Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [34]
“Stop chattering and sit down, Annie,” he said suddenly.
She lifted her head, surprised. She stared warily at him, wondering what she had done wrong. True, she was a bit late, but he knew she’d been off to the dales so it couldn’t be that, and his shirts were all clean and ironed in the drawer, his socks were darned and the house was immaculate … unless something had happened to one of the lads. “Is it our Josh?” she asked, worriedly wiping her hands on her apron and sitting opposite him.
“Nay, it’s not the lads. It’s Aunt Jessie. Your mother’s cousin, you met her once at the funeral. She went to live up Northumberland way and now she’s died and left you a small fortune. Though I can’t think why she left it to you and not the lads,” he added, tamping the tobacco down in his pipe and puffing out pungent jets of smoke.
“A fortune?” she repeated, stunned.
“Aye, lass. A hundred pounds she’s left you. In memory of your mother. That’s what it said in the will anyway. And that’s a sight more than a workingman makes in a year, so you’ll not go squandering it on frocks and fur tippets and fancy bits of jewelry. No, it’ll go in’t bank wi’ the rest.”
Annie’s round brown eyes grew even rounder as she said slowly, “But that’s my money. Aunt Jessie has left it to me.”
Frank puffed consideringly on his pipe; he wasn’t used to his daughter speaking up against him. “Aye, so it is,” he agreed, “but lasses don’t have bank accounts of their own. So it’ll go along with mine, until you have good need of it, that is.”
Annie met his eyes angrily. A hundred pounds was more money than she had ever dreamed of seeing and now it was hers and she desperately wanted to see it. “Aunt Jessie left it to me, Dad,” she repeated. “I have the right to do what I want with it.”
Frank pushed back his chair, placed his pipe carefully in the big glass ashtray and said coldly, “You don’t have any rights, Annie Aysgarth, and don’t you forget that. You’ll do as you’re told and that’s that.”
Annie’s head drooped. She stared miserably down at her hands, red from housework, with ragged, bitten nails. “Poor Aunt Jessie,” she said, blinking away tears of anger at her own helplessness. “Barely in her grave and we’re quarreling over her money already.”
She looked up and met her father’s eyes. “Please, Dad?” she begged. “I’ve never asked you for anything before.” She watched his set, implacable face with a sinking heart; the money had suddenly become a symbol of the freedom she might decide to buy with it one day…. When Josh was a grown man and had fallen in love with some pretty lass and left her to get married. She caught her breath as she saw a flicker of indecision on her dad’s face. She sighed again as he coughed and picked up his pipe. He sat down at the table and began slowly repacking it with fresh tobacco.
“Well,” he muttered, “it is in memory of your mother. Aunt Jessie said so … though you best keep it somewhere safe, Annie. I’ll not be responsible if it goes missing.”
She sprang to her feet, her eyes shining with gratitude. She wanted to throw her arms around him, but it was impossible, she had never embraced him in her whole life, and instead she said, “Thank you, Dad, and I’ll thank our aunt Jessie in church tomorrow for remembering me. And don’t worry, I’ll keep the hundred pounds under my mattress, where nobody will ever find it.”
She bustled excitedly about, setting the table. The lads would be home any minute, six prompt, the way their dad liked it on a Saturday, so she knew she had better be quick. But this time she hummed a little song to herself as she hurried about her tasks, telling herself that she would save her unexpected fortune for a rainy day.
The disastrous year that changed all their lives was 1906. Annie’s Josh was nineteen and he wasn’t just handsome—he was beautiful. He had dark-lashed gray eyes, a cap of thick dark-blond hair and perfect features. He was tall, lean, and well-muscled. He looked like a classical Greek statue,