by Merry Farmer
The butler blinked at her. “I don’t think you understand.”
Cold dread filled Noelle’s stomach. “Understand what? I was sent for to be a maid in this house. I came all the way from America.”
“Lord Waltham is gone,” the butler countered. “The house is in an uproar. The third footman ran off with one of the maids and a sack full of silver, and they haven’t been found yet.”
Noelle flinched in surprise at that, but if she was tempted to find it funny, the butler put a stop to that.
“We have no need of your services,” he said.
Noelle’s chest tightened. “But I came so far, left everything behind. I don’t have anywhere else to stay.”
The butler stared at her, unmoving.
“I don’t know anyone in England at all, except for Ram Singh and Captain Tennant.” She glanced to Ram.
“We don’t need you,” the butler repeated. “You’ll have to find an alternative arrangement.”
“But—”
“Good day,” the butler said. He stepped back and shut the door in Noelle’s face before she could say another word.
CHAPTER 2
Ram’s heart sank on Noelle’s behalf as Lord Waltham’s butler shut the door in her face. For a moment, Noelle stood there, eyes wide, mouth slightly opened, staring at the wood and paint inches from her face. The color drained from her cheeks.
“What am I going to do?” she asked in a whisper, turning slowly to face him. “What am I going to do, Ram? I don’t have any other position lined up. I don’t know anyone else who would hire me. I don’t have anywhere to live or anywhere to go. I’m alone, thousands of miles from everything and everyone that I know.”
Her panic was quickly spinning out of control, so Ram rested a hand on her arm. “You’re not alone. I’m here.”
She fixed her frantic gaze on him and blinked. “But what am I supposed to do now?”
It was a valid question. Ram wished he’d paid more attention to the gossip from high society circles. He might have heard about Lord Waltham’s confrontation and mysterious disappearance. He might have been able to warn Noelle the moment she stepped off the ship, warned Captain Tennant as well. Then perhaps they could have arranged something for her. As it was, they were going to have to figure things out as they went.
Resolution stiffened Ram’s back. “I’ll tell you what,” he began, leading Noelle back down the stairs and over to the wagon. “We’ll start by finding you a place to stay. There are plenty of affordable hotels nearby, outside of the realm of society. Do you have enough spare money to stay in one?”
Noelle shrugged, still stunned, as Ram helped her into the wagon. “I have a little. I don’t know how long it will last. Your British money is not the same as our American dollars. I honestly don’t know how far that will stretch.”
“But you do have British money?” Ram walked around the wagon to climb in on the driver’s side.
“Captain Tennant exchanged what I had for me before I left the ship.”
Ram nodded. “Good. That’s a good place to start.”
He gathered the reins and set the wagon in motion. Noelle remained stunned as he drove around the square, then headed back the way they’d come. It was out of the question for her to stay in Mayfair for the night. Whatever money she had, it would never cover the cost of a room in the fashionable part of town. He wasn’t inclined to take her all the way back to East London either. A single woman on her own would run into more trouble than she deserved if she set foot in the wrong place or crossed the wrong person. No, the best place to take her was the only part of London he knew better than the docks, Fitzrovia.
“We’re heading just north of Oxford Street,” Ram explained as he turned his wagon onto Davies Street. “I know of several respectable establishments up there where you can rest your head in peace tonight.”
“Thanks,” Noelle replied, but she didn’t seem particularly focused.
She picked at her red skirt as she chewed her lip. Any other day, Ram would have found the gesture alluring. Noelle was a beautiful woman, with soulful eyes and a rich, alto voice. He’d felt an attraction to her the moment Captain Tennant introduced them. But now was not the time to turn on the charm in an attempt to woo her into a little fun. In fact, he figured she was probably having the least fun day of her life.
“Lord Waltham will return,” he said to reassure her.
She glanced sideways at him, her brow twitching up. “Are you certain?”
He wasn’t. He didn’t want to admit it, but he also didn’t want to lie. Instead, he shrugged. “He was probably just embarrassed by whatever happened between him and that woman and her fiancé in Hyde Park.”
“What do you suppose happened?”
“Who knows.” His mouth pulled into a wry grin. “Who knows what trouble the aristocracy gets themselves into? All of these rules of polite society and what makes you one of them or on the outside.” He shook his head. “It all sounds like poppycock to me.”
Her shoulders relaxed, but she sounded weary when she said, “Believe me, it’s too easy to end up on the outside of society, and once you’re there, you never get back in.”
“In America?” Ram asked.
“Everywhere.”
She had a point. Ram had known from the moment he set foot on British soil that he would never be on the inside of high society. He would always be “that brown colonial”, no matter how hard he worked. His plans to build one of the finest shops London had ever seen had nothing to do with wanting to edge his way into society with money, and everything to do with wanting the personal satisfaction of creating something from nothing against all odds.
“Even if Lord Waltham doesn’t return,” he went on, “you’ll find your way.”
“I suppose I could find another job,” Noelle said with a sigh. The fear had left her face, which was now set in determination. “In a city like this, there has to be a thousand positions I could apply for.”
