Her mother couldn’t disagree and had eventually acquiesced. Recently, she had even taken to asking Flora to run errands for her while she was in the village.
Poor Mama, Flora thought with a sigh, imagining how difficult the continuing slide into penury must be for her. She still remembered visiting her mother’s childhood home when she was younger, which had felt like a veritable palace to her wide-eyed four-year-old self. Scores of footmen, maids and a butler whose face had seemed carved from marble had stood to attention as the daughter of the house had entered with her family. Both Flora and Aurelia had been whisked off by her mother’s old nanny to the playroom and Flora had never set eyes on her grandparents. Although, if she remembered correctly, three-year-old Aurelia had been taken briefly from the nursery to be introduced to them.
Having completed her business, Flora handed a penny to the boy whom she’d asked to mind the pony, and climbed back up onto the wooden bench with a crate full of vegetables and a paper bag of pear drops – Aurelia’s favourite – next to her.
The day was bright, and as she steered the trap out of Hawkshead, she decided to take the longer way around Esthwaite Water via the village of Near Sawrey so she could see the wild crocuses and daffodils beginning to burst into bloom. Even the air smelled lighter and the brief snow flurry of that morning had barely kissed the ground before melting. As she took the lane out of Near Sawrey towards home, she glanced up at the farmhouse just visible at the top of the rise to her left.
For the hundredth time, Flora thought about stopping and introducing herself to its lone resident, and reminding her of how they had met so many years ago. And what an inspiration she had been since.
As usual, having slowed Myla down, her courage failed her. One day I will stop, she promised herself. For behind those sturdy farmhouse walls lived the embodiment of all her hopes and dreams for the future.
Myla trotted on past Hill Top Farm and Flora was so deep in thought that, as she steered the trap over the hump-backed bridge across the stream, bubbling noisily over its pebble bed, she failed to hear the pounding of hooves coming full pelt across the open ground to her left. As she rounded the bend just beyond the bridge, a horse and rider appeared a few yards in front of her. Myla took fright, rearing up so high that the front wheels of the trap left the ground for a few seconds, shunting Flora across the bench as it tipped perilously to one side. Hanging on to its edge, Flora tried to right herself as the rider brought his own horse to a standstill, only inches from Myla’s flaring nostrils.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?!’ Flora shouted as she attempted to calm her terrified pony. ‘Have you no road sense?’ At that moment, Myla decided to gallop home as fast as she could, away from the plunging bay stallion blocking her path. Flora lurched forward, losing control of the trap as the reins were wrenched through her hands, and Myla flew past the horse and rider towards sanctuary. Flora caught a brief glimpse of the shocked expression in the rider’s dark brown eyes.
It took all the strength she possessed to hang on to the bench with one hand while using the other to pull fruitlessly on the reins. Only when they entered the gates of the Hall did Myla slow down a little, sweat showing on her flanks. Flora arrived at the stables shaken and badly bruised.
‘Miss Flora! What on earth happened?’ Stanley, the groom, asked as he noted the whites of the pony’s eyes and tried to calm her.
‘A rider crossed our path out of nowhere and Myla took off,’ Flora said, close to tears as she handed the reins to Stanley and accepted his hand to help her climb from the trap.
‘Miss Flora, you’re as pale as a ghost,’ he said as, now on terra firma, Flora felt suddenly faint, and leant on Stanley’s broad shoulder for support.
‘Should I call for Sarah to help you up to the house?’
‘No, let me sit down in the barn for a while. Perhaps you could be kind enough to bring me some water?’
‘Yes, miss.’ After leading her into the barn and settling her on a hay bale, Stanley left to find her a mug of water. Flora found herself shivering.
‘Here you are, miss,’ said Stanley as he returned. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to fetch Sarah? You’re a rare colour and that’s for sure.’
‘No.’ Flora spoke with as much firmness as she could muster. Any whisper of her being seen out of control of the trap in public would mean her journeys – and, therefore, her freedom – would be instantly curtailed. ‘Please,’ she said, rallying her jelly-like limbs and standing up, ‘say nothing.’
‘As you wish, miss.’
Flora left the barn, her head held high, but her bones feeling as though they had been rattled around inside their bag of skin. As she crossed the lawns to the house, she knew that not a single flicker of her eye must betray to her parents what had happened.
Entering the kitchen, she saw Mrs Hillbeck’s harassed expression as she took a joint of lamb from the oven.
‘Where on earth have you been, Miss Flora? Your mother came down not ten minutes ago to ask us if we’d seen you. They’re already sitting down to luncheon in the dining room.’
‘I . . . was out.’
‘Miss Flora?’ Sarah approached her.
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a dirty smudge on your nose and your hair’s all over the place.’
‘Do you have a cloth?’
‘Of course.’ Sarah took one and cleaned her face, just as she had when Flora was a child.
‘Gone?’
‘Gone, but your hair . . .’
‘No time, thank you.’ Flora ran out of the kitchen, blindly putting her fingers through her stray locks to fasten them back into the chignon. Pausing at the dining room door and listening to the dull hum of conversation beyond it, Flora took a deep breath and entered. Six heads turned to watch her.
‘Please forgive me, Mama, Papa, Lady Vaughan, Miss Vaughan and Ar—’
Flora’s gaze had followed her words around the table until they came to rest on a pair of dark eyes, wide with alarm and surprise at the mutual recognition.
‘. . . Archie,’ she spat. So this was the wretch that had almost thrown her from the trap – the nasty little boy who had bruised her with crab apples all those years ago. Now grown up, but just as much trouble.
‘My son is now of age, so is to be addressed as “Lord Vaughan”,’ Lady Vaughan corrected her.
‘Forgive me, I did not know. Lord Vaughan,’ she managed as she sat down.
‘Where on earth have you been, Flora?’ her mother asked, her voice gentle, but her expression saying everything she could not. Flora noted her mother was wearing her finest tea gown.
‘I was . . . delayed on the way home due to a . . . cart tipping over and blocking the road.’ Flora settled on a half-truth. ‘Please forgive me, Mama, I had to take the trap along the back roads.’