The Painter's Apprentice Read Online Free

black as her father’s nor as pale as her mother’s, worked at the table peeling a
     mountain of carrots and potatoes.
    ‘Are we too early for breakfast, Peg?’ asked Beth.
    ‘The fire in the hall hasn’t taken yet. It’s warmer here.’
    ‘Do you mind eating in the kitchen, Noah?’
    ‘Not at all, if we won’t be in the way?’
    ‘Always room at my table, sir,’ said Peg, a smile on her freckled face.
    Sara cut bread for them and brought cheese, ale and cold meat.
    ‘I think you have already met Emmanuel, Sara’s father, in the courtyard last night?’
    ‘I certainly did,’ said Noah, smiling at Sara, who dimpled and curtsyed.
    ‘Emmanuel has been with the family since he was a boy. And this is Phoebe and Jennet who are plucking chickens for our dinner.
     Phoebe was our nurse and Jennet has been with our family for ever.’
    ‘Jennet?’ said Noah. ‘My father talks about a Jennet who used to make delicious little sugar cakes for him.’
    A smile broke across Jennet’s broad pock-marked face. ‘You’re the dead spit of Master Tom!’ she said.
    ‘He remembers that you were kind to him after his mother died.’
    The door to the garden opened and a young man soberly dressed in a dark brown coat came in with a swirl of wind.
    ‘Close that door, Joseph!’ said Phoebe. ‘You’re bringing in the cold.’
    ‘Yes, Mammy,’ said Joseph. He winked at Sara, who blushed, and then he gave Noah a wide smile, his teeth very white in his
     nut-brown face. ‘Good morning, sir.’
    ‘Joseph is our steward,’ said Beth. ‘I believe you also met him last night, Noah?’
    ‘Indeed.’ Noah nodded his head curtly but was then unable to resist responding to Joseph’s infectious smile.
    Once the servants had turned back to their tasks, Noah said in an undertone, ‘That must be the Joseph my father mentioned
     to me? Your birth father’s son?’
    ‘He told you about that?’ said Beth, her cheeks flushing.
    ‘He thought I should know, as I was coming to England, in case I unwittingly said anything to cause your family embarrassment.’
    ‘My birth father, Henry Savage,’ said Beth, her colour still high, ‘was Father’s cousin. He grew up with Phoebe on his family’s
     plantation and they fell in love. Joseph was born some five years before Henry married Mama. After Henry died, Father was
     determined that his cousin’s child would have an education.’
    ‘He has a great sense of responsibility.’
    ‘Indeed he has. But when Mama first told me about Joseph some years ago it upset me a great deal.’
    ‘These things happen in the best of houses.’
    ‘I know but I thought …’ She bit her lip. ‘I thought it meant that Father, William that is, didn’t really love me as I’d always
     believed but was simply doing his Christian duty by me in the same way that he took on the responsibility for Joseph.’
    ‘
Is
there a difference in the way he treats you and your siblings?’
    ‘He’s too much of a gentleman for that. But it’s what he feels in his heart that matters to me. And I’ve never been able to
     find theanswer to that question. In any case, Johannes arrived at Merryfields at the time I was so very unhappy and he cares for me
     now as if I were the daughter he never had.’ She was suddenly conscious that she’d voiced aloud to a near-stranger the doubts
     about Father that still troubled her. Mortified, she stood up. ‘Let me show you the rest of Merryfields.’
    ‘I’d like that.’
    Beth took Noah to the library first. She took down a collection of Donne’s poetry and showed it to him. ‘This was one of Grandfather
     Cornelius’s books,’ she said. ‘Father saved them from Grandfather’s apothecary shop just before it burned down in the Great
     Fire.’
    Noah took the book and reverently ran his finger over it, smoothing the blackened corner of the calfskin cover. ‘It’s strange
     to touch a book that once upon a time my grandfather held in his own hand.’
    Beth replaced