Forged in the Fire by Ann Turnbull

Author:Ann Turnbull [Turnbull, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781406352917
Publisher: Walker Books
Published: 2013-07-04T04:00:00+00:00

William

Susanna: thou may have released me from my promise, but I do not release thee—

No. That was too threatening. I tore up the paper and began again:

If thou would only hear what I have to say…

Too apologetic.

I should pursue her, I thought, insist on seeing her. But I feared another rejection. And what could I offer her when I had no work, no prospects, no proper home?

I put the pen and paper away. I would not approach her again, I decided, until I had found a new employer: a bookseller, or stationer, perhaps a notary or some such who needed a clerk; someone who’d give me full-time work that would pay enough to keep a modest household. There must be such work to be found.

Meanwhile, my time at Edmund Ramsey’s was coming to an end. Within a week the cataloguing was finished and I arranged to leave. Working and living with the family, I had come to know them all well – the servants too. But my former ease with Catherine had never returned. I knew she was unhappy, and feared I was responsible for that. It was better to go. Edmund thanked me, said he’d recommend me to any prospective employer, that they’d miss me and I must come back and visit them – and then I returned to my old lodgings in Creed Lane.

It was a shock to be back in that unwholesome place, to have to find my own meals, do my own washing, and face empty days looking for employment. The room, which had been stifling in summer, was now, in December, cheerless and cold. I was glad to be reunited with Nat, but our old camaraderie had diminished with my long absence; and he was at work till the evenings.

The day after my return was my twenty-first birthday: my coming of age. I sat alone by the fire eating a bowl of day-old pease pudding while icy rain beat on the window. Had I been at home with my family I could have expected a celebration, perhaps a gift of money or clothes: certainly some recognition of the day.

I mused on what might have been, had I not fallen in with the Friends of Truth and left Hemsbury without my father’s blessing. If I’d followed the road he’d laid out for me I would by now have been three years or more into my apprenticeship with Nicholas Barron. I’d have money, good lodgings, excellent prospects, and would have travelled in Europe. Nick Barron was an acquaintance and near neighbour of Edmund Ramsey, so I might well have met Catherine. I might have courted her and hoped, in due time, to be married, to the delight of both our families. And I’d have been free, after my apprenticeship, to join Friends if I wished.

But I had made my choice, and could not regret it. I had chosen independence, and Susanna. I thought, ironically, that now I was at last free to marry without my father’s consent, I had neither the means nor the woman.

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