A Brighter Tomorrow - Maggie Ford (thriller novels to read .txt) 📗

As she went to turn away, she’d seen Felix give a sheepish grin.

‘What’s the matter?’ he’d asked, but her annoyance had dissipated and she remembered turning back to him, thinking it suddenly very funny.

She dimly recalled wondering on the way home in the cold, fresh air of the small hours of nineteen hundred and two, whether she might allow him to take the advantage, if he so felt inclined. But she’d thought of Michael. She’d let her guard slip with him and been made a fool of. She still felt horribly abashed and humiliated by it.

Surprisingly, Felix had conducted himself well, even though there had been no apology for his behaviour with the red-haired girl. This morning Ellie was left wondering whether, if she hadn’t been there, he and the strange red-haired girl would have stolen off along that dark passage together? As he’d said, it was perfectly natural to follow one’s instincts in certain circumstances.

Like most she had met last night, he had no prim notions about life, had likely had his fill of women when the chance came, had no trouble drinking himself into a stupor; nor could she really see him drawing back from an occasional dip into drugs, hemp or a pipe of opium. Yet she did like him. After all, it was well known that in society circles many a lady kept a neat little small-bowled pipe on her person for a puff or two to steady her nerves, and laudanum wasn’t always taken merely for medicinal purposes.

Ellie felt she must have derived something from that evening, for she had awoken this morning feeling unexpectedly lively, not even with a headache. Going over to the portrait of her mother, she knew she could finish it.

Better still, where the painting was concerned, surveying her mother’s likeness rekindled the old pain and instinctively she knew that this portrait was going to be the best work she had ever done.

Twenty-Three

At the sound of Mrs Lowe’s voice calling her Dora looked up sharply from the book she was reading in her little side room.

She wished she had a room like Ellie used to have. This one, coming directly off Mrs Lowe’s room, gave her no privacy at all. She had made one or two tentative approaches, asking that she might use the now vacant room, but Doctor Lowe had refused on the grounds that it had been his daughter’s room and was not to be disturbed, which made no sense. So it had been all right for Ellie to have it, but not her.

Mrs Lowe, too, had found obstacles to put in the way. ‘I cannot go running to that room whenever I want you. Dora, I need you by my side.’

It seemed that she was constantly needed, that Mrs Lowe would have sewn her to her skirt if she could. Forever at her beck and call, she felt that the woman was using her to vent her self-inflicted loneliness upon. Dora’s role, as a maid as well as a lady’s companion, was one that never seemed to let up for a moment. She felt more a slave than a paid companion. Even slaves would probably have had some time to themselves, but she… she was expected to be on hand at any moment. She was meant to have days off, but Mrs Lowe seemed to view their days out together as being sufficient.

‘I don’t know why you wish to go off on your own,’ she had said many times when the question arose. ‘Don’t you care for my company, Dora? I do my best to make you happy. I buy you nice things. I take you to select little restaurants for lunch. We go together to the most fashionable shopping streets and to the finest emporiums, such as you would never see if on your own. Isn’t it enough? Is it so boring being with me?’

‘No, of course not,’ Dora would assure her.

‘I have tried to be a good friend to you, Dora. Do I not do enough for you – is that the problem?’

‘Yes, you do.’ She felt that her reply had to be meek, grateful.

‘And am I not kind to you?’

To this Dora would nod in an abashed sort of way. But Mrs Lowe was not all that kind. Dora had known that when she had first taken her on to train her to be a lady’s maid; but when Ellie had apparently become the apple of Doctor Lowe’s eye, so to speak, Mrs Lowe had become quite sweet towards her.

She guessed now that it had been only to make Ellie jealous because, since Ellie had left, Mrs Lowe had changed completely and for the worse. She’d quibble over the least thing and nothing seemed to please her, often being sharp with her – and nothing Dora did was right. Yet the woman clung to her as if she would be utterly lost without her, maybe because she was so ill at ease in social circles.

‘I’m afraid it is inconvenient,’ she’d snapped when this morning Dora had timidly asked yet again if she could have a day off.

It had led to yet another bewildered tirade. ‘I don’t know why you feel the need to go off on your own. Where can you go that I cannot take you? It’s not as if you’ve a family you can visit.’

That last cut deep. ‘On your own’, Mrs Lowe had said. Lately she’d never felt so alone – Mum gone, never a word from Charlie. And Dad? God knew where he was and he seemed unlikely to ever show himself again. As for Ellie, she’d been gone nearly six weeks and hadn’t come nigh or by to see how she was. It was like she didn’t have a sister.

Ellie had sent her a Season’s Greetings card at Christmas, saying she hoped she was coping all right at the Lowes’ without her, but there had been no address to write back to.

The card had come with Doctor Lowe’s