Wenna

by Virginia Taylor

  “You’re confused. Fucking a whore isn’t home comfort. It’s a paid service.”

  “You pay one way or the other,” Dev said with heartfelt bitterness, slinging an arm over the shoulders of the nearest woman. “Why not treat the transaction honestly?”

  “It’s too early in the night to have a philosophical conversation about prostitution. These lovelies are here merely to keep me company. They don’t want my body or yours, only the money.”

  “Well, yes,” the thin woman who had snuggled into Dev said. “Money’s good. It pays for food and lodging. But youse two gents aren’t our usual sort. I wouldn’t mind a go with one of you.” She put her palm over Dev’s fly and groped.

  His hand covered hers. “Not in public, my pet. It’s not polite.”

  “You’re not up for it.” She looked from his face to Nick’s and groaned. “You’re here for him. Not that I blame you. Man or woman, anyone would want him. C’mon, Connie. We’ll find a couple a’men who are interested in females.” Her mouth a sloppy pout, she rose unsteadily to her feet.

  The other looked puzzled for a moment and then she inexpertly gathered the knot of her hair back into a bunch. “Daisies,” she said disgustedly. “Wouldn’ta guessed, though.”

  Nick watched them leave with a resigned tilt of his eyebrows. “That ever happened to you before?”

  “There’s a first time for everything.” Dev sighed and motioned to a barmaid who bustled over and took his order. “It’d be easier though, if we didn’t want women.”

  Nick made a sound like a snort that Dev took to be assent. He proceeded to get sodden with his friend; so soaked, in fact, that Nick offered to walk him home a few hours later, which involved singing. Only a tenant above the chandler objected.

  Either Dev or Nick stumbled over the doorsill and either Dev or Nick ended up crawling into the two-chaired sitting room. “Two chairs,” Dev said in disgust as he tried to haul himself onto the seat. He remembered. He was the one who had crawled. Seemed an easier way to travel when a man’s head didn’t know up from down. “I said I would buy more furniture, but ‘no’ she said. She controls the money and she wants to go to England.”

  “Why should that bother you?” Nick said as he lowered himself into a chair. “You never meant to stay here.”

  “Many a man has had second thoughts.” Dev hit the tender part of his shin on the chair leg as he turned to sit. “Pass that bottle.”

  Chapter 18

  If the slamming of the outside door hadn’t woken Wenna, the voices downstairs would have; would have probably woken most of the tenants in the street as well. Instantly alert, she arose, snagged the paisley shawl from the end of the bed, and covered her shoulders. The night had cooled. Drawing in a resigned breath, she padded barefoot down the stairs. The murmur of at least two voices almost stopped her. She hadn’t expected Devon to bring his friend inside, but the least she could do for her apparently drunk husband would be to haul him upstairs to bed. She proceeded to the angle of light visible between the sitting room door and the jamb. Not dressed for company, she hesitated for a moment.

  Devon, his voice slurred and hesitant, said, “My plan, you understand, was to take her to Cornwall—said that’s where she wanted to go.” Clearly he spoke of Wenna.

  Her heart began to pound.

  “Which sounds convenient.” Nick’s voice, the usual low cynical tone. “Your family lives there and so will you.”

  Devon gave an uneven laugh. “Could you imagine my father’s face, though? A redheaded servant married to his son?” Scathing, not like Devon, but his voice all the same.

  “She’s a smart woman. He would be a fool not to see that.”

  “Know who he wouldn’t let me marry? The love of my life, Jenny, a redheaded dairymaid. I was sent to France because of her, and then out here. I would see sense, my lord thought, and find a lady he could approve of one day.” Devon’s voice cracked. “I showed him.”

  The love of his life? Yet he could make love to Wenna like a man dedicated to bed-sport. Her face hardened.

  “Likely he has your best interests at heart.”

  “So he said, but I didn’t know that then. I found Wenna. She wanted to go to Cornwall. Suited me. I wanted to bed her. Didn’t matter if I got her pregnant. Good idea, as it turned out.”

