Fairfield Hall Read Free Page A

her eyes. ‘And a fat lot of good you’d have been if there’d been any trouble.’
    ‘What sort of trouble, Mrs Rowley?’
    The cook said no more on the subject, contenting herself with a glare and a sharp, ‘Get on with your work now you are here. There’s a pile of washing-up to be done and Lucy’s
already drooping with tiredness having to do your work as well as her own while you go off gallivanting.’
    For the next few hours there was no time to think, but later that night as she lay in her narrow bed in the attic room she shared with Lucy, Jane thought over the problem she faced with her
young mistress. She was devoted to Miss Annabel and would do anything for her – anything – but she was very afraid that what they had been doing over the past few weeks and months was
about to be discovered.

Two
    Annabel, too, was lying awake.
    Why hadn’t Gil come to meet her? Was it all over? Didn’t he love her any more? Had all his ardent declarations been false?
    She had first met Gilbert Radcliffe on a tour of her father’s business offices near the fish docks. That day, Gilbert, as the office under-manager, had been deputed to show the
boss’s daughter around. At only twenty-five he held a surprisingly high position within the company and was well thought of by his immediate superior, the office manager, Mr Smeeton, and her
father too. But Annabel was under no illusion that should their secret meetings over the weeks since then be discovered, the young man would no longer be held in such high esteem. Ambrose had big
plans for his daughter and they did not include marriage to one of his employees.
    Ambrose Constantine was a self-made man. He had been born in one of the poorer areas of the town, the third son of a deck hand on trawlers. He, too, had begun his working life at sea as a
deckie-learner, but Ambrose was ambitious. He soon worked his way up to the position of Mate, working hard and enduring the vicious conditions of life at sea to earn good money and save every penny
he could. Oh, how he saved his money. But by the time he was twenty, his father and two older brothers had been lost at sea. Broken-hearted, his mother died the following year, leaving Ambrose
alone, though the loss of his family only hardened his determination to succeed. He left the sea and became a fish merchant and by the age of twenty-four was employing ten men in the fish docks. He
first saw Sarah Armstrong across the aisle of a church, when they were both attending a funeral in late May 1874. She was no beauty, but she was tall and walked with a haughty grace that appealed
to Ambrose. She had a strong face and a determined set to her chin. At the gathering in a nearby hotel after the service, Ambrose contrived an introduction to her and found himself gazing into her
dark blue eyes and wanting to know all about her.
    ‘How do you know Mr Wheeler?’ he began, referring to the deceased, whose coffin they had just watched being lowered ceremoniously into the earth.
    ‘I didn’t know him well, but I’ve accompanied my father today. He used to do business with him and felt he should pay his respects.’
    ‘So – is your father in the fish trade?’
    Sarah had laughed. ‘No, no, he’s a farmer, but he met Mr Wheeler on market days.’ Abraham Wheeler had been an auctioneer throughout Lincolnshire, conducting sales of anything
from fish to sheep and cows.
    Curious about the fair-haired, stocky young man who, she knew, had deliberately sought an introduction to her, Sarah asked, ‘And you? How do you know him?’
    ‘The fish markets.’ He smiled. ‘He was very helpful to me when I started out.’
    ‘And where have you finished up?’
    ‘Oh, I haven’t finished yet, not by a long way.’
    Sarah’s eyes gleamed as she heard the fire of ambition in his tone. She liked that. She had always bemoaned the fact that she’d been born a girl; men could do so much more with their
lives than women, who seemed destined to be