Pit Bank Wench Read online

  ‘And which way pleases you?’

  Every movement sensuous, Cara let the tie drop from her fingers then reached up to pull the diamanté comb from her hair, the fall of it covering her shoulders in black silk.

  ‘That depends very much upon you.’

  ‘On me, Cara?’

  Shrugging the bed coat from her, letting it slide down her arms, she stepped away, leaving it a heap of pale rose on the floor.

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled, showing perfect teeth. ‘I have a lot of friends, some of whom are your business associates.’

  ‘And some of whom are very much subject to your . . . influence!’

  ‘Very much, my dear.’ Every line of her caressed by the expert cut of a matching silk nightgown, Cara crossed to her dressing table carelessly throwing the comb down on it. ‘It would be very easy to persuade them that a certain project was too risky for them to commit their money.’

  Stretched out on the bed the man watched her every move, his smile hiding the cold anger beginning to gather in his stomach.

  ‘But a little of my money would persuade you in a different direction, is that it? You are a woman of many talents, Cara. Is extortion yet another of them?’

  ‘Proportion.’ The smile played easily about her painted mouth but Cara Holgate’s eyes narrowed like a hunting cat’s. ‘I think that is a much better word. I use my influence to ensure you get what you want, and you give me what I want – and that is a proportion of the enterprise.’

  ‘And what is your idea of a proportion of the enterprise?’ Lifting himself on one elbow, the soft light of candles, caught the twin streaks of silver receding from his brow, and now Carver Felton did not smile.

  ‘What if I tell you your little proposal has come too late, Cara? That the business is agreed.’

  Coming closer to the bed, the light displaying the body beneath the almost transparent silk, she smiled down at him. ‘Then I would have to tell you you were a fool, but I do not think you are. You know the men you are dealing with, Carver, you know they would not think twice about breaking an agreement not with you or any other man should it suit them.’

  ‘But the agreements they make with you are not broken, I take it?’

  ‘No, Carver.’ She shook her head, familiar with the effect of candlelight on her sable hair. ‘Not if they wish their pleasures to go undisturbed. You see, my dear, it is not just men who can be influenced. A word in a wife’s ear . . . you follow, I am sure?’

  His black eyes sweeping the length of her, Carver allowed the smile to return, but the anger was still there. ‘Would that not achieve a negative result?’

  Slender fingers going to her throat, Cara slipped the tiny mother of pearl buttons through each buttonhole, pausing at one set into the fitted waist. ‘If you mean, would I lose the friendship of the men I . . . influence, then the answer is no. They take their pleasure much too seriously for that. A present of – shall we say, considerable value would help me change my mind.’

  ‘And my present, what is the considerable value of that to be?’

  Fingers toying with the last button; green-gold eyes glinted. ‘Twenty per cent.’ She said it softly. ‘A twenty per cent share in your canal project.’

  Carver lay back on the bed, his arms going back behind his head. ‘That is a present of considerable value. Do you think your talents worthy of so much?’

  She laughed, a sound as smooth as the silk gown. ‘Do you?’

  ‘We could find out,’ he answered. ‘Or is that button the only thing you’re going to play with tonight?’

  Slipping the last button Cara parted the gown, revealing taut white breasts. ‘Not the only thing, Carver.’ She let the gown slide, her eyes fixed on his. ‘Not the only thing.’

  Kneeling beside him on the bed, she traced a long slow finger from his throat down across his chest and stomach, a smile of satisfaction curving her lips at the jerking of his flesh. Her hand continuing its downward path, she bent over him, brushing his chest with her breasts, mouth following the movement of her finger. Her tongue touching the base of his erect penis, she murmured, ‘Isn’t this worth twenty per cent, Carver?’

  ‘Let’s seal the bargain.’ His body curving in one swift agile movement, he caught her shoulders, drawing her upright and at the same time rolling her on to her back.

  The silken laugh rolling in her throat, she lifted her arms, spreading her legs. ‘The candle,’ she whispered, ‘shall we leave it burning?’

