Page 6 of By the Sword
Ann had caught sight of her cousin in the company of his newfound friend, young Peter Knowles, son of the tenant of Home Farm. They were coming from the direction of the stables behind the house. The two women watched as Nan hurtled across the garden towards the boys.
‘Tom is very patient with her.’ Nell sighed as Tom stooped to pick up the flowery crown that had toppled from her head.
‘He’s used to small cousins. My sister has six children and, no doubt, more to come.’ Kate laughed.
‘You’re so fortunate to be part of a large family,’ Nell remarked wistfully. ‘Ann and I will miss you sorely. Must you go quite so soon?’
A strange, unfamiliar feeling gripped Kate. In the month she had spent at Seven Ways she had grown to like Nell and to value their burgeoning friendship. They were two women from different backgrounds but the war had torn their families apart and left them alone and lonely. They found solace in each other’s company.
‘We must. I’m sorry. But perhaps you may come and visit me?’
‘Perhaps,’ Nell said without conviction, picking up her frame again.
Kate peered enviously at the fantastic beast conjured up beneath Nell’s needle. She would describe herself as a competent, but unimaginative, needlewoman. Nothing she produced could match Nell’s skill.
‘Why do you stitch with wool and not silks?’ she asked.
Nell did not look up. ‘I can’t afford silks, Kate.’
Kate cursed her insensitivity. With a husband in exile, her home sequestered, reliant on her grandfather’s charity, there would be little money for fripperies such as embroidery silk.
‘Where is Longley Abbey, Nell?’ Kate asked.
Nell looked up and waved a slender hand in a northerly direction. ‘Two miles beyond the woods. It is firmly in the possession of a poxy Roundhead Colonel by the name of Price.’ She flushed and bit her lip. ‘I do beg your pardon, Kate, I keep forgetting…’
‘That I am a poxy Roundhead too?’ Kate laughed. ‘Nell, I hold no candle for either side but how can you endure it?’
Nell looked in the general direction of her home and shrugged. ‘I don’t allow myself to think of it,’ she said. ‘I live in the hope that Giles may make his peace with Parliament and come home but as we are…’ She stopped and bent her head to her work again. ‘He has his reasons not to,’ she mumbled.
‘I thought it was hard for us in the north in the early years,’ Kate said, ‘but I had no idea how much harder it must have been for families such as yours.’
Nell’s lips tightened. ‘No, I don’t suppose you would.’ She looked up again and smiled. ‘Enough of such dismal talk. There is something I have been meaning to say to you all day. You should take better care of your skin. You are going quite brown and freckly. I have some excellent cream you may care to try. I make it myself.’
Kate laughed. ‘Nell, I gave up on myself long ago. I just have to look at the sun and I go nut brown, and as for my hair…it simply won’t do what it’s told. My sister has tried but I’m afraid I’m a disaster.’
‘Well, you will never catch another man unless you take better care of yourself,’ Nell remarked. ‘You’re still young and you shouldn’t stay a widow forever.’
‘I’ve no wish to catch another man.’ Kate declared.
‘Why ever not? Has no other man shown an interest in you?’
An unfamiliar heat rose to Kate’s face. ‘I’ve had suitors,’ she said.
Nell raised a teasing eyebrow. ‘And what became of them?’
Kate smiled. ‘If you had seen them, Nell, you would know what my answer was. No, I have loved only one man and I have no intention of supplanting his memory.’
‘Were I ever to lose Giles,’ Nell said, ‘which God, in his mercy, will never let happen, I don’t think I would stay a widow for long.’ She sighed, ‘Although with Giles so long gone, I sometimes wonder if being a widow wouldn’t be preferable. At least I would have a chance to improve my lot.’
Kate stared at her. Nell lived in a nether world, neither wife nor widow. A woman in her position, alone, penniless and homeless, needed the protection of a man. Kate, on the other hand, had been left amply provided for and was beholden to no man. The difference was that her family had chosen the cause of the victors.
Nell smiled. ‘Don’t look so shocked, Kate. I adore my husband, but I cannot deny that Ann and I find ourselves in a parlous situation. When Sir Francis dies, who is to say what will happen to us?’
What indeed, Kate thought.
She looked up at the house, the red bricks glowing warmly in the afternoon sun, the sunlight catching on the diamond panes of the windows, and realised that the house, like its occupants, now occupied a place in her heart. The injustice and uncertainty of Nell’s life mattered to her.
‘What will happen to Seven Ways when Sir Francis dies?’ she asked.