“That’s the spirit,” Ram said, although he doubted she would be able to find a position as a maid without a full set of references.
“And I’m not entirely friendless.” She glanced sideways at him again. A beautiful, modest pink spread across her face. She lowered her head, her dark lashes sweeping her soft, pale cheeks.
A flash of lust filled him, sending his blood pumping. It would have been ungentlemanly of him to act on it, but he enjoyed the fact that it was there. He drove on, weaving through the traffic attempting to make its way onto Oxford Street and making simple conversation with Noelle. The best thing for her was to look forward, not backward. Even if Lord Waltham never returned, Ram decided it would be his personal mission to make sure Noelle landed on her feet.
“Here we are,” he said as he pulled up to the front of a modest hotel, two streets back from the heart of Oxford Street. “What better place to rest your head than in The Queen’s Arms.”
Noelle had recovered enough of her confidence to laugh lightly at his joke. “Thank you, Ram,” she said as he helped her down from the wagon and walked her into the hotel’s lobby. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“Let’s be glad that you didn’t have to find out,” he said.
He handed over her carpetbag. For a moment, their hands brushed on the handle. Ram wanted to take her hands in his, trace her long fingers with his calloused ones, feel the lightness of her touch against his skin. It made perfect sense to him that she would have been successful in her former profession, but at the same time, he admired her even more for pulling herself up out of that. The fact that it was obvious to him that she must have been very good at being very bad made her efforts to turn over a new leaf that much more admirable.
“I’ll come back and check on you tomorrow,” he vowed, letting go of the carpetbag’s handle at last. “And if you need anything, you can send for me through Captain Tennant.”
“I appreciate this all so much more than you can ever know,” she said, treatin
g him to a grateful smile. “And if there’s ever anything I can do for you, just ask.”
Ram was sure that there were a great many things she could do for him, but he wouldn’t be cad enough to ask. That didn’t stop him from sending her a flirty smile.
“Until tomorrow then, Miss Walters.”
“Until tomorrow.”
Noelle barely slept a wink that night. It didn’t matter how exhausted she was after traveling across London and halfway back. Her mind spun through the long, dark hours, replaying everything that Lord Waltham’s butler had said to her. Lord Waltham was gone. She wasn’t needed.
But even as she tossed and turned, a second, warmer thought infused its way through her, keeping her from a flat panic. She wasn’t alone. Ram was there, and he would look out for her.
Ram Singh. She flopped to her back somewhere in the deep hours of the night, and smiled up at the ceiling. She’d never met a man from India before. To her, India had only ever been a shape on a map. England too, for that matter. Looking at Ram, listening to the musical lilt of his accent and the dream he spun for himself, gave her a thrill. There were so many things in the world that she had never dreamed of before. That meant that there were so many possibilities for her second chance at life that she could choose from. She might have been in a dangerous situation at the moment, but surely, with so many new things in her world, she wouldn’t have to fall back on her old profession.
By the time she dragged herself out of bed, washed and dressed in something less eye-catching than her red dress, and made her way down to the hotel’s restaurant for breakfast, her mind was made up. Her first chance at reinventing herself in London had vanished, but she wasn’t going to give up. Although the decreasing weight of her purse after she paid for breakfast did give her a moment’s pause. She wasn’t going to let that defeat her.
“Excuse me,” she asked the man behind the hotel’s front desk with all the authority of an American heiress come to take the British aristocracy by storm. “Where would I go to find a job as a maid in house of a nobleman here in London?”
The man behind the desk blinked at her as though she’d asked where she could find a unicorn.
“I was supposed to begin work at Lord Waltham’s house,” Noelle went on when he didn’t rush to tell her what she wanted to know.
“Oh,” he spoke at last, all too knowing. “Lord Waltham.” A condescending smirk twisted his mouth. “I’ve heard all about that sorry mess.”
Noelle couldn’t resist asking. “What exactly happened? I heard there was a confrontation over a woman in Hyde Park?”
The man’s smirk deepened. “The woman in question threw him over to marry a bloke younger and richer than Waltham. But rumor has it that she’d given Waltham the goods first, then had to marry the other fellow in a hurry, if you know what I mean.”
Noelle had a feeling she knew full well what he meant. And if Lord Waltham had fled in grief and disgrace after loving a woman who did him wrong, then she felt very sorry for him indeed. Although she wouldn’t be in the predicament she was in now if he’d stayed in London. Maybe there was more to the story than a simple broken heart.
She cleared her throat and shifted her stance. “So where might I go to get another position like the one Lord Waltham was planning to offer me?”
The man behind the desk laughed. “Go to Mayfair, if you want to throw your cap in with that lot. But don’t expect them to go handing positions out on silver platters.”
Noelle’s mouth pressed into a flat line. She didn’t appreciate the man’s tone. “Thank you,” she said, turning away from him and marching toward the door.
“Wait, miss,” the man called after her. “You can’t just go swanning about Mayfair asking the nobs to hire you.”
