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instability. A man of maturity and sobriety will steady you. Amos Todd, I believe, is perfectly suited to the task.’
    Ella stared at her father, mute, drained of any further protest.
    Had she possessed one jot of Livia’s courage, she might still have fiercely repudiated his argument. She longed to maintain her obdurate stand, to scream at her father that he’d only agreed to this match because it suited him financially to do so, all too bitterly aware that the marriage was nothing more than a business transaction. Yet she could not find the strength to resist.
    Ella had once been considered her father’s favourite, the only one who called him by the pet name ‘Dadda’, and the one least likely to suffer from his unpredictable temper. Yet she knew that even she could not win this time. Her cause was lost. Everything had changed the day he’d discovered her in the conservatory with Danny Gilpin. Her young lover had been dismissed without a reference from his job as groom to the family, and arrangementswere at once put in place for Ella’s hasty marriage.
    She shuddered at the prospect of marrying a man she barely knew: apparently a religious fanatic with three young children already from a previous marriage. It was like something out of a cheap Victorian melodrama. They’d entered a new century, and already the emancipation of women was reaching new heights, with some daring ladies embarking upon golf and cycling, tennis and even wearing bloomers. Yet she was to be allowed no say even in a choice of husband.
    Josiah strolled over to his two trembling daughters, and as Maggie instinctively shrank from his touch, he dropped the key in her lap.
    ‘When you’ve let your sister out of the cage, see that the key is put back on its hook in my study without delay, then return to your duties. I want no more histrionics. I trust this episode will serve to reinforce the importance of obedience, something you all seem to have forgotten. Ella, you come with me. We have arrangements to make.’
    Ella cast her sisters one last anguished glance before trailing from the room in her father’s wake, shocked into silence as she contemplated her fate.
    The moment the door closed, Maggie rushed to release Livia, tears rolling down her cheeks as she rubbed and massaged her sister’s numbed wrists and hands, fetched warm water to bathe the fresh wounds on her back made by the shining leather strap.
    They did not engage in any discussion over what had just taken place. Nor did they allow themselves the luxury of bewailing their lot. Much as both girls lovedtheir sister, they were only too bleakly aware that further resistance was fruitless. Their tyrant father had won, getting the better of them all as he had done so many times in the past. Livia might now be allowed out of the cage but there seemed to be no escape from the prison he’d erected around all three of his daughters.

Chapter Three
    Nothing changed in Fellside in the weeks following her mother’s death, save for Mercy being faced with the day-to -day reality of living without her. She still rose every morning at five to riddle the clinker left in the stove and make herself a brew from the leftover tea leaves in the pot. She would empty the slop bucket down the privy out in the alley, then wash her hands and face using the bit of hot water left in the kettle, mixing it with a splash of cold from the pail she kept in the corner. There was no running water up here in the loft, a tap being a luxury enjoyed only by those who lived on the lower floors. If she was lucky, she’d nibble on a heel of bread, or Jessie might bring her up a bowl of porridge left over from her own family’s breakfast. She was generous that way.
    Once she was dressed, Mercy made her bed every morning exactly as her mother had taught her, emptied the night soil bucket out in the yard, then got on with the weaving. The clack of the loom at least filled the deafening silence. How she missed her mother’s