Attempting to catch a butterfly, Permelia dashed around bushes, wielding a net in a haphazard manner.

*Doesn't she know how cruel that is?' Genevieve muttered crossly. *She'll break its wings.'

*I dare say it hasn't occurred to her, or if it has she doesn't care. Tell me, there's something worrying you isn't there?'

*Whilst I was working at the mill I yearned to come home to Little Lubbock. Now I am here I find I cannot forget how intolerable life is for the poor. What is more, I do not want to forget. I feel driven to do something to help them. Added to that, I feel such a blunderer. Each day I wake with the good intention of not saying the wrong thing to the Wexcombes. I always tell myself to act in a way which will not offend them. It never works.'

*It is me who should apologise. This situation is entirely of my own making. I should never have invited them here. But why should you have to put away who you truly are? Be yourself.' He laughed fondly. *You must find your own way to happiness, my darling sister. I put nothing in your way.'

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX.

A DREARY AFTERNOON.

*Rain, rain, rain, that's all we've had for days, almost non-stop.' Genevieve gazed at a maple tree. Though a thrush flew to its branches, the closed drawing room windows muffled its song.

*Reuben Shaw won't be happy,' Gabriel said. *When I met him in Litcombe last week he told me he'd bought a narrowboat and set up business for the carriage of goods. The towpath will be a morass of sticky clay, difficult for his horse to traverse.'

Clutching her embroidery, Hortence flounced in. She glanced disdainfully at Martha, who sat knitting gloves for Sam. *Entertaining the servants again, are we?'

Genevieve opened her mouth to answer back. Martha raised a finger to her lips, indicating that she should ignore Hortence's bitter words.

Despite the rain it felt humid. Flies buzzed and bumped under the ceiling.

*I'm sick of spending long hours in this room,' Genevieve said, gazing at the sickly lime-green paper adorned with idealistic pastoral scenes. *There's no air in here.'

*Air?' Lady Wexcombe said. *What a frightful idea! Who needs air? Whenever I step out of doors the only air I smell arises from farmyard unmentionables.' She turned to Gabriel, who was reading a newspaper. *My daughters and I are most grateful for your hospitality, sir, though I fear we must not trespass on your kindness any longer.'

*I am delighted for you to stay as long as you desire.' Almost as though he sensed Genevieve's eyes fixed on him, he glanced at her, grimacing slightly from the untruth.

*Besides, we must stay for the ball,' Hortence reminded her mother. She poked a finger through the birdcage, trying to prod the forlorn linnet. *This pathetic bag of feathers still refuses to sing.'

*He needs to be set free,' Genevieve implored.

*Such an idiotic notion,' Hortence said. *Why would she choose to fly in this rain?'

Despairing at being unable to reason with Hortence, Genevieve took up her silks. It was tedious embroidering the fine shawl, but there wasn't much else to do to pass the time.

*What ugly hands you have,' Permelia said. She added a touch more grey to her watercolour of storm clouds. *Many a beau has worshiped my slender hands.'

Genevieve had thought herself elegant in her grass-green frock embellished with red flowers. Now she felt sullied by Permelia's throwaway comment.

Rain battered the windows.

*How I yearn for a sunny morning, then I could ride out,' Permelia said.

*When the sun deems to show its face, why do you not accompany Permelia riding, sir?' Lady Wexcombe asked. *I am sure my daughter would value your company.'

Hesitantly, Gabriel responded, *It would be an honour, my lady.'

Hortence turned to Genevieve. *I forgot to mention, this morning, whilst the girl was dressing my hair before the glass ... '

*Folk shun't spend too much time before a looking-glass,' Betsy said, *lest they spy the devil *issen.'

Hortence frowned at this interruption. *... a mouse ran across my feet. In my consternation I dropped your mother's silver hand-glass. It smashed on the floor.'

*Thar portends the loss of a loved one in the house.' Betsy rubbed a black snail over the wart on her nose. To complete the charm she impaled the snail on the point of a blackthorn twig.

*I do believe, Mrs Psalter, that you are trying your utmost to enrage my daughters and I with your native paganism, your tedious omens,' Lady Wexcombe said.

