A tender THREAD
THE STORY SO FAR: England, 1803. Flora and Hester Brooke are sisters, though Flora was adopted two years before Hester was born. Mrs Brooke died in childbirth and her husband survived her by 15 years. The girls have been the wards of Miss Cilla Talbot for a year. While Flora has settled into her new life, Hester is still grieving for her father. On Hester’s 16th birthday, she asserts that Flora can’t possibly feel the same as her. Though hurt, Flora forgives her, but Hester seems unable to forgive herself. On a trip to the coast to stay at the home of Gilbert Geoffreys, a cousin of Miss Cilla’s, she barely speaks. They break their journey at an inn where a handsome young man stumbles into Hester. There is an immediate attraction. When Flora spots someone lingering beneath their bedroom window later that night she wonders who it is. Hester dreamily claims ignorance but Flora knows she’s lying.
In preparing for the final journey to High Town, where they were to reside for the duration of their stay at the coast, it was difficult to find a moment to quiz Hester any further about the previous evening. If the young man who’d effused so about her beauty was the person lingering beneath her window, Flora tried not to worry. Hester may have had her head turned by the fellow, but what harm could it do when they were leaving? She put it to the back of her mind and climbed into the