The Weaver's Dream

Book 2: The Weavers Trilogy

by Lilian Harry

Genres: Sagas; Romance

Synopsis

The Weaver's Dream was first published in paperback under the name Donna Baker. London, 1824. Life has taken Rebecca far from her humble start in a weaver's cottage in Kidderminster. But although she has found love and comfort with her husband, Francis, it has meant they are both banished from the town that raised them. Instead they must raise their family - and a new business in the bustle of the capital. But when a death finally draws them home to Worcestershire, they find the landscape unchanged, but the poverty increased. Amid the smoke of the factories and the clatter of machinery there is also the growing murmur of unrest as the workers search for a way to express their discontent. For Rebecca, Francis and their young family it means being torn between family duty and sympathy for the weavers' plight. And while they have a dream for the future, will it be strong enough to survive the turmoil ahead?

Release date: April 14, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 400

Sample

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fog padded through the streets of London like a slow, predatory animal, claws sheathed for silence. It wrapped sinuous limbs around the shivering bodies of the people, hurrying
to get home and shut it out; though many of them, having closed their broken doors, would find it slinking after them through cracks and crannies, slithering around the mould-dampened walls to wait
in beds of sack and straw and chill their bones when they finally lay down to rest.

Rebecca Pagnel thought of such people as she drew her two-year-old son into the small house she and Francis lived in near the carpet warehouse. She had had her time of living in poverty, her
childhood of near starvation as she stood hour upon hour by her father’s loom, drawing for him as he wove the carpet that was their life. She never ceased to give thanks that her life now was
easy and comfortable, never forgot her sorrow for those who were still condemned to the conditions she had known – and worse, for here in the London of 1824 she had seen poverty such as even
the most abject weaver in Kidderminster had never known.

Here, in the mean streets around Covent Garden, Rebecca had seen little children forced to beg for food that a dog would sniff and pass by. She had seen girls who had barely reached the age of
childbearing, their bodies already swollen as they offered themselves to men for a few pence at a time. She had seen old men and women, too frail to drag their twisted bodies further than the
doorsteps of the cellars and hovels where they dwelt, reaching out quaking, bony fingers for the bounty only a few would, or could, give.

It was on scenes like this that she closed her door on this murky November afternoon and felt the warmth of the small house enfold her as if it were a cloak of fur. There was a lamp already lit
on the little table where she laid her gloves and bonnet, its yellow light driving back the shadows, and as she bent to take off Daniel’s coat and hat, the kitchen door opened and Tilly, the
little maid of all work, appeared.

‘Oh, ma’am, you’re back.’ She scurried forward, taking the clothes and smoothing Daniel’s hair. ‘Ain’t it ’orrid out there? I said to Sal, the
mistress will get lost in this, easy as ninepence, if she don’t take care. I’m that glad to see you safe, I am really. And there’s a gentleman to see you, ma’am, sitting in
the parlour this past hour he’s been, and wouldn’t take no more’n a dish of tea, no matter what. Sal’s all of a dither, wants to know if he’s to stay for supper, but I
dussn’t ask him, he looks at me so . . .’

The voice rattled on, but Rebecca heard no more. A gentleman, in the parlour? To see her?

‘Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake, Tilly?’ she asked. ‘Surely it’s the master he’s come to see.’

The small, neat head that had been alive with lice when Rebecca had taken the child in, shook vigorously. ‘No, ma’am, it’s you he asked for. Shall I take Daniel to the kitchen
for his tea, ma’am, while you goes in there? I been in twice to attend to the fire, ma’am.’

Rebecca looked at her and smiled. Tilly, voluble and even saucy when at home with the family she had come to know, was still unaccountably timid with strangers, particularly men. Rebecca had
often wondered what had happened to her before she had come to the Pagnels as maid, but she only shook her head when questioned, and her eyes looked so much like those of a terrified wild animal
that no one had the heart to persist. But someone, at some time, had done her harm, it was clear, and Rebecca felt a knot of burning anger in her breast when she thought of what it might have
been.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and see who the gentleman is and what he wants. You’ll come if I ring, won’t you? Though I don’t suppose
he’ll stay long, and I’ll have to feed the baby soon anyway. Has he behaved himself while we’ve been out?’

