The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Sixteen

Ellington Manor

Meadvale

Surrey

"I hope your room is to your liking...Mrs Blackstone?" Brogan Osborne asked, once her attentive keeper, Miss Bryant, had finished settling their guest on the sofa opposite her in the main drawing room. Bryant had taken Caroline Blackstone upstairs to remove her travelling costume and change her into an afternoon gown, before they could have tea together and get properly acquainted. "My husband so wants you and your dear husband to make yourselves at home...and I hope that we can be firm friends?"

"I would like that very much, Lady Osborne...and the room is...a suite...I am sure that we will be more than comfortable," Caroline Blackstone replied, minding her manners, tensely aware of the keeper standing by the door, supervising her charges. She had been obliged to live as a Reformist for the last forty years, and was sometimes compelled to pretend to be a pseudo-Daughter of Eve, but she had always avoided spending too much time in thrall to a licensed keeper. It was not always possible. Both of her daughters had licensed keepers, and if she wanted to see them and her grandchildren, she always had to surrender to the inevitable for the duration of her visits, but after only half an hour with Miss Bryant, she knew that she was in for a fairly torrid time. Her corset had already been tightened upstairs, and her hands had been laced into mittens. But at least her sacrifice would be worthwhile, she hoped, and she could cope. She had always coped before and it was in a very good cause. She wanted to support her husband, and that meant that she had to be at Ellington Manor. "Miss Bryant was so patient with me...I am very much afraid that I am not used to being...kept...to your high standards...it is truly an honour just to be here, Lady Osborne?"

"You have a keeper at home, Mrs Blackstone?"

"Yes, Ma'am...she has been with me since the pandemic...but we have no other staff...my husband only has his pension these days...our household is quite humble?" Caroline said in an effort to explain herself without admitting that her keeper was not licensed, because it was not something that people like the Osbornes would understand, or approve of. Her husband was not a rich man, and although they had always obeyed the law and played the game, they were never Reformists. Hemmed in by Charles Montague's infamous boundaries, they had lived a quiet life, keeping their noses clean and their daughters out of the convents, employing her best friend from college as her keeper, originally for the sake of appearances. It had been a spur of the moment thing back in the day, before any of them actually knew what a keeper was supposed to do, or what a Daughter of Eve really was. But Diane Walker, her friend, had to have an approved job to get out of the NHS, as the unlocking gathered pace, not to mention her father's permission to leave. Hugh Blackstone, a doctor who had just been demobbed himself, had taken some advice, and in a flurry of paperwork and some serious arm-twisting to stop Mr Walker accepting a fee in exchange for Diane's continued service, Caroline was registered as a Daughter of Eve, and Diane was released from her national service to work as an unlicensed keeper. She was still unlicensed, forty years later, but was deemed qualified by experience as long as she took regular training courses. But that would not be considered acceptable in the beating heart of the new aristocracy, especially in Meadvale. "We live a simple life...I am something of a home bird, Milady?"

"Well, you must not worry, Mrs Blackstone...Miss Bryant is highly competent and enjoys helping all Daughters of Eve to earn God's love," Brogan said, her mittened hands resting in her lap, and the skirts of her dark green silk gown arranged neatly around her. She was still in disgrace, hence the mittens. Miss Bryant and her assistant, Miss Cooper, were keeping her on a very short leash, and as she was refusing to apologise to Sebastian, he was stubbornly refusing to intervene. "Our not so humble household will make quite sure that we both behave ourselves, whilst our husbands do what really must be done downstairs...now...may I please call you Caroline, my dear? And although you had better use my title in company, please call me Brogan when we are alone?"