  Raising himself on his hands, Carver stared into her green-gold eyes. ‘No.’ He blew at the flame burning at the bedside. ‘I don’t need a candle to find my way into you.’

  Driving deep into her, he smiled in the darkness. Neither would he need one to find a way of destroying her!

  Riding home across the heath, Carver let his mind wander over the preceding few hours. Cara Holgate had satisfied his appetites many times, but tonight . . . He glanced at the coppice rising tall and black against the skyline . . . tonight there had been none of the pleasure he normally took in her soft white flesh, that hair smelling of pomade and French perfume. Tonight there had been only lust. The woman beneath him had been Cara Holgate; the body he thrust into, supple and willing, was Cara’s; the cries soft against his ear, her cries. But in his mind he had lain with another, very different woman. The perfume in her hair had been that of the flowers of the heath; the flesh of her body, though soft and white, had been taut as a bowstring as she fought against him; there had been no willingness in that union and her cries had not been those of pleasure. Yet it was her, that Doe Bank wench, who filled his brain, memories of the feel of her beneath him, not the body of his mistress, had brought tonight’s fulfilment. And the thought of her had dominated his nights with Cara for almost a month.

  Why was that? Why had Cara’s face become her face as she clambered on to the bed beside him? Why had raven hair softened to pale gold and the eyes that smiled down at him become the blue of wild hyacinths?

  Guilt? Carver glanced again at the thicket. Was he feeling guilty for raping that girl? The thought brought a cold smile to his mouth. The very idea was ridiculous. Why should he feel guilty, why should he feel anything at all? The girl was nothing, nothing but a pit bank wench!

  But it was the pit bank wench who regularly found her way into his thoughts. Irritated by the admission, he touched his heels to the animal’s flanks, adjusting easily to its quickened step.

  He had taken her not for pleasure nor from lust. He had used her to serve his own purpose, as from tonight he would use Cara.

  In the shadowed dawn the smile faded, his face becoming hard as tempered steel.

  Cara had taken one step too many. She had allowed her own lust, that for money, to override her judgement. She had thought to sink her greedy fingers into his business.

  ‘A mistake, Cara,’ he whispered, ‘and one that could prove fatal.’

  Carver glanced upward. Sliding from behind a patch of cloud the moon spread a silver canopy over the heath. Carver smiled.

  One step too many!

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Will you be taking the girl to live with you in your house?’

  Her two boys settled to sleep in the scullery, Polly Butler brewed yet another pot of tea.

  Jerusha watched tea follow milk into the cheap heavy cups; none of the fine china of the moneyed classes would be found in Doe Bank, here it was thick platter plates and cups, all that mining families could afford, and some of them could not even afford those. She thought of the many times she had seen jam jars used as drinking cups when she had visited those without a penny to buy tea to put in them; the jars themselves taken from the rear of a grocer’s shop when he was not looking.

  ‘Will you be letting her make a home with you?’ Polly looked up from pouring tea.

  ‘I have no home.’ Jerusha took her cup. ‘Emma Price isn’t the only one whose home this night has taken.’

  Polly set the large enamel teapot heavily on the hob then turned back to th
e woman beside her table. ‘No home! What do that mean? I don’t understand.’

  ‘It takes no understanding.’ Jerusha sipped the hot liquid, holding it against her tongue. ‘Mary Price’s house was taken by fire, as mine is taken by a landlord. Hers is a smoking ruin this night. The next will see mine tumbled to the ground.’

  Polly stared at a face time had dealt with as cruelly as her own. ‘You turned out! When was you told of this? Did the bailiff call at the other houses in Plovers Croft or be you the only one?’

  ‘No bailiff came.’

  Polly held her own thick pottery cup between both hands. She knew enough of Jerusha Paget not to ask how, if no bailiff had ordered her from her home, she knew it was to be so. And how she knew it would be demolished so soon afterwards. If Jerusha said it would happen then happen it would.

  ‘And I won’t be the only one put from house and home. Before three days be gone by Plovers Croft will be nothing but stones in the dust.’

  ‘But what will you do?’ Polly’s voice rang with concern. ‘Where will you go, do you have family anywhere?’

