we always occupied.”
“So you both fell in love with each other at the same time,” Rena said.
“I suppose we did, but I didn’t know it then, because we didn’t get the chance to speak for several weeks.”
With a shy smile she had added, “Then when we met, he told me later he was so overcome by shyness that he couldn’t say more than a word or two.”
“I understood because I felt the same. I wanted to talk to him but I couldn’t think of anything to say. The first time he came with the vicar to tea, neither he nor I said anything to each other.”
“But you were excited at meeting him, Mama?” Rena had questioned.
“So excited that I think I dreamt of him every night until we met again. But that was a long time.”
Finally when her parents gave a garden party, she somehow managed, although she could never remember quite how, to show him the strawberry bed. For the first time they had been alone together.
“How long was it, Mama, before he told you he loved you?”
“It seemed to me as if it took a thousand years. I admitted to myself I loved your father but was not certain if he loved me.”
“But finally he told you so,” Rena said.
“Yes, and I felt as if he took me into the sky and we were together in heaven. I hope, my darling, it will one day, happen to you.”
They were certainly two of the happiest people Rena could ever imagine.
Sometimes she thought they had forgotten her and everything else in the world except that they were together.
But she realised now that it had left her in limbo. They did almost no entertaining, and since her mother’s death her father had stayed at home except for his duties. She had met almost nobody.
A curate had stayed with them for a week, and she had sensed that he admired her. Papa had even asked her how she liked him, and reproved her for levity because she had disliked his red hands and wrists, and his habit of sniffing before he spoke.
But she knew he was glad that she did not want to leave home, and the matter was allowed to drop.
Despite her restricted experience she was not quite as unworldly as her father believed. Lacking any other companionship Rena and her mother had grown closer and had many long talks.
She learned that her grandfather Sunninghill had not been a faithful husband. With money to spare, he had indulged himself in the pleasures of the flesh, including mistresses.
Mrs Colwell had considered long before divulging this to her daughter, but had eventually decided that some worldly knowledge was essential, if the girl was not to be left completely vulnerable.