She swallowed again as her stomach churned, telling herself to think of something else.
How would she be received when she reached the vicarage? The grey landscape mocked the foolishness of the question. Why ask the road you know? Her father would be full of icy fury and her mother beside herself as to what people would think. To have their daughter’s sin paraded in front of their eyes was their worst nightmare. She glanced at the cheap gold band on the third finger of her left hand. She had bought the wedding ring before leaving London. It wouldn’t fool her parents but it gave some semblance of respectability to her homecoming.
Her gaze wandered and she caught the eye of the wife of the young couple sitting opposite. The woman immediately dropped her gaze to the neatly gloved hands clasped in her lap, her sallow cheeks flushing. Since leaving London, Esther had had to change coaches several times. This one, which had left Middlesbrough early that morning, held yet another different batch of travellers. Besides the young couple, a portly, red-faced man was sitting dozing next to the husband, and an elderly gentleman with snow-white hair and a frock coat was sitting reading from a book of prayers on the seat beside Esther.
All her fellow passengers were dressed soberly and the woman in particular was the very essence of propriety, her dark-brown coat and hat and high-buttoned black boots speaking of dignified refinement. Esther appeared like a bright exotic bird that had somehow found itself among a group of sparrows, and the young wife’s fascinated and covert glances as the journey had progressed had made Esther very aware of her mistake. Among the company she had mixed with in London her blue brocade dress and matching coat with its elaborate fur collar would have been considered almost dull. It was the most subdued outfit in her wardrobe, which was why she had chosen to wear it for her imminent arrival in Southwick, but too late she realised she should have pawned a couple of the dresses one or other of her ‘gentlemen’ had bought her and used the money to buy something plain and serviceable.
She looked out of the window again, studying her reflection in the glass. Her hat with its sweeping blue and silver feathers brought out the deep violet of her eyes and pretty tilt of her chin, but she lamented the loss of the paint and powder she had used regularly for the last decade. Her mother would have become apoplectic at the faintest suggestion of such wickedness.
The coach lurched drunkenly, its wheels struggling over the thick ridges of mud and deep icy puddles in the narrow road they were travelling on, and Esther banged her forehead on the window, knocking her hat askew. Suddenly hot tears pricked at the back of her eyes, not because of the bump which had been nothing in itself but because of the position she found herself in. She had vowed never to come back to the north-east when she had left it fifteen years ago, but what choice did she have? Her hands rested for a moment on the mound of her stomach. None. The music-hall audiences didn’t want to see an actress heavy with child entertaining them, and her admirers had vanished one by one over the last months as her pregnancy had progressed. She had sold every bit of jewellery she possessed and the lovely fur coat one of her gentlemen had bought for her in the early days, and she still hadn’t been able to pay the rent for the last few weeks. A moonlight flit had been her only option and she had left with the remainder of the clothes she hadn’t sold for her coach fare packed in her carpet bag and little else.
She blinked the tears away and sat up straighter. But she would return. Once the child was born and she had rested and was strong again, she would plan her escape. She had managed it fifteen years ago and she would do it again. Her parents would take care of the baby, they would see it as their Christian duty however much it stuck in their craw. She would make her way back to London and with her figure her own again she could take her life up once more. She was still pretty, and what she didn’t know about pleasing a man and catering for their more . . . unusual desires wasn’t worth knowing.