Broken Boundaries by Kelly Anne Bruce

Author:Kelly Anne Bruce [Bruce, Kelly Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sweet River Publishing
Published: 2019-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The sudden death of her parents left Christine and her sisters the inexperienced and anxious owners of the village bakery. No longer was the idea of ownership a mere eventuality to be discussed with a dear friend. Now, the responsibility was real.

Christine felt that her lot in life had been decided and set in stone in one horrific moment. She wept, for her parents and for herself, but it did no good. Nothing could ever bring them back to her. Nobody was coming to make her life her own again. Life was not a fairytale and she would have no one to rescue her from her fate.

Once the stresses and strains of organising her parents’ funerals was done, and they had been laid to rest in the churchyard, lying side by side for all eternity, Christine had channelled everything she had into the bakery and raising her sisters. She barely sat still from dawn until dusk and was oddly thankful for the sheer volume of work she had to do. It had kept her mind from dwelling on her sadness and her anxieties about the future.

Emmeline, Daisy, and Rose were no longer able to avoid taking a full share of the work in the bakery now. Christine wished that things could be different so they did not have to work so very hard, but there was no help for their circumstances. They should be getting ready to take a place at one of the grand houses in service and possibly even courting a nice young man. But, none of that was meant to be for now.

She was very proud of how they had accepted the changes. Not one of them had complained of the long hours and hard work, though their exhaustion was plain to see as they all tumbled onto their pallets at night, falling asleep in no time at all.

The duke’s bailiff had arrived on the doorstep on the morning of her parents’ funeral. Christine had been surprised to see him, but had been incensed at the letter he had brought from Goldington House. Every night she re-read that dreadful missive. It had been fuel for her, driving her onwards to prove to the Duke of Goldingshire that he was wrong. It had made her determined to make him rue the day he had underestimated the orphaned baker’s daughter, Christine Langdon.

In the letter, he had assumed that as there was no male relative to take over the bakery, that they would wish to give up the lease and be moved to a smaller and cheaper property. He had offered Christine a position in the kitchens at Goldington House for a pittance of the wage she would be able to draw from the bakery. That was if she could continue to keep it prosperous, of course.

She had politely refused his offers and informed him that she would be continuing in her father’s footsteps, that she and her sisters needed no charity. She had heard nothing more from them,

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