They passed the chemist’s, draper’s, and glover’s shops. “I never stop here anymore,” Mrs. Bacon said with a scathing glance at the fishmonger’s establishment. “Twice they sold us bad fish.” They went another half block, and were just about to enter L. UNDERHILL, COBBLER, when a woman came out of the door and almost collided with Mrs. Bacon.
“Dear me, Annie!” the woman exclaimed with a giggle. She wore a gown of lavender print with vibrant pink flowers, her hair bound up in a hat from which sprouted pink ostrich plumes. “Shame on me . . . woolgathering and not minding my steps!”
“Theodora,” Mrs. Bacon said, and the two embraced. “Are you over your head cold?”
“Quite, thank you.”
Mrs. Bacon made introductions, informing Sarah that Mrs. Mallet was the housekeeper at number 17, three houses from Mrs. Blake’s. “Mrs. Blake’s ward?” the woman said, small hazel eyes studying Sarah’s face. “I heard she was takin’ one in. How good of her. And how old would you be, dearie?”
“Four . . .” Sarah began, then amended. “Thirteen.”
“Thirteen, eh?”
“And now we must go,” Mrs. Bacon said, threading her arm through Sarah’s again. “So much to do today.” The cobbler’s shop smelled of leather and polish. Two young apprentices sat upon tall stools at a table, one tapping tacks into the sole of an upturned boot with a small hammer, the other sewing the back of a slipper. Elderly Mr. Underhill measured both of Sarah’s stockinged feet with a cloth tape, then gave her a peppermint drop from a glass jar. Sarah fought an inner battle over whether to save it for savoring later or pop it into her jaw. The popping won.
A hog’s head grinned at them from under a garland of linked sausages behind the glass at L. WARNER’S FINE MEATS, WHOLESALE AND RETAIL. The bell tinkled a welcome when Mrs. Bacon opened the door. A woman in servants’ dress nodded at them, then returned her attention to the man behind the counter who wore a bloodstained apron. The odor of raw meat was overwhelming. Sarah began taking shallow breaths, grateful for the peppermint to mask some of the smells.
But by the time the bell tinkled the previous customer’s exit and Mrs. Bacon had stepped up to the counter, Sarah could stand it no longer. She asked, “May I wait outside?”
“Of course. But wait . . .” Mrs. Bacon opened the drawstring to her reticule and drew out a navy blue button the size of a farthing. Pushing her spectacles up the bridge of her nose, she said, “WATNEY AND SONS is just across the street. Look through the button rack and see if you can match this one, and I’ll join you when I’ve finished. But do be careful crossing, mind you.”
The responsibility was an awesome one. Sarah held the button tightly in her hand as she dashed across after a dray wagon rattled past carrying crates of tinned goods. WATNEY AND SONS was a popular establishment, for at least a dozen women and men looked over tables and racks and shelves of everything from handkerchiefs to walking canes, toothbrushes to stockings, and hair ribbons to furniture wax. Sarah located the button rack against one wall, long hooks upon which hung cards of buttons in all sizes and colors. While she looked, she could not help but overhear two women in conversation nearby.
“ . . . I was just hired on as chambermaid—that’s how I recollect that it was ’56—and Mrs. Young—she was housekeeper then, God rest her soul—saying that pitiful creature had come to the back door begging for work.”
After a clucking sound of disapproval came another voice. “You would ha’ thought she would ha’ known better than to look in these whereabouts . . . and in a family way yet!”
“That’s what Mrs. Young told her, and I expect she took heed and went off somewhere. But not before blubbering that he had promised to marry her, but now he wouldn’t even speak with her, and his mother accused her of tryin’ to ruin him. All that money from them ships—you would ha’ thought they would set her up somewhere out of the city.”
After more clucks, the second voice lowered. “It ain’t right to speak ill of the dead, but once he spattered my best Sunday dress, racing by in that little runabout after a rain. I could ha’ sworn it weren’t no accident. He didn’t even stop.”
“Beastly rude, he was. And as I’ve always said, sooner or later the chickens come home to roost.”
