PENNY JORDAN - Orphans from the Storm - Bride at Bellfield Mill / A Family for Hawthorn Farm / Tilly of Tap House

She would just have to do the best she could. And she would do her best—just as her aunt would have expected her to do. Now, what was it that boy on the bicycle had said his name was? Postlethwaite—that was it.

Marianne had seen the telephone in the hallway, and now she went to it and picked up the receiver, unable to stop herself from looking over her shoulder up the stairs. Not that it was likely that the Master of Bellfield was likely to come down to chastise her for the liberty she was taking.

A brisk female voice on the other end of the line was asking her what number she required.

‘I should like to be put through to Postlethwaite’s Provisions,’ she answered, her stomach cramping with a mixture of guilt and anxiety as she waited for the exchange operator to do as she had requested. She had no real right to be doing this, and certainly no real authority. She wasn’t really the housekeeper of Bellfield House after all.

‘How do, lass, how’s t’master going on?’

‘Mr Postlethwaite?’ Marianne asked uncertainly.

‘Aye, that’s me. My lad said as how he’d heard about t’master’s accident. You’ll be wanting me to send up some provisions for him, I reckon. I’ve got a nice tin of turtle soup here that he might fancy, or how about…?’

Tinned turtle soup? For a sick man? Marianne rather fancied that some good, nurturing homemade chicken soup would suit him far better, but of course she didn’t want to offend the shopkeeper.

‘Yes, thank you, Mr. Postlethwaite,’ she answered him politely. ‘I shall be needing some provisions, but first and most important I wondered if you could give me the direction of a reliable chemist. One who can supply me with bandages and ointments, and quickly. The doctor is to send up a nurse, but in the meantime I am to bandage the wound.’

‘Aye, you’ll be wanting Harper’s. If you want to tell me what you’re wanting, I’ll send young Charlie round there now and he can bring it up.’

His kindness brought a lump to Marianne’s throat and filled her with relief. Quickly she told him what she thought she would need, before adding, ‘Oh, and I was wondering—would you know of anyone local who might have bee hives, Mr Postlethwaite. Only I could do with some honey.’

‘Well, I dunno about that,’ he answered doubtfully, ‘it not being the season to take the combs out of the hives. But I’ll ask around for you.’

‘It must be pure honey, Mr Postlethwaite, and not any other kind.’ Marianne stressed.

Her aunt had sworn by the old-fashioned remedy of applying fresh honey to open wounds in order to heal and cleanse them.

‘A word to the wise, if you don’t mind me offering it, Mrs Brown,’ Mr Postlethwaite was saying, his voice dropping to a confidential whisper. ‘If the doctor sends up Betty Chadwick to do the nursing you’d best make sure that she isn’t on the drink.’

‘Oh, yes…thank you.’

At least now she would have the wherewithal to follow the doctor’s instructions, and the larder would have some food in it, Marianne acknowledged as she carefully replaced the telephone receiver, even if the shopkeeper’s warning about the nurse had been worrying.

Mentally she started to list everything she would need to do. As soon as she had bandaged the master’s wound she would have to fill the copper and boil-wash a good supply of clothes with which to cleanse his wound when it needed redressing. She would also have to try to find some decent clean sheets, and get them aired—although she wouldn’t be able to change his bed until the nurse arrived to lift him.

Armed with a fresh supply of hot water, and a piece of clean wet sheeting she had washed in boiling water and carbolic soap, Marianne made her way back upstairs to the master bedroom.

Her patient was lying motionless, with his face turned towards the window and his eyes closed, and for a second Marianne thought that he might actually have died he was so still. Her heart in her mouth, she stared at his chest, willing it to rise and fall, and realised when it did that she was shaking with relief. Relief? For this man? A man who…But, no, she must not think of that now.

Quietly and carefully Marianne made her way to the side of the bed opposite the window, closest to his injured leg.

Congealed blood lay thickly on top of the wound, which would have to be cleaned before she could bandage it. Marianne raised her hand to place it against the exposed flesh, to test it for heat that would indicate whether the wound was already turning putrid, and then hesitated with her hand hovering above the master’s naked thigh. Eventually she let her hand rest over the flesh of the wound. A foolish woman, very foolish indeed, might almost be tempted to explore that maleness, so very different in construction and intent from her own slender and delicate limbs.

Marianne stiffened as though stung. There was no reason for the way she was feeling at the moment, with her heart beating like a trapped bird and her face starting to burn. In the workhouse she had become accustomed to any number of sights and sounds not normally deemed suitable for the eyes and ears of a delicately reared female. Naked male limbs were not, after all, something she had never seen before. But she had not seen any that were quite as strongly and sensually male as this one, with its powerful muscles and sprinkling of thick dark hair. And, shockingly, the flesh was not pale like her own, but instead had been darkened as though by the sun.

An image flashed through her head—a hot summer’s evening when, as a girl, she had chanced to walk past a local millpond where the young men of the village had stripped off to swim in its cooling waters. Over it her senses imposed the image of another man—older, adult, and fully formed in his manhood. This man. A fierce shockwave of abhorrence for her own reckless thoughts seized her. What manner of foolishness was this?

Deliberately Marianne cleared her head of such dangerous thoughts and forced herself to concentrate on the feel of the flesh beneath her hand as though she were her aunt. Was there heat coming up from the torn flesh, or was the heat only there in her own guilty thoughts? There was no flushing of the skin, but her aunt had always said that a wound should be properly cleaned before it be allowed to seal.

Marianne wished that the nurse might arrive and take from her the responsibility of judging what should be done. She had seen what could happen if a wound turned putrid when a young gypsy had been brought to her aunt’s back door, having been found on neighbouring land caught in a man trap. His leg had swelled terribly with the poison that even her aunt had not been able to stem, and he had died terribly, in agony, his face blackened and swollen.

Gripped by the horror of her memories, Marianne’s hand tightened on the Master’s thigh.

When he let out a roar and sat up in the bed, Marianne didn’t know which of them looked the more shocked as she snatched her hand away from his flesh and he stared in disbelief.

‘You! What the devil? What are you about, woman? Is this how you repay my charity? By trying to kill me?’

‘Dr Hollingshead said that I was to bandage your leg.’

‘Hollingshead? That fraudulent leech. If he has let that filthy man of his anywhere near me then I am as good as dead.’

Instantly Marianne tried to reassure him. ‘I took the liberty of suggesting that I should be the one…That is…since he had—wrongly, of course—assumed I was your new housekeeper…’

‘What?’

‘It was a natural enough mistake.’

‘Was it, by God, or did you help him on his way to making it?’

For a man who had lost as much blood as he had, and who must be in considerable pain, the swiftness of his comprehension was daunting, Marianne acknowledged.