Banishment (Daughters of Mannerling 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

life had decided it was time she began. ‘What is your name?’
    ‘Betty, miss.’
    ‘Then lead the way, Betty.’
    Oh, the misery of that dark square undistinguished hall, the poky narrow wooden staircase, and the bedrooms, one for Isabella and Jessica, one for the twins, and the other for Belinda and Lizzie.
    ‘Well,’ said Isabella to Jessica, ‘here we are.’
    ‘Just look at the carpet,’ said Jessica. ‘It’s
worn
.’
    ‘Quite a number of people do not have carpets in the bedrooms, only bare boards. Oh, dear, they must have taken this furniture with the house. The bed hangings will need to come down and be cleaned. I fear, Jessica, that we are going to have to learn about housework after all.’
    ‘Who will teach us? ’Twould be demeaning to ask the servants.’
    ‘Viscount Fitzpatrick’s aunt, Mrs Kennedy, would be delighted to help us.’
    ‘That peasant woman! You said she was as common as the barber’s chair.’
    A painful blush rose up Isabella’s cheeks. ‘Do not remind me of that. Has it ever occurred to you, Jessica, that we have been most badly brought up?’
    ‘We were brought up as befitted our station,’ said Jessica stoutly.
    ‘I do not think so.’ Isabella opened the window and let in a gust of cold damp air and looked down at the scrubby garden and balding lawn. She swung round. ‘Perhaps had our servants at Mannerling been treated by us as people rather than as machines, we might have been able to command a certain loyalty when disaster struck us. But, no, not us. Not the famous Beverleys.’
    ‘Really, Isabella. You are beginning to talk like a Whig!’
    ‘Perhaps. Losing Mannerling is like a death. We must learn to live with our grief. There is no hope we will ever get our home back. We must make the best of things here. I do not think Mama even knows how to train maids.’
    ‘The cook-housekeeper will do that.’
    ‘Mayhap. Let’s explore the rest of our new home.’
    There was a dining room off one side of the hall and a drawing room off the other. A long dark passage led to the kitchen at the back and to a cloakroom, study, and parlour. On the first floor were six bedrooms, the sisters in three, Sir William and Lady Beverley in two, and one left spare for a guest. The attics were for the servants.
    At the back of the house were several outbuildings and a privy, a small carriage house, and stabling for a mere two horses.
    Their first meal in their new home was a disaster. The untrained maids clattered noisily about with the dishes, the port had not been decanted, and the food! Beverley palates accustomed to the best French cuisine tasted with dismay dry meat, lumpy gravy, and watery vegetables.
    ‘This will not do, Mama,’ said Isabella, putting down her knife and fork. ‘Who is this cook-housekeeper, and how did we come by her?’
    ‘I do not know, my dear,’ said Lady Beverley wanly. ‘I do not concern myself with such things. Mr Ducket had to engage servants from the town at the last moment and it is hard to get qualified servants at a moment’s notice.’
    ‘Then, if we have to make do with what we have, she will need to be trained.’
    ‘By whom?’ wailed Lady Beverley. ‘Mrs Pearce is quite a rough woman and will brook no interference in the kitchen.’
    ‘We will see about that,’ said Isabella. She found it hard to even look at her father, he who had ruined their lives with his silly gambling. He was drunk, she noticed, not jolly or rowdy, but almost as if drugged, sitting gazing vacantly into space with a fixed smile on his lips.
    After dinner she wrote a letter to Mrs Kennedy, saying she would call on her the following afternoon, and then went in search of the odd man. She found him in one of the outbuildings, chopping logs.
    ‘Weather’s turned uncommon sharp, Miss Isabella,’ said Barry. ‘Best to be prepared.’
    Isabella gave him a shilling and the letter. ‘Would you be so good as to deliver that to Mrs Kennedy at