LADY ANN'S FOLLY: Chapter Eleven - Part Seven

Ann resented the walk back up to Griply Hall because it reminded her most firmly of her new station in life and the terrible mistake she had made.

Each step she took made it clear to her that she was no longer entitled to ride in the coach; made her comprehend more fully that she had missed her chance to be spirited away to Nockton Vale to meet Richard’s mother and start an incredible new life together with him. She wasn’t Lady Ann anymore. She was just Mavis; just a lowly barmaid.

The further she got from the village, the more her determination to confront Hattie ebbed from her; the more she doubted that it had any chance of success. She had been sent away twice already and the last time they had threatened retribution of a kind that would devastate her physically; might even incarcerate her.

She stopped in the lane, feeling hopeless, tears trickling down her cheeks. She knew that her only hope of retrieving her life as a titled lady was at the hall but the fear of attempting another egress was too powerful. She couldn’t risk it, but she knew that to turn back would be to effectively accept her new life as permanent.

She looked behind her down the lane toward Griply village. That was where she belonged now, or at least, it was the only place she was safe from the whims of the titled rich. It was a place where the grip Mavis’s life had taken on her would tighten until it was totally inescapable, but at least she wouldn’t be beaten. She would be free.

And what hope did she have really of regaining her past life?

She should never have used the pendant. In doing so she’d accepted the barmaid’s destiny as her own. There was no way out of it.

Ann took a single step toward the hall and then stopped. She turned her back on it. Then she started walking back toward the village, knowing she didn’t have the strength of will to seize her former life back. Her best hope was to find the good in her new lot in life. That was her only chance now: to find some happiness in a life as Mavis; because that, surely, was who she was now and always would remain.