The carter, with blackened stumps where his teeth had been, and his habit of spitting out the tobacco he was chewing, might not have been her preferred choice of companion, but his kindness in taking her up with him had brought tears of relief to her eyes. His offer had come after he had heard her begging the station master at Rochdale, who had turned her off the train, to let her continue her journey—a journey for which she had told him she had a ticket, even if now she couldn’t find it. She certainly couldn’t have walked all those extra miles that had lain between Rochdale and the small mill town that was her destination.
Now, as she struggled to stand upright against the battering wind, the moon emerged from behind a cloud to shine down on the canal in the valley below her. Alongside the canal ran the railway—the same railway on which she should have travelled to Rawlesden. She could see smoke emerging from the tall chimneys of the mills. Mills that made fortunes for their owners whilst becoming a grim prison for those who worked in them. She had never so much as visited a mill town before, never mind been inside a mill. The aunt who had brought her up had owned a small estate in Cheshire, but it was no mere chance that brought her here to this town now.
The baby gave a small weak whimper, causing her heart to turn over with sick fear. He was so hungry and so weak. Her fear for him drove her to walk faster, slipping and sliding on the muddy road as she made herself ignore the misery of her cold, wet body.
She was halfway down the hillside now, and as she turned a sharp bend in the road the large bulk of an imposing mansion rose up out of the darkness in front of her, its presence shocking her even though she had been looking for it. Its façade, revealed by the moonlight, was grim and threatening, as though daring anyone to approach it, and was more that of a fortress than a home. A pair of heavy iron gates set into a stone wall barred the way to it, and the moon shone on dark unlit windows whilst the wind whipped ferociously through the trees lining the carriageway leading to the house. She had known what it was even before she had seen the name Bellfield Hall carved into the stone columns supporting the huge gates.
A thin curl of smoke from one of its chimneys was the only evidence that it was inhabited. No wonder the carter had urged her to avoid such an inhospitable-looking place. Marianne shivered as she looked at it, before turning away to comfort the baby who had started to cry.
It was then that it happened—that somehow she took a careless step in the muddy darkness of the cart track, causing her ankle to turn so awkwardly that she stumbled heavily against the gate, pain spearing her even whilst she hugged the baby tightly to her to protect him.
As she struggled to stand upright she found that just trying to bear her own slender weight on her injured ankle brought her close to fainting with the pain. But she could not fail now. She must not. She had given her promise, after all. She looked down into the town. It was still a good long walk away, whilst the hall…This was not how she had planned for things to be, but what choice did she have? She reached for the heavy gate handle and turned it.
CHAPTER TWO
IT HAD taken her longer to walk up the carriageway to the house than Marianne had expected, and then she’d had to find her way round to the servants’ entrance at the rear. The smell from the mill chimneys was stinging her throat and eyes, and the baby’s thin wail warned her that he too was affected by the smoke. A stabbing pain shot through her ankle with every step she took.
Relief filled her when she saw the light shining from a window to one side of the door. Here, surely, despite what the carter had told her, she would find some respite from the harsh weather, and a fire to sit before—if only for long enough to feed the baby. She was certain no one could be so hard-hearted as to send her out into a night like this one. Milo had often talked with admiration and pride of the people of this valley and their generosity of spirit. A poor, hard-working people whom he had been proud to call his own. He had shown her the sign language used by the mill workers to communicate with one another above the sound of the looms, and he had told her of the sunny summer days he had spent roaming free on the moors above the valley as a young boy. He had desperately wanted to come back here, but in the end death had come and snatched him away more speedily than either of them had anticipated.
She raised her hand toward the door knocker, but before she could reach it the door was suddenly pulled open, to reveal the interior of a large and very untidy kitchen. A woman emerged—the housekeeper, Marianne assumed. For surely someone so richly dressed, in a bonnet lavishly trimmed with fur and feathers and a cloak lined with what looked like silk, could not possibly be anything else. Certainly not a mere housemaid, or even a cook, and no lady of the house would ever exit via the servants’ door.
The woman was carrying a leather portmanteau, and her high colour and angry expression told Marianne immediately that this was no ordinary leave-taking.
The man who had pulled open the door looked equally furious. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick dark hair and a proudly arrogant profile, and both his appearance and his demeanour made it plain that he was the master of the house and in no very good humour.
‘If you think you can turn me off with nothing but a few pennies and no reference, Master Denshaw, then you’ll have to think again—that you will. An honest woman, I am, and I’m not having no one say no different…’
‘An honest woman? So tell me then, Mrs Micklehead, how does such an honest woman, paid no more than ten guineas a year, manage to afford to clothe herself in a bonnet and a cloak that even to my untrained male eye would have cost in the region of ten times that amount?’
The woman’s face took on an even more crimson hue.
‘Given to me, they was, by Mr Awkwright what I worked for before I come here. Said how I could have them, he did, after poor Mrs Awkwright passed away on account of how well I looked after her.’
‘So well, in fact, that she died of starvation and neglect, you mean? Well, you might have hoped to starve me into submission—or worse—Mrs Micklehead, with your inability to perform any of the tasks for which you were employed—’
‘An ’ousekeeper were what I were taken on as—not a skivvy nor a cook. I come here out of the goodness of me heart.’
‘You came here, Mrs Micklehead, for one reason and one reason only, and that was so that you could line your own pockets at my expense.’
‘If you was real quality, and not just some poor brat what managed to marry up into a class what was too good for him, you’d know how the real quality and them that works for them goes about things. Call yourself the Master of Bellfield? The whole town knows there was another what should have had that right, even if they’re too feared of you to say so.’
‘Hold your tongue, woman.’
The order thundered round the chaotic room.
‘You’re no housekeeper,’ he continued grimly into the silence he had commanded. ‘You’re a lazy good-for-nothing, a thief and a liar, and I’m well rid of you.’
‘You may well be, but I’ll tell you this—you won’t find no one daft enough to come looking to take me place, that you won’t,’ she told him vigorously. ‘Not when I’ve had me say—’
‘Excuse me…’
At the sound of her faltering interruption they both turned to look at Marianne.
‘Oh, I see—got someone to take me place already, have you?’ The housekeeper gave Marianne an angrily contemptuous look, and then, without giving either Marianne or her late master time to correct her, she continued challengingly, ‘So where’s he had you from, then? One of them fancy domestic agencies down in Manchester, I’ll be bound, with that posh way you talk. Well, you won’t last a full day here, you won’t. You’ll