  Her lips against the rim of the cup, Jerusha shook her head. ‘I have no family, there was only Jacob and he be gone now.’

  ‘Then you and the girl must both bide here. There will be a place on the Bank for you both.’

  ‘I can speak only for myself.’ Jerusha stared at the fire, her eyes seemingly drawn to its glowing depths. ‘For the girl I cannot answer, that she must do for herself, but I fear Doe Bank will never be home to her again.’

  ‘Then where?’ Polly was genuinely concerned. ‘It ain’t right for her to go wandering off alone, not every place be as ‘ospitable or as safe for a young wench as Doe Bank.’

  Safe! Jerusha kept her glance at the crimson coals. She could tell Polly Butler just how safe this village had been for its young girls, but that danger was gone and no good could come of raking over the ashes.

  ‘Emma Price be able to suit herself, Polly. She be without parents to say what she must do and there be no guardian set over her. That leaves her free to follow what she will. But I reckon a lot of sense to that girl. She may find life hard but she will do nothing foolish. Nothing Mary Price would take exception to, God rest her soul.’

  ‘Amen to that.’ Polly crossed herself piously. ‘Poor Mary, not to leave out the other two, that young daughter and Caleb. Lord, what an end! What a way to go! Burned to death in your very own house. What do you reckon to be the cause of that fire?’

  Jerusha sipped again at the hot sweet tea. She’d known the question would come and had known the answer she gave would be a lie.

  The silence had come in the late afternoon wrapping about her like a cocoon, closing off the world about her, lifting her into its own heart, into a floating endless space of golden light. Then the soundless voice had come, speaking formless silent words; words that nevertheless rang in her mind with the clarity of a bell. She would leave this house, it had told her, leave it for the last time for soon after it would be demolished. Then it had spoken of the deaths of three people, of a fire set by a woman to take from the earth all mark of the evil done by a man. One who had abused his own child and those of the people to whom he preached.

  The preacher man! The words had been said over again and then the light had faded and with it the silence.

  Mary must have found him out. That was her reason for watching him hang himself. She could not live with the knowledge of what he had done, not live with Carrie’s pain or her own, so she had sent Emma far enough away so she would not witness that to which Mary set her hand.

  ‘Who knows what set that house to burning?’ Jerusha answered Polly. ‘A red hot glede dropping from the grate on to the rug, a fallen candle, there be many things could be the cause.’

  Arr, many things. Polly kept a still tongue. But with three waking people in the house, a red hot cinder or a fallen candle would have small chance of burning it to the ground. And then there was Emma, what was that business of her running to fetch Jerusha Paget at night? There had been no sickness in Mary’s house or it would have been spoken of, and Mary Price had said not a word.

  ‘It were a blessing Emma weren’t in that house.’ Polly lifted her cup. Jerusha Paget could be close-mouthed when it suited her, a direct asking would bring no reply.

  ‘A blessing,’ Jerusha nodded.

  Seeing both cups empty, Polly reached once more for the teapot. There was nothing better for loosening a neighbour’s tongue than a cup of tea.

  ‘Still, to cross the heath to Plovers Croft in the dark, and by herself! Something must have been worrying Mary to let her wench do that.’

  Accepting the tea, Jerusha nodded and met the other woman’s glance. Polly Butler was a kindly soul but one who liked to know the top and bottom of everybody’s business. Tell her something one day and the next it would be all over Doe Bank and on its way to Wednesbury.

  ‘Arrh, I reckon you be right in your thinking, Polly.’ Jerusha allowed a little of the truth to escape, enough to satisfy the other’s curiosity. ‘But what they were worrying about we will never know now. All that girl sleeping upstairs could tell me was that her mother asked I should come.’

  ‘Arrh, it be the wench we must feel sorry for.’ Polly emptied the dregs of the teapot on to the fire, sending a cloud of acrid-smelling steam sizzling into the chimney, then banked the fire for the night and collected the cups. ‘They all be out of the misery of this world: young Carrie, her mother and her father. But that one, Emma, she has to live with the memory of this night.’

