The Flood-Tide Read Free Page A

had drunk himself to death had all but ruined them, and brought the Morland estate to the brink of bankruptcy. 'But you must marry someone. Boys can have a career, but there is nothing else for girls to do.'
    ‘It's not fair,' Charlotte cried.
    ‘It's the way the world is,' Jemima said. 'Even for me -I was my father's heir when my brothers died, and he taught me business, but still my mother arranged a match for me.'
    ‘The wicked Earl,' Charlotte said. It was something of a cautionary tale in the schoolroom.
    ‘I was fortunate that he died when he did, and I was able to marry your Papa,' Jemima finished. It deflected Charlotte for a moment.
    ‘Is Papa ever going to come back?' she asked. It was only a childish emphasis, but it made Jemima shiver: her unspoken dread was that she would never see him again. ‘He has been gone so long.'
    ‘Almost three years, but it seems longer. James does not even remember him,' Jemima said sadly. 'Father Ramsay says it cannot last much longer.'
    ‘But Papa does not even write like Cousin Thomas.'
    ‘Father Ramsay says one must not expect letters from someone on a diplomatic mission. His business is for the King, and secret, and it may not be possible for Papa to write to us without giving a secret away.'
    ‘I wish the King had never sent him,' Charlotte said crossly. Jemima nodded. She wished, even as she had wished at the time, that her brother-in-law, the new Earl of Chelmsford, had never presented Allen at Court, where his talents could come to the King's notice. Chelmsford did it to be kind, just as he had sold Morland Place to Allen at less than its true value, as a kindness to Jemima, who had been left destitute on Rupert's death. But so often the Morlands had been involved in a king's business, and it had rarely brought them anything but grief. Her father had met his death as a result of the '45 rebellion, and Allen had spent fifteen years in exile in France because of it. It was that exile which had given him the special experience which made him so useful to King George, and taken him from her for three long years.
    ‘I wish it too,' she said. 'It is a fine thing to serve the King, and no doubt the King will reward him. But I had sooner he stayed at home with us.'
    ‘You miss him, don't you, Mother?' William said, watching her face.
    ‘He is the best man in the world,' she managed to reply.
    ‘Perhaps Charlotte could marry someone like him,' William said. ‘If she learns to keep her hair tidy.'
    ‘But I don't want to marry anyone,' Charlotte scowled, and the conversation had turned full circle.
    *
    When they left Twelvetrees, Poppy was still pulling and fretting, for she had not been out much in the past few days, and since Charlotte was in the same condition, Jemima took pity on them and said, 'We shall ride a long way back, and have a canter across Hob Moor, and go down to the Hare and Heather and see if there are any letters.' It was a convenient excuse, and Charlotte, who opened her mouth to say that the footman had been down for letters only that morning, had wit enough to close it again. They skirted Morland Place through the fields, galloped as fast as the ponies could go across the moor, where the common herdsman was tending the village cattle, jumped the Holgate Beck in fine style, and pulled up just in time to avoid running down a little girl who was herding geese back from High Moor. They were just above the South Road, opposite the new racecourse, which Jemima's father had helped to build. Below them was St Edward's School, and across the road from it St Edward's Church and the Hare and Heather Inn.
    ‘There's the London coach!' Charlotte cried excitedly. ‘Stopped outside the inn.'
    ‘It must be putting someone down,' Jemima said. ‘Sometimes it is easier to set down here than to go right into the city, if a person is travelling on by another coach.'
    ‘There's Jack taking down the boxes,' William said. ‘And Abel holding the horses.' The children