“And you’re positive this girl’s his—”
Curious at the abrupt silence, Sarah glanced over her left shoulder. Two women were hurrying down an aisle in the opposite direction. The one in lavender looked back and met Sarah’s eyes. Pink feathers quivered as she turned away quickly.
On her way back down Bruton Street, Sarah thought about the discomfort on the fleeing woman’s face. But why? No names had been mentioned, save the housekeeper Mrs. Young, who was no longer living and had not seemed to have done anything wrong. She looked up at the housekeeper beside her. “Mrs. Bacon?”
“Mmm?” Mrs. Bacon’s weak eyes were kind behind the spectacles.
“That lady you almost bumped into . . .”
“Mrs. Mallet?”
“Is she your friend?”
“Why, yes. We play cribbage every Friday evening.”
That information stifled Sarah’s inclination to go further. And thankfully, Mrs. Bacon did not ask why she wanted to know. Back at the house Sarah could hear Mrs. Blake’s and Marie’s voices as she passed the sitting room. Upstairs, Jeremy Blake’s door stood open. Sarah passed her own room and peered cautiously inside. She saw Hester standing at a writing desk and making swift little motions with a feather duster against a lamp, causing the crystal teardrops clinging to the glass shade to clink together softly.
The maid looked up and asked in her childlike voice, “Did you enjoy the square?”
“Yes, thank you. May I come in?”
The chambermaid hesitated. “I suppose it’s all right, seeing as how you live here now. Just mind you don’t touch anything.”
With that kind of dubious welcome, Sarah took only three steps into the room. She looked about her. It was as if someone still lived there, for a folded nightshirt lay upon the foot of the bed, and a dressing gown was looped over the tall back of an armchair. On a bureau in a silver tray a pipe was propped against a rectangular tin of Pioneer Tobacco. There were also an ebony-handled brush and comb set, a shallow wooden trinket box, and a pair of leather gloves.
“What was he like?” she asked.
It seemed Hester was about to ask of whom she was speaking, but then she gave a little nod while continuing to dust. “I only came two years ago, so I never met him.”
“Oh.” Sarah looked about some more, staying in the same spot. A jar of peppermint sticks sat on the edge of a writing table, their strips wavy because of the design cut into the glass. As much as she had enjoyed the peppermint the cobbler gave her, these did not tempt her in the least. It would have been too irreverent and even macabre to accept a treat that had probably been purchased by Mr. Jeremy himself. When Hester moved to dust a wardrobe, Sarah said, “I went to market with Mrs. Bacon too.”
“What fun! Did you buy anything?”
“I was measured for boots and shoes.” Casually she added, “And I found some buttons for Mrs. Bacon while she was at the butcher’s.”
The maid smiled and continued dusting.
“I overheard some women talking about someone.”
“Talkin’ about who?”
“I don’t know.” Sarah had no choice but to admit the part that somehow made this relevant. Taking another two steps forward, she said, “But one looked at me in an odd way as if I wasn’t supposed to be listening, then they hurried away.”
Hester stopped dusting. “What they was sayin’?”
Sarah lowered her voice to tell her. She left out the part about the woman who looked back being Mrs. Bacon’s friend because she feared it might somehow reach the kindly housekeeper. She had no sooner finished when Hester unpursed her lips and began dusting again. “That’s odd all right.”
“Do you know what it means?”
The duster began moving al
most furiously. “Maybe they was talking about somebody royal and there wasn’t supposed to be anybody hearing. It’s against the law, you know, talking bad about the royals.”
“You mean the queen?”
“Well, perhaps not her, but there’s royals living all over Mayfair. Why, Stanley and I seen Prince Edward ride by in a carriage once, probably visitin’ one of his kin.”
“You did?”
“He looked right handsome, with a white gardenia on his coat. He tipped his hat to me, and it made Stanley jealous because he said, ‘Maybe you’d rather be with him than me,’ and I said, ‘No, that ain’t true, the prince is married,’ and Stanley frowns and says, ‘Oh, then if he wasn’t married you would want to be with him?’ and I said, ‘That ain’t what I meant. Of course I’d rather be with you.’”
She said all of this without seeming to draw breath, and when the flood of words stopped, Sarah nodded. “That must be it. Someone royal.”
