CHAINS TO FREEDOM.✔

Chapter Forty-Six

Louis walked into the kitchen with the letter in his hands. He looked at the page once more and then put it in his pocket.

Mary was kneading some dough on one end of the table. Alice was sitting at the other polishing the silver. Her baby was asleep in a basket on the floor beside her. Jessica was washing dishes. They all stopped what they were doing and peered up at him.

He looked at Mary. "It seems we will be receiving a visitor late this afternoon." Louis took a breath and added, "Mrs. Templeton will be calling and staying with us for two or three days. There will be herself and her driver to cater for."

Mary curtly nodded her head. "Yes, Master this afternoon you say."

Jessica noticed Mary didn't sound too pleased at having to cater for his visitor.

"Yes, Mary, this afternoon," Louis repeated tersely. He turned to Jessica and with the same tone said, "Make up the guest room across the hall from my own." When the door had closed behind him Mary huffed loudly.

"What's the matter, Mary?" Jessica noticed she and Alice exchange glances. "Don't you like the Master's guest?" Mary ignored her question, huffed once again and, continued kneading the dough. Jessica grinned and let out a giggle. "Well you must tell me. You both cannot pretend I have not seen the look of distaste on your faces. If I am to be serving her I must know. Is she such a witch?" Jessica cocked her head in amusement.

"Oh, she's not a witch, Jessica though she is very close to being one. Such a demanding woman," Alice said as she rubbed her cloth harder on the knife she was polishing.

"I will be worked very hard then, will I?" Jessica knew of such women. They had nothing better to do than make their servants lives unhappy. "Will her husband join her later?"

Alice looked at the knife she was polishing, huffed on the blade and then looked up at Jessica. "No her husband is dead." She and Mary exchanged glances once more.

It was enough for Jessica. She strode to the table and she put her hands on her hips. "What is it? You keep passing looks to each other. I'm not blind!" she demanded.

Alice smirked. "It's just that...the lady is a little wayward."

Mary huffed again. Jessica spun her head at the sound as Mary spat, "The lady tis more than just a little wayward, Alice. The lady tis a slut!"

"Millie you mustn't allow this to happen to you," Jessica pleaded. "He is not being a gentleman."

Millie laughed. "What would you know of it, Jessica? Has a man ever touched you, like he has touched me?"

Jessica clasped her hand over her mouth at Mary's use of the unladylike word.

"Mary!" Alice gasped. "That is..."

"True." Mary pounded her fist into the dough and looked from one girl to the other. "Well tis true, she comes here to bed with Master Louis, we all know that." Mary turned up her nose in disgust and then added, "And her two day visit will become two weeks. She is not good for the Master!"

"Now, now, Mary that is for Master Louis to decide. Besides he is a man, a healthy man who needs what a woman can give him," Alice explained, trying to make the subject appear less evil.

"Ha! And give it she does, just like a rabbit in heat she is," Mary continued to rant.

"Keeps up with the Master very well she does. Mayhap she should stay. It would save him all them visits into town."

"Into town?" Jessica's mouth was wide open in shock trying to absorb this conversation.

Alice smiled at the look on Jessica's face. "That is why the Master goes into town most often. Aiden says he has a healthy appetite for the ladies."

"I don't understand," said Jessica. "Does this lady live in Launceston?"

Mary roared with laughter. "No girl, but it is plain to see ye do not know too much of a man's ways."

"Yes...it is plain to see I do not," Jessica shook her head. "So it is not business the Master goes to town for?"

"Oh yes," said Alice. "He combines pleasure with his business," she shrugged and added, "At least that's what Aiden says."

Jessica nodded her understanding. She blushed, embarrassed to have discovered this personal information about her master.

"I...I shall go and prepare the guestroom now," she said quietly. Somehow the thought of Louis being intimate with a woman disturbed her. Of late she and Master Louis had been getting on very well, and... Jessica sighed, what did it matter how she felt. 

Copyright © 2019 Donna Fieldhouse. All rights reserved.

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