“Your mother-in-law is hungry,” he repeated slowly. Then, in a harder voice, he demanded, “And what of your hunger? You’re practically a skeleton.”
Now she felt ashamed in quite another way. “Yes,” she admitted tightly, her throat clenching as though he held a fist around her windpipe. She stopped to banish images of the full woman she had once been, so safe and well cared for. She had been beautiful too, shapely and pretty enough to have caught Edric’s eye even while hidden beneath her veil. Now she was a skeleton, as this man had so bluntly noted, covered in dirt. Vanity, she warned herself. All that was vanity.
“Yes, I am hungry,” she went on, “but I am not responsible only for myself.”
“What are you doing here?”
Weary of defending herself, Rena spoke more frankly. “Surely you’ve already heard more than enough stories of the Indian trollop who has come to invade your precious England.” She heard the burst of bitterness in her words and winced. Most days hunger frayed her nerves and made her speak and act in hasty ways. She was so tired of being stared at and whispered about, of being treated like some beastly thing which made families unwilling to open their doors. But she didn’t want to be bitter or inwardly frayed or even hurt. She wanted to be stalwart like Nell, immovable like Edric.
“I have no taste, nor time, for gossip,” the man volleyed, sounding irritated by her answer. She was ready, then, to leave and return home, but his expression relented, his tone nearly gentle as he asked her, “What is your name?”
“Rena.” As soon as she said it, she winced, realizing her gaffe. To have introduced herself to a lord by first name on first acquaintance—why, it was unheard of.
Lord Barric’s eyes widened slightly as if he too was taken aback by the introduction. But then his expression smoothed, and he bowed, graciously overlooking her misstep.
“Rena.” He tested her name, a slow pronunciation, then met her eyes as if measuring its sound against her wraith-like appearance. Edric’s voice had always held a laughing quality, her name soaring whenever he spoke it, but this man gave her name a strange cadence, soft and rolling in a way she’d never heard.
“Yes, Lord Barric.” She tried to sound formal, dipping into a slight curtsy so they might both forget her threadbare dress and dirt-marred cheeks.
Her halting accent probably mangled the sound of his name. He was as foreign to her as she was to him, and yet he flashed a faint smile at her words. “Ah, so you’ve heard of me.”
In truth, she knew very little of the man standing before her. Only that his steward had said she could pick the grain because the master was not at home. Would she have been allowed even to set foot on the land had Lord Barric been there? Or would she have been cast out before he’d see her?
“I can repay you for what I took,” she promised suddenly. “If you only give me time, my lord.”
He stooped to pick up her bag and held it out to her. When she did not move to take it, he pressed it into her hands, and she noted how horribly light the satchel felt now that the grain was littered in the road.
“You may pick from my fields,” Lord Barric finally said, a low-spoken offering, “however often as you and your mother-in-law have need. You needn’t think of paying me back.”
Rena’s eyes startled wide. She wanted to ask why a lord would make such an offer, especially to someone as strange and out of place as she was, but it seemed unwise to do so, in case it prompted him to change his mind. “I am grateful for your kindness,” she whispered instead.
Lord Barric threw a glance over his shoulder, in the direction of town, and stared distantly at the path the other men had taken, presumably toward home. “And I wouldn’t go asking for help in any of the other fields.” His voice was much grittier now, as it had sounded before. “Do you understand?”
She followed Lord Barric’s gaze down the road, where the wind howled as if echoing his cousin’s snide laughter. She understood all too well. When she bunked down for sleep that night, she was sure she would once again feel the press of Thomas’s icy fingers digging deep into her skin—would feel the startling crack of pain as his hand had connected with her face. “Yes,” she whispered, tucking the folds of her shawl even tighter around her elbows. “I understand.”
Lord Barric glanced back down and studied her. He was much taller than she, but she kept her chin held high to meet his eyes. Thomas had jeered at her lifted chin, had mocked her for her grubby hands and defiant expression. Barric’s eyes trailed from her eyes to her jaw, as if measuring her pride by the lift and angle of her face. “Good,” he remarked, then looked away once more as he said to himself, “Yes, good.”
