The Misbegotten (Katherine Webb) by Katherine Webb

Author:Katherine Webb
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General, fiction
ISBN: 9781409131489
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2013-08-01T05:00:00+00:00

1808

In the kitchen at the farmhouse, there was a suspended, ringing moment after Starling blurted out Alice’s and Jonathan’s secret. When it ended she was sent upstairs, but she did not quite go all the way. She sank into the same spot by the banisters from which she’d first seen Jonathan and Lord Faukes, though it was harder for her to fit there than it had been, and there was such a restlessness in all her limbs it was near impossible to remain quiet or still. For a long time, Alice only wept, and that was the hardest thing of all to bear. She wept with a kind of frantic need that prevented Bridget from saying anything at all. Starling heard the scrape of chair legs on the kitchen floor, and the kettle coming to the boil on the range.

‘Alice, child, stop now,’ said Bridget, after several long minutes. ‘Take a deep breath, slowly now. Be calm, be calm. Take a sip of tea.’ She heard the trembling rattle of a china cup in its saucer.

‘Bridget, you must not tell him! Promise me! Please, I beg you, for he will prevent us from ever seeing one another if you do, and he will like as not cast us out and we will have nothing and be ruined! And I will never see him again!’ Alice gabbled.

‘All this you knew, and yet you continued your liaison – you indulged your feelings, and encouraged them to grow. All this you knew, and also that I am employed by Lord Faukes, and must obey his commands.’ Bridget spoke heavily, wearily.

‘I indulged my feelings, and encouraged them to grow? No, I am compelled by my feelings, Bridget! You must know, you must understand . . . haven’t you ever been in love?’ Alice’s voice was shaking. Starling knew she would be pale, wild-eyed. Do not let her take one of her turns because of what I said.

‘I fancied I was once, and it was no more prudent than this love you have for young Mr Alleyn. My father stepped in and prevented our becoming too attached to each other, and before I had shamed myself publicly. It was a painful separation, I shan’t deny it. But now I see the sense of it, and you must see the sense of removing your affections from Mr Alleyn.’

‘The sense? No, I see no sense in that! I see no sense in separating, or being kept apart, when our souls are wound tight together and have been these many years! You must have seen it? You must have known the way we feel for each other?’

‘I’ve known it, yes. Anyone with eyes in their head would know it, seeing you together in the same room. Even Lord Faukes knows it, though he does not know you would disobey him like this, and meet with his grandson in secret – as I did not know it. Alice, what were you thinking? He is engaged to another! And even if he were not, he is destined to make a fine marriage, into a noble family.

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