‘Oh yes, ma’am. Slept all the while.’ Tilly ducked her head and took Daniel by the hand. ‘Come along o’ me, Daniel, an’ see what Sal’s bin making for
your tea. Shall I bring you a dish of tea, ma’am? You must be shrammed, being out there in that awful fog.’

‘Yes, I would like some, but I’ll see who the gentleman is first.’ Rebecca smoothed her hair and laid her hand on the doorknob. She had an odd sensation, as if time had slipped
back. As if she were once again the maid, bobbing to her mistress, answering the door, scurrying to obey orders. Of course, her situation had been very different from Tilly’s – taken
from a weaver’s hovel to work in the big house of the man whose carpets she had seen on the loom, kept for her first two or three years more or less chained to a big earthenware sink in the
dark, cramped scullery that seemed to be permanently piled high with dirty dishes; the lowest scrap of life in a hierarchy of servants, working from before dawn until well after dark, allowed out
only to take scraps to the rubbish heap or to go to church on Sunday afternoons.

Memories of those days had taught her to treat her own maid as a human being, with feelings and needs of her own, and Tilly had responded by investing her with a devotion that seemed at times to
be almost too much for the skinny frame that no amount of feeding had yet fattened. But she had still not grown in confidence; it seemed that trusting Rebecca, old Sal in the kitchen, and Francis
himself had absorbed all her energy, and she shrank from venturing out of doors.

Rebecca turned the doorknob and went into the parlour. It was her pride and joy, this room with its heavy furniture and the polished table at which no meals were ever eaten. She cared for it
herself, trusting neither Sal nor Tilly to polish the shining wood or dust the ornaments that decorated the mantelpiece.

The lamp had been lit in here too, and cast a mellow glow which blended with the flickering light of the fire Tilly had lit. An armchair had been drawn up before the fire, its back turned
towards the door, and although Rebecca could see a pair of legs stretched out towards the flames she could not see who the ‘gentleman’ was. She stepped forwards, feeling suddenly
nervous, and at the sound of her footstep the man in the chair moved suddenly and rose to his feet, looking gigantic in the shadowed room.

Rebecca stepped back, startled, then took a breath and laughed.

‘Mr Pagnell! Why didn’t Tilly say – but of course, she’s never met you before. Why didn’t you let us know you were coming? Does Francis know you’re
here?’

Jeremiah Pagnel looked down at her gravely. Rebecca had been a maid in his house, first standing in his scullery, then scrubbing floors and peeling vegetables in his kitchen, and finally
cleaning fireplaces, dusting, polishing and sweeping in the rooms he sat and ate and worked in; yet he had never noticed her, had barely seen her, until after she had been driven away to London,
pregnant with his grandchild.

Since then, he had gradually got to know her, the girl that his son loved and had pursued to London to find and marry. It had not been easy – with the truth of Francis’s birth
revealed, Jeremiah’s wife Isabella had forbidden him ever to enter her house again. And although Jeremiah’s brother Geoffrey and Geoffrey’s wife Enid, who had raised Francis as
their own, had been happy to receive Rebecca as a daughter, she knew there would never be a real welcome for her in Kidderminster while Isabella lived.

Their visits had therefore been few. And indeed, there had been little time for visiting. Jeremiah had made Francis manager of his carpet warehouse here in London, while at the same time Francis
was struggling to establish his own small carpet business with Rebecca’s brother Tom. And Rebecca had been fully occupied with Daniel, born during that first hard winter together, and now the
three-month-old baby, Geoffrey.

Jeremiah had come to London whenever possible and called at the house near Covent Garden, but his visits had been hurried and secret. Even his adopted son, Vivian, who often accompanied him to
London, had not known of them. Vivian was closer to his mother than his stepfather and would not have hesitated to make trouble between them had it suited him to do so.

‘Does Francis know you’re here?’ Rebecca repeated. ‘Have you been to the warehouse?’

‘No, I came straight here,’ Jeremiah took her hands in his. ‘Rebecca, I have news for you both.’

Rebecca stared at him, feeling suddenly afraid. What news could have brought him here like this, and looking so solemn?

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked. ‘The factory . . . nothing’s happened there, has it?’ Her imagination showed her the factory in flames, the carpets burned and
scorched beyond repair, men and women killed, children dying. But it need not be so dramatic. Everyone knew that times were bad, that trade had slumped, never really recovered since the end of the
Napoleonic Wars. Perhaps Pagnel’s had gone bankrupt like so many of their competitors; perhaps Jeremiah faced ruin and had come to tell them so.

