The Beloved Read Free

or as excited or as terrified. When the knock finally arrived at the door she almost choked on her own heart.
    Little did Temperance know, but she needn’t have bothered to go to so much trouble and effort. Arthur Angel was already frantically in love with her. He wouldn’t have cared less if he’d had to pick his way through the worst of slums to get to her. When Temperance answered the door to him the rest of the world fell away. Arthur could have been in a palace or a hovel. He didn’t notice the damp in the corner of the room, or how threadbare the rug was. He didn’t notice how the delicate china teacups that Temperance poured the tea into didn’t all match. He barely noticed her father sitting quietly in the corner of the room and he certainly didn’t taste the sweetness of the pastries that Temperance had gone to so much trouble choosing. All he noticed was how Temperance shone. He feasted his eyes on her long white neck and drank in the greenness of her eyes. He had never wanted something so much in his whole life and within half an hour of his arrival he was down on his knee asking for her hand in marriage.
    As luck would have it, Charles Angel, who was not entirely in agreement with his only son marrying so low, met with a nasty accident while observing the installation of a new roller at the mill, leaving his entire fortune to Arthur and giving the inhabitants of Bridgwater a reason to gossip when St Mary’s church hosted a funeral and then a wedding within two days of each other.
    Temperance took to running Lions House as if she had been born to it. Arthur agreed with her suggestion that a newly married couple should enjoy complete privacy in the early days of wedlock, so the Angel sisters and Charles’ widow were dispatched to a small but adequate cottage on the outskirts of town. Temperance looked at her grand new home, at the fine furniture and large army of servants it contained, she looked at her costly trousseau, that had all been handmade for her by a Bristol dressmaker, and she could not believe how easy it had been to get the life she had always dreamed of. Arthur, for his part, could not believe how lucky he was to have the wife he’d always dreamed of. Neither of them could have been more satisfied with the way things had turned out.
    Within a year, Temperance had produced a son they named Eli and a year later a daughter named Alice. If Arthur was puzzled by the change in Temperance that came about after the children were born, he never said a word about it. He adored his wife and if she was not as enthusiastic in the bedroom any more, well maybe that was to be expected after the rigours of childbirth? When she moved out of their bedroom altogether, he meekly accepted it as her right to a good night’s sleep. He grew used to containing his passion for her and counted his blessings instead: that he was fortunate enough to have the most beautiful wife in the whole of Bridgwater.
    Temperance’s beauty dominated the Angel household. It drew everyone towards her and made them want to please her: from the lowliest maid-of-all-works to all of Arthur’s business associates. By the time any of them recognised the dark truth behind Temperance’s perfect façade, it was too late. She had them caught in her trap, and none was brave enough to speak out against her. No one, that is, except for her daughter, Alice Angel.
    Alice saw straight through her mother. From the moment she was born, Temperance was aware of the baby’s small black eyes following her around the room. Temperance found it disconcerting that a mere baby could make her feel so uneasy. She would dream of the child’s miniature fingers digging into her face and peeling back the skin to reveal the ugliness of the blood, bone and muscle underneath. Temperance spent as little time as she could with the child. She called her difficult, awkward and wearing, although the nanny she engaged to