And indeed it was a bit like looking into a mirror at times the same features, rich dark hair, delicate nose, and almost Oriental eyes. Everyone said how alike they were, twins born four years apart. Louise produced a sympathetic smile for her younger sister. “Just because Daddy’s got a temper doesn’t mean he’s a bad man.” “Why do you suppose the Union hates us so?” Genevieve asked querulously. In some hollows they had drifted in loose dunes up to a foot deep. Where ten days ago the grassland had been dusted with graceful white and pink stars, small shrivelled petals now skipped about like minute autumn leaves. The aboriginal plants which had all flowered in unison at midsummer were long dead now. Duke’s hot rays had flayed open the soil, producing a wrinkled network of cracks. Louise’s horse picked its way gingerly over the ground. They had to saddle the horses themselves, but it was worth it just to be away from the manor for a few hours.
And the estate farms outside, with their skeleton workforce, were falling dismayingly far behind in their preparations for the summer’s second cereal crop.īy lunchtime, the ennui had started to get to Louise, so she had suggested that she and her sister go riding. With the young men away, the maids and older menservants were struggling with the normal day-to-day running of the rambling building. It was a tricky task sitting about doing nothing was so incredibly boring, yet if they drew attention to themselves they would be given some menial domestic job to do. Louise and Genevieve had spent yet another morning milling aimlessly around the manor. Even bland accounts of “disturbances,” reported on the nightly news programs, had ceased after the county militias encircled the city-censored by the government.Īll they could do was wait helplessly for the militias to triumph as they surely would. Boston could have been on another planet as far as Stoke County was concerned. Louise tried hard to close her ears to them, convinced it was just wicked propaganda put about by Union sympathisers. Of terrible battles and beastly acts of savagery by the Union irregulars. The whole county was crackling with rumours, of course. Which meant Louise and Genevieve had to creep around Cricklade manor like mice so as not to worsen her temper.Īnd there had been no word since, not of Father or any of the militia troops. That had made Louise’s mother worry frantically. The last time he’d phoned was three days ago, a quick, grim call saying the situation was worse than the Lord Lieutenant had led them to believe. Officially, she was waiting for her father, who was away leading the Stoke County militia to help quell the insurrection which the Democratic Land Union had mounted in Boston. Destiny had apparently chosen her to spend her waking hours doing nothing but wait. She didn’t feel much of anything these days. “Air from the devil’s cookhouse,” the old women of the county called this awful unbreathable stillness which blanketed the wolds. It seemed to Louise Kavanagh as though the fearsome midsummer heat had persisted for endless, dreary weeks rather than just the four Duke-days since the last meagre shower of rain.