It was a whisper but Bridget heard it and put her arm round the slender shoulders. ‘That she would, me bairn. That she would. And a matching one for herself, no doubt, then you’d have been two peas in a pod.’ She was exaggerating a little but felt it was called for. ‘Just like her you are, hinny.’
Sophy nodded. And that was why her aunt and uncle didn’t like her. She had learned much from listening to Bridget and Kitty’s chatter as she had grown, especially when they thought she was asleep in her pallet bed in the far corner of the kitchen. She knew her mother had been her uncle’s sister and that she had married a French nobleman of whom her family had disapproved. Her mother had been beautiful, like a fairy princess, and her father very handsome. She had added that last bit herself but she knew it to be true, for why else would her mother have left everyone and everything she’d known to marry him? It was like a story, even if it had ended badly with her father dying and her mother having to come home to her Uncle Jeremiah. Her aunt and uncle hadn’t liked her mother and they didn’t like her. She had said that once to Bridget, and Bridget had answered that her aunt and uncle didn’t like anyone, including each other, but then Kitty had shushed Bridget and told her to hold her tongue.
She also knew that Bridget was wholly hers in a way no one else was, and this was often balm to her bruised heart when her aunt had been particularly harsh. Only last night she’d heard Bridget and Kitty talking at the kitchen table over a cup of tea before they retired for the night, Patrick ensconced in his chair by the range smoking his pipe.
‘Cryin’ shame, I call it,’ Bridget had said softly. ‘She’ll be ten the day after the morrer and still sleeping like a dog in the kitchen. What other man would hold with his own sister’s bairn being treated as scum, I ask you? She’s worse off than we are, at least we get paid for the work we do’ – here Kitty had snorted, and Bridget had amended – ‘even if it is a pittance, and we have our own rooms, Mam, now then. That little bairn has never been allowed to play, and she was made to slave from when she could walk. A pallet bed in the kitchen – it’s not right, not when the guest room is empty year in and year out, ’cept for when the bishop comes to stay for a few days.’
‘I know, lass, I know, but it’s none of our business. We work here, that’s all, an’ we could be out on our ear afore you could say Jack Robinson.’
Bridget had been silent for a moment and Sophy had risked peeking out from under her blankets. Bridget was slowly shaking her head, her face sad but her voice angry when she’d murmured, ‘Makes my blood boil, the things that go on in this house, and all the time them actin’ the holy Joes. I’d like to take that little lass to one of his damn committees and show them what his lady wife does when she’s of a mind. Last time she caned her, she was black an’ blue all over.’
‘Wouldn’t make any difference if you did.’ Patrick had entered the conversation, which was rare. He was a man who didn’t say much. ‘The nobs stick together, as you well know. Like your mam says, it’s none of our business an’ you’d do well to remember that, lass.’
This had effectively finished the conversation but it had left Sophy feeling warm inside that Bridget cared about her so much. Reaching up now, she whispered in Bridget’s ear, ‘I love you.’
‘An’ I love you, hinny.’ Bridget’s gaze rested on the shining hair which was strained into one tight plait so that not even a curl escaped. The mistress had insisted on it as soon as the baby mop of curls had grown, along with the dull dresses and ugly, thick-soled boots the little girl was made to wear, but nothing could disguise Sophy’s beauty, Bridget thought for the umpteenth time with great satisfaction. And that was something that stuck in the mistress’s craw all right, cruel devil that she was.
As though her thoughts had conjured the mistress up, Bridget heard her mother say, ‘Good afternoon, ma’am,’ a moment before Mary appeared in the scullery doorway. She and Sophy stood to their feet, it was one of many niceties the mistress demanded but Sophy knew better than to stare at her aunt and kept her eyes lowered.
Mary Hutton’s cold reptilian eyes swept over the silver on the rough wooden table. ‘Haven’t you finished that yet? It’s’ – she consulted the small silver pocket-watch pinned to the bodice of her thick linen day dress – ‘almost four o’clock and we have guests for dinner tonight.’
‘Nearly done, ma’am.’ Bridget dipped her knee just the slightest.