“There, you see? So it’s best not to concern yourself with what a couple of old busybodies said.”
“Yes, I see,” Sarah said, though she was actually more confused than before.
Lunch was fried sole with anchovy sauce, spinach, and stewed rhubarb. Already Sarah imagined she could feel the flesh growing around her protruding ribs. She had to smile at the way Stanley drew back his lips to flash his teeth at Hester when she teased him about having spinach between them. They must be in love, Sarah thought, for his name came up in Hester’s conversations almost as much as Avis’s fiancé did in hers.
She helped clear away dishes and considered asking Naomi about what she had overheard in the shop. But she couldn’t do so without Trudy overhearing. As fond as she was growing of the scullery maid, Sarah had a feeling it would not be prudent to confide in too many people, judging on how nervous the question had made Hester.
When she went upstairs to fetch Barnaby Rudge to take out into the garden, she met Marie in the corridor in Sunday dress. “Have a pleasant afternoon,” the maid said with a rare smile.
“Where are you going?” Sarah asked automatically, followed with, “Forgive me, I wasn’t thinking.”
A tan glove waved away her apology. “There is no shame in being curious. I have three sisters who also work in Mayfair, and we share the same half-day off. Today we take an omnibus to the National Gallery to look at paintings.”
Outside, Mr. Duffy was bent over a row in the vegetable patch while William dug a hole farther down the path. “Little Miss!” Mr. Duffy called, straightening, a smile across his roughhewn face.
“Yes, sir?” Sarah thought it reasonable that anyone addressed as Mister was due that extra expression of respect. She was much more comfortable doing so, and he had yet to correct her.
He was stepping out of the patch. “Might I have a minute?” When they met, he withdrew some lengths of string from a pocket of his smock. “And might I have your hand?”
It was obvious which one he meant. Sarah extended her left hand, surprised at herself in that she felt no awkwardness about doing so. With soil-stained fingers he turned it palm up and stared at it for a minute, his brow furrowed in concentration. He circled the first string from the arc between her nub of thumb and where her fingers should have begun and then down to the wrist.
Sarah’s curiosity finally got the better of her. “Why are you doing that, Mr. Duffy?”
He winked. “I’ll tell you soon enough, Little Miss.” The second string he looped from the same arc to where her wrist began on her right. This one went into his right pocket. With one hand holding her wrist steady, he circled still another string about three inches up her arm from the heel of her hand and tied it. After easing this one down past her hand, he simply looped it over his thumb, said, “Very good!” and turned for the gardening shed.
“What was going on there?” William asked when Sarah reached him. An evergreen shrub with roots encased in sacking lay across from the deepening hole.
“He asked to measure my hand.”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t say. I think it’s to be a surprise.”
“Ah.” William pushed the shovel down into the hole with his boot on the top of the blade, then hefted the unearthed soil onto the mound at his right. “Then I’ll ask him.”
“You will?” Even though he had shown her the horses yesterday, Sarah still felt shy in William’s presence. But the common goal they now shared emboldened her enough to step a little closer and lower her voice. “Just be sure he doesn’t see you telling me, please.”
“Hmm.” He covered the tip of the shovel handle with his leather-gloved hands and rested his chin upon them. “I don’t recall offering to share that information.”
Sarah blinked. “I just assumed . . .”
“That I would betray the man who taught me how to work a garden and could conceivably order me to dig a dozen holes before nightfall?”
“No, of course—” Embarrassment dulled her wits to where she had no idea what should follow. But she did manage an apology before turning for the refuge of the house.
“Wait, please.”
Reluctantly she turned.
“Do forgive me.” He gave her little smile. “Digging is dull work, and I couldn’t resist having a little fun at your expense. I forget what it’s like to be the new person.”
Posture easing, she asked, “Like your first time at Oxford?”
“And as a servitor yet,” he replied with a grimace. “You’ve only an inkling of the mischief of which males are capable.”
“Do they treat you terribly?”
“Nothing unbearable, and it only strengthens my resolve to get an education, so there is good in everything. But truly, I wouldn’t want to spoil your surprise.”