*I am of faerie descent, so I knows a thing or three. I gave the same warning to Gillow when I got them corns on me feet, an' I was proved right.'

*And who might this Gillow be?' Lady Wexcombe asked.

*He was my ...,' Genevieve faltered, *someone close to me.'

*He was my husband,' Martha said. *He was shot by Eppie's father.'

*Shot? How so?'

*There was an incident. My son and his lordship argued. Gillow was caught in the middle.'

*Your husband was a fool to intervene.'

*If he had not, my son would have died.'

*By whom you mean that scoundrel who stole Lady Genevieve from her cradle? More is the pity that his lordship did not kill both of them with one bullet.'

A few days later the weather improved sufficiently for Gabriel and Permelia to ride out.

Genevieve had overheard Lady Wexcombe telling Permelia that, as she was such an attractive and amiable young woman, it would not be long before Gabriel took her for his wife. Though she knew Gabriel ventured out unwillingly, Genevieve feared that he might succumb to Permelia's ardent advances.

To take her mind off her melancholic thoughts, she passed through the garden gate and headed into the woods. Birds hopped and played, a chorus of a hundred blended notes arising from every tree, shrub and briar thicket.

Settling beside Shivering Falls, she watched the waterfall and listened to it roaring over mossy stones, pounding rhythmically into the plunge pool.

Like a hidden hand, the beauty of nature caressed and eased her mind, drawing her back to her childhood memories. Never was she truly alone; always Talia was her companion, her ghostly form mingling with the stars of sunlight glittering on the cascade.

Content in her isolation beneath the shade of an alder tree, Genevieve took up her book, The Romance of the Forest.

Genevieve, Permelia and Lady Wexcombe sat around a green baize table in the salon, playing cards. Genevieve always kept a book open on her lap for the tiresome interludes.

*Genevieve reads incessantly, firm in the belief that improvement to her mind will be accomplished by extensive reading,' Permelia said patronisingly.

Seated before the pianoforte, Hortence restlessly flicked through sheet music. *I believe her mind to be in vast need of improvement.'

*That was a bad move,' Permelia told Genevieve.

*I haven't the heart to play no more.' Genevieve was tired of the sisters speaking about her as though she were not in the room. Seeing Betsy draw her woollen shawl around her shoulders, she added a log to the fire to keep the chill from her old friend's bones.

*Surely the servants are capable of such mediocre tasks?' Hortence chided.

*Dawkin once told me about when he first went to work as a climbing-boy for Mr Crowe. He breathed in so much soot that it killed the worms in his stomach. After he retched them up he found one longer than the soot cellar.'

Spread upon the hearth was a dusting of soot. With her fingertip, she formed the letters DS. *I wonder where he is. What happened to him?'

*I'll do a spot of fire divination for you, if you like?' Betsy offered.

*You can foretell the future by seeing pictures in the fire?' Genevieve asked, surprised.

*Would anyone care for another game?' Lady Wexcombe asked. *Gabriel, I am sure that you can drag yourself away from your chronicle, just this once.'

*Tea and cakes?' Genevieve asked Betsy.

*Lovely, m'dear, t'ud slide down a treat.'

Genevieve tugged the ribbon beside the fire, and went to sit beside Martha on the settee. Soon, Duncan arrived carrying a tray laden with refreshments.

*It's heavenly to sup a decent cup of tea,' Martha said. *Mr Loomp's tea leaves had no flavour. I always suspected they'd been used before.'

Genevieve cast her mind back to the wreckers at the mill and thought of the truck store manager languishing in jail. *The only way that we could make our drinks look the colour of tea was by pouring hot water over the leaves and adding charcoal from burnt bread crusts.'

*I never liked Mr Loomp's bread,' Martha reflected. *It always tasted gritty, as though it had sand in it.'

*It probably did. It was awful when Fur fished out a dead newt from that pennyworth of Loomp's mixed pickles.'

Martha shuddered at the thought. *I'm glad those days are behind us.'

To drown out Genevieve and Martha's chatter, Hortence sang in a high-pitched voice, squawking like a crested cockatoo, rarely hitting the right notes.

