Patience stared at her father wide-eyed, bewildered at how rapidly her world had changed. ‘She needs to be kept warm,’ she said weakly.
‘Then stay here with her.’ Jeremiah pulled the sofa closer to the fire as he spoke before straightening and adding, ‘I’ll see to everything upstairs as soon as I can.’
When her father had left the room, Patience turned and looked down on Sophy again. The amber eyes were open and tears were seeping from them but Sophy didn’t make a sound. Patience stared at her helplessly. ‘Are you cold?’
Sophy made the slightest movement with her head; even so, it caused her to wince.
‘Here.’ Patience slipped off her thick, woolly dressing gown and placed it over the trembling body of her cousin. ‘It’ll be all right. I’ll look after you.’ And then, aware that this might not be much comfort, she added, ‘I promise I won’t let Moth— anyone, hurt you ever again. I promise, Sophy.’
When Sophy closed her eyes Patience wasn’t sure if she had understood her or not, but anyway, it didn’t matter. She had meant every word.
Bridget, Kitty and Patrick left the house at ten o’clock with a month’s wages apiece and the precious references. By then Sophy was heavily sedated with a generous dose of Jeremiah’s laudanum and consequently unaware of their departure. The family carried all their worldly possessions in three carpet bags, but due to the back-door trading which went on with most cooks and itinerant traders who presented themselves at the kitchen door at certain days in the month, they weren’t as destitute as they could have been. Beef dripping, rabbit skins, feathers and bones were all disposed of into willing hands, and over the time Kitty had been at the vicarage she had made a tidy sum for ‘a rainy day’. This did not comfort Bridget in the slightest; she was bereft at leaving the child she considered her own, but it would cushion the three against the perils of homelessness while they looked for employment.
A thin dusting of snow lay on the frozen ground from a brief fall the night before, but as Jeremiah watched the small family trudge down the drive from his vantage point at an upstairs window, he felt not the slightest remorse for turning them out in such bitter weather. On the contrary, he was more than a little peeved at having to pay out good money for nothing – as he described it to himself, ignoring the fact that he knew he had underpaid the three for years.
After he was sure they had departed, he looked in on Sophy and Patience now ensconced in the spare room. Sophy was lying as still and white as a small corpse under the heaped covers of one of the two single beds the room held, and Patience was sitting in a chair by the fire reading.
‘Go and get yourself something to eat.’ Jeremiah walked over to the bed and stood looking down at his niece for a moment. ‘She’ll sleep for some time yet.’
Patience didn’t need to be told twice, and once his daughter had disappeared downstairs Jeremiah made his way to the bedroom he shared with his wife. Mary hadn’t moved from the armchair in front of the fire where she had placed herself on entering the room with Patience earlier. When he had come to get dressed before he had carried the child to the spare room she had said not a word and neither had he, but her glance had carried its normal disdain when she had looked at him. Now, as he opened the bedroom door, she again looked at him in the usual dismissive way, but his opening words caused her thin, tight body to sit straighter. ‘The servants have gone, as you directed, so I suggest you get yourself down to the kitchen and start preparing an early lunch.’
She stared at him as though he was mad. ‘I will not.’
He carried on as though she had not spoken. ‘After which you will carry out the duties Bridget normally attends to, as well as seeing to dinner tonight. And until I can replace the O’Learys, this will continue, so let us hope it can be soon.’
Mary had now risen to her feet, her bony hands joined in front of her waist. ‘Have you lost your mind, Jeremiah?’
‘No. For the first time in years I am thinking clearly, Mary.’ His calm demeanour was holding by a thread and Mary must have sensed this as she took a step backwards. ‘You’ve excelled yourself today, my devout, God-fearing wife. And I am partly to blame, I accept that. I have allowed you sufficient rope to hang yourself, but it wasn’t you who was caught in the noose, was it? It was all of us. You would have destroyed my standing in this community without a second thought because of your obsession regarding the child. But no more. I will not be ruined on the altar of your fixation. Of course this all depends on whether the child lives or dies, because you have taken her to the edge, do you realise that?’
‘Don’t you dare speak to me in this fashion.’
‘I dare much more than this.’ It was a low growl. ‘The child will reside in the guest room with Patience for the time being until I can arrange for her to attend a private school in Newcastle along with Patience.’