Sweet Deception Regency 07 - The Divided Hearts by Karla Darcy

handed a cup
to the girl, who accepted it with a twinkle in her eye. Phoebe had
confessed that her mother refused to have tea in the house. There
was still a great deal of resentment left over from the War of
Independence. So each morning, Phoebe accepted an illicit cup,
holding it under her nose to inhale the moist orange fragrance, her
eyes closed in ecstasy. It always amused Judith because she
suspected that the girl did not like the brew; the cup was never
emptied, only tasted periodically during their morning chat. At
fourteen any rebellion was wonderful.
    “What’s the morning news, Phoebe?” Judith
asked patting the side of the bed for the girl to sit down.
    “One of the cows on our farm calved
yesterday. Best of all she dropped twins. I missed all the
excitement, but that’s all my dad could talk about at supper last
night. Told mama iffen it’d been a colder winter, along with the
calves, we’d have had a bundling baby.”
    “A what?” Judith asked, unsurprised at the
frank discussion of Phoebe’s family life. Even in England she had
been aware that most of the under servants had more information on
sexual matters than she did.
    “A bundling baby. Don’t the country folk
have bundling in England?” Phoebe asked and at Judith’s puzzled
headshake, the girl grinned in triumph. It pleased her that she had
discovered something that her mistress did not know. “It’s mostly
for courting couples in the winter. Our lads work all week so’s the
only time they have for courting is on Saturday night. When my dad
took a fancy to mama he’d walk almost ten miles to visit her folks.
It was winter so they bundled them up nice and tight in bed.”
    “In bed?” Judith asked, shocked in spite of
herself. “Wasn’t there a sitting room in your mother’s house?”
    “Yes, ma’am, and a right pretty one, mama
said. But that’d waste a good fire and a lantern when dad just
wanted to snuggle close to mama anyways.” Phoebe noticed the glazed
look on Judith’s face and hurried to explain further a custom that
must seem rather bizarre. “It’s not quite like it sounds, Miss
Judith. My grandmam and my aunt would wrap up mama just like a
butterfly in a cocoon. Then they’d wedge a board between them, but
dad said, thank God it weren’t very high.”
    Here Phoebe burst into laughter at the
horrified expression on Judith’s face. She was aware that for all
the older girl’s sophistication, Judith was relatively ignorant
about ‘those’ facts which Phoebe, raised on a farm, took as a
normal part of life. She had never thought much about how strange
this story must sound to an outsider. But then she’d never
considered her mistress an outsider.
    “Does everyone do that sort of thing?”
Judith asked in a choked voice, feeling rather like a pupil being
educated by this bright child.
    “Nobody much does it anymore,” Phoebe said,
a wistful look on her plain face. “Town folk never took to it.
Especially the fancy set. I was born too late, I guess.”
    “Oh, Phoebe,” Judith laughed. “You sound
positively ancient.”
    They both giggled, much in charity with each
other. Judith cocked her head as a light scratching sounded at the
door and her name was hissed plaintively through the wood panel.
Young Patrick usually announced his impatience each morning.
    “Judith? Aren’t you ever going to come out?
Your father says we can leave as soon as you come down.”
    “I’m coming, Patrick,” Judith called. She
handed the breakfast tray to Phoebe and pushed back the covers.
    “He’s pacing the front room and rapping his
pipe on the mantelpiece,” Patrick warned. “Says if you don’t hurry
all the good horses will already be sold.”
    “Tell Simon, I’ll be down shortly,” Judith
said.
    She crossed the floor and opened the
right-hand door of the oak clothes press. She raised her arms over
her head in a satisfying stretch, then reached inside the press to
take her riding habit from the wooden peg. Opening