Hope at Holly Cottage by Tania Crosse

Author:Tania Crosse [Tania Crosse]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780749016890
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2014-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Anna was walking back from Princetown, looking forward to Queenie’s cheery welcome at Holly Cottage and mulling over the ugly scene in Bolt’s Store. She had been ordering some dress material and maternity patterns and the woman behind her at the counter had evidently noticed what she was buying.

‘Huh! I doesn’t know how you can bring yersel’ to serve her,’ she had sneered at the shopkeeper. ‘That ring don’t fool me. Seen her in yere afore, I has, an’ she weren’t wearing no ring then. Got hersel’ into trouble, an’ thinks she can still mix with good, honest folk like us. Unmarried mother, it’s disgraceful. Should be locked up.’

Anna had gulped, wanting to disappear into thin air. It had been a horrible incident, but the shopkeeper had been so understanding. As for the customer, well, it was the first open hostility Anna had come across, and there would be plenty more where that came from, she was sure. She would just have to harden herself against it. For so many years, she had held her head high over the situation with her father, and with the support of Ethel and Queenie, she could do so again over the baby.

Oh, damn Gilbert Ashcroft! Damn him to hell! And as for this child he had lumbered her with, well, she wasn’t sure what she felt about it. Queenie seemed passionate for her to keep it, but what did she truly want herself? She really couldn’t answer her own question. She felt all topsy-turvy, she reflected grimly. The child would be her own flesh and blood, and she should love it. But it would also be Gilbert’s. Would it grow up to be like him? If she had it adopted, she would be free. Free of Gilbert and his artful lies and deceit for ever.

She sighed with dejection. Oh, what a chain of events. It was like a row of dominoes all falling on each other, and she was the end one taking all the strain. But she did have a choice. Unlike poor Francesca, who was tied to Gilbert and all his falsehood for life.

Frankie. Anna wondered what had happened to her, caught up in the hoity-toity society it had been her lot to be born into. Had her father died yet? She had all that grief to go through. And in the meantime, she would have to suffer the humiliation of knowing her husband was a cad and a liar.

Poor Frankie. Anna still thought of her as a friend. A friend she yearned to support, despite the harrowing circumstances of their relationship. But she couldn’t just walk up to Ashcroft Hall and ask to see her now, could she?

But maybe there was a way.

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