Orphans from the Storm: Bride at Bellfield Mill / A Family for Hawthorn Farm / Tilly of Tap House

‘If you think I should.’

‘I do,’ he assured her grimly.

Marianne nodded her head. His words had only confirmed her own fears about the nurse’s suitability for her work.

‘I’ll go and inform Mr Denshaw that you’re here. If you would like a cup of tea…?’

‘That’s right kind of you, missus, but I’d best see the master first.’

‘If you would like to wait here, I’ll go up and tell him now,’ Marianne told him.

She had closed the door to the master bedroom when she had last left it, but now it was slightly ajar. She rapped briefly on it, and when there was no reply she opened it.

A tumble of clothes lay on the floor: the shirt the Master of Bellfield had been wearing, along with some undergarments. The room smelled of carbolic soap, and there were splashes of water leading from the bathroom.

It amazed Marianne that a man in as much pain as Mr Denshaw had felt it necessary to get out of bed, remove his clothes and wash himself. And whilst ordinarily she would have admired a person’s desire for cleanliness, on this occasion she was more concerned about the effect his actions might have had on his wound.

Without stopping to think, she bustled over to the bed, scolding him worriedly. ‘You should have called for me if you wanted to get out of bed.’

Immediately a naked hair-roughened male arm shot out from beneath the covers and a hard male hand grasped her arm.

‘And you would have washed me like a baby? I’m a man, Mrs Brown, and that ring on your finger and the marriage lines you claim go with it don’t entitle you to make free with my body as though it were a child’s.’

Marianne could feel her face burning with embarrassment.

‘Mr Gledhill is here,’ she told him in a stilted voice. ‘Shall I bring him up?’

‘Aye.’

‘I have spoken with Charlie Postlethwaite about the laundry. I have not had time to check the linen closet properly as yet, but I shall do my best to ensure that your nightshirts are…’

To her dismay it was a struggle for her not to look at his naked torso as she spoke of the item of clothing he should surely have been wearing.

‘Nightshirts?’ He laughed and told her mockingly, ‘I am a mill master, Mrs Brown, not a gentleman, and I sleep in the garment that nature provided me with—my own skin. That is the best covering within the marital bed, for both a man and a woman.’

Marianne whisked herself out of the room, not trusting herself to make any reply.

For a man who had injured himself as badly as he had, the Master of Bellfield had a far too virile air about him. Her heart was beating far too fast. She had never before seen such muscles in a man’s arms, nor such breadth to a man’s chest, and as for that arrowing of dark hair…Marianne almost missed her step on the stairs, and her face was still glowing a bright pink when she hurried into the kitchen to find Mr Gledhill rocking the baby’s basket and the chair beside the fire empty.

‘T’babby woke up and started mithering.’

‘I expect he’s hungry,’ Marianne told him.

‘Aye, he is an all, by the looks of it. Got a little ’un of me own—a grand lad, he is,’ he told her proudly. ‘I’ve sent t’nurse packing for you, an’ all. Aye, and I’ve put the bolt across t’back door in case she were thinking of coming back and filling her pockets. A bad lot, she is. There’s more than one family round here ’as lost someone on account of her. After what happened to the master’s missus, me wife said as how she’d rather t’shepherd from t’farm deliver our wean than Dr Hollingshead.’

‘I’ll take you up to Mr Denshaw now, if you’d like to come this way?’

This time when she knocked on the bedroom door and then opened it Marianne purposefully did not look in the direction of the bed, but instead kept her face averted when she announced the mill manager, and then stepped smartly out of the room.

It was some time before the mill manager returned to the kitchen, and when he did he was frowning, as though his thoughts burdened him.

‘T’master has told me to tell you that for so long as he is laid up you can apply to me for whatever you may need in your role as housekeeper. He said that you’re to supply me with a list of everything that needs replacin’—by way of sheeting and that. I’m to have a word with the tradesmen and tell them to send their bills to me until t’master is well enough to deal wi’ them himself. There are accounts at most of the shops.’

