“Are you quite certain it’s safe?” Alice ventured.
“Lord,” Molly said with a huff of laughter. “I’d like to see anybody try and bother us. I’ve three knives and a reputation for bloodshed.”
Good God. What did that even mean?
“The only real danger is that you might freeze to death,” Molly continued. “Do they not have weather in Norfolk or wherever it is you’re from?”
Oh, if she only knew how cold it had gotten at the vicarage. “I used to wear wool stockings and flannel petticoats. Sometimes three or four petticoats at a time.” And so many shawls that she now felt quite naked without one.
Molly was silent a moment. “And now you don’t.” There was something in her voice that Alice couldn’t quite make out. Something a bit rough.
“Of course not. You know perfectly well what undergarments ladies wear in London. Only a chemise and a couple of thin petticoats. I don’t even wear a corset most days. You dress Mrs. Wraxhall several times a day. You know all this.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think about it.” Before Alice could reflect on whether this meant that Molly thought about Alice’s underthings, or lack thereof, Molly spoke briskly. “Anyway. Come close. I don’t know how either of us would explain it to Mrs. Wraxhall if you caught a chill. Last thing I need is a corpse.” She tugged Alice against her, looping her arm through Alice’s.
Alice nearly lost her footing at the warmth and softness of the other woman. She almost tripped over her feet and landed in a gutter.
Worse, she nearly pressed closer into Molly’s side, trying to feel that softness with her own body.
And then she did it anyway.
Molly smelled like Mrs. Wraxhall’s eau de toilette—either she helped herself or some of the perfume had rubbed off her mistress’s garments—mixed with the sweet, soapy smell of babies. It was such a normal scent, the sort of thing any woman might smell like. She did not know why she had expected Molly to smell like mystery and intrigue, foreign perfumes and rich musk. Instead she smelled like a person who had a job and a child and a purpose in life, not merely a vague infinity of breasts and hips and crooked grins.
From time to time, Alice found herself looking a little too closely, too warmly, at a woman. At home it had been the curate’s sister, then the landlady at the inn. At first, she reassured herself that everyone must have this difficulty: women’s bodies were just good and one did enjoy looking at good things. One didn’t want to ogle, but it was like admiring a particularly well-iced cake, that was all. Perfectly natural. Later, she had to acknowledge that her thoughts about women did not much resemble her thoughts about cake, however well-iced. So she averted her eyes and kept herself busy and tried not to think overmuch about what any of it meant.
With Molly this close she had to think about it.
Molly stopped walking and cleared her throat. Alice frantically scrambled for something to say to explain why she was pressing up against Molly’s body like a cat, but tonight she was behaving like a lunatic and couldn’t even manage the simplest excuse for her actions. It was as if she hadn’t amassed a lifetime of experience in placating and excusing. She settled for the next best thing, which was straightening her back and trying to pull away.
But Molly’s arm now wrapped around Alice’s waist, tight as a vise.
“You’re cold all the way through,” Molly said. Then the arm was gone, and Molly was pulling off her own cloak and wrapping it around Alice.
“But you’ll get cold,” Alice protested.
“I’ve been colder.”
So had Alice, but she was out of practice.
Molly pulled the cloak tight across Alice’s chest, but then apparently forgot to remove her arms, because she stood so close to Alice that their breaths mingled into a single cloud in freezing air.
Molly hadn’t intended to be gallant, and she certainly wasn’t in the habit of sacrificing her comfort for anybody, but the sight of Miss Stapleton shivering, embarrassed, and obviously afraid had affected her. Molly wanted to do more than wrap the lady in a cloak. She wanted to tuck her close, hold her closer, and think of interesting ways to rub some warmth back into that rail-thin body.
The girl needed hot soup.
And kissing.
And more. Molly had very clear ideas of what more might consist of, even if it had been a while since she had put any of those ideas to practical use.
