All I Want Is You Read Online Free PDF

say. But it was wonderful, Sophie. I thought it might hurt a little, but it didn’t really.’ She was silent a moment. ‘When he kissed me – when he felt me, down there, and was so gentle with me – it was wonderful. I love him, so much.’
    Again I felt a tremor run through me. ‘Nell. Aren’t you scared?’
    ‘About having a baby? No, he told me I was all right, so long as we choose the right time of the month. Anyway, my Eddie says he’ll marry me, Sophie!’
    I said nothing else, but I thought of my mother, and how the man I’d called my father had left her. I thought that anyone who gave themselves as lightly as Nell had done was a fool, though I didn’t have to worry about men anyway, because no one was interested in me.
    With Nell in love, I was lonelier than ever. I still wrote to Mr Maldon, even though he’d told me he wouldn’t be writing to me any longer. I’d already told him about the funeral, and how poor Lord Edwin was so very young.
Mrs Burdett was extremely angry
, I wroteto him on a lighter note,
because she caught Robert the footman showing Betsey how to do the foxtrot in the dining hall the other day…
    Then I put my pen down. I wanted to write,
I wish I could tell you how much your kindness meant to me, on the day my mother died. I wish we could meet again.
But I didn’t. I finished my letter, and then it was time for me to do the washing-up in the scullery.
    I looked at my hands and suddenly realised they were as red and work-worn as my poor mother’s had been.

Chapter Three
    In September that year there was a big house party for Lord Edwin’s tenth birthday. The Duke, confined to his bath chair by now, made an effort at jollity, but the Duchess was as poisonous as ever to the young heir. When he arrived with his mother, and the footmen were all lined up in full livery outside the main doors, Robert heard her greeting him with, ‘Dear little Lord Edwin! You’ve not grown any taller, but goodness, how stout you are – what do they feed you on?’
    Quite a few children had been invited to the house party – to keep the young heir entertained, the Duke and Duchess explained graciously – and on the morning of his birthday the Duchess personally insisted the children all go out riding in the grounds. Most of them, the girls as well as the boys, were already confident on horseback, but Lord Edwin was terrified of horses. Billy, one of the grooms, told us about it afterwards.
    ‘Her Grace the Duchess came along and insisted we put him up on the most evil-tempered cob in the stables. By gosh, when his little lordship was thrown in the first five minutes and started crying for his nurse, I’ll swear the old witch smirked.’
    That was what they called the Duchess,
the old witch
,though never in the butler’s or the housekeeper’s hearing.
    At the birthday tea, we maids and some of the footmen served sandwiches and jellies in the downstairs parlour, then afterwards Robert organised games for the children, like blind-man’s-buff and pinning the tail on the donkey. Lord Edwin was poor at
everything
, and the Duchess’s cats, which were all over the place, made him sneeze
.
Some of the bigger boys got bored with the donkey game and wanted to play at killing the Hun instead, so Mr Peters announced they could go outside, and they charged about the lawns with their arms outspread pretending to be British airmen, while the girls gathered in a huddle to talk about their frocks and their ponies.
    Lord Edwin was left sitting by himself. I felt sorry for him.
    After a while the adult guests went out into the garden also for their afternoon tea, and I, together with the other maids and footmen, waited on them. The men who’d gathered around the Duke talked solemnly at first, not only about the war, but about a strike throughout the country by the miners and railwaymen. But they stopped their conversation and turned to stare when a blue two-seater motorcar came steadily up the drive and crunched