  “It must have been torture for you.” Nick, cynical, drawling.

  Devon made a sound like a grunt.

  “You could have persuaded any one of a number of colonial hopefuls to do the same thing. You know how impressed the females here are by the British gentry.”

  “Not a redhead among them.” Devon, flippant.

  “Nothing but a redheaded maid would do for you. I understand revenge, unfortunately.”

  “Should never have considered it.” Silence from Devon.

  Wenna couldn’t move either back or forward. Every joint in her body had locked into place. Her heart sprung a hole right in the center, a great cavernous hole. She had died, but her body remained upright, stiff, and cold.

  Devon had married her to avenge himself on his father.

  She had red hair and Devon saw her as a servant, no more than that to him. Not the woman of his dreams, not the woman who tried hard to save him money, to make him comfortable, to push him ahead in life. Not the woman who thought she would love him until she died.

  “She would have been able to handle m’father, despite that red hair of hers.” A shoe scraped on the floor as if one of the gentlemen had moved.

  “Would have? You think she can’t now?”

  Silence again. Another shifting of feet. “Don’t need her to do so. My plan was puerile, but, Lord, I wanted her. And Courtneys always get what they want no matter what they have to promise.” Said sourly by her dishonorable husband. He had married her to gain a bed-warmer, no more, no less, and now greatly regretted his haste. Lust didn’t last forever, not as long as a need for revenge. “And Courtneys don’t break promises.”

  “So, now what?”

  The silence lingered. Wenna swallowed to ease her dry throat. He wanted her because his father wouldn’t approve of his son marrying a servant, and certainly not one with red hair. Unwillingly, ignobly, he would be a redheaded servant’s escort to England, because he had promised, all the while trying to put a baby in the servant’s belly so that he could complete his vengeance by giving his father an underling’s child as his heir. Perhaps she ought to let Dev impregnate her. Then they could be done with each other.

  Shivering, she groped her way back to the bedroom, led by the moonlight beckoning through the upstairs windows. Strange rasps forced through her throat and tears flooded out of her eyes, blinding her, too fast to be blotted, gushing too heavily to stop. Her crying became weeping, noisy and ugly, betrayed, unstoppable, seeping out of her in a volume she couldn’t imagine or control. She had mourned before, but she had never been betrayed before, not like this, not by a man she completely trusted. She thought she would never feel warm again.

  She crawled under the sheet, the linen around her soaked with her distress until the deluge stopped, leaving her drained of all emotion except an aching cynicism about herself and her foolish expectations. Her husband hadn’t betrayed her, hadn’t lied to her. When he had asked her to marry him, she had heard his honest explanation. He hadn’t tricked her. Redheaded maid that she was, she’d had no problem tricking herself. Knowing her attraction to him, she’d hoped he might learn to love her.

  At some stage through the muddle of her flickering thoughts, she heard Devon stumble up the stairs. She turned her back to the door, refusing to acknowledge him. He didn’t enter. He had enough sense to snore the rest of the night away in the dressing room.

  In the morning, she slowly dressed in her servant’s black, not sure of her next step. She thought of her beautiful red dress and ached. A redheaded servant in a red dress at an exclusive ball. Without a doubt that had delighted Devon as much as he said. By wearing that c
olor she played right into his hands. She couldn’t have been more out of place, more noticeable, or more the sort of woman with whom to taunt his father.

  She’d been told often enough that she didn’t know her place and, literally, she didn’t. As a child, she’d had status of a sort as the daughter of a mine manager. In those days she had associated with children of the wealthier settlers, including Nell and Ivor. After her father’s death, she had moved way down the ladder when her mother could only support her as a washerwoman.

  However, as soon as Wenna reached the age to take her first job as a scullery maid, she had pushed her old friends to the back of her mind and fought her way up again, until she’d reached the highest position a woman servant could attain. Though for her, being a lady’s maid was not enough. Being as good as anyone was her aim; as good as the boy her father had craved.

