A Carriage for the Midwife Read Online Free Page B

at the empty sky.
     
    The day that was to change Sophia Glover’s life began inauspiciously enough. A fire had been lit in the library, and she had set the boys to write an essay on the countryside in winter.
    ‘May we not play beggar-my-neighbour, Sophy?’ asked Osmond, restless with the long confinement indoors. ‘I vow that I’ll be thankful to see even the old rector’s study again, for ’tis poor sport here with a woman for tutor,’ he added in a lower tone but still loud enough for his cousin to hear. He got up and sauntered over to the window, his hands in his pockets. ‘How merrily would we glide down the slope if we had Henry’s sledge! Cannot a manservant be sent to Hansfords’ for it?’
    ‘Indeed not, Osmond. Come back to the table, you are disturbing your sisters,’ replied Sophia, suppressing a strong desire to box his ears. The girls were fidgety and inattentive when their brothers were present, and no sooner had they settled to their tasks than Osmond jumped up again.
    ‘Look there, out of the window, is not that the carrier’s horse?’ he cried.
    They all ran to look, and sure enough, the old horse usually seen drawing Dick the carrier’s cart was now making his slow way along the white track that had been dug in the snow from the front gate round to the stable-yard. Dick and his son were on foot.
    ‘Come on, let’s go down and find out what news they bring!’ said Osmond, glad of any diversion, and rushed from the room without a backward glance. The others followed, clattering down the backstairs to the servants’ quarters, the domain of Martin the butler and his wife.
    Sophia rested her elbows on the table and let her head fall between her hands. Keeping her young cousins occupied during this severe weather was weary work – but what would become of her when they no longer needed her? What was she, after all, but a nobody, a bastard offshoot beholden to the Calthorpes for a roof over her head? It was seven years since she and Bever House had been placed in the care of her cousin Calthorpe by her grandfather, old Lord de Bever, who had built the manor house forty years ago and brought his beautiful girl-bride Sophia Calthorpe over the threshhold; nobody could have foreseen at that time how soon the ancient name would die out. The death of Sophia in giving birth to their only son, Humphrey, who had himself died in agony with an inflammation of the bowel before he was twenty, had turned Lord de Bever into a bitter and disillusioned man, and at sixty he had quitted Beversley for London, to live out the rest of his life in St James’s Square.
    But first he had summoned his wife’s nephew to assume ownership of the estate.
    ‘No need to wait till I’m dead, Calthorpe,’ he had said bluntly. ‘You might as well learn to hold the reins now as later. And those boys of yours will need to be brought up as responsible landowners – they are but toddling yet, but they’ll have to learn thrift, for ye’ll not get my money till I’ve gone.’
    Osmond Calthorpe bowed. ‘I shall devote myself to the estate and to Beversley, Uncle,’ he had replied, hoping that Gertrude would show equal discretion, and not rejoice too openly at their sudden advancement.
    Lord de Bever gave a grunt. ‘Hm. And there is one important condition.’
    ‘You have only to name it, Uncle.’
    ‘It concerns my granddaughter, Sophia Glover, sired by my son on a sempstress before he died, and the mother soon followed. I’ve kept the poor orphan at Bever House, and though I never gave her my name, I’ve settled an annuity on her, and you are to make a place for her here with your children. She’s in her thirteenth year, a quiet, devout little thing, but no fool. She can read, write, sew and play the pianoforte. She’ll be no trouble to you.’
    Calthorpe had bowed again and promised that his cousin Sophia could count on a home with his family for as long as she needed a roof over her head.
    ‘I shall send for