A Little Light Mischief

by Cat Sebastian

Well, that got the lady’s interest. “A guinea,” she repeated.

  “Give or take.”

  Miss Stapleton was silent a moment, her lips slightly parted as if deep in thought. “No,” she finally said. “I can’t take money for handwork.”

  “Bugger,” Molly answered, not pointing out that she hadn’t offered the lady a share of the take.

  “I beg your pardon.” Miss Stapleton drew herself up, quite affronted.

  “Bugger,” Molly repeated, annunciating carefully. “Bugger not taking money for your work. You haven’t a pot to piss in.”

  Miss Stapleton’s eyes widened. “This is very crass.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Ordinarily Molly observed all the dull proprieties with the gentry, but this lady needed to get her head on straight. “So is starving to death.”

  “I’m not about to starve,” Miss Stapleton protested.

  Molly ignored that, because they both knew that the only reason the lady had food in her belly was Mrs. Wraxhall’s delight in taking the piss out of that red-faced vicar. Instead, she began to carefully unwrap the parcel, taking out the handkerchiefs one by one.

  She let out a low whistle when she saw them spread out before her, snowy linen embellished with a riot of colors. There were a dozen in total, each one of them bearing every color of the rainbow.

  “I dare say they’re very vulgar,” Miss Stapleton said. “It’s just as well my sister will never see them.”

  Molly was about to say that Miss Stapleton’s entire family could go straight to hell, where handkerchiefs would be the least of their worries, but something on one of the handkerchiefs caught her eye. “Oh, bless me. Look at that little fellow.” An elfin creature peeped out from behind a row of delicately embroidered hollyhocks. She examined another handkerchief and found a tiny fairy, no bigger than the nail on her smallest finger, sleeping inside a daffodil.

  And to think, all this for blowing your nose. “My little—” Molly stopped. She had nearly finished that sentence in a way that would have required a good deal of explanation. “They’re pretty,” she said instead. “Your needlework is very fine.”

  Miss Stapleton made a noise that from a regular person would be a snort but for which the upper classes likely had some other name. “I certainly have enough practice. But the pictures are only to go with the stories.” She gestured to the folded stack of papers that still sat in the remnants of the parcel wrapping.

  Molly retrieved the papers and saw they were filled, front and back, with a thin, spidery hand. “Stories?”

  “I used to tell fairy stories to my nieces. And since I can’t see them anymore, I thought to write them down for my sister to read aloud.”

  Can’t see them, not don’t see them. Molly knew enough of the events surrounding Miss Stapleton’s banishment to make a guess. “I know your father tossed you out. Your sister was in on it too?”

  The lady swallowed, as if deciding whether Molly was worth a confidence. “My sister doesn’t care to disoblige our father. None of my siblings do.”

  “Spineless,” Molly spat.

  The lady’s eyes went wide and something flickered across her face. Gratitude? Disgust? Whatever it was, it didn’t last long, because she tossed her head and swept from the room as grandly as a lady could in a dreary gray frock.

  Chapter Two

  The lady’s maid sneaked out whenever Mrs. Wraxhall dined away from home, Alice was certain of it. Last night Alice had gone into Mrs. Wraxhall’s boudoir in search of a headache powder, and the door to the adjoining maid’s bedroom had been open, the room clearly empty. Nor had the woman been downstairs. The hour was too late for her to conceivably be running an errand for Mrs. Wraxhall, and the only question in Alice’s mind was whether the maid was carrying on with a man or engaged in something even more nefarious.

  Tonight, Mrs. Wraxhall was dining out again, and Alice had pleaded to be excused on the grounds that her headache had returned. She sat in the back parlor, by a window that overlooked the mews. Her hands felt empty, pointless, when holding neither pen nor needle, but she could hardly bring herself to begin another doomed handkerchief or another story that would never be read. She leaned back in the too-soft chair and adjusted the draperies so she could see the precise place where the kitchen door opened below.

  It didn’t take long before Molly appeared. Even covered head to toe in a black cloak, she was unmistakable, and Alice could make out the sway of her hips and slight swagger of her walk. Alice leapt up and flew down the back stairs on silent feet. She already had on her warmest pelisse, a measure that had earlier felt like wise planning and now smelled like premeditation. Never mind that. She slipped past the bustling kitchen servants and made for the mews.

