by Merry Farmer
“Hmm.” The gentleman studied her, stroking his chin. “Is that so?” He swept her from head to toe with a look that made Noelle feel as though he could see through her clothing. She was inches away from turning and fleeing when he reached into his coat pocket and brought out a business card. “I might have something for you,” he said, presenting her with the card.
Noelle took the card with shaking hands. She told herself the shaking was just from the cold as she read the card. It didn’t say much, only, “Lord Theodore Shayles. Black Strap Club. Kensington.”
“Yes,” Lord Shayles said, studying Noelle as she pretended to study the card. “I think that I might have just the position for you.”
A flicker of movement from the carriage caught Noelle’s eye. She glanced up to find a woman frantically shaking her head and mouthing the word, “No”. The woman was pale with dark circles under her eyes. She didn’t look well, even though she was finely dressed. When she saw that she had Noelle’s attention, she shook her head harder and mouthed, “Run. Get away.”
Lord Shayles noticed the exchange. His brow fell into a harsh frown. “Mildred,” he snapped. “Sit back.” The woman in the carriage window disappeared. Lord Shayles turned back to Noelle. “You must excuse my wife. She’s prone to fits.”
“I’m very sorry,” Noelle said. Part of her wanted to stay and help the woman. She didn’t trust Lord Shayles as far as she could throw him, and if the woman really was his wife, she was likely in trouble. But there didn’t seem to be anything Noelle could do on her own.
“I promise you,” Lord Shayles went on, his sly grin returning. “I pay very well. And there are…benefits to being in my employ.”
The mention of money triggered something old and visceral in Noelle. Men had said things like that to her before. The temptation of food in her belly had been too much to resist back then. But in the years that had followed, she had consoled herself after all she’d done with the thought that it was either spread her legs or die.
Lord Shayles continued to smile at her, a reminder of just how easy it was to choose something horrible in order to stay alive.
Not yet, she told herself. It’s not time to make that decision yet.
“I—”
“There you are.”
Before she could open her mouth to turn Lord Shayles down, she was saved by the determined form of Ram striding toward her.
CHAPTER 3
“Ram.” Noelle practically shouted his name, she was so grateful to see him. With only a fleeting glance and nod to Lord Shayles, she turned and rushed to meet him farther down the sidewalk. “I’m so glad to see you,” she whispered when they were close.
“I can see that.” Ram glanced past her shoulder, narrowing his eyes at Lord Shayles, who was still watching Noelle, a hungry look in his eyes. “What are you doing out here?”
A flush of sheepish heat came to Noelle’s face. “I was looking for a new job. I feel foolish about it now, but I assumed I could find some nice lady in the middle of her shopping and ask her to hire me.”
Ram winced. “I wish you had asked me first. Hiring of servants doesn’t work that way.”
“I know that now.” Noelle touched a hand to her hot cheek. She should be grateful for a little warmth in the cold morning, but she felt too stupid to enjoy it.
“What did that one want with you?” Ram nodded to where Lord Shayles continued to stand beside his carriage.
Noelle peeked over her shoulder, hoping the lord wasn’t still watching. He was. She sighed and turned back to Ram. “Never mind what he wanted. I’ve dealt with his like before, and he’s not getting it.”
Ram didn’t look convinced. “I’m not sure you ever truly have dealt with men like him before.”
A twist of worry pinched Noelle’s gut. “Why? Do you know him?”
Ram’s eyes narrowed even further as he boldly studied Lord Shayles. “I think I’ve seen him before. If he is who I think he is, you’ll want to stay far away from him.”
Noelle bit her lip, but stopped herself from taking another look. She still held Lord Shayles’s card in her left hand. Hoping Ram didn’t see, she thrust it into her coat pocket.
As soon as her hands were free, her soul felt lighter. She sighed. “I just wish there were an easier way to find gainful employment in London.”
Ram must have sensed the shift in mood too. He nodded, taking her hand and sliding it into his arm so that he could escort her. “Employment is easy,” he said with a wry grin. “It’s the sort of employment you want that’s much harder to come by.”
