The Silver Touch by Rosalind Laker Page A

of you all the way from China to the American colonies.’
    ‘How can you be so sure?’ He was enjoying the experience of sustaining the little joke. ‘You’ve never yet seen anything I’ve made.’
    ‘I don’t have to.’ She could tell she had dispersed whatever it was that had suddenly threatened the day. It gave her an insight into the power she might possess to lead this serious young man into lighter frames of mind whenever he was troubled. ‘I think that here, on the banks of the Thames, I’ve suddenly developed second sight!’
    She loved to see him laugh and laughed with him. Her arm remained tucked into his as they continued their stroll, aware only of each other.
    After that day they saw each other regularly, not only every two weeks on a Sunday, but occasionally on weekdays when some of her free time in the evenings gave them the chance to talk for a little while in the kitchen yard. Without actually bringing Caroline’s name into the conversation, he had told her about the Harwood Sunday dinners. She, in turn, had said enough for him to understand she must have heard something of his involvement with his master’s daughter. For the time being, by unspoken consent, they left the matter there.
    On his part, to avoid any chance of running into Master Harwood in the main taproom, he took ale sometimes in the rougher end of the tavern. Although Hester did not wait there, she always managed to spend some time sitting at a table with him when her brother and his wife were safely elsewhere, which gave them the chance to hold hands. She had to face some good-natured chaff from the rest of the staff about her swain, but she shrugged it off, knowing it would not be voiced in either Martha’s or Jack’s hearing, for in spite of being related to them, she was very much a lowly member of the staff and therefore belonged to the confederacy of the kitchen regions.
    John often looked back to that first afternoon with Hester by the river as the start of a new pattern of living that tore daily at his conscience. The Harwood Sunday dinners became unbearable to him. He was frequently abstracted and lost to the conversation until jerked back into it by a direct question. Now and again he took stock of the situation as if miraculously a solution might suddenly present itself. On the one hand there was Caroline, still lodged in his affections, still secure in an understanding that they were to share a future together. Nothing had been stated categorically in their love-talk, even her father had forbidden mention of it until a later date, but for someone of his outlook an unvoiced promise was as binding as any other. He was in it up to his neck!
    On the other hand there was Hester, drawing him to her by day and filling his dreams at night with images of her as Caroline had never done. The bachelor’s adage of a good girl to woo and a bad one to tumble with did not even apply in this case, for Hester, honest and generous and warm-hearted, held herself in respect and commanded it in others. The thought of abusing her never occurred to him. On the contrary, she awakened in him such tender feelings, combined with the longing to possess and cherish her, that eventually he came to the stark realization that he was in love with her as he had never been, or ever would be, with Caroline.
    It became more difficult with every meeting to hold back what he wanted to say to Hester. He could tell she knew his feelings and was waiting each time for him to speak, particularly after they had kissed when she was pliant and yielding and breathing softly within the circle of his arms. Again and again he had to choke back the words, realizing that he could easily plunge them both into depths from which it would be impossible to draw back.
    Yet eventually the moment came. They were taking a Saturday afternoon stroll along the Mall. It was here that the latest fashions of both men and women were to be seen, which made the Mall one of Hester’s