The Promise Read Online Free PDF Page B

mother she felt a little saddened and worried by her worldliness. How would she be able to bring a daughter up to be chaste, to teach her that she must obey her husband and all the many rules of etiquette so she would fit in with polite society, when Belle herself had flaunted them all?
    She watched the young couple until they turned the corner up by the heath, then looked down to her left, toying with the idea of closing up as the street was now deserted. There was a heat haze on the road further down, which looked like a pool of water. She wondered if that was what a mirage was, for she’d heard that people in deserts often saw water ahead when it wasn’t really there.
    All at once a strident yell and the sound of rumbling carriage wheels broke Belle out of her reverie.
    Looking back to her right, she saw a small carriage drawn by two brown horses was being reined in by the driver, and at the horses’ feet a woman was lying crumpled on the ground. The driver must have been going at quite a speed, and it looked as if she had walked out right into his path.
    As Belle darted to help, the driver climbed down from the carriage.
    ‘She stepped out without looking. I could have driven right over her,’ he gasped, his face ashen with fright.
    ‘You did well to stop,’ Belle said as she knelt down by the woman.
    Her hat had fallen off and her fair hair was hiding her face. Belle smoothed her hair back cautiously, half expecting that she would have a grievous injury if one of the horses’ hooves had struck her a glancing blow. But there was no blood, just a graze on her forehead which appeared to be from hitting the ground. Whether she had tripped and then been knocked unconscious by the fall, or had fainted, Belle didn’t know as she hadn’t seen it happen. The woman was young, perhaps in her early twenties, and very well dressed in a pale blue gown.
    ‘Can you hear me?’ Belle asked, running her eyes over the woman’s body, looking for anything that might suggest further injuries.
    The woman’s eyelids fluttered and then opened. ‘What happened?’ she asked, her voice faint and indistinct.
    ‘I think you must have fainted, but you were lucky you weren’t mown down by the carriage,’ Belle said. ‘Can you move your arms and legs?’
    The woman looked at Belle vacantly, clearly in shock.
    Belle turned her head to look at the driver, a small, plump man wearing green livery. He was wringing his hands and appeared equally shocked. ‘Did you actually hit her?’ she asked.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘She just walked off the pavement and as I yelled at her she dropped like a stone. I pulled so hard on the reins it was a wonder the horses didn’t rear up. She might have been struck by a hoof, but I was that close to her I couldn’t see past the horses. But it weren’t my fault.’
    ‘No, of course not,’ Belle said, and pulled the woman’s dress down to cover her legs. ‘There isn’t any blood, and she seems stunned rather than injured. I think she fainted.’
    A few people had gathered now, and though Belle knew you weren’t supposed to move someone with an injury, she couldn’t leave the woman in the road. She saw a big, dark-haired man among the bystanders, and beckoned to him. ‘Could you help me get her into my hat shop?’ she asked. ‘I could call a doctor from there.’
    ‘I’m all right,’ the woman said in a quavering voice. ‘If you’d just help me up.’
    The big man came forward, leaned over and lifted the woman as if she weighed nothing. Belle picked up the blue hat lying in the road and indicated where her shop was.
    ‘You look shaken up too,’ she said to the carriage driver. ‘Would you like to come in as well and I’ll make you a cup of tea?’
    ‘That’s kind of you, miss,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got to pick up the mistress.’
    Belle had learned in her time in Blackheath that servants were often very nervous of displeasing their employers. ‘Well, if you are sure