The Abandoned Heart: A Bliss House Novel by Laura Benedict

Author:Laura Benedict [Benedict, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2016-10-10T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

AMELIA

December 1878

Randolph was determined to have a party between Thanksgiving and Christmas that would formally introduce both Amelia and Bliss House to the neighborhood, and presented Amelia with a guest list so she could write out the invitations. There wouldn’t be all that much more for her to do. He had set the household operations in motion long before she’d arrived.

He had hired Maud Poole as a cook, and her husband, Clayton, as a driver and houseman, a housemaid, and a groundskeeper who worked with Mason on the orchard operation when there wasn’t much to do in the gardens. Maud had worked for a local judge who had died as Bliss House was being built, and had a heavy hand with sauces, but made excellent biscuits, which, Randolph said, was a skill highly prized in the neighborhood. When Amelia gave her the recipes she’d brought from Long Island, Maud had sniffed and said that she didn’t like fish, and, besides, trout was about the only kind of fish they were likely to get when the weather warmed, and they certainly wouldn’t be getting any crabs this far from an ocean. The way she said it made Amelia think that Maud didn’t quite believe in oceans. Her husband, Clayton, shuffled audibly from room to room, coughing frequently from his former job in the mines. He was far less recalcitrant than his wife, who bullied him, though she was—to Amelia’s shock—nearly twenty years younger than her fifty-year-old husband, despite the streaks of gray in her hair and the faded blue eyes in her plump face.

A laundress came to the house three times a week; she was the sister of the housemaid. Both were some kin to Maud and Clayton, but when Maud tried to tell her of the connection, Amelia listened politely for a few moments, then changed the subject back to the menu. Her own mother had long ago warned her about getting too involved in servants’ lives.

“If you’re so close that you know the names of their children, then you’re too involved. They’ll take advantage and you’ll never be able to let them go unless they start stealing from you. Your heart is too tender, Amelia.”

Because it was such a struggle to make the house her own, she was afraid that she was coming to despise it, despite its beauty. Or was it that she had begun to despise Randolph?

More than anything she missed their house on Long Island with its many smaller rooms, and stuffy but dear furniture she had inherited from her D’Jarnette grandmother. She missed having neighbors nearby. She missed walking to her dressmaker’s shop, and her mother’s house, and the quaint tearoom where she could meet her sister for lunch. At least she wasn’t completely alone, though she hadn’t made what anyone could call friends.

A few of the neighborhood women had called on her: heavily pregnant Selina Searle, the wife of the local priest, and Katharine “Pinky” Archer, who seemed to consider herself the most

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.