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Back Sisters of Gold
Chapters (64)
  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Dedication page
  4. A Week’s Work in Birmingham
  5. I
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. II
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. III
  47. Forty
  48. Forty-One
  49. Forty-Two
  50. Forty-Three
  51. Forty-Four
  52. Forty-Five
  53. Forty-Six
  54. Forty-Seven
  55. Forty-Eight
  56. Forty-Nine
  57. Fifty
  58. Fifty-One
  59. Fifty-Two
  60. Fifty-Three
  61. Acknowledgements
  62. Further Reading
  63. About the Author
  64. By the Same Author

‘You are an astonishingly fine young woman, do you know that, Margaret?’ He laughed at her confusion. ‘No – of course you don’t. And that is one of the things that makes you so lovely.’ He looked at her intently. Slowly he said, ‘I can see things in you which I don’t believe you even know are there . . . Such qualities . . .’

She was looking down into her lap now, overwhelmed by this attention, these compliments. Her face, for so long pallid, was hot with blushes.

‘Do look at me, Margaret, will you?’

She managed to raise her head. His flinty eyes, which she had so often seen cast heavenward, were fixed on her. Here he was, so close that the creases of his black jacket, the pores of his pale skin and bristles of his beard, the sharp, well-defined nose, were all intensely visible. She could hear each of his breaths and the hairs on her body stood on end.

‘Might you do one thing for me, Margaret?’ he said in a tender voice.

She began to tremble. What did this mean? Did Charles . . . Was he about to put into words feelings which she could hardly believe he would ever feel for her? No, she told herself – what a fool she was. He would ask for some errand in the village, some assistance in his godly work. After all, she was so much younger than he. How could he possibly be thinking of her in any other way?

‘Of course,’ she said in a low voice. ‘What is it?’

He sat back, resting his right elbow on the arm of the couch and still not moving his gaze from her.

‘I always think a woman looks at her most lovely when she sits like this –’ He laid his left hand on the small of her back and she straightened. ‘Delicately upright. The hair perhaps like this . . .’ Gently he lifted her long plait and laid it so that it fell forward over her right shoulder. ‘And with the ankles crossed in front.’

Margaret crossed her ankles.

‘There.’ He gazed at her, seeming entranced. Margaret felt that no one had ever looked at her the way Charles Barber looked at her.

‘But your father doesn’t want you to marry him – is that it?’ Aunt Harriet said, as if impatient to get to the crux of the matter.

Margaret lowered her eyes, unable to hold her aunt’s gaze. This explanation, handed to her for the moment, was what would have to do. She just could not put into words the feeling of those nights, Annie and herself together in their bedroom, the chest of drawers shifted in front of the door, knowing that he was lying in the room next to theirs.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘That’s the problem.’

Thirteen

Thirteen

September 1904