Thinking this was as kindly a farewell as she’d been offered yet in Abbotsville, Rena shouldered her bag and moved to leave, but Lord Barric kept in step with her as she headed back toward town. “Shall I escort you home?”
Rena struggled with his question. Home didn’t seem like a befitting term for a storage closet which often smelled of moldy produce. With a sidelong glance, she measured Lord Barric one last time. He wore a long black frock coat with glinting buttons and a fashionable set of high riding boots, barely worn. He walked beside her with the casual gait of a man who in his life had inhabited many great halls. She grimaced, imagining the moment he would duck beneath their splintered doorframe to inspect their dusty hovel. Perhaps he would even wonder how she survived at the Gilded Crown, when so many other women led men upstairs just to pay their way.
“I’d much rather go on alone,” she decided, dipping her head as she tried to pass him.
He followed still. “Where is it that you live?”
She shook her head, trying to sound dismissive as she said, “It’s not far.”
“And you are alone?” Barric pressed, matching her quickening pace with ease. “You and your mother-in-law?”
“We live with…with kindly people.” She faltered on the outright lie. Though Mr. Bagley had shown her mercy, he also made his living in the most unscrupulous of terms. And his wife, true to his promise, hated Rena and seemed to awaken each morning with the sole aim of tormenting her.
“Are they relatives?” he demanded. “These kindly people who apparently let you starve?”
She eyed him sharply for pressing the issue, thinking a gentleman ought to allow her some bit of privacy.
“They are relatives to someone, I’d imagine.”
Lord Barric inclined an eyebrow.
“Are you playing a game with me, or do you really refuse to answer my questions?”
Once upon a time, Rena had played games with Edric, had teased and smiled because he was kind, and she wanted to seem spirited and interesting. Feeling Lord Barric’s shadowy presence beside her, she sighed and shook her head, feeling the grit between her fingers as she rubbed her hands together.
“I live, Lord Barric,” she replied bleakly, “not particularly well, I’ll admit. But I do live, and that is more than answer enough.”
CHAPTER 3
Bag still in hand, Rena shoved against the front door of the Gilded Crown. The door’s red paint splintered and stuck beneath her clammy palms, its wood peeling from years spent standing against rough wind. Rena faltered in the open doorway, cringing as the room reeled in its familiar chaos.
The usual men were drinking that night. Side by side, their elbows on the bar formed a thick, impenetrable chain as they murmured together. Beyond them, a cluster of painted women circled the tables, their eyes searching, lingering, promising. Rena knew that several of them, the particularly pretty ones, lived in the rooms upstairs. The rest lived in various other holes throughout town, drifting from bed to bed to stave off starvation.
Rena’s fingers were stiff as she slipped her shawl from her shoulders and shut the door behind her. As she entered, the women avoided her eyes more than the men, drifting away and scattering as soon as she neared. Rena studied their tangled hair, which was pinned against the backs of their heads in elaborately wild designs, as if it had only jus
t now been tousled. Self-conscious, Rena smoothed her fingers over her own hair, which was parted smoothly down the center of her head. Her simple plait was tucked up in a tight bun at the back of her neck, as would have been in style several years before. As she moved, the line of women continued to fold away from her. Did they know how deeply it hurt for her, a Brahmin woman, to live in a shelter of prostitutes? She didn’t belong in Nell’s world, but she certainly didn’t belong to theirs either. Even here she was somehow beneath.
A man knocked against her as she approached the bar, and she stiffened out of instinct. By now every eye in the place viewed her as a possibility. How long? the men seemed to wonder. How long could she starve before considering it? Work was work, as the women often said. Rena’s eyes panned warily to the shadowy staircase, her stomach clenching in fear of her own desperation.
“And what wickedness have you been up to?” Rena glanced toward the bar, where Mrs. Bagley was drying water glasses with a grubby towel. Rena often imagined the woman’s stubby fingers could turn to claws when provoked. “Surely you haven’t been up to anything useful.”
