Foxden Hotel (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 5) by Madalyn Morgan (ebook reader ink txt) 📕

suppose not, except all the time she’s worked here she has never mentioned a niece. Who’s to say the child isn’t hers. If she’d had her in the war and there wasn’t a father in the picture, the vicar and his wife could be bringing her up. That would be a good reason for Maeve to visit Kirby Marlow regularly, don’t you think?’

‘It would.’ Henry got up and sat next to his wife. ‘And if that is the case, it is none of our business. Leave the poor woman to get on with her life,’ Henry said, kissing Ena.

‘Shall we go down and tell Bess, or…?’ Giggling, Ena laid back on the bed and stretched.

Henry checked his watch. ‘There’s plenty of time,’ he said, laying down next to her.

Maeve wasn’t on reception when Ena and Henry went down for tea. The office door stood open so Ena called, ‘Coo-ee?’ and they entered.

Maeve was bending down talking to Aimee, or rather listening while Aimee told her and Bess about the pony and the pigs - and how she had looked for eggs with Uncle Frank. ‘Tea time is the wrong time of the day,’ Aimee explained, with the authority of a seven-year-old going on forty. ‘I shall have to get up early in the morning if I want to collect the eggs.’

Maeve stood up and acknowledged Ena and Henry with a smile. ‘I had better get back to my post,’ she said, and left the room.

‘Maeve has a niece,’ Bess said, with surprise in her voice. ‘Her name is Nancy and she’s going to bring her over to play with Aimee. So, because Aimee won’t be here on her actual birthday, she’s going to be like a fairy queen and have two birthdays, aren’t you darling?’ Aimee nodded. ‘I thought, as there are a couple of children in the hotel this week, we’d have a tea party. We’ve decided on Thursday afternoon, after school, so Nancy can come. What do you think?’ Bess looked from Ena to Henry.

‘I think it’s a lovely idea,’ Ena said, ‘don’t you, Henry?’ Aimee squealed and clapped her hands before Henry had time to answer.

‘That’s settled then. I think you should send out some invitations, Aimee,’ Bess said. ‘Why not write to Nancy first, then her aunt can take it home with her when she finishes work today.’

Aimee ran over to the seat beneath the window to where she had left her paper and pencils. ‘I shall draw Nancy a birthday cake,’ she announced.

Bess savoured every minute of the hour she had off on Saturdays. When the hotel’s guests who were leaving had vacated their rooms, which was any time between breakfast and eleven, the cleaners and chamber maids went in to prepare the rooms for new guests who were booked in from twelve.

Bess strolled around what was left of the old Foxden Estate: the park, the walled garden, and the lake. This morning because Aimee was with her it was, as always, the lake first to see the ducks.

The sun’s reflection on the still water looked like silver silk. ‘Don’t go near the edge, Aimee,’ Bess called to the excited child.

Bess kicked off her shoes, picked them up by their heels and ran across the peacock lawn, catching up with Aimee on the north side of the lake. She sat down on the grass and stretched out her legs. Aimee ran to her, sat down next to her and did the same. Looking at Bess’s feet, and then her own, she began to take off her sandals. ‘Where are the ducks?’ the little girl asked, undoing the buckles.

‘They must be in the rushes on the other side of the lake,’ Bess said. ‘Don’t take your shoes off, Aimee. The grass is long over there, you might step on a thistle or a stinging nettle.’

Aimee frowned. She opened her mouth, but before she had time to argue that if Bess was barefoot, why couldn’t she be, Bess slipped her feet back into her shoes. Checking the leather straps across Aimee’s instep to make sure each was safely caught in the pin of the buckle, she stood up. ‘Ready?’

Strolling round the lake with Aimee reminded Bess of the Land Girls that she had worked with during the war. In the winter, as soon as the lake froze, they would be skating on it. Three of them were accomplished skaters and when the village children came up to Foxden to skate on the lake, they acted as lifeguards. Bess smiled remembering the fun they’d had.

She had worked and lived with the Land Girls for five years; it was no wonder that they had become like sisters. She looked across at the grazing meadow on the other side of the drive leading down to the River Swift. It had once yielded root vegetables and beyond that there had been fields of wheat and corn.

Turning Foxden’s fields and meadows into arable land had been hard work. The women were up before dawn to start work as soon as it was light and rarely, if ever, did they finish until dusk - and often in appalling conditions. From potato picking and digging up vegetables in torrential rain, breaking the ice on water troughs for the livestock in the outer meadows in winter, to getting burned in the mid-day sun and being stung by all manner of flying creatures at harvest time - they never complained.

Bess, suddenly aware that Aimee was calling her, looked to where the child was standing. Riveted to the spot, her back as straight as a poker, with an expression on her face that was somewhere between excitement and terror, Aimee stood in the middle of a family of ducks. Bess approached slowly so she didn’t frighten the two adult ducks who were protectively leading their family of downy ducklings around the little girl to the lake.

When