*It is your turn, I believe, Mrs Psalter,' Lady Wexcombe prompted. *You are red.' In between turn-taking she spoke to Betsy upon her pet topic, her wish for her daughter's future happiness. *Permelia has many admirers. If the right gentleman came along I am sure that he would sweep her off her feet. Hortence, darling, your singing enthrals me immeasurably, but do stop. I have such a headache tonight.'

*You're not the only one,' Martha murmured.

Genevieve was tired of these nights of refined entertainments. Of Lady Wexcombe's conniving to marry Permelia off to Gabriel, and Hortence's vindictive words about Martha and Betsy. So she tried harder to agitate the Wexcombes, though, somehow, the fun had gone out of it. *Do you recall that terrible winter, when poor Mrs O'Ruarc died? The ground was so hard that it was impossible to dig fresh graves. Wakelin hung her body in a sack from the rafters to ward off the rats.'

*Oh my!' Lady Wexcombe fanned herself rapidly.

*How dare you aggravate my mother with your coarse words?' Hortence cried. *In the asylums they chain the mentally insane to the walls. It is so enthralling. We really must pay another visit.'

*Are you implying that Eppie is mad?' Martha cried. *For if you are, I warn you ... '

*It is of no consequence, Mam.'

Gabriel was taking the banter lightly. He prodded an interesting article in his newspaper. *It says here that, until home-grown grain reaches a minimum price of eighty shillings a quarter, the import of foreign grain is virtually banned from Britain.'

*Not blue! Red! Red!' Lady Wexcombe cried, frustrated by Betsy's forgetfulness. *It is useless to continue.'

*When I lived at Pear Tree Cottage I had a nice set of bone dominoes,' Betsy said.

*There's a fine set in the breakfront,' Gabriel said, indicating to a mahogany sideboard with brass swan-drop handles. Finishing off a roast chicken leg, he left the bones on a side table, whereupon Sovereign clawed eagerly across the floral rug and lost no time in alighting on them.

Beside a clutter of silver fox-head stirrup cups in a drawer, Genevieve found a carved ivory barrel. The engraving on the front showed two people sitting on a bench, playing dominoes. In the background was a tree. It reminded her of the jolly games that she and Betsy had had whilst seated beneath the mulberry tree.

Happy at last to play a game that she enjoyed, she flipped open the top of the barrel and tipped the ebony and bone tiles onto the table.

As the play went round the table, Betsy became irritated with Lady Wexcombe's persistent slowness. *Hurry up, hurry up!'

Befuddled by Betsy's insistence, Lady Wexcombe misplaced a domino.

Betsy pressed her face close to Lady Wexcombe's, her nose and chin jutting c-shaped like the open beak of a sparrow. *If you can't play you've got to draw a tile from the boneyard, you stupid haycum.'

Hortence sprang to her feet. *You wicked hag!'

*Don't you dare call Betsy names!' Martha cried.

*I'll call her whatever I deem fit,' Hortence retorted, *like I would call you a trollop, for throwing yourself at the first farmer that called on his lordship.'

Martha gaped in disbelief at what she was hearing.

Genevieve was quick to come to her defence. *You don't know o't about my mam, or the life we led before.'

*I know that your mam, as you persistently call her, is the mother of a thief. Living here she is nothing short of a beggar, and this withered crone in tow with her.'

Martha could take no more.

Rushing to her bedchamber she threw together her few belongings and thrust them into a stuff sack.

*What are you doing?' Genevieve cried, trailing her back and forth from the clothespress to the bed.

*I shall take Betsy with me; she can't look after herself. Lottie has made friends with the servants and is content working here.'

She hung onto Martha's arm. *You can't leave!'

Hortence hovered in the doorway, revelling in Martha and Genevieve's shared distress.

*Wait! I'll pack my bag.'

Unsettled by Hortence's presence Martha had no time to reflect upon her choice of words. *Don't be silly, Eppie. You are where you belong, with your sort of people.'

Genevieve was hurt almost beyond endurance. *With my sort of people? How can you say that? You're my mam, not in blood, but you are my mam nonetheless. You can't simply throw me off.'

Martha hurriedly tied the bag.