Bride at Bellfield Mill

‘No!’

‘Then what?’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers, sir,’ she replied quietly, looking not at him but down at the floor. It had taken more than one whipping before she had known that it was not her right to look her betters in the eye.

‘Beggars? You class yourself as such, and yet you are aspiring to the post of a housekeeper?’

‘I know the duties of a housekeeper, sir, and have carried them out in the past. On this occasion, though, I was not in any expectation of such an elevated post.’

‘Elevated? So you think that working for me as my housekeeper would be a rare and juicy plum of a post, do you?’

‘I had not thought of it in such terms, sir. Indeed, I had not thought of taking that position at all—you are the one who has done that. All I was looking for was the chance of work and a roof over my head.’

‘But you have worked as a housekeeper, you say?’

‘Yes, sir.’ It was, after all, the truth.

‘Where was your last post?’

‘In Cheshire, sir. The home of an elderly lady.’

‘Cheshire! So what brings you to Lancashire?’

The baby, who had fallen asleep, suddenly woke up and started to cry.

‘What the devil?’ He snatched up a lantern from the table and held it aloft, anger pinching in his nostrils and drawing down the corners of his mouth into a scimitar curve as he stared at them both. ‘What kind of deceit is this that you try to pass yourself off as a servant when you have a child?’

‘No deceit, sir. I am a respectable widow, forced to earn a living for myself and my child as best I can.’

‘No one employs a woman with a child as a servant.’

It was true enough. Live-in domestic staff were supposed to remain single. Housekeepers might be given the courtesy title of ‘Mrs,’ but they were certainly not supposed to have a husband, and most definitely not a child.

‘I was in service before my marriage,’ she answered his charge, speaking the truth once again.

‘So you’re a widow, are you? What happened to your husband?’

‘He died, sir.’

‘Don’t bandy words with me. I don’t have the temperament for such women’s ways. There’s no work here for the likes of you. You might have more luck in one of the bawdy houses of Manchester—or was that how you came by your brat in the first place?’

‘I am a respectably married woman.’ Marianne told him angrily. ‘And this child, my late husband’s child, was born in wedlock.’

‘I’m surprised you haven’t had the gall to farm it out to someone else, or left it outside a chapel door to add to the problems of some already overburdened parish. Without it you might have convinced me to give you some work.’ He was walking towards the door, obviously intending to force her to leave.

It was too late now for her to wish that she had not allowed her pride to overrule her caution.

‘Please…’ She hated having to beg for anything from anyone, but to have to beg from a man like this one was galling indeed. However, she had given her promise. A deathbed promise what was more. ‘Please let me stay—at least for tonight. If nothing else I could clean up this kitchen. Please…’

She hated the way he was looking at her, stripping her of her dignity and her pride, reducing her to nothing other than the miserable creature he perceived her to be.

He gave a mirthless bark of derisory laughter.

‘Clean this place—in one night? Impossible! What is your name?’

‘Marianne—I mean Mrs…Mrs Brown.’

Something too sharp and knowing gleamed in his eyes.

‘You don’t seem too sure of your surname, Mrs Brown. Could it be that you have forgotten it and that it could just as readily be Smith or Jones? Where were you wed?’

‘I was married in Cheshire, in the town of Middlewich, and my name is Brown,’ Marianne told him fiercely.

‘Aye, well, anyone can buy a cheap brass ring and lay claim to a dead husband.’

‘I am married. It is the truth.’

‘You have your marriage lines?’

Marianne could feel her face starting to burn. ‘Not with me…’

He was going to make her leave…

‘If I turn you out, you and the brat will no doubt end up on the parish, and the workhouse governors will have something to say about that. Very well, you may stay the night. But first thing in the morning you are to leave—not just this house, but the town as well. Is that understood?’

He had gone without giving her the opportunity to answer him. Which was just as well, given the circumstances that had brought her here.

For tonight at least she and the baby would have the warmth of this kitchen. A kitchen she had promised to clean in return for its shelter, she reminded herself, as she rocked the baby back to sleep and prayed she would be able to find some milk for him somewhere in the chaos.

Her arms ached from carrying both the child and their few possessions, and her ankle was still throbbing. She limped over to an empty chair and placed the silent swaddled bundle down on it. Her heart missed a beat as she studied the small waxen face. She turned towards the fire glowering sullenly in the range. Ash spilled from beneath it, suggesting that it was some time since it had been cleaned out properly, and she would need a good fire burning if she was to heat enough water to get this place properly clean.

Picking up the lantern, she walked slowly round the kitchen. Half a loaf of bread had been left uncovered and drying out on the table, along with some butter, and a jar of jam with the lid left off, causing her mouth to water at the sight of it. But she made herself resist the temptation to fall on it and silence the ache of hunger that tore at her insides. Everywhere she looked she could see filthy crockery, and the floor was sticky with dirt.

A door opened off the kitchen into a large pantry, in which Marianne was relieved to find a large pitcher of milk standing on a marble slab. Before she did anything else she would feed the baby. Another door opened down to the cellars, but Marianne decided not to bother exploring them. A good housekeeper would keep a domain like this well stocked and spotlessly clean, and it would be run meticulously in an ordered routine, to provide for the comfort of its master and mistress and their family. If the kitchen was anything to judge from, this house did not provide comfort for anyone.

In the back scullery Marianne found a sink piled high with dirty pots. The pain in her ankle had turned into a dull ache, so she found a small pan, unused and clean enough to need only rinsing under a tap before she put some milk in it to heat up for the baby. He was so very, very frail. Tears filled her eyes.

Ten minutes later she was seated in the rocking chair she had drawn up to the range, feeding the baby small pieces of bread soaked in the warm milk into which she had melted a teaspoon of honey and beaten a large fresh egg. He was so weak that he didn’t even have the energy to suck on the food, and Marianne’s hand shook as she gently squeezed so that the egg and milk mixture ran into his mouth.

It was over an hour before she was satisfied with the amount of nourishment he had been able to take, and then she removed the swaddling bands to wash him gently in a bowl of warm water in front of the range. After she had dried him, she used a clean cloth she had found to make a fresh clout for him. He was asleep before she had finished, and Marianne put him down in a wicker basket she had found in the larder, which she had lined with soft clothes she had warmed on the range.

Was it her imagination, or was there actually a hint of warm pink colour in his cheeks, as though finally he might begin to thrive?

Marianne turned her attention to the range, ignoring the aching misery of her ankle as she poked and raked at the old ashes until she had got the fire blazing brightly and the discarded ash swept into a bucket ready to be disposed of. An empty hod containing only a couple of pieces of coke told her what the range burned, but whilst in a properly organised household such a hod—and indeed more than one—would have been ready filled with coke, so that the range could be stoked up for the night, in this household no such preparation had been made.

There was no help for it. Marianne recognised that she was going to have to go out into the yard and find the coke store, otherwise the range would go out.

The wind had picked up during the time she had been inside, and it tore at her cloak, whipping it round her as she held a lantern aloft, the better to see where the coke supply might be. To her relief she found it on her third search of the yard. But again, just like the kitchen, the store was neglected, and without a cover to keep the rain from the coke. The handle of the shovel she had to use to fill the hob was gritty, but she set her jaw and ignored the discomfort.