Kitty Read Online Free PDF

however, she encountered a basket of large green leaves, shiny on one side but pale and almost furry in texture on the other. She used one and found it to be really rather effective.
    ‘What are the leaves in the privy?’ she asked Rebecca as she passed through the kitchen again.
    Rebecca smiled. ‘Rangiora. We don’t get a lot of newspapers here, and it works just as well.’
    Kitty smiled back and turned to go, but stopped when she felt a light touch on her arm.
    ‘Wait a moment, dear,’ Rebecca said. ‘Sit down.’
    Kitty hesitated, then tightened the sash of her dressing-gown and perched on the edge of a wooden chair.
    Rebecca said, ‘Forgive me for being so blunt, but I frankly don’t accept what your aunt said about your reasons for coming out here. I think there’s more to it than that. You don’t seem to be a very happy girl to me.’
    Kitty remained silent.
    ‘You didn’t choose to come, did you?’ Rebecca said. ‘Somebody chose for you.’
    Her eyes filling with hot, unbidden tears, Kitty dug her fingernails into her palms and willed herself not to cry.
    Rebecca stirred the porridge again, then wiped her hands on her apron. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but it might help if you talked about it. Problems often seem smaller if you share them with someone else. Other than God, I mean.’
    The simmering porridge made a faintly vulgar plopping noise. Kitty thought about her aunt, and how her mouth always turned resolutely down at the mere mention of a delicate or personal matter. She knew that as far as Sarah Kelleher was concerned you told those sorts of things only to God, and even then only if they were fit for His ears. Otherwise, you kept them strictly to yourself.
    Then she looked at the woman in front of her, who in less than twenty-four hours had shown her more understanding than her aunt had in five months.
    And it all came out.
    England, Summer, 1838
    Kitty knew she looked fetching—even the dull black of mourning crepe complemented her obsidian hair and pale skin—but the knowledge wasn’t enough to bolster her mood. She felt miserable because she missed her beloved father terribly, anxious because a certain gentleman she was desperate to see still hadn’t arrived, and irritated at having to sit about being polite to people she either didn’t know or didn’t particularly like. Also, she was bored.
    She didn’t enjoy garden parties, and was well aware that she and her mother had been invited to this one only because her uncle and aunt were about to depart intrepidly for the distant and mysterious Antipodes. She was surprised that the invitation had been accepted—it was not normally the done thing so early in a period of mourning—but her mother had muttered something about the importance of a family presence, so here they were.
    As far as Kitty was aware, no one from Dereham, Norfolk, had travelled to New Zealand before, and certainly not in the employ of the Church Missionary Society—if it could be called employment, because by all accounts Uncle George and Aunt Sarah would have to fend more or less for themselves when they got there. But Uncle George was chafing at the bit to go, and Aunt Sarah had always steadfastly accommodated his ambitions. Not necessarily with a smile, because she didn’t smile overly often, but submission to the wishes of her husband was a wife’s lot, especially the wife of an evangelist low-church Anglican minister.
    Kitty waved her black lace fan briskly in front of her face, but it did little to dissipate the late summer afternoon heat. Her stays were laced too tightly, and she could feel the sweat from her armpits and back soakinginto the fabric of her dress. She sat up straighter, glancing surreptitiously at the other guests to see if the certain gentleman had arrived yet, but lowered her eyes quickly when she noted her mother’s pointed stare. If Emily Carlisle knew what her daughter had been up to of late, then Kitty would without doubt be