She stood up and walked over to the window, looking out into the courtyard below as her mind wandered. When she had been old enough to leave the workhouse, the master had arranged a job for her as a kitchen maid at a big house near Mowbray Park. The cook there had been full of old sayings and proverbs, and one she remembered was ‘Big oaks from little acorns grow’. Right at this moment she felt like a little acorn, but she intended to grow, as much for Betsy as herself. She wanted to give her daughter a secure home and good food, shoes on her feet and clothes on her back. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it? At least in the workhouse she’d never had to go barefoot, like those little bairns today, but in truth she would have preferred that to carrying the stigma of the workhouse with her. Sometimes even now she felt it would be with her until she died, that it was in her very bones. When she was a young lass she couldn’t imagine that any lad would ever look the side she was on; she’d felt that the mark of her beginnings was written across her forehead.

A large part of her love for Davey had been gratefulness.

The thought came sharply and without warning, shocking her. She stared blindly now, looking back in time. She’d loved Davey, she told herself painfully, of course she had. Maybe not as he had loved her, but then in any relationship one person loves more. That was natural. And yes, she might have been grateful to him and thankful that he didn’t see her as second-rate or inferior, but she’d cared deeply for him, appreciating the good and kind man he had been. But for the accident she would have been content with him for the rest of her life.

Suddenly annoyed with the introspection, she clicked her tongue irritably. She’d made Davey happy and in so doing she had been happy too. What was wrong with that? This was all Amy’s doing, going on about love at first sight and Frank still making her weak at the knees. And in truth she didn’t want anyone to make her feel weak at the knees, she acknowledged fiercely. In fact she would hate it. To give a man that sort of power over her would be terrifying. She wanted nothing more than to be left alone to bring Betsy up as Davey would have wanted, that was all she asked.

Nevertheless, her thoughts had disturbed her and it took her a long while to fall asleep when she went to bed, Betsy curling into her like a small animal in a burrow, and when her dreams came they were more in the form of nightmares once again, dark threatening figures chasing her and shouting her name.

Chapter Fourteen