Sarah couldn’t help but smile back. “I shouldn’t have asked anyway.”
“There’s no law against curiosity.” Positioning his gloved hands upon the handle of the shovel again, he said in an affable tone, “And now you’d best run along so I can finish this. Stanley should still be at the stable. Why don’t you visit Dudley and Gypsy?”
“Yes, thank you.” Her book tucked under her right arm, she walked to the back. She heard a giggle just as the gate swung halfway open. Stanley stood at the stable yard with one arm loped around the shoulder of a young woman in servant’s dress and lace cap. Sarah was just about to turn for the garden again when he spotted her and waved with his other hand.
“Good afternoon, young Miss! Gypsy and Dudley was just asking about you.”
That brought a fresh spate of giggles from his companion. Her mouth was too wide and her eyes too close together to be pretty, but she was comely enough for Sarah to dislike her on Hester’s account.
“He’s been around horses too long!” the woman said to Sarah, though her eyes never left Stanley’s grinning face. “Thinks they talk to him!”
“I’ll come back later, thank you,” Sarah murmured.
More female giggles trailed her on her way back through the gate. “We’ve gone and embarrassed her. It weren’t like we was kissing!”
Sarah felt almost sick to her stomach as she walked the path. William stopped digging to give her a pained look. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize he had company.”
“Some other time,” Sarah said with forced casualness. But she wished she had spent the day in her room. It was only afternoon, and already she had heard something she wasn’t supposed to hear and seen something she wasn’t supposed to see. She could barely look at Stanley at supper, yet he seemed to feel no discomfort, even teased Hester as before. That made her more aggrieved with him than with the woman who had been with him, for she might not have been aware of Hester’s feelings, as Stanley surely had to be.
Chapter Sixteen
That evening Sarah had just finished her bedtime prayers when three quick raps sounded at her door. She lifted her head from the pillow, and Marie entered in a circle of candlelight. Through the open doorway drifted faint strains of the same haunting piano music
. “You are not asleep yet?” the lady’s maid asked in a gruff voice.
“I-I’m sorry.”
“No, that is good. You must go downstairs and comfort Madame.”
Stupid with shock, Sarah gaped at her.
“Well, will you come now?” the lady’s maid asked in a tone that did not invite argument.
Sarah found her voice. “How can I do that? She doesn’t even want me near her.”
“I do not know. But Mrs. Bacon is asleep, and I cannot find Naomi. Perhaps having a child about will make her act like an adult. Come now.”
She could see that it was useless to argue. And so reluctantly she slid from the bed and allowed the lady’s maid to help her into her wrapper and slippers. With knees of jelly she was steered down the flight of stairs. The worst she can do is send me back, she thought at the parlor door, which gave her enough courage to touch the knob.
She turned to Marie, who nodded her on. “Aren’t you coming?”
The maid shook her head. “I am going to my room. Just ring for me when she is ready to go to bed.”
Remember Naaman’s servant girl, Sarah told herself and drew in a deep breath.
* * *
Dorothea Blake was forty when she hired her first piano tutor in pursuit of a dream she had kept inside since she was a small girl in East London. Mr. Gordon, her father’s and, later, husband’s employer, opened his magnificent Victoria Park house every Christmas to the shipbuilders and their families. While the women pretended they were used to such fine furnishings and hovered over their children for fear of cake crumbs or spilt punch, and the men in ill-fitting suits gorged themselves and pretended the camaraderie they shared with Mr. Gordon was an everyday occurrence, Dorothea would stand at the piano, enraptured, while Mr. Gordon’s daughter played carols.
As they both grew older, the girl allowed her to turn the pages of the songbook whenever she nodded, a responsibility Dorothea did not take lightly. The slender fingers rippled over the keys like water over stones, the girl’s expression one of serene detachment, as if she were unaware that dozens of people were watching and listening. Back in the Leman Street cottage, Dorothea would sit at the foot of the bed she shared with two older sisters and pretend the footboard was a piano. She even nodded at appropriate intervals to the imaginary little girl at her side, who hastened to turn pages and watched her with the same awe that filled the faces of the imaginary people all about her.
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