Though weary from her encounter on the road, Rena would not allow Mrs. Bagley to tempt her into a foul mood. Instead, she swept forward, splaying both hands on the bar in front of her, and managed a weak smile. “I have two pence.” She dug the pennies from a scrap of fabric in the back of her shoe. As she slid the battered copper coins against the bar, two men on either side of her shifted in their seats. Could they tell it was all she had left in the world? “Won’t you fix us a plate?” Rena pleaded. “Just for tonight?”
“For two pence?” Mrs. Bagley humphed, her eyes fixed on an invisible spot on the glass she was holding. Not once did her gaze flick to the worthless coins in front of her, which scraped together were hardly enough worth a boot cleaning. “You’d think we weren’t already giving you lodging out of our own generous pockets.”
Rena bit back her irritation. Nell had worked slavishly hard those last few weeks to pay their way, and Mrs. Bagley could hardly rent the produce closet to regular customers regardless.
“Please,” Rena said, softer, carefully tempering her words so the other guests would not overhear her begging, “let me do this for my mother-in-law.”
There was nothing Rena would not give for Nell, nothing she wouldn’t do. True, she was now to be a beggar at Lord Barric’s feet, but his offer was also a salvation of sorts. Tonight was the beginning of something new. She could feel it. Rena wanted to feast as she had in her father’s house, as Nell had done on holidays, as they had both done when she married Edric.
“If you wanted to do your mother-in-law favors, you’d have stayed in India where you belong.”
Rena winced as Mrs. Bagley’s voice rose, knowing the other customers would be sure to overhear every insulting syllable. “What could you do for her, anyway, a little waste such as yourself? Another mouth for her to feed, that’s what you are. Why, I ought to take those two pence as payment for the room I’m renting to you at practically nothing. As if two pennies scraped together are enough for a plate from my kitchen.”
“Perhaps two shillings would be enough to make up any remaining cost.” Rena startled when a hand placed two silver coins on the bar beside her own. Glancing up, she joined gazes with an older man, nearly her father’s age, who wore a thick white neckcloth.
“Parson?” Mrs. Bagley nearly stammered in disbelief as she shook her head and sweepingly said, “That is hardly necessary. I did not mean for you to be in any way disturbed by my tenant.”
Everyone was staring now, and Rena suspected for once the attention had little to do with her. Men and women alike cast uncertain glances at the parson, evidently shocked to find him standing beneath the inn’s scanty light.
“I am just fine.” Rena whispered the words tightly, mortified to be caught, again, with nothing. “I will not take your money.”
Her words moved nothing in his expression. He had intelligent eyes, cast in a subdued shade of misty gray. As he glanced over his shoulder, the patrons went about their usual business, pretending not to notice his presence.
“It is not a question of what you can afford,” the parson assured Rena, speaking loudly enough for his voice to be heard all the way down the length of the bar. “But if the innkeeper’s wife cannot manage to feed you for two pence, then it is certainly a question of what she can afford.”
Heads turned again. Mrs. Bagley’s hand shot out at once and claimed Rena’s two pence, leaving the parson’s two shillings behind. “I assure you we can certainly afford to feed anyone who comes in our doors.”
The parson nodded slowly before plucking up his two shillings and slipping them back into his pocket. “I am quite relieved to hear you say so,” he said, then glanced distractedly over Rena’s shoulder, once again scanning the crowd.
“Is there…anything you need?” Mrs. Bagley hedged hesitantly.
The parson settled his attention back on her. “In fact, there is,” he admitted. “I’m looking for Miss Janet Dawson.”
“She frequents this place well enough,” Mrs. Bagley agreed with some surprise, eyes shifting toward the corner stairs. She grimaced. “Though she is currently…working.”
“I see.” The parson stepped back, frowning as he dropped his hand from the bar. He was quiet for a moment, then tipped his head meaningfully in Rena’s direction. “I will kindly wait if your customer is hungry.”