Noelle pretended that she hadn’t heard him. She marched out the front door, putting on the winter coat she’d been carrying, and turned toward Oxford Street. Her mission was to find employment, and she wasn’t going to let the likes of a hotel clerk discourage her.
An hour later, she wondered if she should have stayed behind and listened to the man.
“Excuse me, my name is Noelle Walters, and I came over from America with the promise of a position as a maid in a London house. But that position fell through. You wouldn’t happen to be hiring for your house, would you?” she asked for the dozenth time.
The lady she’d stopped outside of one of the fancier draper’s shops on Oxford Street turned up her nose and marched on as though Noelle were a mangy dog. Noelle sighed and let her shoulders slump, even though it didn’t present an attractive image. She should have thought things through before accosting every lady in silk on the street. The day had grown colder as she’d walked up and down the street, and none of the ladies she’d approached had taken her questions seriously. But how else was she supposed to find out who was hiring and who wasn’t?
Her heart leapt and her energy returned as she spotted a group of young ladies close to her age leaving a haberdasher’s shop. They were all wrapped in thick coats, and the younger ones carried ermine muffs to keep their hands warm.
“Excuse me.” She rushed to intercept them. All five of the ladies blinked and fluttered in surprise at being addressed. “My name is Noelle Walters, and I’ve just come over from America.”
“I should say you have,” one of them muttered. The lady standing closest to her tittered.
Noelle refused to be deterred. “I was supposed to have a job here as a maid in—” She paused, thinking twice about mentioning Lord Waltham’s name. “—in a grand London house,” she said instead. “But that position fell through. Might any of you be looking for a maid? Or if not, do you know of anyone who is?”
The lady who had made the snide comment merely laughed, grabbed her tittering friend’s arm, and marched on. Of the three ladies who remained, one of them shook her head, muttering something about vagrants on the street, and hurried to catch up to the other two. The fourth glanced between the retreating ladies and the one who seemed to be the oldest, then rushed on to join the others. The last remaining, oldest lady, looked after the others, but instead of rushing off to join them, she clasped her hands in front of her and looked at Noelle with pitying eyes.
“My dear, I understand that you are new here, but if you persist in searching for a position this way, you’re more likely to end up in jail,” she said, like an older sister.
Noelle gasped. She hadn’t considered that. Now that she was considering it, she darted an anxious look around to make sure that no policemen were observing her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know. It’s just that I’m at a loss for what to do after discovering the job I was supposed to have doesn’t exist anymore.”
“That must be terribly distressing,” the woman said. Her kind, oval face and green eyes held nothing but sympathy. “The trouble is, one does not hire one’s servants off the street.”
“No?” Of course, it was obvious to Noelle now that she thought about it. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment.
“Generally, it is the housekeeper who hires female servants,” the woman went on. “I’m not entirely sure how they do so, but one would assume it is through an agency of some sort. That or personal recommendation. And only those women with an impeccable reference will be hired by a good house.”
“References?” Noelle’s heart sank. The only reference she had for Lord Waltham was his connection to Theophilus Gunn and the group of men he’d known during the Crimean War.
“Do you have references?” the lady asked, a note of hope in her voice.
Noelle sighed. “No, not really.” She was still wary of announcing her connection to Lord Waltham, so there was nothing else she could say.
The lady shifted, pressing her fingertips to her cheek for a moment. “I’ll tell you what, Miss Noelle Walters, fresh off the boat from America. If you tell me where you are staying, and if I hear of any houses that are in need of staff, I shall send word so that you might have an interview.”
“Really? Oh, thank you—” Noelle paused with her mouth open, no idea who the woman in front of her was.
“Lady Lavinia Prior,” she said. “My father is Lord Percival Prior, Earl of Margate. Those are my sisters,” she added with a raised eyebrow and a hint that it was her burden in life to play mother hen to them.
Noelle glanced past Lady Lavinia’s shoulder. “You’d better go after them before they get away.”
Lady Lavinia laughed. “Tell me where you’re lodging, and I will.”
“The Queen’s Arms hotel,” Noelle said. “In Fitzrovia. But I don’t know how long I’ll be there.”
“And we live in Berkeley Square,” Lady Lavinia said, taking a half step back and looking over her shoulders to her sister. “With any luck, I’ll be able to do something for you.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Noelle called as Lady Lavinia turned to hurry after her sisters. She wasn’t sure if anything would come of the meeting, but it was better than nothing. She sighed, turning to search Oxford Street for anything that might look like an employment agency for placing servants.
“Did I hear you were looking for a position?” a deep male voice said.
Something about the voice sent an instant chill down Noelle’s spine. She twisted and turned until she found the man who had spoken. He stood only a few yards away, by the side of a tall, black-lacquered carriage. He himself was tall, with neat, blond hair and a stylish moustache. The coat he wore to block the cold was expensive-looking and trimmed with fur.
“Um….” Noelle swayed on her spot. Instinct told her to run from this man, especially as he sidled closer to her, his eyes gleaming with the same sort of interest she’d seen in the men back home who liked to be rough with women. But if she ever wanted to find a new job, she would have to look under every rock. “I’m looking for a position as a maid,” she clarified for him.