She saw the warehouse closed and empty; herself, Francis, and Tom dependent on the small two-loom business that had scarcely begun to pay its way. And it wasn’t just the three of them;
there were the children too, there were Tilly and Sal. And the old weaver, Samuel, who worked with Tom, and his daughter Nancy who helped her sister Bessie in the millinery business she had started
. . . None of them yet fully self-supporting, all looking to Francis – and, past Francis, to Jeremiah – for their livelihood.

Rebecca stared up at the big man, feeling the sick fear that her mother must have felt when her husband, Will Himley, came home without a ‘piece’ to weave for the coming week. Seven
days of sardonically named ‘play’ while their meagre stock of food ran down to nothing and the faces of the children grew more pinched, while they scraped by on her pay from the winding
room, the rent unpaid and the fire unlit. There had been no guarantee, in the hardest times, of a ‘piece’ the next week, or the next, or the next after that.

Were they to be reduced to this again? Was she to join those poor, ravaged women in the street with their shaking hands held out for food or money?

‘Please,’ she said, ‘tell me what’s happened.’ And she looked up at him with eyes large and dark in a suddenly ashen face.

Jeremiah let go of her trembling fingers and laid his hands on her shoulders. He guided her to a chair, his face concerned, and pressed her gently into it. Then he sat down close to her and took
her hands once more in his.

‘Rebecca, my dear . . . don’t look so frightened. There’s nothing to worry about. I’m a fool, I should have spoken differently, I never thought . . . No, there’s
nothing wrong at the factory, nothing at all. The bad times have hit us all, but Pagnel’s will weather it – indeed, our fortunes are already improving and I want to discuss with Francis
the possibility of some new designs. But that isn’t what brought me here today. And I thought to save my news until Francis could be present to hear it with you, but now—’

He broke off as they heard the slam of the street door and the patter of Tilly’s footsteps. Her voice sounded high and cheerful as she chattered about fog and coats and visitors; then they
heard the deeper tones of a man’s voice, calm and soothing as he sent her back to the kitchen. A moment later the parlour door opened, and Francis came in.

‘Father!’ For many years, he had been accustomed to call Jeremiah ‘Uncle’ but that time was past and the true relationship acknowledged. He stepped forward with the
eagerness that had never left him, save for those weeks when he had thought Rebecca lost to him, and held out his hands, his blue eyes glowing. ‘This is a surprise. How are you? And my aunt,
she’s well, I hope?’ The query was delicately put, for Isabella would never have inquired after Francis; if she had been able to bring herself to speak his name at all, her voice would
have been hard, the tone bitter. She had never liked him, even while she had believed him to be of no kin. Since discovering the truth, she had hated the very thought of his existence.

‘Have you had tea?’ Francis went on, hardly expecting an answer to his question. ‘Tilly must bring some – Rebecca, my love—’

‘I’ve ordered it already, it must be almost made by now.’ They all turned as the door opened again and Tilly staggered in bearing a tray heavy with crockery and a steaming pot.
She set it down on the table, gave Jeremiah a terrified glance and bolted from the room. Rebecca busied herself with the cups and saucers, then poured the tea. She passed a cup to Jeremiah, meeting
his eyes as she did so. Please, she begged him silently, tell us what has brought you here today.

Jeremiah’s expression changed a little, still solemn but now with a touch of reassurance in the dark eyes. He accepted his tea with a murmur of thanks, then turned to Francis.

‘It’s good to see you again, my boy. You’re well?’ The formalities had to be observed, but Rebecca felt her impatience growing again. With an effort, she curbed it. He
would tell them, after all. He had not come all this way merely to tease. She had only to wait.

And she had not, after all, too long to wait. Jeremiah seemed as anxious to tell his news as she was to hear it. And after only a few moments, he broke into Francis’s enthusiastic account
of his latest designs, and said abruptly: ‘Forgive me, my boy, but I have something to tell you. Something—’ he glanced at Rebecca ‘—which will affect you
both.’

There was a moment’s silence. Rebecca felt her heart thump. Keeping her eyes on Jeremiah’s face, she stretched out a hand to Francis, and felt him take it in his.

‘What’s happened?’ Francis asked quietly, and she knew that he had been struck with the same fears that she had known. ‘Father, what’s wrong? Do you need
help?’