She’d give it good odds that Miss Stapleton was interested in more as well, whether she knew it or not. Whether she’d let herself was another question entirely, one Molly didn’t intend to find out the answer to. Molly had a decent life working for Mrs. Wraxhall. She wasn’t likely to find another employer who would look the other way when her maid disappeared to care for an illegitimate daughter, and she wasn’t going to throw away Katie’s chance at a decent future for a quick tumble.
No matter how much she wanted to.
So now Molly was shivering in her black wool frock, and Miss Stapleton was shivering in her gown, pelisse, and cloak, and Molly still had her arms wrapped around the lady. Really, they ought to move. This was not the time to be dallying in the shadows, and Miss Stapleton was nobody to dally with either. But Molly liked the feel of her, and judging by the way Miss Stapleton sort of melted against her, she liked it too.
Miss Stapleton pulled back a fraction of an inch, just enough for Molly to get a good look at her. “You won’t be able to see her when we’re in Norfolk at the house party,” the lady whispered.
Thank God for the bit of moonlight shining on the lady’s face, or Molly might have thought Miss Stapleton was rubbing Molly’s nose in misfortune. But there was no mistaking the bleakness in the other woman’s eyes.
“It’s happened before, and it’s—” She nearly said that it was fine, that it was part of her job, that she didn’t mind. But those were all lies. “I miss her something awful.” Molly swallowed, fisting the wool of the cloak in her hand and feeling Miss Stapleton sway closer. “And I think she misses me, but sometimes I think she might not. And I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.”
The lady sucked in a breath and briefly shut her eyes, as if she had stepped on a tack.
Molly remembered what she had heard about Miss Stapleton serving as a glorified governess for her sister’s children and housekeeper for her father. At the time, Molly had thought it a shame that the girl hadn’t even been paid for her servitude, and then was turned loose into the cold. And that was before she had seen the handkerchiefs meant for tiny hands, read the stories intended for little ears.
“Right,” Molly said. “You’ll know about how that is, won’t you.” The lady nodded once, looking grateful not to have to explain herself. “We ought to keep moving if we don’t want to freeze.”
Molly kept her arm entwined with the lady’s the rest of the way home.
Chapter Three
“Please let me unpick that trim,” Alice asked for the fifth time.
“No. It’s my work. Get your own post as a lady’s maid if you want to unpick trim so badly.”
“But I don’t want to embroider any more handkerchiefs”—she could hardly bring herself to do so, knowing they’d never be seen by her nieces—“and helpful elves have mended the spencer I meant to work on.” She cast Molly a pointed glance; the maid didn’t look up from her sewing, but Alice thought she saw a smile. “I’ll go quite mad if I have to sit here with nothing to do.”
“Then go downstairs. Mrs. Wraxhall has company. There will be cake.”
Alice did not know what to do in a roomful of people who were meant for nothing but cake and idleness. She knew she was supposed to welcome this as her birthright as the daughter of a gentleman, but she’d much rather be put to use scouring pans in the kitchen. No, if Alice went downstairs, she would sit in the hard-backed chair farthest from the fire. She would be silent and still, hoping nobody took any notice of her. This didn’t seem like a very good reason to go downstairs, and it was occurring to Alice that she did
n’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. This was not an entirely welcome realization after a lifetime during which her wants hadn’t mattered in the slightest. The laundry had needed hanging, the soup needed stirring, the baby needed rocking; Alice had done her duty, and that was that. The absence of duty left her with nothing other than want as her guiding principle, and the thought made her feel adrift.
“There will be cake,” Molly repeated in a wheedling, singsong tone.
Alice made a dismissive noise. “Bollocks on cake,” she said, borrowing Molly’s phrase.
Molly looked up in mock affront. “Never say that about cake.”
Alice giggled, actually giggled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that.
“Well, suit yourself,” Molly said, tossing Alice a gown that needed some beads resewn before it could be worn again. “If you want to do my job, I shan’t stop you.”
They sewed together for the rest of the afternoon, and sometimes when Alice looked across the room, Molly gave her a sly little sideways smile. The first time, Alice nearly dropped her work because that smile somehow put her in mind of secret nighttime thoughts she was trying not to reflect overmuch on. The second time, she returned a smile of her own—not a crooked nighttime-thought kind of smile, but a smile that was meant for Molly. It was the only kind of smile Alice had, and it would have to do.
