Eliza’s Daughter by Joan Aiken Page B

far as to write a letter to my guardian, Colonel Brandon, having obtained his address from Hannah in one of her lucid intervals, asking if he would have any objection to my removal to the Hall.
    But after a long lapse of time a reply came back, not from Colonel Brandon himself, but from some lawyers in Dorchester, to the effect that Colonel Brandon had last year rejoined his regiment, the 33rd Foot, under the command of General Wellesley, and that he and Mrs Brandon also were now in Seringapatam, letters to and from which place must necessarily take many months. In his absence the lawyers were not empowered to permit such a change in my situation.
    â€˜Never mind it, please, dear ma’am,’ I said to Lady Hariot. ‘It is kind in you, but we go on very well as we are.’
    In fact I was myself in two minds about such a scheme.
    â€˜ Let us, you and I, be best friends always ,’ Fanny Huskisson had once said to me urgently, before she left Byblow Bottom. But I could not give my agreement to this. Apart from the fact that Fanny was a stupid, foul-mouthed girl (though cheerful and very good-natured), I did not feel able to commit myself to such a promise. And by the same impediment in my own nature I had been held back when Hoby invited me to go to the fair; a desire to keep apart, not to be at anybody’s bidding, to move alone and freely, never to be bounded by the dealings of others. My fondness for Hoby did not blind me to the fact that he and his cronies had many ploys in which I did not at all wish to share. And though Fanny had always felt that she was my particular friend, I, for my part, felt that we had hardly anything in common.
    So now it was the same with my life at Kinn Hall.
    Firstly, I was at all times well aware that the Squire looked upon me with a sour and most unfavourable eye. Neither an affectionate father nor a loving husband, he never entered the nursery world and paid little heed to it; but the dullest intelligence could not but be aware that, beyond this indifference, he bore towards me an active dislike and, if he came across me in the grounds or garden, leading Triz’s pony or playing with her at bat and ball, would screw up his mouth in a bitter line and cast upon me a glance of evident repulsion. This dislike, I knew, was fostered by his man Willsworthy. If ever Triz and I fell into some minor misdoing, as children must at times, if there was a trampled flower-bed to be reported, or a broken rose bush, or a toy left forgotten in the rain to rust, be sure the tale would reach Mr Vexford as fast as Willsworthy could seek his ear. And I think Lady Hariot had her work cut out to defend my position.
    But defend it she did.
    Then also, though Lady Hariot was so kind towards me, so amazed at the quantity of learning that I had already contrived to acquire from Dr Moultrie, so desirous of assisting me to other attainments, to the end that, when little Triz began to have masters to teach her music and dancing and French and Italian, I must share all her lessons (and indeed that was a sovereign advantage to the poor little thing, for she was by nature a slow learner and many times found it easier to understand or to recall what she had been taught after I had gone over it with her) – yet, despite these benefits, I felt a constraint up at Kinn Hall which I was mortally glad to cast off when I ran home at evening-time, back to the squalor and freedom of Byblow Bottom. Pray do not mistake me. I perfectly understood what inestimable gifts I was daily receiving. Under the impartial, affectionate eye of Lady Hariot I was learning the way that high-born folk speak and move and comport themselves, and quite quickly, at will, I was able to discard the rustic airs of the village.
    I soon came to realize that Lady Hariot’s birth and blood were superior to those of the Squire.
    â€˜I married him, you see, because I had no other choice,’ she told me calmly one day, when we were