The Spinster (Emerson Pass Historicals Book 2) by Tess Thompson

Author:Tess Thompson [Thompson, Tess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-10T18:30:00+00:00

Josephine

For two days in a row I only saw Phillip at dinner. He’d been hard at work in the shed on the Cassidys’ table, leaving the house before I’d come down for the morning. During the days, I worked at the library, coming home just after teatime. After dinner, he and I would retire to the sitting room with the rest of my family. I yearned to have him all to myself and ask him a hundred questions. Instead, we were surrounded by my sisters and watchful brothers, not to mention Papa, who seemed to have eyes in the back of his head.

At night, to distract myself from staring at him endlessly, I busied myself by knitting him a pair of fingerless gloves. Working out there in the cold, he needed gloves, but he’d mentioned they encumbered his agility. I’d finished them last night and wanted to give them to him today. Yet I hesitated, shy to go out uninvited to his working space alone. Fiona and Cymbeline were at school. The boys were working with the carpenters at the ski lodge. Papa was at his office. Mama was with the little girls in the nursery. I wished my sisters were here to ask if they’d accompany me. We were a modern household; still, I wasn’t sure Papa would like me to be alone with Phillip in such a small space.

I spent a good fifteen minutes moving restlessly around the sitting room. Finally I decided I’d take Phillip a pot of hot tea and casually leave the gloves as well. How ridiculous I was, all this fuss over whether I should go out to the shed.

I went down to the kitchen to ask Lizzie if she’d mind putting a pot of tea together for me. She and Mrs. Wu were both working in their usual harmony. Mrs. Wu was in the middle of peeling a pile of potatoes; Lizzie stood at the stove, stirring a steaming pot of broth that smelled of celery and garlic.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Hello, Miss Josephine,” Mrs. Wu said.

When she’d first come to us, Mrs. Wu couldn’t speak much English, but over the years she’d become quite fluent. She and Lizzie, so opposite in appearance—Lizzie robust and pink-skinned with round features; Mrs. Wu, birdlike and tiny with white hair and a dark complexion—were fast friends. After so much time together they moved about the kitchen as if in a choreographed dance.

Mrs. Wu and her granddaughter, Fai, lived downstairs in our staff quarters off the kitchen. When Li came home, if he ever did, his future was uncertain. His Chinese descent would surely keep him from playing in an orchestra. Papa had influenced the music college to take him by donating generously. But his money could only take Li Wu so far. Li had told me during his last visit home that he knew his escape to school would be temporary, but that he was enjoying every moment while he could.

“Are you hungry?” Mrs. Wu asked.

“No, thank you.

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