Call of the Heart Read Free Page A

from first thing in the morning until last thing at night.
    Her Step-mother had always hated her and after her father’s death had made no pretence of treating her with anything except contempt.
    In her own home and amongst the servants who had known
    Lalitha since she was a baby, Lady Studley had to a certain extent tempered her dislike with discretion.
    In London these restrictions disappeared.
    Lalitha became the slave, someone who could be forced to perform the most menial of tasks and punished viciously if she protested.
    Sometimes Lalitha thought that her Step-mother was pushing her so hard that she hoped it would kill her and faced the fact that it was not unlikely.
    Only she knew the truth; only she knew the secrets on which Lady Studley had built a new life for herself and her daughter, and her death would be a relief to them.
    Then Lalitha told herself that such ideas were morbid and came to her mind merely because she had felt so weak since her illness.
    She had been forced out of bed long before she knew it was wise for her to rise, simply because while she was in her bedroom she received no food.
    On Lady Studley’s instructions, what servants there were in the house made no attempt to wait on her.
    After days of growing weaker because she had literally nothing to eat, Lalitha had forced herself downstairs in order to avoid dying of starvation.
    “If you are well enough to eat you are well enough to work!” her Step-mother had told her, and she found herself back in the familiar routine of doing everything in the house which no-one else would do.
    Walking along the cold, stone-flagged passage to the kitchen, Lalitha perceived automatically that it was dirty and needed scrubbing.
    But there was no-one who could be ordered to clean it except herself and she hoped that her Step-mother would not notice. She opened the door of the kitchen, which was a cheerless room, badly in need of decoration, with little light coming from the window high up in the wall but below pavement level.
    The groom, who was also a Jack-of-all-trades, was sitting at the table drinking a glass of ale.
    A slatternly woman with grey hair straggling from under a mob-cap was cooking something which smelt unpleasant over the stove.
    She was an incompetent Irish immigrant who had been engaged only three days previously as the Employment Agency had no-one else who would accept the meagre wages offered by Lady Studley.
    “Would you please take this note to the Dowager Duchess of Yelverton House?” Lalitha asked the groom. “It is, I believe, at the far end of Wimbledon Common.”
    “O’ll go when O’ve afinished me ale,” the groom answered in a surly tone.
    He made no effort to rise and Lalitha realised that the servants always learnt very quickly that she was of no importance in the house-hold and warranted less consideration than they themselves received.
    “Thank you,” she answered quietly.
    Turning to the cook, she said:
    “Miss Studley would like something to eat.”
    “There ain’t much,” the cook replied. “I’ve got a stew ’ere for us, but it ain’t ready yet.”
    “Then perhaps there are some eggs and she can have an omelette,” Lalitha suggested.
    “I can’t stop wot I’m adoing,” the woman replied.
    “I will make it,” Lalitha said.
    She had expected to have to do so anyway.
    After finding a pan, but having to clean it first, she cooked Sophie a mushroom omelette.
    She put some pieces of toast in a rack, added a dish of butter to the tray, and finally a pot of hot coffee before she carried it upstairs.
    The groom left grudgingly a few minutes before Lalitha went from the kitchen.
    “It be too late for goin’ all the way t’Wimbledon,” he grumbled. “Can’t it wait ’til tomorrer mornin’?”
    “You know the answer to that!” Lalitha replied.
    “Yeah—Oi knows,” he replied, “but Oi don’t fancy bein’ outside London after dark with ’em footpads and ’ighwaymen about.”
    “It’s little