  Molly cut through alleys and passageways with the brisk efficiency of a woman who had traveled this route many times before, taking corners diagonally and not sparing a glance for her surroundings. This shadowy web of streets was Molly’s natural habitat.

  Alice, her thoughts divided between keeping Molly in sight and the necessity of not tripping over the hem of her gown, scarcely noticed where they were heading until she realized she was in an entirely unfamiliar part of London. During her few months in town, Alice had only traveled on foot the distance from Mrs. Wraxhall’s front door to the carriage and back again; she had certainly never ventured this far east. At least—she checked over her shoulder, towards where the sun appeared to be setting behind buildings she had never seen before—she was fairly certain this was east.

  Finally, after Alice’s ankle boots started to pinch her toes and her fingers had gone numb in her useless kidskin gloves, Molly came to a stop in front of a low brick building. Alice watched as the lady’s maid rapped on the door before stepping wordlessly inside. So, she had been expected by her . . . paramour, or whatever a man was supposed to be called in these situations.

  Whatever the case, this was a decidedly inauspicious place for an assignation. It wasn’t precisely a bad neighborhood, but down at the heels and worn around the edges. In the great divide between gentry and commoner, this row of houses was planted a few crucial inches on the side of the common. Alice, having spent her life helping her family cling to their station a few inches over on the opposite side of the divide, knew the signs of not-quite-gentility all too well: a couple of chickens had strayed out into the street, a few bits of forgotten washing hung in the gap between two houses, an ownerless dog wandered hungrily about the pavements.

  It was not the place Alice would have chosen for a romantic interlude, if she were in the business of having interludes of any variety—which, of course, she was not.

  Now, though, she had a problem greater than Molly’s bad behavior. She had set out on this harebrained mission without any definite plan, with the result that she was standing, conspicuous and cold, in front of a strange building in an unfamiliar quarter, with the sun rapidly setting, and no idea how to get back to Mrs. Wraxhall’s house.

  The dog began eying her suspiciously.

  She would need to wait until Molly reappeared, and then follow her home. Molly couldn’t stay inside indefinitely—surely she meant to return well before Mrs. Wraxhall. But it was not unheard of for Mrs. Wraxhall to stay out well past midnight.

  Alice’s warmest pelisse did not feel warm at all. She missed the heavy wool cloak that Mrs. Wraxhall had declared unfit for London. This was the first time she had been cold since leaving the vicarage. It was funny, how one got out of the practice of being uncomfortable. The cold greeted Alice like an old friend.

  Was Molly warm, in her lover’s embrace? Alice really didn’t want to think about that; honestly, she went out of her way never to imagine Molly other than clothed and upright, but now she had a vision of curving hips and swaying breasts, a throaty laugh, a crooked smile.

  “You lost, miss?” The voice came from far too near Alice’s shoulder. She spun around to see a strange man in a soft cap.

  “N-no,” she stuttered.

  Even in the darkness,
Alice could see the skepticism on the stranger’s face. “You look lost. Let me hail a hackney?”

  Alice drew herself up. “That won’t be necessary.”

  The man reached out to take her elbow—maybe only to usher her towards safety, towards a hackney.

  But it didn’t matter. Alice screamed.

  Molly was nearly at the end of Katie’s bedtime story when she heard a sound like a cat being murdered.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” she muttered, putting aside the page she had been reading. She rose to her feet, shifting the now-wide-awake Katie to her hip. This was Holborn—well, almost Holborn—not Seven Dials. One didn’t expect murder to happen in the middle of the street. That was why Molly paid so dearly to keep Katie here—it was safe and clean, certainly safer and cleaner than the rookery where Molly had grown up.

  She pulled the curtain back enough to get a look at the street. It was dark, but in the moonlight she saw a flash of pale blond hair beneath a bonnet. Squinting, she could make out a dove-gray pelisse trimmed with slate-gray braid.

