Emily (12 page)

He looked at her and she felt as if her heart was about to stop as he took hold of her hand. ‘I’m not much of a dancer, but shall we join in?’

She was lost for words and looked for advice from Ginny, who merely shrugged and gave a wry smile and turned her eyes to the antics of the dancers, who were laughingly trying to keep in time to the birdlike music of the flute.

‘Please do, no-one will mind,’ he persuaded and led her out to the other dancers. ‘There’s a hidden story behind the music,’ he explained softly. ‘It’s a fairy tale. Of magic, of comedy – but it is also a love story.’

She felt the pressure of his hand on hers and felt weak and giddy with emotion as he guided her round and round, but soon she started to laugh with merriment and as she did, so did he. The music stopped and the dancers broke into spontaneous clapping, but he kept hold of her hand. ‘How lovely you are, Emily,’ he whispered, his eyes on her face, and it seemed to her that they were the only ones there with just the sound of the sea
breaking below the Spa wall and the cry of the seagulls above them.

‘Ahem!’ Someone close by was clearing his throat and as they both looked up, Emily thought she would die of humiliation as she recognized Philip’s parents and sisters watching them. His father had an amused laugh in his eyes, but his mother was stony-faced, whilst his sisters gazed in open curiosity at Emily.

‘Father!’ Philip stammered. ‘Mother! I was looking for you. I thought you must have gone inside.’

‘No. We decided that the evening was far too pleasant to be spent indoors.’ Commander Linton gazed at Emily. ‘I don’t think we have had the pleasure of this young lady’s acquaintance.’

‘Erm, no. Father, Mother, may I present Miss Emily –?’

‘Hawkins, sir.’ Emily bobbed her knee deferentially to Commander and Mrs Linton, and then in an afterthought to their daughters also. She was glad that she was wearing her crisp white blouse with her grey skirt, but felt a stray strand of hair creeping from beneath her bonnet. ‘I work for Mrs Purnell, sir, ma’am.’

There was silence for a moment, then suddenly the music struck up again and Commander Linton gave a grin which made him look just like his son, and said genially, ‘How do you do! Delighted to meet you, Miss Hawkins.’

Mrs Linton inclined her head but no smile lit her face as she said, ‘I haven’t met Mrs Purnell. Would she approve of her staff behaving in this way?’

Suddenly Ginny was at Emily’s side. She gave a neat curtsy to Commander and Mrs Linton. ‘Good evening, sir, good evening, ma’am. How nice to see you again at Scarborough.’

Mrs Linton’s face softened. ‘Ginny! So you are here too?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Mrs Marshall and Mrs Purnell are sharing a house this year. They’re at ’concert and said we could enjoy ’music while they were inside! This is Emily’s first time at Scarborough,’ she explained and gave an encouraging nod at a flushed and nervous Emily.

‘I see!’ Mrs Linton looked Emily over and inclined her head, then glanced at Philip. ‘Well, shall we get along?’

They all moved away, Philip lingering last of all and turning for one last backward glance as the music faded and the maids and the men entered the door to do their superiors’ bidding.

Emily wept as she climbed into bed that night. How humiliating to be caught in such a manner, and what would Mr Linton’s parents say to him about dancing with a servant girl in public? And yet as she wept, there was a small spring of joy which would keep bubbling up no matter how hard she pushed it down. She thought she could still feel the sensation of his hand on hers, and mused on the brief moment that his hand had lightly touched her waist as they danced. Oh, how wonderful he is, she romanticized in a flight of fancy. And he said I was lovely! Perhaps I am, she thought dreamily. I feel as if I might be. She smiled in the darkness and pretended to be asleep as Dolly climbed into bed
beside her. I don’t want to talk, not tonight. Tonight I only want to dream.

‘What on earth were you thinking of, Philip? What if the girl’s employer had seen her!’ Mrs Linton made no bones over her disapproval. ‘She could have been dismissed on the spot.’

‘Yes, I didn’t think – it was just the music and everything,’ he said unconvincingly. And not only the music, he thought. When I saw her there I just wanted to dance with her.

‘Do you know her?’ His mother continued her questioning. ‘Have you met her before?’

‘Yes. I’d called to see Hugo Purnell and she answered the door.’ He omitted to mention the loan that he’d made to Hugo or the subsequent meeting with Emily at his lodgings.