Noelle let out an ironic laugh and shook her head. The tension that she’d carried with her since leaving the hotel began to lift, and her heart felt light with Ram by her side. They didn’t walk far. Ram led her into a bustling café just a few doors down from the shop that Lady Lavinia and her sisters had come out of. People of all descriptions and sorts filled the noisy space, so Noelle didn’t feel as wildly out of place as she could have when Ram pulled a chair out from a table close to the café’s front windows.
Within minutes, they were seated and cozy, a young woman brought them tea, and Noelle began to feel hopeful again.
“I suppose all isn’t lost yet,” Noelle said as she cupped her hands around her tea to warm them. “I met a very nice lady by the name of Lavinia Prior who gave me some advice.”
“Lady Lavinia Prior.” Ram furrowed his brow, thinking. He shook his head and dunked a biscuit into his tea. “What did she say?”
“That I need references if I’m going to get a position in another house like Lord Waltham’s.”
Ram grinned and bit into his soggy biscuit. “I could have told you that.”
“I wish you would have.” Noelle smiled in spite of her embarrassment. Everything seemed better with Ram’s handsome face across the table from her. “How do people start out in the life of a servant?” She wondered aloud. “I mean, in the beginning, no one has references.”
“They start the same way that you were going to,” Ram said. “With a personal recommendation. Although usually young people are related to someone else who has gone into service. And they start out at the very bottom, as a scullery maid or hall boy, then work their way up.”
“Hmm.” Noelle sipped her tea. She didn’t know what a scullery maid did, but she doubted it was a job she’d be interested in. She’d had to start out at the bottom before, and it had been a nightmare. Although working at the bottom of the heap in a London house had to be easier than being at the bottom of the pecking order in a busy whorehouse. The new girls were always the ones who ended up with the worst customers—the dirty ones, the creepy ones, and the violent ones. She absent-mindedly rubbed her cheek at memories she would rather have forgotten. It’d been a bittersweet day when Madam Trixie at the whorehouse in Seattle had graduated her from the cribs out back to a room of her own upstairs. She’d earned that room and earned it the hard way.
“What are you thinking?”
Ram’s simple question jolted her out of her thoughts. Noelle’s face and neck went hot. She met Ram’s eyes, debating how much she should reveal to her new friend. Everything she had to say about her past would probably shock him into not wanting anything to do with her anymore. Then again, Ram had been born in a different world. He’d sailed the seas, and now he made his home in the buzzing city where she found herself.
“I was fretting over how bad my luck has been since setting foot in England,” she said. It was an honest answer, but also an evasion.
“Things will turn around for you, I’m certain.” Ram reached across the table to touch her hand where it rested next to her teacup.
Noelle smiled at him, but doubt and fear gripped her all the same. “That man,” she said, quickly swallowing the lump that came to her throat. “Lord Shayles.”
“Was he the man by the carriage?” Ram frowned.
Noelle nodded. “He offered me a job.”
“Do I want to ask what kind of job?”
Noelle shook her head. She took a long drink of her tea, staring at the cup once she set it on the table again. “That’s not the first time a man like that has offered me a job that way.”
Ram remained silent, watching her. His expression was grave, but his eyes were supportive and filled with a worldliness that spurred Noelle along. He would listen to what she had to say, and he would understand her.
“I grew up in a place called Seattle, in Washington Territory, in an orphanage,” she said, eyes downcast. “I never learned much about my parents, only that they died in a flood when I was just a baby. Somehow, I was rescued and taken to a mission before landing in the orphanage.”
She glanced up to see if Ram was interested in what she was saying. He hung on her every word. That gave her the courage to go on.
“The orphanage wasn’t a very nice place, but I did receive an education. They turned me out when I was sixteen, but before they did, they found me a position as a washerwoman. It was hard work, though, and the lye soap made my hands crack and bleed. I hated every minute of the work.
