Friendship's Bond Read Online Free

sky after summer rain? Had that caused him to toss the slim volume aside and catch her to him, his body pressing close against hers?
    In his memory he felt again the hard jerk, the drive of tautening flesh that had ripped through him when at last that enticing body had touched his own. He had heard the soft cry as she came into his arms, felt the quiver running through her as his mouth closed over hers become stronger as his hand closed about her breast. He had begun to release the buttons of her dress, the tremor rippling along her spine a silent testimony to the pleasure of his touch.
    ‘ There is no need of money ,’ he had released her mouth just long enough to say, ‘ payment in kind is much more satisfactory. ’
    There had been a tangled moan as his mouth again took hers, a sound he had taken to be that of acquiescence.
    But it had been no sign of compliance.
    Snatching up the rent book he stared at it, anger coursing along his veins. Her words throbbed in his brain, adding to the resentment of rejection.
    ‘ Get away from me . . . ’
    She had twisted from his arms, almost running to the far side of the cramped room. An obvious shudder had shaken her whole body as she looked at him.
    ‘ Take the money and go, don’t . . . don’t ever come here again, I will bring the rent to the chapel every week. ’
    But that would have given rise to talk, speculation as to the reason why she would give up the tenancy of a comfortable home when she had nowhere else to go. What had decided her on such a move? Such conjecture might conceivably become enquiry and that he could not allow.
    And so he had lied and she had been evicted.
    He had thought that would be an end to it, the threat of what she knew gone along with her from the town.
    Except she was not gone from the town. A fresh wave of anger surged hot but beneath it there was another feeling, a slow ebb tide of anxiety.
    Ann Spencer and Leah Marshall. His fingers tightened about the slim book, screwing it up into a tube. Two women sharing one house; two women either of whom could cause the downfall of Thomas Thorpe.

Chapter 3
    ‘Let the lad find his own way, it’ll go easier for the both o’ you if he don’t feel tied down.’
    ‘But farm work is heavy and I don’t think he is used to that.’
    ‘Hmmph!’ Leah’s snort echoed along the whitewashed walls of the small outbuilding she had turned into a dairy. ‘He won’t never get used to it neither lessen he be given the chance. Seems to me the lad has more’n a fair share o’ common sense, should a task prove too much then he’ll say it do.’
    But would he? Ann gathered wooden pats she and Leah had used to shape rich golden butter into small rectangular blocks and carried them into the house. After placing them in the scullery’s shallow brownstone sink she went to fetch the kettle from where it hung above the living-room fire. When she reached for it a spurt of steam gushed from the spout, the same pressure setting the lid clanging noisily, and in the instant she was back in Ploschad Morskoy Slavy, the great Square of Maritime Glory in St Petersburg, the harsh cry of horns announcing the arrival and departure of ships, the steam from their funnels hissing like enormous terrifying sea creatures of fairy tales. That dreadful scene had however been part of no fairy story but a frightening reality.
    The Russian language had proved almost impossible to learn, so that her trips to the market to purchase food became a daily struggle to make herself understood; the walks she had taken around the city to alleviate the loneliness of that tiny house got her lost many times, including that day walking to the seaport in order to save what she could of her money.
    Ploschad Suvorova, Aptekarsky, Bolshoi, Prospekt, names difficult to interpret in themselves made the more so by many of the Cyrillic letters appearing what to her was the wrong way round. It had proved virtually useless to ask direction of people hurrying