  She knew that hair, had spent many a misbegotten moment wondering if it were as silky as it looked, had thought about bribing the housemaid who attended Miss Stapleton to feign illness so Molly could brush out that hair herself. She knew that pelisse too, because she had noticed that a bit of the trim had come down, and had tacked it up with her own hands. For all the time the lady spent with a needle in hand, she never seemed to notice when her own things needed tending to.

  “Katie, sit with Mrs. Fitz for a minute, will you?”

  The woman automatically held out her hands to receive the child. She loved Katie and did a fine job taking care of her, but Molly felt a surge of resentment at having to let go of her daughter one minute sooner than she had planned. God knew she already got precious little time with the girl. And all for the purpose of rescuing busybody ladies who stuck their noses where they didn’t belong.

  Molly ran down the stairs and threw open the door. “Johnny, get your hands off her. Have you run mad?”

  “I’m not the one who’s mad,” the landlady’s son retorted. “I was offering to get her a hackney and she went daft on me.”

  Molly cut him a glare. It didn’t matter if he was telling the truth. In her experience, lads generally deserved a nasty glare and Molly was willing to do her part.

  “You.” She turned to Miss Stapleton, who even in the dark was red with embarrassment.

  “I—”

  “Spare me.” As if Molly needed to be told what had brought this lady here. It was nosiness or malice or both. “You ought to be glad Mrs. Wraxhall took you in, because if you were left up to your own devices you’d starve. You haven’t the sense God gave a duck.” Miss Stapleton’s eyes were downcast, her fists balled tightly at her sides, and now Molly felt bad for having spoken harshly. Sighing, Molly said, “Never mind that. Get inside.” She threw another menacing look over her shoulder at Johnny, who had his hands raised in helpless protest. “Up the stairs, second door on the right.”

  It was always a bit of a shock, seeing the right people in the wrong places, and the sight of Miss Stapleton in Mrs. Fitz’s flat, two paces away from Katie herself, didn’t add up in Molly’s mind.

  “Mama!” Katie said, as she always did when Molly walked through the door.

  “Katie, love,” Molly answered, bending to scoop the child into her arms as Mrs. Fitz left the room. “Now you know,” she told Miss Stapleton, who had a look of almost comical astonishment on her face. “I suppose you’ll try to get me sacked.” Molly held Katie closer.

  “No,” Miss Stapleton said immediately. “It’s none of my—”

  “That’s right, it isn’t. Mrs. Wraxhall already knows anyway, so you can spare yourself the trouble.”

  “I thought . . .” Miss Stapleton shifted from foot to foot, hands clasped before her. “I knew you were sneaking out—”

  “Not sneaking,” Molly said from behind gritted teeth. She didn’t have the patience for this. She had so little time with her daughter as it was, the rare hour in the evening or a half day on Sundays, barely enough for the child to know who she was, and she’d be damned if she was going to waste another minute explaining herself. “I told you, Mrs. Wraxhall already knows.”

  “I didn’t know that, and I only thought to look into the matter for Mrs. Wraxhall in case you were . . .” Her voice trailed off, some genteel delicacy preventing her from saying aloud precisely what she thought Molly had done.

  “You thought I was nicking the silver or meeting with a fancy man.” There had been a time when Molly had done both of those things, often and with great enthusiasm, and she rather wished she could protest complete innocence. Instead, she raised an eyebrow and glared at her accuser.

  “Elf in tree!” Katie tugged a lock of Molly’s hair to get her mother’s attention. “Elf,” she insisted. “Tree.” She was almost three and had recently discovered that by saying words, she often got things. “Mama. Elf. Tree.”

  “She wants me to finish her bedtime story,” Molly said. And that was well and good, but Molly had no intention of telling the story with Miss Stapleton hovering by the door. “Sorry, love, but I’ll read you the story another time.”

  “The elf in the tree?” Miss Stapleton murmured almost to herself, her brows drawing together. “Is it a cherry tree?” she asked Katie.

  “Cherry! Elf!” Katie agreed, clapping her fat little baby hands.

  Molly watched in dismay as Miss Stapleton’s eyes searched the room, finally alighting on the stack of papers on the table. “Are those my stories?” she asked, her voice thin and strained.

