‘No, you won’t take Patience from me.’
‘Of course this will mean we have to cut back a little, my dear, so thriftiness will be called for.’
Mary’s breath was coming in gasps. ‘I – I won’t discipline the child again.’
‘Indeed you won’t.’
‘There is no need for such measures.’
‘There is every need.’ Jeremiah spat the words into her stiff face, and only in that moment did Mary realise how far she had pushed him. ‘I see now I cannot trust you around the child and so she needs to be removed from your presence. You will not destroy my good name, Mary. Not while I have breath in my body. Sophy will go away to school and Patience will accompany her. Anything else would raise suspicions as to why we are educating our niece above our daughter. And while we are talking like this, you had better write to your uncle and inform him that his New Year visit will not be convenient this year. The guest room will be occupied.’
‘You – you devil.’
‘I am but what you have made me, Mary.’
Jeremiah turned and walked out of the room, and if his wife had still had the pearl-handled knife in her possession she would have used it.
PART THREE
Destiny
1896
Chapter 6
‘Aren’t you even a little bit pleased to be leaving school for good, Sophy? I mean, no more arithmetic and French and embroidering those wretched samplers. If I have girls when I get married I shall make sure they never have to do any sewing.’
Sophy smiled at her friend. Charlotte Gilbert-Lee had shared much of the last six years of her life and she was very fond of her, but Charlotte was the only daughter of Mr and Mrs Gilbert-Lee and her father was a prominent solicitor who doted on his offspring. Charlotte went home every weekend to be thoroughly spoiled, and her holidays were spent in a round of entertainment and fun. They were worlds apart, and yet from Sophy’s first week at Miss Bainbridge’s Academy for Young Ladies, Charlotte had taken the frightened and unhappy newcomer under her wing and smoothed Sophy’s path. Sophy and Patience had only gone home to the vicarage at holiday time – Jeremiah had maintained that a weekly trip to Newcastle to bring the girls home every weekend was too much – but neither of them had minded this. In the four months from Mary’s assault on Sophy until Jeremiah had got them into Miss Bainbridge’s Academy, the open warfare which existed between husband and wife had made life at the vicarage unbearable. And this had only got worse over the years.
Thinking of this now, Sophy said quietly, ‘I like it here, I always have, and I’ve enjoyed everything.’
‘That’s because you’re good at everything,’ Charlotte said without a trace of envy. ‘Even the pianoforte with old Potty.’
Miss Potts was the music teacher and Charlotte had been the bane of the poor woman’s life; no matter how Miss Potts tried, she was unable to make Charlotte grasp more than the mere rudiments of the instrument. As Charlotte herself cheerfully proclaimed, where the piano was concerned she had two left hands. Charlotte did have a beautiful singing voice, however, as did Sophy, and the two of them had often performed a duet at the musical soirées Miss Bainbridge put on for family and friends at the end of the summer and Christmas terms. As both girls were very pretty and their voices harmonised perfectly, they had been in great demand.
Sophy had loved those occasions; in fact, she sometimes felt they were the only times she was truly alive, along with the dancing and drama classes taken by Miss Bainbridge’s sister. She could become someone else – anyone else – rather than Sophy Hutton, orphan. She had once daringly asked her uncle why she couldn’t be known by her father’s name of Lemaire, since it was so much more satisfying than plain old Hutton, but he had told her not to be so impertinent and that was the end of that. She knew why, of course. It was because her aunt and uncle had disapproved of her mother’s marriage and were determined to stamp out even the memory of her father’s name. But they wouldn’t. She was determined about that. She often pictured them, her mother and father, when they had been young and in love. Her mother had had deep blue eyes, Bridget had told her that, so she must have inherited her father’s unusual amber eyes. She liked the thought of that. She could see him in her mind’s eye – a tall, dark, handsome Frenchman with black curly hair and a captivating smile. And he was of the nobility, even if he hadn’t had any money. But more than that he had loved her mother, and he would have loved her too, if he hadn’t been taken so suddenly.