He reached into his pocket and withdrew some bright shiny coins, which he placed on the table.

‘He said to give you this. There’s two guineas there in shillings. You’re to keep a record of what you spend for t’master to check. If there is anything else I can ’elp you with…’

‘There is one thing,’ Marianne told him. ‘The house is cold and damp, and I should like to have a fire lit in the master’s bedroom. There is a coal store, but there does not seem to be anyone to maintain it, nor to provide the household with kindling and the like.’

The mill manager nodded his head. ‘T’master said himself that he wanted me to sort out a lad to take the place of old Bert, who used to do the outside work. Should have been replaced years ago, he should, but t’master said as ’ow he’d worked ’ere all his life, and that it weren’t right to turn him out. Not that ’e’d been doing much work this last year. ‘The mill manager shook his head. ‘Too soft-’earted t’master is sometimes.’

Marianne couldn’t help but look surprised. Soft-hearted wasn’t how she would have described the Master of Bellfield.

‘I’ll send a lad up first thing in the morning. I know the very one. Good hard worker, he’ll be, and knows what he’s about. Master said that you’ll be needing a girl to do the rough work as well.’

Marianne nodded her head.

For a man who less than a handful of hours ago had barely been conscious, her new employer seemed to have made a remarkable recovery.

‘And perhaps if Mr Denshaw could have a manservant, especially whilst he is so…so awkwardly placed with his wound?’ Marianne suggested delicately.

The mill manager scratched his head. ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I don’t think he’d care for that. He doesn’t like all them fancy ways. Mind, I could send up a couple of lads, if you were to send word, to give you a hand if it were a matter of lifting him or owt like that?’

‘Yes…thank you.’

He meant well, Marianne knew, but that wasn’t what she’d had in mind at all. With the nurse dismissed, she was now going to have to nurse her employer, and if what she had experienced earlier was anything to go by, the Master of Bellfield was not going to change his ways to accommodate her female sensibilities.

‘T’master also said to tell you that you can have the use of the housekeeper’s rooms, fifteen guineas wages a year and a scuttle full of coal every day, all found.’

Fifteen guineas! And all found! Marianne nodded her head. Those were generous terms indeed.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_9eea718d-a0f1-5fa1-bed9-013ad7f8e016)

THE day’s bright sunshine had faded into evening darkness, and beneath the full moon which Marianne could see from the kitchen window the yard was glazed with white frosting.

True to his word, the mill manager had sent up a sturdy-looking youth who had spent what was left of the afternoon chopping fire kindling and filling enough coal scuttles to fuel every fire in the house.

At four o’clock Marianne had gone out to him to take him some bread and cheese. He seemed a decent lad, shy, and not quick with his words, but hard-working. He had told her his name was Ben. He had further added that his cousin Hannah would be coming up in the morning, to see if she might suit for the rough work in the kitchen.

A cheerful-looking individual had also arrived, announcing that he was from the laundry, and Marianne had somehow made time to bundle up and list as much of the grubby linen as she could.

She had even had time to run up the stairs to the attic floor, to seek out the rooms the mill manager had referred to as the housekeeper’s rooms. It had been easy enough to establish which they were, and Marianne had decided the minute she saw them that neither she nor the baby would be occupying them until she had given them a good scrub through and got some fresh ticking to cover the mattress. For tonight she planned to sleep in the kitchen again, where it was warm and clean.

The house’s nurseries were also on the attic floor, and Marianne had been drawn to them. Once they would have rung with the childish laughter of the young boy and girl whom, so local gossip said, had been driven away by the cruelty of the man who had been stepfather to one and guardian to the other.

The rooms were cold and abandoned, with distemper flaking off the sloping walls where they rose to meet the ceiling. Heavy protective bars guarded the windows, and there was a large brass fireguard in front of the fire, the kind on which a children’s nanny would have dried their outside clothes, and perhaps as a treat made toast for nursery tea.

One thing that had impressed her about the house was the fact that the nursery floor had a proper bathroom, with a flushing lavatory and a big bath.