“One day, when I was delivering laundry to a rich man’s house in town, a woman in a fine gown stopped me on the street. She said I was too pretty to waste my life scrubbing other people’s dirty knickers, and if I wanted, she had a job for me that would pay ten times what washing did.”
Noelle sighed, picking at a spot on the table. Her shoulders sagged, and her soul felt as though it were wilting with her memories. But Ram didn’t interrupt her or ask questions.
“I thought I’d hit the mother lode,” she went on. “I went back to the laundry shack and told my employer I was through with being her slave, told her I’d had a much better offer. She laughed at me and told me I’d be sorry.” Noelle paused. “She was right.”
“I went to the house that the woman on the street had told me to go to. That woman, Madam Trixie, gave me a bath, a pretty new dress, and a warm supper. I didn’t question why she was being so nice, why there were so many men in the dining room, or what my job was going to be. It wasn’t until I found myself being whisked upstairs by a man in a suit that I figured it out. By that point, it was too late.”
She shook her head, drinking the last of her tea.
“I’m sorry,” Ram said. “That must have been terrible. You were so young.”
She peeked up at him. “I wasn’t as young as most girls who get trapped in that life. And believe me, no woman chooses to become a whore.”
Even as she said it, she winced. It sounded nice, but it wasn’t exactly true.
She rubbed her temples, then went on. “I should say that I didn’t choose that first time. After that, though….” She swallowed, dragging her eyes up to meet Ram’s again. “I had a choice. I could’ve run, but Seattle was a small city back then. Madam Trixie made it clear that everyone in town would know what I’d done and what I was, and no one would hire me for decent work. So I chose to stay rather than to starve.”
“You were in an impossible situation,” Ram said, confirming Noelle’s feeling that he would understand.
She sighed. “I wonder if I’m in an impossible situation now.” She thought about Lord Shayles’s card in her coat pocket. One way or another, foreign city or not, she wouldn’t starve. But if it came to it, what price would she be willing to pay to stay alive? “I can’t shake the feeling that my second chance might end up to be nothing more than having to make the same difficult decision in a new city.”
“It won’t come to that,” Ram insisted with more force than Noelle expected. She blinked, straightening and staring at him. “I won’t let it come to that,” he went on. “This is London. There are a thousand things to do that don’t involve…men like that Lord Shayles.”
Noelle arched an eyebrow, silently asking if he was certain.
“Yes, you need references to work as a maid in a house,” Ram went on, his energy growing. “But there are plenty of other kinds of jobs. You could work as a seamstress in one of the shops right here on Oxford Street.”
Noelle shook her head. “My sewing was never any good.”
“You could work as a salesgirl in one of the shops, then.”
That sounded like a better suggestion. Noelle tilted her head to the side, considering it. “Would a shop that ladies like Lady Lavinia patronize really hire an American just off the boat?”
Ram’s expression flattened a little. “I’m not sure if they would. But there are other kinds of positions.” His energy returned, bringing light to his whole face. “Why, you could get a job serving tea at a shop just like this one.”
Noelle’s brow inched up. She glanced around the shop. The girl who had brought their tea was busy taking the order of a table of middle class women deeper in the café. She wore simple clothes and had her hair pulled back in a bun. She didn’t seem any more special or extraordinary than Noelle was. Perhaps Ram was on to something.
He must have seen her interest. “I bet you could get a job right here, in this very shop,” he went on. “They’re so busy, and I only see the one waitress. Come on.”
Ram pushed back his chair and stood, reaching for Noelle’s hand. The gesture took Noelle completely by surprise, but she stood nonetheless. Ram led her away from the table and deeper into the café, toward the back, where there was a display case filled with sweet and savory pastries.
“We’d like to speak to the owner,” he told the man in a chef’s coat working behind the counter.
The man glanced up, his face pinched in annoyance at being interrupted. “That’s me.”
Ram’s grin widened into the charm of a salesman. “My good sir, I present you with the beautiful and brilliant Miss Noelle Walters from America.”