  Then she had married Devon. Even then, she continued being humiliated and ridiculed because of her hair and her lowly status. To cap that, Devon had married her only to avenge himself on his father. She couldn’t even force a self-derisive snort. But she managed to curl her lip and harden her heart as she tramped down the stairs to the kitchen.

  Ignoring the cold stove, she left the husband sleeping upstairs to heat his own water and prepare his own breakfast, and proceeded to her job in the back of Madame Fleur’s. Her persistence meant nothing at all if, throughout her life, she never rose above being a redheaded maid. As she walked through the doorway of the hat shop, she lifted her chin.

  From this day and forevermore, she intended be more than the sum of her hair color and her gender.

  * * * *

  The daylight poured into the window as Dev tried to get his bearings. He lay in a small bed, barely a cot, and he wore his suit and shoes. His head thumped. He tried to sit up, but the anvil pounding in his skull kept him supine. Apparently he’d slept the night in Wenna’s dressing room. Memories came back to him of drinking with Nick. If he had kept up with his friend, his head could be explained. And then he remembered why he had been drinking. He groaned.

  Wenna wanted a life in England. Later he would process this. Right now he needed to wash and shave—as soon as he could stand. Since he had booked to leave Adelaide on the next passenger ship, he needed to get his affairs in order. After groping his way up the wall, he stood up and, with agonizing slowness, he fumbled to his bedroom. Wenna had gone.

  He saw no sign of her in the kitchen. The stove sat gray with last night’s ashes. Moving slowly, he had a cold-water wash before he dressed for a day’s labor. After a large cold glass of water, he puttered down the street to discuss the management of his properties with Tom Finn.

  After that, he bought a glass of ale, which somewhat dulled the thumping hammer in the cavernous black space of his head, and he jammed a meat pie into the cesspit of his mouth on the way up to his almost-completed house.

  His mind couldn’t process his immediate future. He could do nothing but sit for a while on the hill, wrists dangling from his knees, contemplating the view that would soon be replaced by the stark boredom of idling in Cornwall.

  Finally, he rose to his feet and walked down to the house he would never occupy, unless Wenna tired of Cornwall, or unless she grew to love him and wanted to live with him at the end of the earth. He couldn’t expect love from her, though. He had done not a thing for her except tup her day and night, and expect her to be content in society, although she’d not been born there. He had expected her to be comfortable in the company of his friends, though she likely had her own elsewhere.

  Not once in the past few months had he given a thought to the life she might have wanted. He had expected her to live his. Without a doubt, he had been a graceless, inconsiderate husband who would now do his duty by his wife, who had always done her duty by him.

  * * * *

  If Wenna did nothing else in her life, she would make a lasting success of her business. She finished washing and drying her customers’ hair; she showed off the prettiest hats, she booked her time for the next day and the next; she finished for the day at the same time as usual. Then, after tying her hat firmly under her chin, she dropped into The Pig and Whistle to talk to Mr. Snow. From there, she walked to the land agent’s office.

  The portly red-faced man, of course, didn’t want to deal with a mere female. “Who do you have as surety if I let you rent out a place?” he said, hooking his nicotine-stained thumbs into the pockets of his tweed waistcoat and rocking back on his heels. His belly looked important enough to have its own office.

  She glanced down her nose at him. “I have myself, Mr. Bainbridge, and cash. My business is very profitable, and I’m expecting to hire more staff if I have larger premises. You are advertising a vacant shop. Do you want to let it, or not?” She waited, tapping her foot impatiently.

  He ran his tongue over his teeth as he stared at her. Then, with a hearty sigh, he took down the advertisement from his window and scanned his wording, as if making sure he could let a woman with her own money hire the place. Finally, he buttoned his jacket and took his dusty hat from the peg by the door. “If you’ll give me a moment to lock up here, Miss Chenoweth, we can see if it’s suitable for you.”