‘And you asked her to dance with you on the strength of one meeting!’ His mother was aghast.

‘Oh, come now, Constance. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.’ His father peered from over the top of his newspaper. ‘She’s an extremely pretty girl. If I’d been twenty, I would have asked her to dance too.’

Mrs Linton looked disapprovingly down her nose at her husband, but a flicker of amusement twitched her lips, so Philip hastily seized the opportunity to say, ‘I was just being impetuous, Mama, and had she been of a different class and not a servant you would have been planning a wedding!’

‘Had she been of a different class, you would not have had the temerity to do it!’ she said scornfully. ‘Now be off with you.’

He planted a kiss on her cheek and departed, leaving his parents to finish their after-supper brandy alone. A ritual they had always followed for as long as he could remember.

‘I could be worried about that incident.’ Constance Linton was thoughtful as she sipped her brandy, a spirit her husband had introduced her to when first they were married. ‘There was just something about them!’

Her husband shook his head. ‘I told you, she’s just a pretty girl, a damn fine looker, I must say. Besides he’ll be meeting plenty of other young women whilst he’s away, any amount I should say.’

‘I do not wish to know,’ his wife replied. ‘No. I mean it,’ she rebuked him as he gave a jovial laugh. ‘I do not wish to know what you common sailors get up to when you are away from home!’

‘Well, not much chance of me getting up to anything any more, now that I’m back in harbour.’ He sat and pondered, his newspaper forgotten. ‘But I’m really pleased that Philip is doing so well. Wouldn’t Mother be delighted that he is following in the family footsteps?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, I’m sure she would have been. She would have been very proud. As proud of Philip as she was of you.’ She looked at him and then raised her finger. ‘I know what you’re going to say! And don’t say it! You’ve come a long way from your mother’s beginnings if what she said was true.’ She gave a laugh. ‘They were so eccentric those two, your father and mother, I don’t believe a word of anything they said!’

‘You would never have married me, would you,’
Commander Tobias Linton stretched his legs in front of the fire and grinned, ‘if Mother really had been a gutter snipe as she said, and not a Dutch princess or whatever else it was they said about her, and if Father really had been a smuggler before he was a naval captain?’

She leaned back in her chair. ‘Of course I wouldn’t, Commander! When I was the most sought-after young woman in Yorkshire? Would I have risked my reputation to marry a man with such dire connections?’

He looked across at her and smiled. If he was sure of anything in this life it was of his wife’s love, it had sustained him over many dangers and hardships. But he understood his wife’s anxieties for their children, especially Philip, once he had left to join his ship. There were many dangers for a young officer and not just at sea. There were women in wait too, undesirable women who could fell a man instantly if his wife only knew, not that he would dream of telling her. An innocent dance with a young servant girl was the last thing she should worry about.

They stayed in Scarborough until the beginning of October and although Mrs Purnell was reluctant to leave, Mrs Marshall, who had leased the house, was eager to return to Hull as the social season there would be about to begin.

Emily too was reluctant to return to the cramped streets of Hull. She had so enjoyed the sea air and the warm weather, which had not induced the flies and smells in the way it did in the town. She would miss too the sound of the sea as it washed to the shore, and in particular the last two weeks when the wind had changed and become more blustery, driving the waves with great force over the harbour wall, making the small ships in the harbour dip and plunge like corks and the pedestrians on the foreshore scuttle out of the way to avoid a soaking. She found it exhilarating and exciting and whenever she could she volunteered to run errands so that she might brave the elements.

‘I think you’re mad,’ Dolly proclaimed one day when Emily had been on an errand in the rain and came back to the house, wet and breathless but her
face glowing with health. ‘Won’t catch me going out in weather like this.’

Mrs Anderson remarked on her complexion on their return to Hull. ‘You look well, Emily,’ she said. ‘Better than us here. Some of us have had a bad time. I haven’t told mistress yet, but we’ve lost Lily, the new kitchen maid, to cholera. We’ve had to fumigate her room and burn all her clothes.’

Emily and Dolly were both shocked. The girl had been young and not very healthy and seemingly had gone down with the disease rapidly, and they both agreed that they were glad they had been away. Mrs Purnell was both distressed and angry and immediately wrote a letter to the governors of the workhouse in Parliament Street, blaming them for the loss of her servant and the inconvenience of her having to find another.