The third time, Molly moved so they were sitting beside one another on the same settee.
When the dinner hour drew near, Molly rose to her feet and stretched. “A letter came from the Continent today, so that means Mrs. Wraxhall will take her supper on a tray in bed. I’d better see if she needs a warming pan.”
“A letter from the Continent?”
“That’s where Mr. Wraxhall is.”
“Is he on a diplomatic mission?”
“Oh lord no. He’s drying out in some spa town.”
“Drying—what on earth are you talking about?” Alice had an image of Mr. Wraxhall, son of a baronet, husband of an heiress, hanging out laundry somewhere in Belgium.
“He drank. A lot. He’s gone to the Continent so he can get in the habit of not doing that anymore. Not sure why he couldn’t dry out just as well in London, but people who have money like to find ways to spend it, I guess.”
Alice wasn’t sure about that. She could see how breaking a habit might be easier if one wasn’t surrounded by familiar temptations. She had often thought that if only she were able to stop the wine merchant from extending credit to her father, a good deal of their household’s troubles could have been avoided. “Why didn’t Mrs. Wraxhall go with him?”
“Beats me. I think he was embarrassed by some trouble he caused. The poor lady was in a wretched state last summer.” Before Alice could ask about what this trouble was, Molly continued speaking. “If you ask me, she doesn’t think he’ll come back, which is why she gets herself worked up when a letter comes from him. Oh! Before I forget,” she said, reaching her hand into her pocket. “This is for you.” In her palm was a golden guinea, two crowns, and several shillings.
“I beg your pardon?”
“For the handkerchiefs. I sold them.”
“You sold them?”
“You said I could,” Molly protested, sounding offended.
“No, I quite appreciate it. Thank you. I just never thought to get so much money for them.” She reached towards Molly’s outstretched hand but didn’t touch the coins. It seemed impossible that she had money of her own. Money she had earned, not begged off her father, not been given as charity by Mrs. Wraxhall.
Molly took hold of her wrist and dumped the coins into Alice’s palm, where they landed with an impossibly bright clinking. Then Molly clasped Alice’s hand, the coins in between their palms, and said, “You deserve it,” before leaving Alice alone.
Even when things had gone very poorly at the vicarage—even the sort of “poorly” that involved crockery being thrown across the room and the housemaid cowering in the larder—Alice never got angry. There was no point to it. Her father had been angry enough for the two of them, and meeting his anger with some of her own would only have earned her the same treatment as the crockery. She had gotten into the habit of brushing off any inconvenient emotion like she might brush dust off the chimneypiece, and simply getting down to the business of setting things right.
Now that she lived a life of outrageous idleness, in a house with functioning chimneys and meals that appeared on the table as if by magic, she found herself furious over the least things.
When they arrived at Eastgate Hall and she learned that she was to share a room with Molly, she nearly cried with helpless annoyance. As if she hadn’t shared a bedroom nearly every night of her life before coming to Mrs. Wraxhall’s house. As if she didn’t still reach out in the night to comfort a sibling or niece who wasn’t there.
“Her ladyship doesn’t want either of us sleeping next door to her bedchamber,” Molly said as she unpacked the perfumes and salves and combs and ribbons that were required in her mistress’s toilette. They were in the dressing room that adjoined Mrs. Wraxhall’s bedchamber; this was where Molly would have made a bed for herself if Mrs. Wraxhall hadn’t decreed otherwise at the last minute, when it was too late for any arrangement to be made besides the lady’s maid and the companion sharing quarters. “If you ask me,” Molly said, arranging a pair of ivory hair combs on the dressing table, “she has a fellow.”
“Nobody did ask you,” Alice snapped. Molly turned, her mouth an O, her eyebrows nearly at her hairline. She didn’t look insulted, so much as impressed, as if she hadn’t thought Alice had it in her to snap at anyone. Alice had hardly thought so herself.