The dismissal was clear but kind. Mrs. Bagley clanked the glass she was holding down on the bar, scowling slightly at Rena as she disappeared into the kitchen and began barking orders at her poor, unsuspecting kitchen girl. As soon as Mrs. Bagley was gone, Rena sought the proper words to thank the parson for what he’d done. Not merely for stepping in, for offering money, but for the way he had spoken to her, calmly, as if there was nothing at all peculiar about her. Nothing different. It was certainly a change to be regarded with more respect than pity.
But the words did not form in time, nor did the parson seem to expect them. In a moment, his attention was drawn across the room, where a thin young woman with plain brown hair and tired eyes was descending the stairs. As soon as she spotted the parson, a spark of unsettled recognition flashed across her features. The fear in her eyes made her seem somewhat younger.
“Must be about the child,” someone whispered from just behind Rena’s shoulder.
To which another grimly answered, “They summoned the doctor this morning.”
The parson stepped through the chaos of the pub to meet the woman—Janet—at the bottom of the stairs. He tipped his head in greeting, and her hand found the banister, clutching tightly. Even over the din, Rena heard her sharp words. “What is it?” Janet demanded. “What’s happened? Why have they sent you?”
The parson stood very still. He did not reach out to touch her, though she looked at him, wide-eyed and fearful, as though he’d grabbed her by the arms. The parson motioned gently toward the front door, but the woman shook her head and asked him something else, words which were lost to the murmur of the crowd. The parson’s eyes were soft and dreary as he whispered something back to her. Immediately she half sunk against him, her hands clawing against the front of his coat as she shrieked out an unintelligible name. The parson grasped her shoulders, continuing to whisper in her ear.
The voice over Rena’s shoulder spoke again. “What would the poor lad have thought, to know he had a mother such as her?”
“Probably better off that he didn’t.”
Janet swayed, then fell, her hands pressed tightly against the floorboards as she heaved. Rena knew enough of death to know that this was what it looked like. This was how it felt. Rena had hit the floor too when the doctor had emerged from Edric’s room to tell her it was all over. Even after two years, she still felt as though she hadn’t managed to stand fully ever since.
From all corners of the room, women left their men on various benches as they rushed to grab ahold of Janet. They ran their hands over her h
air as they whispered quiet words to her. Senselessly, she shook her head, over and over and over, as if to clear it. But when all else cleared, Rena knew this one truth would never change: the woman’s child was dead.
Familiar with the press of grief, Rena moved toward Janet, wishing to soothe her, but Mrs. Bagley grabbed her hand in a vise grip and stopped her from taking another step. “Get back to your room,” she snapped, shaking her head in rebuke as she hurled a tray of food into Rena’s arms. “What makes you think she wants comforting from you? Indian witch.”
Rena fiddled with the storeroom’s doorknob, first wiggling it to the right and then pressing the tip of her foot firmly against the bottom left corner of the door—a frustratingly familiar ritual. At last the door swung free on its rusty hinge, admitting Rena into the narrow space.
She paused in the entryway. Nell had not heard her come in. The woman sat alone at the table, both of her eyes clamped closed, her hands pressed tightly against the marred wood of the tabletop.
Even beneath the vulturous talons of starvation, Nell’s strength and vibrancy filled the room. Though more than twice Rena’s age, Nell was remarkably beautiful, her blond hair woven with wisps of elegant silver which would not dull into gray. Her back and shoulders had turned bony in past weeks, but even hunched over the table in her strange vigil, the woman seemed sturdy and unbending. Hunger had not stolen the light from her eyes or the strength from her brow. Colored only by candlelight, Nell wore a determined expression that swept away the dusty gloom of the room and made her mistress of even the cobwebs.
Clenching her fingers together, Rena studied the crisscrossed veins on the backs of Nell’s bony hands, then considered the woman’s palms as they pressed prostrate against the table. On Nell’s third finger rested a thin, gold wedding band set with amethyst, which had begun to fit loosely in her hunger. A talisman, Rena thought, against the pangs of widowhood.
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