Noelle blushed, pressing her lips together to keep from laughing.
The café owner stepped away from his work, brushing his floury hands on his smudged apron. He studied Noelle with narrowed eyes, then said, “Yeah? So?”
Noelle lost her smile, but Ram didn’t. He continued with just as much enthusiasm. “My dear friend Noelle here is looking for a job, and it seems to me that you could use an extra pair of hands to wait on tables.” He glanced around the café, nodding to where the single waitress was jotting down yet another order on the small pad she carried.
“It’s been a busy winter,” the café owner said, rubbing his chin. He was overweight and flabby, but that only made Noelle trust him and his business all the more. She’d been warned never to trust a skinny chef, and she supposed the same was true for café owners. “Ruby could use some help. She’s my daughter,” he added.
“I can wait tables,” Noelle blurted, suddenly beyond eager to secure the position, no matter how humble. “I have a good memory, and I’ve been told I’m personable.” There was no need for the man to know just how personable she’d been. “I know I could do this.”
The café owner studied her with narrowed eyes. “This isn’t like a pub,” he said. “We open early. Could you be here before dawn?”
“Yes, sir.” Noelle nodded.
“I can’t hire you to work every day,” the owner went on. “Business is good, but not that good. Three days a week to start, just until we see how things will go.”
A flicker of disappointment chipped at Noelle’s enthusiasm, but all the same, she answered, “I would be willing to work whenever you need me to, sir. I can work my way up to longer hours.”
The café owner was silent, considering. There was something mischievous in the way he took his time giving an answer, as if he were hatching all sorts of plots behind his dark eyes. It gave Noelle pause, but after the day she was having, after her encounter with Lord Shayles in the street, she was willing to take a risk to keep from falling back on old ways.
She stole a sideways peek at Ram. He seemed to think they were on to a good idea. His single nod and growing smile were all she needed to feel like her luck might have turned.
“All right,” the café owner said at last. “Can you start right now?”
Noelle
could have shouted in relief. “Yes. Yes, I can.”
“Then find yourself an apron and start taking orders.”
“Yes, sir,” Noelle said. “Let me just move my coat, and I’ll be working in no time.”
Noelle all but danced her way back to the table where she and Ram had been sitting to fetch her coat. As soon as it was in her arms, she whirled back to give Ram a quick kiss on the cheek. Both of them flushed at the spontaneous gesture.
“Thank you so much, Ram.” Noelle recovered first. “I was so worried.”
“I’ll always be here to help you when you need it,” Ram said, squeezing her arm. “And now that things are taken care of here, I need to get back to my own work.”
“Is there a time when I could see you again?” Noelle asked before she lost her nerve. “When you have a day off, perhaps?”
Ram’s smile widened as if it were suddenly July instead of January. “I can show you the sites of London on Sunday,” he said.
“I’d love that,” Noelle sighed.
Ram touched his forehead. “Until then.”
He winked, then turned to go. Noelle watched him the whole way, bubbling warmth filling her. It tickled its way through her stomach and squeezed around her heart like a hug. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she was sweet on Ram. Not that that would be a bad thing.
Her joy hit a bump after Ram closed the door and her gaze shifted to the window that looked out on Oxford Street. Lord Shayles stood in the pale, January light, watching everything that was going on inside of the café. Noelle met his eyes, and he grinned, tipping his tall, sleek hat.
Noelle snapped away from him, marching to the back of the café. She refused to let a stranger put a dent in her good fortune. She had a job now, which meant that the money would start coming in once more. She could find lodgings besides the hotel, and her friendship with Ram could grow and flourish.
And she would never have to see Lord Shayles again.
CHAPTER 4
Helping people was something that had always come naturally to Ram, from the time he was a tiny boy, helping the bigger men load and unload cargo in the docks of Karachi, to the errands he ran for Captain Tennant that went over and above the jobs he was paid for. Putting his time to good use had always made him happy, but never more so than when it came to Noelle.