  Clouds hovered low in the gray sky. The walk down the wind-blown street would have been more pleasant alone. The man almost creaked while he huffed and puffed beside her. She didn’t have any respect for a man who let himself get so out of condition that walking at a smart pace along a street could cause trails of sweat to drip from under his hat.

  Devon could run for miles, and he did so every day. She had never asked why, but the exercise showed on his big, healthy, beautiful body. Lifting bricks also didn’t hurt his physique one bit. But dreaming about the perfection she had married was a waste of her time when he had no affection for her. She tightened her face and continued on with the small-minded man beside her.

  The building that interested her had been vacant for a week. The last tenant, a shoemaker, had moved to a side street with cheaper rent. Wenna thought she would do well in the space, which was attached to the pastry shop where Devon had taken her the day she had arrived. The proprietress, a widow with three children who lived above the premises, employed smartly uniformed waitresses, a ploy that attracted the well-heeled customers who could also use Wenna’s services. As a bonus, Wenna’s clients would likely purchase pastries or cakes so conveniently placed.

  After a short amount of haggling, she hired two very suitable rooms, the large front room and the smaller back room on the ground floor. She planned to use her main area for her customers and her back area, which housed the wood stove, as her utility room. The tenants upstairs had the same arrangement as she and Devon had in their lodgings, a lobby and staircase, and would be no trouble, or so Mr. Bainbridge said.

  Her first task completed, Wenna took a detour and strode along the back lanes to Frome Street, planning her shop’s decor. The walls needed to be painted a color that would show up the ladies’ hairdos in the most flattering way. A dark cream would be suitable. She stopped outside Alden and Company where she could find the chairs she wanted for her customers, briefly wondering if Nick Alden’s family ran the place. His surname was unusual.

  Forewarned being forearmed, she carefully glanced around the showroom before entering, but she didn’t see Nick. This didn’t really surprise her. His drinking habit wasn’t compatible with the early rising required to work in a shop, and his hands showed no signs of being used for physical labor—not like Dev’s with his cuts and scratches and hardened palms. She breathed in the hot aroma of boiling glue, wood dust, and shellac while listening to the hidden murmur of conversation behind a partition, a sudden shout of mirth, and the regular bite of a saw.

  The chairs could be delivered within the next few days. The painter shouldn’t take longer than that, once she found one. She estimated that in a weeks’ time, she would no longer be visible to society matrons who shopped for expensive hats. Only women who neede
d an occasional lift to their spirits would see her.

  The relief she experienced in moving to her own space lightened her steps. The thought of defying her husband tightened her lips and stiffened her spine.

  * * * *

  Dusk had settled before Dev had finished supervising the property. During the next few weeks, he would hurry up setting out the area. Finn knew his long-term plans and would hire a couple to live in the house to maintain the home farm and the gardens. Dev would not be able to return. He didn’t want to sell, though a small part of him hoped his wife might not find the life she had dreamed of in England, and would agree to settle back into the land of her birth.

  He arrived home that night, weary, chastened, and contrite about his appalling loss of composure the night before. As soon as he opened the door, he spotted Wenna sitting in the kitchen as usual, awaiting his arrival. The stove warmed the place. He smiled at her, his beautiful, patient, redheaded wife.

  “Does your head ache?” she asked politely.

  He smiled ruefully. “Like the devil.”

  “It serves you right.” She indicated the water on the stove awaiting his wash.

  He began unbuttoning his shirt. “I won’t be drinking to excess again in a hurry.” At least he hadn’t annoyed her with his drunken attentions the night before. “You’re right. We should have moved into a house the day we married. I simply thought... Well, we expected to go to England.” He shrugged.

  “At least we have a date to leave now.” She turned her back.

  He sighed. Likely he deserved an amount of punishment, but he’d grown used to the intimacy of her watching him while he washed. He changed upstairs as usual, and they ate across the street as usual, but the conversation no longer had the give and take he so much enjoyed with her. The remote expression on her face warned him off, though he couldn’t fault her manner. He had apologized. He could do no more than wait out her displeasure.