“That was unkind of me,” she said, falling back on the old habit of contrition. “I apologize.” Besides, who was she to begrudge Mrs. Wraxhall some comfort and companionship? Her husband had been gone for several months and might never return. “I suppose that’s what people do at these parties.” Alice was conscious that any decent woman would come up with some suitable comment about dens of iniquity or some such. Her father certainly would have expected it of her.
Perhaps for that reason alone, Alice kept silent. What did it matter to her whether Mrs. Wraxhall carried on with every gentleman in East Anglia? She was a kind, charitable woman—witness Alice’s continued existence—and if fornication was what she required to sustain that level of good humor and generosity, then so be it.
“Some do,” Molly answered, as if Alice’s question had been anything other than rhetorical. “Others just gossip and gamble and ride horses, pretty much like they do every other day of the year. What’ll you do?”
Was she asking whether Alice intended to have an affair? “Not lift my skirts for some man,” she said before she could consider the wisdom of such a response. “No doubt there are dowagers in attendance who require their yarn to be balled up and children who need their dollies mended. Those tasks seem much less tedious to me than entertaining gentlemen.”
Molly let out a peal of laughter. “Oh Christ. You and me both. More trouble than they’re worth, the lot of them.”
Maybe the sound of Molly’s laughter was as intoxicating as Mrs. Wraxhall’s bubbly wine, because Alice found herself asking the worst possible question. “You must have thought otherwise at some point. With Katie’s father, I mean.”
Molly went still, holding a pincushion in midair, and too late Alice realized that Katie’s father might have been the kind of brute who took what he wanted without a thought to spare for anyone else. Alice had learned that lesson well.
“He promised me a silver locket,” Molly said, with a look that dared Alice to judge her.
“Did he deliver?”
“No. I blackmailed him, though.”
“Good,” Alice said, with more venom than she thought she possessed.
“Miss Stapleton,” Molly said, shaking her head in feigned admonishment.
Alice made a dismissive sound. “Did he give you enough so you can put a bi
t aside for Katie when she’s older? So she can . . .” Alice didn’t know what the children of servants and blackmailed gentlemen did when they came of age. “Learn a trade?” Alice’s own money had been put aside for her marriage, but as she had never married, her father had simply kept it. And now she’d never see it.
“Her money’s safe and I don’t need to touch it. My wages are enough to keep her at Mrs. Fitz’s and maybe send her to school in a few years.”
Alice felt a surge of—it couldn’t possibly be affection, but something near enough to it—towards this woman who had thought to properly set money aside for her daughter. “How lucky your daughter is to have a parent who looks out for her.”
Molly pursed her lips. “Not a lot of people would call the bastard daughter of a lightskirt lucky.”
Alice wanted to deny it, but Molly was right. “Many people would think the daughter of a reasonably prosperous clergyman was very lucky indeed. But I expect your Katie will never have a parent who harms her.” She spoke the words lightly, carefully, but Molly looked at her sharply all the same.
“I wonder what that’s like,” Molly said.
Alice was overwhelmed by this sudden sense of common feeling with a woman whose life had been so different from her own, but who had wound up in roughly the same place. Grasping for something more familiar, she noticed that one of Mrs. Wraxhall’s chemises had a hem that had come untacked. “If we’re to share a room, you might as well let me share some of the mending,” she said, reaching for the garment.
Quick as a bolt, Molly reached out and grabbed Alice’s hand, stopping her from taking the chemise. Alice’s first instinct was to snatch her hand back, but when Molly didn’t let go, instead she let herself enjoy the touch. It was mere friendliness, she told herself. It was all right to enjoy the warmth and the gentleness, and Molly wouldn’t have touched her if she didn’t want to. So she put her other hand over Molly’s, letting her fingers slip between the other woman’s. She kept her gaze there, at their interlocked fingers, not daring to look up at Molly’s face. The silence between them stretched out, neither of them moving. They were holding hands, and the only reason they were doing it was that they both wanted to. They wanted to touch one another. There was no escaping from that basic fact: Alice wanted, and was wanted in return.
A Little Light Mischief Page 3
