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

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СКАЧАТЬ No need for those now, Jenks,’ he announced to his servant, who had come into the room panting from carrying the heavily soiled and bloodstained coils of rope he held in his arms.

      ‘Best thing you can do is bandage him up and let nature take its course. Like as not he’ll take a fever, so I’ll send a nurse up to sit with him. She’ll bring a draught with her that will keep him quiet until the fever runs its course.’

      ‘Bandage him up? But surely, Doctor—’ Marianne began to protest, thinking that she must have misheard him. Surely the doctor couldn’t mean that she was to bandage the Master of Bellfield’s leg?

      ‘Those are my instructions. And make sure that you pull the bandage tightly enough to stem the bleeding, but not too tightly. I’ll bid you good day now. My bill will be five guineas. You can tell your master when he returns to himself. You may feed him on a little weak tea—but nothing more, mind, in case it gives rise to a fever.’

      Five guineas! That was a fortune for someone like her. But it was the information the doctor had given her about the Master of Bellfield’s astonishing treatment of his workers that occupied Marianne’s thoughts as she escorted the doctor back down the stairs, and not the extortionate cost of his visit. Her heart started to beat faster. Did this news mean that the task she had set herself before she arrived at Bellfield could be nearer to completion? If only that might be so. Sometimes the weight of the responsibility she had been given felt so very heavy, and she longed to have another to share it with. But for now she must keep her own counsel, and with it her secret.

      As soon as she had closed the heavy front door behind the doctor she headed for the kitchen, where to her relief the cat was curled up in front of the fire whilst the baby was lying gurgling happily in his basket.

      He really was the sweetest-looking baby, Marianne acknowledged, smiling tenderly at him. He was going to have his father’s cowlick of hair, even though as yet that cowlick was just a small curl. His colour was definitely much better, and he was actually watching her with interest instead of lying in that apathetic stillness that had so worried her. She was tempted to lift him out of the basket and cuddle him, but her first duty had to be to the man lying upstairs, she reminded herself sternly. After all, without him there would be no warm kitchen to shelter them, and no good rich milk to fill the baby’s empty stomach.

      Bandage him up, the doctor had said. He hadn’t even offered to leave her any bandaging either, Marianne reflected, her sense of what was ethically right in a doctor outraged by his lack of proper care for his patient.

      She would just have to do the best she could. And she would do her best—just as her aunt would have expected her to do. Now, what was it that boy on the bicycle had said his name was? Postlethwaite—that was it.

      Marianne had seen the telephone in the hallway, and now she went to it and picked up the receiver, unable to stop herself from looking over her shoulder up the stairs. Not that it was likely that the Master of Bellfield was likely to come down to chastise her for the liberty she was taking.

      A brisk female voice on the other end of the line was asking her what number she required.

      ‘I should like to be put through to Postlethwaite’s Provisions,’ she answered, her stomach cramping with a mixture of guilt and anxiety as she waited for the exchange operator to do as she had requested. She had no real right to be doing this, and certainly no real authority. She wasn’t really the housekeeper of Bellfield House after all.

      ‘How do, lass, how’s t’master going on?’

      ‘Mr Postlethwaite?’ Marianne asked uncertainly.

      ‘Aye, that’s me. My lad said as how he’d heard about t’master’s accident. You’ll be wanting me to send up some provisions for him, I reckon. I’ve got a nice tin of turtle soup here that he might fancy, or how about…?’

      Tinned turtle soup? For a sick man? Marianne rather fancied that some good, nurturing homemade chicken soup would suit him far better, but of course she didn’t want to offend the shopkeeper.

      ‘Yes, thank you, Mr. Postlethwaite,’ she answered him politely. ‘I shall be needing some provisions, but first and most important I wondered if you could give me the direction of a reliable chemist. One who can supply me with bandages and ointments, and quickly. The doctor is to send up a nurse, but in the meantime I am to bandage the wound.’

      ‘Aye, you’ll be wanting Harper’s. If you want to tell me what you’re wanting, I’ll send young Charlie round there now and he can bring it up.’

      His kindness brought a lump to Marianne’s throat and filled her with relief. Quickly she told him what she thought she would need, before adding, ‘Oh, and I was wondering—would you know of anyone local who might have bee hives, Mr Postlethwaite. Only I could do with some honey.’

      ‘Well, I dunno about that,’ he answered doubtfully, ‘it not being the season to take the combs out of the hives. But I’ll ask around for you.’

      ‘It must be pure honey, Mr Postlethwaite, and not any other kind.’ Marianne stressed.

      Her aunt had sworn by the old-fashioned remedy of applying fresh honey to open wounds in order to heal and cleanse them.

      ‘A word to the wise, if you don’t mind me offering it, Mrs Brown,’ Mr Postlethwaite was saying, his voice dropping to a confidential whisper. ‘If the doctor sends up Betty Chadwick to do the nursing you’d best make sure that she isn’t on the drink.’

      ‘Oh, yes…thank you.’

      At least now she would have the wherewithal to follow the doctor’s instructions, and the larder would have some food in it, Marianne acknowledged as she carefully replaced the telephone receiver, even if the shopkeeper’s warning about the nurse had been worrying.

      Mentally she started to list everything she would need to do. As soon as she had bandaged the master’s wound she would have to fill the copper and boil-wash a good supply of clothes with which to cleanse his wound when it needed redressing. She would also have to try to find some decent clean sheets, and get them aired—although she wouldn’t be able to change his bed until the nurse arrived to lift him.

      Armed with a fresh supply of hot water, and a piece of clean wet sheeting she had washed in boiling water and carbolic soap, Marianne made her way back upstairs to the master bedroom.

      Her patient was lying motionless, with his face turned towards the window and his eyes closed, and for a second Marianne thought that he might actually have died he was so still. Her heart in her mouth, she stared at his chest, willing it to rise and fall, and realised when it did that she was shaking with relief. Relief? For this man? A man who…But, no, she must not think of that now.

      Quietly and carefully Marianne made her way to the side of the bed opposite the window, closest to his injured leg.

      Congealed blood lay thickly on top of the wound, which would have to be cleaned before she could bandage it. Marianne raised her hand to place it against the exposed flesh, to test it for heat that would indicate whether the wound was already turning putrid, and then hesitated with her hand hovering above the master’s naked thigh. Eventually she let her hand rest over the flesh of the wound. A foolish woman, very foolish indeed, might almost be tempted to explore that maleness, so very different in construction and intent from her own slender and delicate limbs.

      Marianne stiffened as though stung. There was no reason for the way she was feeling at the moment, with her СКАЧАТЬ