Escape by Moonlight Read Free Page B

make your heart beat faster?’
    ‘Course not. There was only James and he thinks he’s so superior, always teasing me about my hair and tweaking it with his fingers. Belinda’s all right, though.’
    ‘And how was finishing school?’
    ‘Boring.’
    ‘Boring? How can learning to be a lady be boring?’
    ‘You cannot learn to be a lady. Either you are one or you are not.’
    ‘Mama might not agree with you.’
    ‘Mama is different.’
    He made no reply to that because both knew their mother was not of aristocratic birth. She was French, her father farmed a few acres in the Haute Savoie, and she had been brought up to do her share of the work, something that real ladies never did. And yet there was no one more ladylike, more diplomatic, or more beloved, especially by her husband. The children knew the tale of how they had met and married and as far as the girls, Elizabeth and Amy, were concerned it was a true love story, but Jack, who had never known his real father, tried to expunge it from his memory. His shameful birth, his feeling that he did not belong, was a chip he carried on his shoulder, though to see him and hear him, you would never know it.
    ‘I only went to please Papa, you know.’
    ‘So you were telling the truth when you told Lucy you were glad to be home.’
    ‘Of course I am.’ She sighed. ‘In some ways, I envy her.’
    ‘Envy her?’ He ignored the stifled choking sound Annie made. ‘What is there to envy?’
    ‘I envy her her freedom. She may work if she chooses to. She is not tied by convention.’
    ‘My dear sis, it is not a question of choosing to work, it is a matter of having to and she is just as tied to convention as you are, surely you can see that? And in the fullness of time she will be expected to marry someone of her ownkind, probably chosen for her by her father …’ He paused a moment, thinking about that and suddenly felt very sorry for poor Lucy Storey.
    ‘So will I, though that’s not to say I will.’
    He laughed. ‘Not ever?’
    ‘Oh, well perhaps one day, if I meet the right man, but not before I have done something with my life.’
    ‘Such as?’
    ‘Earning a living, doing something worthwhile.’
    ‘Oh dear, not home five minutes and already I can see squalls on the horizon. You know Father will never allow it. And there is no need; everything you want you can have within reason.’
    ‘Except my independence.’
    ‘What can you do, anyway?’
    ‘I don’t know yet. A doctor perhaps, or a lawyer or a politician.’
    He smiled. ‘Oh, Amy dear, you will make Papa throw up his hands in horror at the thought. And you aren’t brainy enough in any case.’
    ‘Thanks for that, brother dear.’ She sighed, realising he was probably right. ‘But if there’s a war …’
    ‘And that will happen, you may depend on it, but I don’t see how it will affect you.’
    ‘Of course it will. I could work then, do something useful, perhaps in Papa’s railway business.’
    The first Lord de Lacey had been one of the first to recognise the revolution the railways would bring about, and besides involving himself in the construction of the railways, he had built up a large herd on the home farm, whose milk was sent in churns to London in the early hours of every morning, some of it destined to be canned. All theseenterprises needed labourers and supporting industries like horsemen, farriers, harness-makers, basket-makers, shops, breweries and alehouses, carriers to take produce from the farms to the station and railwaymen to run the trains. His son and then his grandson, Amy’s father, had carried on where he left off. When other aristocrats were having to sell their estates because they could not afford to keep them up, nor employ the army of servants needed to run them, he had prospered.
    ‘Like Lucy?’
    ‘No, silly, in the offices, like you do. Or you are supposed to do; I haven’t seen much evidence of it. You’d rather live the idle life of a gentleman.’
    ‘I