Whether Lord Harley might make Emily a suitable bridegroom did not enter Hannah’s head. He was not like the captain, he seemed reasonably kind, he was rich and handsome and a lord. Hannah was very much a woman of her age. Outside the servant class, the only career open to a woman was marriage. As a servant, you were lucky to get a job and asked only that your employer be tolerable. It was the same with marriage. It was just as well, thought Hannah with a little sigh, that everyone knew that life was merely a painful journey to future happiness. But what, nagged a treacherous little voice in her head, if there were no afterlife? What if Heaven had been thought up by the human race because people could not bear the idea that life, which was for most of them wearisome, and which ended in the indignities and pains of old age, was all there was?
She immediately banished the thought, looking nervously around, as if she expected some angel of judgement to fly into the kitchen and take the ungrateful Hannah’s legacy away.
The kitchen door opened and Emily walked in.
‘What got you out of bed so early?’ exclaimed Hannah.
‘I felt I should help,’ replied Emily primly, although the fact was that the lurid story she had been reading had given her nightmares, and when she had awoken in the dark room she had seen monsters lurking in every shadow.
‘I’ve made some tea,’ said Hannah. ‘Have a dish of bohea and then you may begin, although you’re supposed to be let off work for finding that slipper.’
She put a cup of tea down on the kitchen table. Emily sat down and picked it up and looked at Hannah over the rim. ‘Do you really think,’ ventured Emily, ‘that Lord Harley has no interest in me whatsoever?’
‘Not a whit,’ said Hannah cheerfully, kneeling down and stirring up the coals with great vigour.
‘Then what, think you, is he looking for in a bride?’
‘That’s the trouble with men,’ said Hannah. ‘They don’t think. One day, a man decides he wants children and so he enters into the matter like a business deal. That is if he is an aristocrat. He settles on some suitable female and then his lawyers settle the rest.’
‘So love does not exist?’
‘I think it does,’ said Hannah, pulling her nose. ‘But it’s usually a sham and a deceit and it don’t last. Hard on the lower orders because they’ve got to see the husband day in and day out, but for a young lady like yourself, well, the gentlemen spend most of the time in their clubs, or in Parliament or on the hunting field. Being a married woman would give you a lot of freedom. Settle for someone kind and complacent.’
‘How dull,’ said Emily, burying her nose in her cup. ‘So Lord Harley is not likely to fall in love?’
‘He’s probably been in love a score of times already,’ retorted Hannah cynically.
‘So why didn’t he marry one of them?’
‘Probably weren’t marriageable.’
‘Does it not seem odd to you, Miss Pym, that such as I must walk to the altar unsullied, and yet a man like Lord Harley can have scores of affairs without losing one whit of his reputation?’
‘It’s the way the Good Lord has arranged things.’ Hannah banged pots and pans with unnecessary noise because she thought there was a lot of truth in what Emily had said, but felt at the same time that a young lady should not even allow such thoughts to enter her head. Furthermore, she was determined not to encourage Emily to think Lord Harley might become interested her in any way. If Emily thought that, her wounded vanity might be satisfied. If she stayed puzzled and hurt by his apparent indifference to her, then perhaps, thought Hannah, she might make more of an effort to engage his attentions.
There came a stamping and shuffling from the yard and then the outside door, which led through the scullery to the kitchen, opened and three shivering maids came in.
‘Go tell Mrs Silvers some of her staff have returned,’ said Hannah to Emily.
Emily went through to Mrs Silvers’ room. As she opened the door, Mrs Silvers sank lower beneath the bed-clothes and demanded feebly, ‘Yes, what is it?’
‘Some of your maids have managed to return to the inn,’ said Emily.
‘Then I must rise and see to the lazy-bones,’ said Mrs Silvers.
‘Are you sure you are well enough?’ asked Emily maliciously.
‘I be proper poorly, but it be right bad for them girls to see gentlefolk in the kitchen,’ said Mrs Silvers. ‘They’ll be getting ideas above their stations, and that do lead to laziness.’
Emily returned to tell Hannah that Mrs Silvers was getting out of bed. The kitchen now seemed full of inn servants. It looked as if they had all returned.
‘Come along,’ said Hannah to Emily. ‘We can be ladies of leisure again.’
Emily found she was feeling disappointed. She wondered what she would normally have done with the time had the servants been there all along. Well, she would have read books or checked her clothes for holes and darned any stockings that needed darning and perhaps she would have read novels. How tedious it all seemed now.
Breakfast was served in the dining-room. The coachman had been out earlier and said gloomily that there was no hope of them getting on the road that day. The drifts were piled high and frozen hard.
After breakfast, Hannah suggested it would do them all good to walk for a little into the town. The servants had managed to walk to the inn, so there must be paths through the snow.
Only Mrs Bradley said she would stay by the fire and keep warm.
Emily was tired of her wool gown but did not want to venture out in muslin, even with a fur-lined cloak. She spent longer than usual brushing her hair and buffing her nails and putting on perfume, so that when she went downstairs again, the rest were already impatiently awaiting her at the inn door.
Lord Harley offered her his arm and she took it, glancing up at him in surprise.
‘Well, Mrs Bisley,’ came Captain Seaton’s heavy voice from behind them. ‘Are we set?’
He held out his arm. Lizzie shrank back a little. Mr Fletcher firmly drew the widow’s arm through his own.
‘Why, you …’ began the captain. Lord Harley swung around and the captain muttered something and fell back.
The sun was shining and snow glittered everywhere. ‘How beautiful it is!’ cried Emily. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were sparkling.
‘Yes, very beautiful,’ said Lord Harley, looking down at her face.
Emily was conscious of the pressure of his arm. She became quite breathless and then felt a flow of feeling from her own arm to his. She tried to stop it. She began to wish he would release her so that she could breathe properly again.
‘Look, there is a baker’s shop open,’ she cried and disengaged herself from him and ran forward.
‘You cannot want to eat again so soon,’ protested Hannah. ‘You have just had breakfast.’
Emily stayed gazing raptly into the baker’s window until she heard them moving on. She then turned around, but found Lord Harley politely waiting for her.
‘I do not want to appear rude, my lord,’ said Emily, ‘but I would rather not take your arm. You see, you are so very tall, I have to reach up, and … and … it is so awkward … and …’
He simply smiled in an enigmatic way and waited until she fell into step beside him. Then Emily discovered that the soles of her half-boots, always buffed and polished by the boot-boy at home, had hardly any grip on the rutted icy surface of the winding path between high drifts that led down the main street. She slipped and stumbled and then she had Lord Harley’s arm around her waist. The tumult of emotions that contact caused in her body almost made her gasp aloud. It was so dismal to have such a treacherous aching, yearning body when he probably felt nothing at all.