num_pages: 416
description: WHEN Esther Thorel the wife of a Huguenot silk-weaver rescues Sara Kemp from a brothel she thinks she is doing Gods will. Sara is not convinced being a maid is better than being a whore but the chance to escape her grasping madam is too good to refuse. Inside the Thorels tall house in Spitalfields where the strange cadence of the looms fills the attic the two women forge an uneasy relationship. The physical intimacies of washing and dressing belie the reality: Sara despises her mistresss blindness to the hypocrisy of her household while Esther is too wrapped up in her own secrets to see Sara as anything more than another charitable cause.It is silk that has Esther so distracted. For years she has painted her own designs dreaming that one day her husband will weave them into reality. When he laughs at her ambition she strikes up a relationship with one of the journeyman weavers in her attic who teaches her to weave and unwittingly sets in motion events that will change the fate of the whole Thorel household.
language: English
title: Blackberry & Wild Rose
publisher: Quercus