Jeremiah’s face relaxed into a smile, but there was still a shadow in his eyes. ‘Help? No, my son, I need no help, though it’s like you to offer it. This is something quite
different from what you both fear. I’ve already told Rebecca, there is no question of trouble at the factory, our carpets are selling as well as anyone’s, our customers know their
quality and are willing to pay for it . . . No, this is a family matter. Francis – I have to tell you that your aunt has died. My wife,’ he added, as if they needed clarification.
‘She died three days ago, of a heart attack the doctor says. The funeral is to take place the day after tomorrow.’

There was a small silence. Rebecca felt Francis’s fingers tighten around hers. She gave him a swift glance and saw his face whiten, his eyes blaze suddenly blue against the pallor. She
felt the quiver of his hand and enclosed it in both hers, waiting for him to speak.

‘My aunt Isabella?’ Francis said at last. ‘Died?’ He paused, as if seeking the right words, then said, ‘I’m sorry. It must have come as a shock to
you.’

‘It came suddenly, it’s true. Nobody had the least idea that her heart was weak.’ Jeremiah too paused. ‘But shock . . . Francis, it would be hypocritical of me to pretend
to much grief. Your aunt and I had enjoyed little friendship, let alone love, for the past many years. Our marriage was never much more than a business arrangement as it was – an empty shell.
Nevertheless . . .’ he hesitated ‘. . . there is always some regret for a life cut off.’

‘Of course there is,’ Rebecca said softly. ‘And the house must seem very empty now. And so big.’

Jeremiah shot her a surprised look. ‘That’s exactly right – it does seem much larger without her. All those rooms – not that we ever used many of them since the children
have all been gone—’ He broke off and Rebecca knew that he was thinking, not only of Francis and Vivian and his living daughters, but also of Isabel, his youngest child, who had died of
a decline. ‘I never went into some of those rooms,’ he said as if speaking to himself, ‘nor even thought of them. Yet without Isabella in the house, I seem to feel them pressing
at my back, demanding my attention. It’s as if she haunted me still.’

‘Father, she’s been gone only three days,’ Francis said gently. ‘You must give yourself time. It’s a great loss. You’d been together for many
years.’

‘Twenty-eight,’ Jeremiah said, as if repeating an oft-learned lesson. ‘Vivian was four years old. A handsome boy – I was pleased enough to name him my heir. Until I had a
son of my own.’ He glanced at Francis. ‘I have much to make amends for,’ he said in a low voice.

‘You have nothing at all, as far as I am concerned,’ Francis retorted. ‘You always did your best for me – you gave me to your own brother to bring up as his own, you took
me into the firm and into your home when I was grown, you came after me to London and gave me help when I wed Rebecca, you’ve looked after us since. Would I have been able to set up my own
business if I’d not also had the managing of your warehouse? Would Rebecca’s sister Bess be a milliner today? Would Tom be able to think of marrying his Nancy, which I believe is in his
mind? Would little Daniel and Geoffrey—’

‘Enough, enough.’ Jeremiah held up his hand. His face was smiling but Rebecca, casting him a glance, saw that his eyes were unusually bright. ‘Yes. I did all that, but it was
the very least . . . I always wanted to do more, but while Isabella still lived—’

‘You could do nothing. I understood that. And I ask no more of you now.’ Francis disengaged his hands from Rebecca’s and laid them on his father’s. ‘Father, this
changes nothing. I don’t expect you to go back on your word to your wife. Vivian must remain your heir. If you’ve come to—’

‘No, I haven’t come for that, much though I would like to. That has to stand. But there are other conditions that no longer apply.’ Jeremiah had been looking down, at the long,
young hands that covered his own. Now he raised his head and looked his son full in the face. ‘There is nothing to stop you coming back to Kidderminster now, Francis. That’s what
I’ve come to ask of you. Come back. Come back and work with me or alone, whichever is your will, but come back to the town where you belong, where I can see you and my grandsons.’ He
turned his head to look at Rebecca. ‘I need you all in Kidderminster,’ he said quietly. ‘And have done so for this long time. Come back to me, now that you can.’

Jeremiah would not stay the night. He had to leave at once, to be back in Kidderminster in time for his wife’s funeral. But before he left, he made them promise to
consider a return to Kidderminster. For there was too much involved, Francis said, to make an immediate answer, and Jeremiah agreed that this was true.

