So saying he turned and made off across the square and after a moment Rose followed him. He stopped at a horse and cart tethered at the far end of the square. The back of the cart was covered in a film of white and there were several hessian sacks in one corner. ‘You an’ the bairn all right there?’

‘Yes. Yes, thank you.’ She scrambled up and settled herself behind his plank seat just as the first of the snowflakes began to fall.

‘Hold on then, it can get a bit bumpy but better than shanks’s pony, eh?’ Once he was in his seat, after untying the reins, he clicked for the horse to move off.

Rose, her heart thudding fit to burst, watched the disappearing view of the square as she cuddled Betsy close. For better or worse another stage of her life was beginning but as the miller had said, she and Betsy would have a roof over their heads and full stomachs, and it sounded as though she would be the sole mistress of his house which was far better than having to take orders from another woman. This would work out, she would make it work.

PART TWO

Out of the Frying Pan

1904

Chapter Nine

The last eighteen months had been quiet ones on the whole for Rose as the housekeeper of Vickers Mill House. The forming of a new militant movement to gain the vote for women – the Women’s Social and Political Union – had passed her by, along with Marie Curie, a French scientist, becoming the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Arthur Vickers never bought a newspaper when he went into town for the simple reason that he couldn’t read, and even if he had heard of these events, he wouldn’t have reported them back to Rose. He believed women should know their place, which was serving men, and it was foolish to give them ideas above their station.

The house was quite separate from the mill. It was set some fifty yards away in a small incline, and had its own yard as well as a square area of grass where the chickens had their run and coop. In the whole time she’d been at the house, Rose had only seen the lad who came from the nearest hamlet every day apart from Sunday to help Arthur in the mill – just twice, and then from a distance. Arthur had made it plain on her first day that she was not to set foot in the mill, not that she wished to. Keeping house and caring for Betsy and seeing to the chickens suited her just fine.