Fragile Blossoms Read Online Free Page B

morning, rain dripping down my back, I’ll think of ambient temperatures and take comfort.’ He strode into the kitchen pulling his shirt over his head as he went. ‘And you never know if the mood takes me, miserable man that I am, I might jig about a bit.’
    The day continued as heavy and unrelenting as the rain. Albert took the labourers to another job. ‘We were to whiten ceilings but not wi’ muck flying about.’ He hooked his thumb. ‘Why don’t you pop over to the Nelson for a cup of tea! Hangin’ about indoors won’t help.’ He smiled. ‘Not wi’ misery guts in charge.’
    Misery Guts was clearing the attics. Arms braced and head down he swept all before him, sodden rugs and bird’s nests, tangled messes of mice and moth thrown through the window to gather beneath. News spread of a house clearing and a queue formed by the wall. All was going peacefully until a man snatched another’s wire bedspring and a fight broke out.
    Black hair peppered with dust Luke leapt to the window. ‘Get you gone, Nate Sherwood!’ he roared. ‘You’ve thieved your bit of junk now clear off and don’t let me see your ugly mug within a mile of this place!’
    Bedspring a portcullis over his head the man ran.
    ‘Who was that?’ said Julia.
    ‘Nobody worth knowing.’
    ‘I gathered that by your tone.’
    ‘My tone! What’s wrong with my tone? Is this another aspect of me you’d see different? Should I have danced a two-step with him?’
    ‘I don’t know what you should’ve done! I only wonder why it need be so violent. After all it was a bedspring he took not the crown jewels.’
    ‘It was your bed-spring and you don’t want him sleeping on it!’
    ‘It wasn’t my bedspring!’ Julia was sick of his testy ways. ‘It wasn’t anybody’s bedspring! It was junk as you said so why couldn’t he have it?’
    ‘Because he’s a bad ‘un and you don’t want him near anything of yours!’
    ‘Such a fuss!’
    ‘There was no fuss until he came. If you’d nothing against folk taking stuff neither had I! But oughtn’t it be decent folk that benefit from cast-offs not one that spends half his life hurting those that can’t defend themselves and the other half ripping the shirt off an honest man’s back.’
    Julia recalled Luke pulling his shirt over his head and compared his back, the ripping muscles and breadth of shoulders, to the stooped back of the man with the bedspring. She smiled. ‘You had a shirt ripped from your back by such a man did you, Luke Roberts?’
    He saw her smile, heard the scorn in her voice, and colouring left the room.
    Rain or not Julia retreated to the terrace garden. The Mole had been at work there were bulbs in need of securing and footmarks in the border. When she returned to the cottage the attics were empty, the ground beneath the window cleared, and the parlour ceiling in process of being whitened.
    Maggie Jeffers, a maid on loan from the Nelson was mopping floors.
    ‘Everything gone, Maggie? ‘
    ‘Looks like it, ma’m.’
    ‘Did I see you out there earlier?’
    Maggie nodded.
    ‘And did you find anything nice?’
    ‘I wanted the blue ribbons you flung but a parlour maid at the Big House got ‘em. Shame! Blue ribbons mean a wedding in the family.’
    ‘They were terribly tarnished.’
    ‘They might’ve washed.’
    ‘I suppose they might.’ A trunk from the attic stood by the door. ‘I wonder if there are ribbons in here.’ Julia knelt at a chest and Maggie with her. The smell of camphor rose from folds of linen and a not so pleasant smell from Maggie.
    ‘It has to be blue,’ said Maggie, ‘or the spell won’t work. You bind a ribbon to your left wrist seven days and nights. If it stays tied the beloved will come.’
    ‘I’ll remember that should I be looking for the same.’ Julia held up a lace collar. ‘This is pretty and may prove cause of a wedding.’
    A bone to a starving pup the maid snatched the collar and ran.
    ‘Is that wise?’ Luke Roberts