‘I’ve always been afraid that it would be so,’ he said, pulling at the whiskers that grew grey around his mouth. ‘The longer you remained in London, the more difficult it
would be to extricate you. One grows roots, even in a place like this. You’ve made a home here, thanks to Rebecca, you’ve started a business, you have friends. I can see that it
won’t be easy to leave it all behind.’

‘We’ll think about it, all the same,’ Francis promised him, and called Tilly to bring Jeremiah’s hat and coat. ‘We have to talk to Tom and Bessie too. We
can’t make up our minds without consulting them.’

‘Of course not. But perhaps they’ll be glad to come back too. It’s their home as well.’ He looked questioningly at Rebecca. ‘Well, we shall see. They’ve been
in London longer than you two – they may have forgotten the town where they were born. And glad to forget too, who knows?’

‘Indeed they may,’ Francis said soberly when he returned from seeing Jeremiah to the coach. ‘Father seems to have forgotten the reason why Tom and Bessie left Kidderminster in
the first place. And I hadn’t the heart to remind him just now.’

‘Oh, Francis!’ Rebecca stared at him. ‘I’d almost forgotten it myself. But would that old story be remembered now? It’s – how long ago? Ten years. The year
the wars ended.’

‘You think that people will remember Boney’s defeat and forget Jabez Gast’s murder?’ Francis shrugged. ‘Maybe so. But memories are long, Rebecca, and there may be
some who find it convenient to remember what Tom and Bessie Himley did the night they disappeared from Kidderminster.’

‘But they didn’t kill him! It wasn’t murder – Tom’s told us that often enough, and Bessie too. It was an accident – not that he didn’t deserve to die,
after what he did to Bess—’

‘And there’s nobody to tell the magistrate that but Tom and Bessie themselves,’ Francis pointed out. ‘There were never any witnesses. Even Vivian, who helped them to get
away—’

He stopped and they looked at each other.

‘Vivian,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes, there’s another stumbling block. Is Vivian likely to allow them to return to Kidderminster and say nothing? He’s always sworn he
would make them pay for the money he gave them to escape—’

‘Which he could not admit to,’ Rebecca said swiftly, and Francis smiled.

‘No, he couldn’t, could he? But he might find other ways of queering them. Or us.’ He hesitated and looked at her uncertainly. ‘He’s never been entirely my friend,
you know. And since he learned the truth about my parentage—’

‘But your father has said there’s no question of your displacing Vivian as his heir. He made that promise when he married your aunt, and he means to keep it. It was part of their
marriage contract.’

‘All the same, Vivian may not believe that. An unscrupulous man may find it difficult to understand the scruples of an honest one.’

‘And is Vivian so unscrupulous?’

‘He might be,’ Francis said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, he very well might be.’

Rebecca stirred the fire into life and stared into the flames, taken back for a moment to the days when she had stirred the library fire at Pagnel House in Kidderminster. Francis would sit
there, watching her, and both would be thinking of the early mornings, when they met by the same fireplace, Rebecca carrying her housemaid’s box to clean out the cinders and ashes and lay the
new fire, Francis rising before the rest of the family to read quietly – until he had found the shy housemaid more interesting than any book.

Vivian had caught her in the library once, she remembered, and shivered at the memory. Vivian, dark-eyed and flamboyantly handsome, had fancied his chance with any woman and particularly a
housemaid whose position in the house was so fragile, who could be dismissed at a moment’s notice and turned out into the streets for very little reason. Most housemaids would have been
forced by their circumstances to succumb to him. Rebecca, however, had fought him off and although he had not had her dismissed – perhaps because he relished the challenge of a housemaid who
did not succumb – she knew that he had neither forgiven nor forgotten.

Yes, she thought, Vivian was an unscrupulous man. And as he had once held her fate in his hands, so he could now hold that of her brother and sister if they returned to Kidderminster.

‘Tom and Bessie don’t have to go back to Kidderminster just because we do,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t they stay here, if they want to, and carry on the businesses?
Bessie’s just getting on to her feet as a milliner, and it’s what she’s always wanted to do. And Tom and Samuel can go on with the weaving, so long as they have your designs to
work from.’

‘That’s true. But they ought to be given the choice. And for either of them to be afraid ever to go to Kidder . . . it’s a sentence hanging over their heads, Rebecca. And
Vivian must know by now that Tom works with me. He could bring them to justice at any time – he need only deny their story that he helped them to escape.’