  Cups in hand, she bustled into the scullery, stepping over the sleeping boys to rinse the cups in water taken from the bucket. Returning she glanced at the older woman still hunched in her chair. Jerusha Paget could shed a great deal more light on the happenings of the past hours should she choose, but that light would never shine. ‘Yes, I feel for the wench. There be many an hour of crying afore the memory fades.’

  ‘That be the way of it,’ Jerusha agreed. ‘But it be the way to healing. Tears help wash away the pain.’

  The words were easily said. Bidding Polly good night, Jerusha climbed the narrow stairs to the room she would share with Emma.

  The saying was easy, it was the living that was hard.

  Emma stood before the charred bricks and blackened timbers that were all that remained of her home. Wisps of smoke curled up from the smouldering ruins and the morning air was heavy with the smell of burning.

  They had been inside, her mother and sister, her father. They had died there. Had Carrie known of the fire, felt the agony of its touch, the choking of its breath as her parents must have?

  How had it happened? Why had it happened? And why had Emma herself been spared? Unable to look any longer at the burned out shell, she covered her face with her shawl, her body shaking with grief.

  ‘Why?’ she sobbed. ‘Why leave me? Oh, God, why be so cruel? I can’t live without them, I can’t . . . I can’t!’

  From the doorway of Polly’s house, Jerusha Paget watched the slight figure drop to its knees. Although she had not heard her words she knew why Emma cried. She knew the pain, the heartache of losing a loved one, the emptiness of being alone. As the girl was doing now she too had questioned the Lord, she too had asked Him why. But unlike the weeping girl she had been given an answer, an answer spoken in silence, an answer that had chilled her to the bone.

  Drawing her shawl about her, black skirts brushing dew from the ground, Jerusha walked slowly over to the figure huddled in its shawl.

  ‘They be gone, child.’ She bent over Emma, one arm about the heaving shoulders. ‘Let them rest.’

  ‘I want it to be me . . .’ Beneath the shawl Emma’s cries were pitiful. ‘Oh, God, why could it not have been me!’

  ‘Come.’ Urging Emma to her feet then folding her in her arms, Jerusha held her while sob after sob wrenched free from her shaking body. ‘Cry it out,’ she said softly. ‘Cry it out. There be none save Jerusha to hear.’

&
nbsp; Holding Emma half slumped against her, Jerusha guided her a little away from houses, huddled together close as frightened children, then waited until the sobs quieted.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you, Jerusha?’ Lowering the shawl Emma turned tear-washed eyes to the woman standing staring out across the heath. ‘You knew about the fire?’

  The old woman nodded. ‘I knew, child.’

  ‘And the reason for my coming to Plovers Croft?’

  Eyes fixed on the circles of pit wheels outlined against the sky, Jerusha waited. Perhaps the moment she’d thought to be a long way off was already here. Perhaps the time for truth was now. Emma knew one answer, and with hindsight would eventually guess the other. But guessing was not knowing. Only knowledge would salve the hurt, heal the wound.

  ‘Did you know that too, Jerusha? Did you know that Carrie . . .’

  ‘Did I know your sister plunged a knife into her own breast?’ Jerusha drew a long breath. ‘Yes, child, I knew that too. As I know her life ended before the flame was lit, she felt none of its sting.’

  ‘I . . . I didn’t know she had a knife, I didn’t see her take it. Then she said my father . . .’

  ‘He has gone to a judgement more forgiving than any he would have received from the hands of men, and Carrie is at peace now, that is what you must remember.’

  ‘But why did they have to die, Carrie and my mother? They never did harm to anybody. Why didn’t God take me? Mine is the sin!’

  ‘Question not the Lord or His ways, child, trust only His love.’

  ‘His love?’ Bitterness and pain throbbed in Emma’s voice. ‘Trust His love as Carrie trusted our father? Where was the love in what he did to her . . . is that what trust brings? So much torment that a young girl must take her own life. Is that love, Jerusha. Is that love?’

  As the storm of tears broke afresh, Jerusha held the trembling girl. What Caleb Price had done, the sin he had committed against his own child and those of other folk, could never be described as love.