He thought of the meat pie they’d had last night at the inn and was tempted; he left the beef and bread on the plate, left his cap and scarf on the chair and followed her across to the table where she was sitting, taking the end seat next to her. None of the grown-ups who were busy chatting or giving a child a telling-off seemed to notice him. A plate of meat pie was put in front of him and with only a fraction of hesitation, before the little girl nudged him as her food was served too, he began to eat.
Delia slipped back into the room and saw him sitting at another table talking to a little girl next to him. There was a hum of conversation as plates of food were handed round there and she licked her lips. Money no object, then. She cast her eyes to the sharp-faced young woman and saw that she was pregnant. Delia’s mouth trembled, and glancing towards the red-haired man she took a bitter breath and muttered an appropriate expletive for the one who had taken a young girl’s innocence without so much as a word of love. She turned up her coat collar and buried her face in her woollen shawl. A quick scan round the table saw a clutch of girls; the only boy was her own son. She gave a cynical smile.
But she was frightened. As frightened and desperate now as she had been ten years ago with a decision to make. Her heart hammered, and she felt a pulse drumming in her throat and ears. With trembling fingers she picked up the remains of the bread and beef, sandwiching them together and wrapping them in a serviette, and turned to leave the room. She turned again to look back from the doorway and saw her son tucking in to the hot dinner. Her eyes filled. How her boy loved his food. She put her hand to her mouth and breathed a silent kiss. Goodbye, Jack.
CHAPTER FOUR
The older woman, Peggy Robinson, took off her coat and loosened the warm shawl at her neck. Their table was close enough to the fire to feel the heat on her back. She glanced about her; all the usual regulars were there, the farmers and the smallholders, and some of the estate managers, who didn’t sit at the tables like the rest of them but propped up the bar counter with a pint of mild or bitter in their hands. From her position she could see through the open doorway into the main bar, which was packed with customers. There were more people here for the hiring fair than there would be on a normal market day.
She saw people she knew and a few she didn’t, and one of those was the back of a young woman in a coat fit for town and not for country, with a flurry of scarves floating behind her and a felt hat on her dark hair, trying to push her way out through the throng. Peggy looked along her family’s table. Next to her, her husband Aaron was chatting over his shoulder to an acquaintance; Jack, their red-haired son, was standing at the end of the table, chewing the cud with a mate, his arms folded across his chest. Next to Aaron was their daughter-in-law Susan, with her usual scowl; was she ever happy, Peggy wondered? She persistently spoke with a sharp tongue and a rejoinder to cut anyone down to size; except for me, Peggy thought shrewdly. She had taught Jack’s wife a long time ago that she wouldn’t stand any nonsense from her.
At the table next to theirs were Peggy’s older brothers and sisters and their kin. Her sisters, who had married out of farming, with their sons; her farm worker brothers with their daughters, and their grandchildren a mixture of each. She gave a little grin. All the men had longed for sons to carry on in farming after them but it hadn’t happened. She alone of the sisters had been the one to turn a fisherman into a farmer and give him a son, but now Jack couldn’t produce a male child either. Serves him right, she thought grimly. He shouldn’t have got caught and married that harridan. She had always had her suspicions, and the sweet child Louisa looked nothing like either of them.
Her daughter Jenny wasn’t here; she’d escaped from the country as soon as she was old enough, became a teacher and taught and lived in Hull; at twenty-eight she had never married, nor intended to unless she found a man who would treat her as an equal. She said that other people’s children were enough for her.
The serving girl was coming with another stack of plates filled with food. The children had been served and now it was the turn of the adults.
‘Sit down, Jack,’ Susan called harshly. ‘Food’s coming!’
‘I can see that.’ His answer was equally abrupt. ‘I’ve got eyes in my head.’ He turned to his friend and muttered something and the other man grinned.
Peggy’s eyes glinted and then roamed along the other side of the table where Jack’s girls sat. Rosie, the youngest, was bright and sparky with flaming red hair and freckles, and at six could hold her own with her older sisters. Next to her was golden-haired Emma, a year older and as argumentative as her mother. Then Molly, placid and dreamy, but known to stamp her feet if she couldn’t have her own way, living in her own eight-year-old world, which would for ever remain the same. They all had the Robinson appearance with shades of red to gold hair and pale skin that burned and freckled; all except Louisa, the eldest at ten, the quiet one, with nut-brown shiny straight hair and cocoa-brown eyes flecked with gold. But who—
Her gaze was