Rebecca sighed. How quickly, she thought, problems multiplied. A few hours ago, she had no more to worry about than the fog. Now difficulties seemed to be crowding in on her, and to this one she
could see no solution.

‘What do you feel about going back, Francis?’ she asked. ‘Do you want to – or do you feel we belong in London now?’ She looked around the room where they now sat,
the cheerful, comfortable room behind the parlour. A fire burned brightly in the hearth, a rug of Francis’s design glowed before it and little Daniel played there with a set of wooden bricks.
She and Francis sat on either side of the fireplace in chairs that were old enough to have shaped themselves to the human body, as shoes will shape themselves to feet. In fact, most of the
furniture in this room was old and shabby – what money had been available for show had been spent on the parlour – but Rebecca was fond of everything there, and knew that they were both
far more at ease here than in the formality of their ‘best’ room.

Here, in her own home, she felt safe, almost invulnerable. Would she – could she – feel as secure if they went back to Kidderminster?

Francis too had been staring into the fire. Now he lifted his head and looked across at her.

‘I’ve thought of going back for so long,’ he said slowly, ‘that it’s become a kind of dream, something I longed for but knew was impossible. And now that it
is possible – it’s strange, I ought to be overjoyed, making plans to leave at once. But I’m not. I feel, well, almost as if I’d rather it remained a dream.
I feel almost afraid.’

‘Surely that’s just because it’s come so suddenly. You’ve always seen it as something that couldn’t happen for years. Now it’s upon you and you feel
unprepared.’

Francis nodded. ‘Perhaps. And yet . . . Somehow, Rebecca, I feel that this is an important turning-point for us. If we stay here in London, life will go on much as it has done. We’ll
go on with the plans we’ve already made.’ He looked at her and she saw the familiar glow in his eyes, the glow of a passion that had been growing steadily in him ever since they first
began to work together, here in London. ‘You know what I want most, Rebecca – the dream I have. Setting up our business in a different way, as I’ve already done with Tom and
Samuel, so that none of us is master, none of us is man – we all work together, sharing our skills and our knowledge, sharing the profits that come from them.’ He leaned forward,
telling her again the thoughts that crowded his mind, thoughts he had expressed so often and which were growing, developing constantly. ‘None of us could manage without the others. Without
Tom and Samuel, I’d be no more than Father’s warehouse manager, selling a few designs as well. Without me, Tom and Samuel would be no more than weavers, perhaps with a loom of their
own, but still dependent on the whims of the manufacturer. But together, together we can make our mark. We can weave our own carpets, sell them to our own customers, develop and expand. So
it’s only right that we should each share the profits equally.’

‘And you really believe that will work in a bigger factory, a factory the size of your father’s,’ Rebecca said, nodding. ‘I believe it too, Francis. It’s a dream I
share. But my dream goes even further – to weavers who won’t live in hovels as my family did, who won’t starve if their piece isn’t finished by Fall Day, who won’t
have to scrape for food for their children, scour ditches for water and share firing with their neighbours. All that could happen, Francis, and the masters wouldn’t have to live so very much
poorer.’

‘A lot of people would say it’s a dream of Heaven,’ Francis said soberly. ‘A dream that can never come true. But it can, Rebecca – and we can make it come true.
Whether it’s here or in Kidderminster, it can all come about. So . . . if we stay here, the warehouse will occupy much of my attention, but the business will expand – at least, we hope
it will – and grow into a successful concern, making quality rugs and carpets in small quantities for discriminating buyers. We shall move, after a while, to a better house and bring up our
children the best way we can. It doesn’t sound such a bad life, does it?’

‘It, sounds a very good life,’ Rebecca said with a smile. ‘And if we go back?’

Francis lifted his hands slightly. ‘Who knows? Obviously, Father wants me to go back to work in the family business again – but how will Vivian react to that? He was always a little
jealous and since he’s known the truth – well, I’ve not seen much of him, it’s true, but when we have met he’s been hostile. Aunt Isabella was his mother, after all.
How will he take my return? I’m not sure we could ever work well together.’

‘No. And now that you have two sons, and he still has only daughters . . .’ Rebecca thought with pity of Maria, Vivian’s wife, still endeavouring to give Vivian the son he
craved, growing more and more depressed as each baby proved to be a girl. ‘Five of them now. And poor Maria pregnant again, so your father says.’

‘And if that turns out