The Clergyman's Daughter Read Free Page B

and try to intimidate Jessica with un-subtle reminders of her great wealth and rank. Occasionally Jessica had felt as if she would explode with the effort to contain her temper when Claire made some cutting remark about her shabby clothes or hinted that her unfashionable slenderness was less the result of diet than of genuine hunger. Long used to dealing with unruly children, Jessica had forced herself merely to laugh at the girl’s airs, knowing how disastrous it would be ever to permit her to see that some of her cruel jibes had found their mark. But Andrew had known, Andrew, Lady Claire’s brother, twenty years old but looking younger, so like his little sister in coloring that they might have been mistaken for twins…. From beneath a drooping lock of bright red hair he had gazed at Jessica with brown eyes soft with a sympathy she had never encountered before in a man, and she had fallen in love.
    Of course she had known that it was hopeless, poor clergymen’s daughters did not aspire to the sons of peers. Her father had already made it quite clear that as soon as her mother had convalesced from this latest lying-in, now that Jessica’s younger sisters were of an age to help with the new baby, Jessica herself would be expected to leave home, find herself a husband, preferably a prosperous merchant or at least a farmer who could help supply food for the vicarage table. To dream of someone like the Honourable Andrew Foxe was vanity, so utterly impossible that it showed wanton disregard for the well-being of her family. Jessica had known all that, and yet, the mere fact of being in love had been so novel, so strangely pleasant, that she succumbed without a fight, expecting no more from Andrew than an understanding glance now and then, a murmured word, perhaps—perhaps the furtive brush of fingers as they passed in the portrait gallery at Renard Chase after one of Claire’s lessons….
    She never dared hope that Andrew might also have dreams.
    In her stuffy kitchen Jessica remembered how blithely she had walked back toward the village that bright spring day, strolling along the edge of the dusty roadway, her portfolio in one hand, her shabby straw bonnet dangling by its strings from the other. Ahead of her, in the shade of a spreading oak tree, she had noticed a clump of butter-colored daffodils with white trumpets, and she debated whether she ought to pick some to take to her mother, who was weathering her eleventh pregnancy with less fortitude than she had the previous ones, especially after suffering two miscarriages in six months. Finally Jessica reluctantly decided against the flowers, knowing that if she arrived at the vicarage with anything so frivolous as a fragrant armload of daffodils, her father would accuse her of dawdling; if he was in the right mood, he would proceed to issue a sermon on indolence and the perils of admiring earthly beauty…. Wistfully Jessica had resumed her walk. Although she was sorry to have left Andrew’s home, she reminded herself philosophically that each passing moment brought her that much closer to the time when she would return to him again. And, she admitted, a little confused by the contrariness of her emotions, in some ways it was much easier to be in love with him when they were apart, when she could weave her fantasies without practical considerations, without having to worry about the watchful eyes of servants or the chaperon, or his spying brat of a sister….
    Suddenly her thoughts had been interrupted by an unusual sound just behind her, the growing thunder of galloping hooves. Jessica knew that on the highways mail coaches traveled as much as ten miles an hour, and once she had overheard two men discussing the work of some Scottish engineer, Mc Adam or something like that, who had devised a new type of road surface that would allow even greater velocities, but here in the country, ungainly vehicles and poor maintenance of the rutted and uneven roadways meant that