All I Want Is You by Elizabeth Anthony

what I’d written about Will and started again. I told him how Harriet and Betsey had been to see
Her Heritage
at a picture house in Oxford and hadn’t been able to speak of anything else for days. I told himhow we’d heard there was some union for servants being started in London, but the Duke had said that any servant of his who joined it would be dismissed without pay.
    The Duke was already filled with rage over the miners’ strike. The Belfield estate, Mr Peters informed us in his important way, had owned vast coalmines in the Midlands for over a hundred years. During the war, the government had taken all the mines into national ownership so they were no longer the Duke’s responsibility, but His Grace still took the miners’ dissatisfaction as a personal insult.
    Everyone thought the end of the war would make things better
, I wrote to Mr Maldon.
Everything is changing here at the Hall
,
and so much is different. But I promise you my devotion, as always. Your Sophie.
    ‘Save your love, Sophie,’he’d told me on that day long ago in Oxford. And I did. For him, God help me. For him.
    We heard in the New Year that the Duke’s heir, Lord Edwin, had become very ill, and as usual Robert was our source. ‘It’s said His Little Lordship won’t last out the month,’ he declared gleefully in the scullery. ‘So it’s just as I predicted – the old witch has cast her curse.’
    ‘Hush your wicked gossip, young Robert!’ Mrs Burdett had come into the kitchen just then and she knew he was referring to the Duchess. ‘The poor little lad maybe has a touch of fever. He’ll pull through, that’s for sure.’
    But Lord Edwin died in the spring of 1920, when I was seventeen.
    The funeral took place at Lord Edwin’s home in Chichester, but of course the Hall was cast once more into mourning. I wondered if Lady Beatrice had attended the funeral, but didn’t ask, chiefly because talking about her reminded me of Margaret, and I’d been trying to forget Margaret and the things she’d done to me that night in Lady Beatrice’s sitting room. Were it not for the coins she’d given me, I’d have thought it all a dream.
    Will had got his job at the mill on the Belfield estate and somehow all the servants knew what had happened between him and me. ‘They say he’s not smiled since you turned him down,’ they muttered. ‘Poor Will.’
    Only Nell remained my friend, and she was still head-over-heels in love with Eddie. ‘Oh Sophie,’ she’d say with glowing eyes. ‘I quite understand, about Will. You want to feel
real
love like I do for my Eddie, don’t you?’
    I said nothing, because the other night out in the back courtyard, as I emptied the kitchen scraps into the swill bin, I’d seen ‘her Eddie’ kissing Harriet in the shadows.
    Because of the mourning for Lord Edwin, there were no house parties. But there was always a service every day in the family chapel of the Hall, at which the Duke, confined to his bath chair, read out a Bible lesson, and the vicar led us in prayers that seemed to go on for ever. What the Duke and Duchess were really praying for, Robert slyly informed us one evening in the servants’ hall, was for the new heir to meet with some disaster. ‘Their Graces are absolutely furious at the idea of himinheriting,’ Robert declared. ‘But the London debs are wild with excitement.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Nell.
    He looked at her pityingly. ‘Use your sense, Nelly. This man’s already filthy rich, he’s unmarried, and some day he’s going to be a duke.’
    ‘How old is he?’ asked Betsey. ‘What is he like?’
    ‘Who cares? He could be fat as a tub of lard and as old as Methuselah, he’s still easily the biggest catch for years…’ Robert broke off and looked at the wall clock. ‘My goodness, is that the time? Now listen, everybody. Listen to this…’
    Robert was beckoning us over to his crystal set, where with great drama he fiddled about until, after the usual crackling and hissing,