‘My son will be home in December,’ she told Mrs Anderson in Emily’s presence. ‘I have had a letter from him, so make sure his room is well aired and a good fire burning when he does come. He’ll feel the cold after Italy.’

Mrs Anderson’s face tightened. ‘Yes, ma’am. There has been a small fire lit every day while you were away in case he returned.’

‘He has some good news for me, he says,’ Mrs Purnell chatted in the casual way she sometimes did to her servants, when there was no-one else around to confide in. ‘I can’t think what it can be. Unless,’ she became quite girlish and her false curls bobbed beneath her lace cap, ‘unless he has met someone whilst abroad. What do you think, Mrs Anderson, you know him well after all these years? Do you
think he might have found someone marriageable? Oh –!’ Anxiety creased her face. ‘I just pray it won’t be someone foreign.’

Emily, sewing buttons on to a pair of Mrs Purnell’s gloves, glanced up at Mrs Anderson and thought that though her expression appeared impassive, she seemed to be in some kind of emotional turmoil.

‘I’m quite sure that Mr Hugo will choose someone suitable when the time is right, ma’am,’ she said tightly. ‘He always seems to know how to go about things.’

‘You’re right, of course. Well, we’ll arrange a few parties and some young people to come over as soon as he gets back. What fun we will have, I’ve missed him so. The house is far too quiet without him.’

Emily was quite looking forward to seeing Mr Hugo and the thought of having young people in the house, with perhaps music and dancing, filled her with expectation. Not that she would be able to participate, of course, but the atmosphere in the house would, she was sure, be much lighter and brighter. She also mused on the idea that Mr Linton might appear at one of the functions, as after she had danced with him on the terrace of the Spa, to her great disappointment, she hadn’t seen him again and Ginny had told her that she had heard he had been recalled to join his ship.

It was half-way through December when Mr Hugo finally arrived home, his arrival heralded by a loud banging on the door and a shrill ringing of the doorbell. Emily opened the door to find him
standing on the doorstep with a manservant and an array of bags and boxes and a smart-looking curricle drawn by two black horses out in the street.

‘Hello! And who are you?’ He was tall and dark with a long sharp nose and a thin mouth. Not really as handsome as I’d expected, Emily thought. Though he’s very merry.

‘I’m Emily, sir.’ She bobbed her knee.

‘Emily! That’s a very plain name for such a pretty girl.’ He surveyed her admiringly. ‘I must say my mother knows how to pick the beauties. Turn around, Emily. Let’s have a look at you.’

She cast a scared glance at Mrs Anderson, who had followed her into the hallway after hearing the commotion. Mrs Anderson gave her a brief nod to comply, so slowly she turned for his inspection. ‘Well, you’ll do! Won’t she, Mrs Anderson? I’ve seen some handsome women whilst I’ve been away but there’s no-one to touch the comeliness of a fair English rose.’ He pinched Emily’s cheek. ‘Believe me, Emily, I know.’

She didn’t know why she felt apprehensive at his attention, for after Ginny’s warning not to take men’s admiration too seriously, she had simply smiled and accepted compliments, and there had been many whilst at Scarborough. She had thought no more about them, apart from Mr Linton’s whispered words, and she really did want to believe him. But Mr Hugo made her feel very uneasy and she didn’t know whether it was the accidental touch of his hand on her rear as she went upstairs with his bags, or Mrs Anderson’s hoarse whisper to keep her bedroom door locked.

* * *

‘I’m waiting Hugo, to hear the news you have to tell me.’ Mrs Purnell viewed her son affectionately. ‘You said in your letter there was something.’ He had been home for three days and still he had not divulged his secret. ‘Have you – have you met someone whilst you’ve been away?’

‘I might have.’ He poured himself a brandy and a sherry for his mother. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mother? But I’m not sure whether to tell you now or at the party on Saturday.’

‘Oh, but you must tell me now,’ she gurgled. ‘I must be the first to know.’

He laughed. ‘You and her father!’

She looked shocked. ‘You mean you haven’t asked him yet? What are you thinking of? He might not agree.’

‘Oh, he’ll agree, there’s no doubt about that.’ He looked smug. ‘She’ll kick up a fuss if he doesn’t.’

She put her hand to her heart and took a shuddering breath. ‘You haven’t – you haven’t done anything wrong, Hugo? She is from a good family, isn’t she?’ The thought of scandal or of him making a poor marriage with someone unsuitable filled her with dismay.