To Have A Heart (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 7)

CHAPTER ONE

Mallory Reynolds slid a huge pile of freshly washed dishes onto the sideboard and looked down at her raw and chapped hands. She had already spent several hours washing a seemingly endless pile of pots and crockery and wasn’t finished yet. There was another stack of pots waiting for her which would take several hours to get through. She had to wash them. There was no choice, despite the pain in her hands growing considerably worse throughout the day. The thought of putting her hands into water and suffering through the pain made Mallory want to cry. But she couldn’t. She daren’t.

I am not going to show these hideous people any weakness. They are merciless predators and will pounce on me as surely as a cat would on an unsuspecting mouse.

The last time Mallory had cried in front of the below stairs staff she had not been allowed a moment’s peace for several weeks; not days - weeks. The cruelty of their barbed jibs and bold insults had been so spiteful that Mallory had, albeit briefly, contemplated whether she would be better off dead.

“What are you standing there for? You have work to do. Get on with it,” Mrs Cummings, the housekeeper, snarled at her from the doorway.

Mrs Cummings swung a large hand out and smirked when Mallory ducked out of the way of the fist that nearly slammed her into the back of her head.

“We don’t pay you to stand about all day. Get on with it.”

“You don’t pay me at all,” Mallory muttered, hating the woman with everything she was.

This time, she wasn’t so swift in ducking away from the woman’s heavy hand, which slammed painfully into the side of her head with a resounding thump. Mallory clutched her throbbing temple and glared balefully at the older woman, but Mrs Cummings had already turned away.

“Edward, Mallory hasn’t got enough to do,” Mrs Cummings called as she returned to the kitchen. “Find her something useful to do. God knows she is far too lazy and thinks she is here to stand about looking bloody useless all day.”

Edward, the master’s private butler, appeared in the doorway of the scullery and sneered at Mallory with narrow, lecherous eyes.

“I can see if the master wants her upstairs,” Edwards said in a tone that was calculatingly suggestive.

Mallory knew exactly what that meant. The last time one of the serving girls had been sent upstairs she hadn’t returned to the kitchen. Heaven only knows what happened to her, but her screams would stay with Mallory forever. Mallory hated to even think what the poor girl had been subjected to before she had vanished, but Jemima’s plaintive wails of pain had echoed around the house for hours. What followed had been much, much worse, though.

“Silence. Deathly silence,” Mallory whispered. “That’s what followed.”

Rather than show Edward just how much the idea of going upstairs sickened her, Mallory forced herself to look at the pots that awaited her. She did her best to keep her face devoid of all expression. For now, all she could do was wait and let Edward indulge his spiteful nature.

He did that a lot, as did Mrs Cummings. It seemed that a part of their respective jobs was tormenting Mallory, and Jemima while she had been there, with as much abuse and bullying and yes, physical beatings, as they could. From the brief chats she had managed to have with Jemima, Mallory had learnt that the young girl, who had been not a dissimilar age to herself, had not arrived at the house willingly either. Jemima had been kidnapped too and forced to work as an unpaid slave at the house despite her vehement demands to be set free. Jemima had also been threatened with death if she ever tried to escape, and had been kept busy with hours and hours of hard, back-breaking work – until the fateful day she had been sent upstairs to see the master of the house - her kidnapper.

Six months. That’s how long I have been here. Six months, and it has been pure Hell.

Mallory had been swept right out of her life and held captive in a house she didn’t recognise, in the middle of God knows where, with no chance of escape. Like Jemima, she was expected to work morning, noon, and most nights; long tedious hours of toil and suffering with minimal food, little or no rest, and absolutely no reward for her effort. She didn’t get paid. The one and only time she had asked if she was going to receive payment for the work she did, Mallory had been beaten so severely by Edward that she had struggled to walk the following day because of pain in her bruised ribs. It was a mistake she hadn’t dare make again.

Without saying a word, or acknowledging Edward’s lingering presence in the doorway, Mallory returned to washing the teetering pile of pots waiting for her. She didn’t stop to think about what she was doing. There wasn’t any need. The work was tedious, boring, and repetitive. It was now also worrying because of the state of her hands. Mallory had to wonder how much longer she could bear the pain from the callouses.

I must keep washing. It is the only thing I have to do with my time. Stopping only gives me time to think.

Battling tears, she dully washed pots and waited until Edward’s shadow disappeared. Once he had gone, Mallory heaved a sigh of relief, rested her hands on the sink, and dropped her head while she did her best to gather her nerves. She knew she had come close to having another beating. The thought was simply horrible. Mallory usually felt safe in the scullery mostly because it was where she spent her days and was somewhere Mrs Cummings and Edward rarely ventured into. While it was a small, cramped room with no heating and minimal light it had still become her sanctuary; a place to get away from the abuse of her captor’s employees.

Her peace today didn’t last long, though. Before she could return to washing the pots, Mrs Cummings appeared in the doorway once more. She dropped a heavy basket at Mallory’s feet with a dull thud, and threw her a dark, menacing glare.

“Here, get those on the washing line. Hurry up about it. Don’t just stand there. You don’t have all day. When you have done that you can peel the potatoes for dinner. Get to it. Now.”

Mallory knew what would