  “Well. You were about to throw them in the fire, so I thought you wouldn’t mind.” Molly knew she didn’t need to feel guilty, but she did anyway. She had enough guilt left over from the past that sometimes it seeped out where it didn’t belong. “You might as well sit,” she said grudgingly, gesturing to the chair Mrs. Fitz had been sitting in.

  When Katie had still been a babe in arms, Molly spent a week’s wages on a prettily bound book of children’s stories, only to discover that each story culminated in a child being punished and shamed for acts of a naughtiness so mild that Molly wanted to throw the book out the nearest window. She knew theft and violence and the rest of the ways she had kept body and soul together were wrong; she wasn’t some kind of heathen. But she couldn’t get herself exercised about fictional children stealing muffins when a few streets away there were children who would risk their lives for a chance to steal a loaf of bread. Molly wasn’t proud of the stealing and cheating she had done, but she didn’t regret it either, because what was a gentleman’s watch fob compared to a month of meals in her belly?

  When Miss Stapleton said she had written stories for her nieces, Molly expected them to be packed with dull moralizing and heaping with shame. She had thought that maybe they would be a bucket of cold water over whatever embers of warmth she felt for Miss Stapleton. Instead she had found page after page of elves and fairies cavorting about and getting into harmless mischief. There had been no sermonizing, no punishment, only, well, fun. She hadn’t thought Miss Stapleton capable of anything even in the neighborhood of fun. Looking at her now—straight-backed, pale-faced, worn out from an evening of high-minded snooping—she seemed about as dry as dust. But now Molly knew she might actually like Miss Stapleton, and she rather wished she didn’t.

  The child had Molly’s honey-brown hair and eyes to match, and clung to her mother’s neck as she listened to the tale of the elf in the cherry tree. She was too young to follow the story, and before long the cadence of her mother’s voice lulled her to sleep, her little hands unclasping and falling to her sides, her head dropping back against Molly’s arm.

  Alice’s lap felt empty. She had put her nieces to bed like that countless times—stories told in hushed tones, babies held in aching arms. She’d likely never see her nieces again, and even if she managed to worm her way back into her family’s good graces, the girls might be half gro
wn by then, well beyond the age for stories and cuddles.

  Now she had tears prickling in her eyes, and that would not do at all. She had already embarrassed herself just by coming here. If she started crying, she’d look a proper bedlamite.

  A gray-haired woman appeared in the doorway. Molly carefully rose to her feet and passed her the sleeping child, then dug in her pockets for a few coins to slide into the woman’s apron pocket. She must spend all her wages keeping her daughter here—the room was clean and quiet, the air was fresh by London standards, and the child was plump and rosy-cheeked.

  “You,” Molly said to Alice, not meeting her eyes. “Come on.”

  Outside, night had fallen and the wind was bitterly cold. Alice tried to wrap her pelisse more tightly around herself, but the cold seeped through the layers of wool and silk right to her bones.

  “It’s less than half an hour if we walk quickly,” Molly said, her gaze straight ahead. “You’ll live.”

  “Perhaps we ought to take a hackney?” Walking through a strange part of London in the dark, unaccompanied by a man, seemed a poor idea regardless of the weather. “I have a few shillings.”

  “Bollocks on shillings,” Molly said, striding briskly along the pavements. “Bollocks on hackneys. I always walk, and since you’ve decided to tail me, you’ll walk too.”

  Alice felt the heat of embarrassment spread through her body, the only warmth in her. “I do apologize—”

  “Bollocks on that too.”

  Alice didn’t quite know how to argue with that. She wasn’t accustomed to hearing coarse language. For all her father’s faults, he had always spoken like a gentleman, although now it occurred to Alice that she might prefer a bit of honest profanity to the alternating miseries of crockery-throwing and sermonizing. Surely she ought to be shocked and insulted to hear herself addressed in such a rude and common manner, but she found that Molly’s vulgar words gave her a frisson of excitement. Molly’s total lack of deference, her failure to stand on ceremony with a gentlewoman, ought to feel like an insult, but instead made Alice feel warm despite the chill in the air.