by Anne Gracie
Jane started up from her sleep, whimpering in fright.
“Hush, love, it’s all right,” Abby soothed.
Jane turned to her, shivering. “Oh, Abby, you are here! Thank God. I thought I’d only dreamed you, and that I was still in that place.” She wrapped her arms tightly around Abby. “I’ve missed you so much, big sister.”
“I’ve missed you too, little sister.” Her eyes blind with tears, Abby kissed the crown of Jane’s head. “You’re safe now, love, so go back to sleep.” She stroked her sister’s hair as she had when Jane was a little girl, until Jane’s breathing slowed and she was asleep.
One thing was settled, Abby thought as she finally drifted off to sleep in the wee small hours of the morning: There was no question of sending Jane anywhere; they’d stay together as a family. Somehow, Abby would manage it.
* * *
“My sister and her companion and maid were set upon and robbed.” Abby stood in the morning room, explaining to Mr. and Mrs. Mason why three strange women had been discovered in her bedchamber. Mrs. Mason had come to Abby’s room to demand something and found them.
Jane and Damaris, dressed in Abby’s clothes, waited with Daisy in the hallway.
Abby continued. “They’d just arrived in London and with no money, no baggage and nowhere to go; what was I to do?”
“You had no right to bring them into my home,” Mr. Mason said. “You know my policy on staff visitors.”
“It was an emergency,” Abby said calmly. She was skating on thin ice, and her position was on the line, but she refused to apologize. “I will also need to take some time off this morning to see my sister settled. She is not yet eighteen and a stranger to London.”
“No, you’ve just had a half day—and returned from it late,” Mr. Mason said in a bored voice, and returned to reading his newspaper.
“Yes, but this situation is both unexpected and urgent. I need at least half a day to make arrangem—”
“No,” said Mr. Mason from behind his newspaper. His wife nodded in self-righteous approval.
“I would ask you to reconsider,” Abby said quietly. “I’ve worked for you for four years and have never once asked for anything extra. You must understand this is a family obligation.” Abby’s time here was over; she knew it, and she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of begging.
But the thought of being jobless and having to support four people on her meager savings terrified her.
“The only family you have any obligation to is mine,” Mr. Mason said.
“That is your last word?”
“It is.”
“Then I hereby tender my resignation, to take effect immediately.”
“What?” Mrs. Mason gasped.
Mr. Mason lowered his paper. “You cannot.”
“You’ve left me no choice,” Abby said, amazed at how calm she sounded. “I will leave this morning, as soon as I have packed my things.”
“Leave? But what about the children? Who will take care of them?” Mrs. Mason demanded.
“They’re your children. You look after them—you might even get to know them, poor little things.” Abby turned on her heel and marched from the room.
Behind her Mrs. Mason squawked, “Don’t you dare turn your back on me—I’m not finished with you, young woman! Do something, Edwin! I’ve never in my life been treated to such insolence! Come back here, Miss Chantry!”
Abby kept walking. She would miss the children desperately, but she had no choice.
* * *
“What are we going to do?” The four girls had gathered in the small bedroom they’d rented in a respectable lodging house. It was their first evening as independent women.
“Find a job,” Daisy said. “Find a place to live. I can’t afford to stay here.”
“I think we should stay together,” Abby said. She’d given it a lot of thought during the night.
Daisy said in a cautious tone, “What, all of us? Me included?”
“Yes, all of us,” Abby said firmly. “Mama used to say, ‘A woman without family is so vulnerable,’ and she was right. Alone each of us is vulnerable, but together we can be stronger, like a family.”
“Four orphans: one family,” Damaris said. “I like the sound of that.”
“I like it too.” Jane held out her hands. “Let us take hands then, and make a vow to become as sisters to one another.”
“Sisters? I can’t be your sister,” Daisy objected.
“Why not?”
“’Cause you’re all quality born and I’m just a foundling from the gutters.” She hesitated, then added, “I can’t even read.”
“I’ll teach you,” Abby and Damaris said at the same time, and laughed.
“Yeah, but—”
“Daisy, darling, if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t even be here,” Jane pointed out. “So come along and swear.”
So, with the heady air of freedom firing their blood like a sweet and potent wine, they vowed to be as sisters to one another, to become a family. They toasted their pact with weak tea and then returned to the question of what they were going to do.
The answer was the same for each of them—get a job, earn a living. The question was how?
Eventually Abby said, “What if you could have whatever you want?”
“Ooh, yes.” Jane, who was drooping over the edge of the bed, sat up eagerly. “Abby and I used to play that game when we were children—what we’d want if we could have things exactly as we’d wish,” she explained.
Abby smiled. “It doesn’t hurt to dream.” Dreams had long been Abby’s friend.
Jane clasped her hands and thought for a moment. “I want to have a come-out like Mama did—remember the stories, Abby? She’d go to dances and balls and picnics and plays and concerts and . . . and everything. I want that. I want to go to balls and wear pretty dresses and dance with handsome men. And one of them—he’ll be tall and handsome and rich, of course—will make it his business to attend all the same balls that I go to, and he’ll ask me for the supper dance and the last dance of the evening. . . . And then he’ll ask for my hand.”
Abby’s eyes were misty. “Just like Papa did with Mama,” she said softly.
Jane nodded. “Except Papa wasn’t rich. I know it’s not possible, of course, but that’s what I want, Abby—what Mama had. And what do you want?”
Abby smiled. “That’s what I want for you too, Jane.” And she swore her sister would have it, one way or another.
“No, I mean for you—what do you want? Don’t you want the same?”
“Of course I do,” Abby said lightly. To not be lonely ever again, to feel loved and wanted . . . To have someone to talk over her worries with, and maybe even to lift the burden of care from her shoulders . . . who wouldn’t want that?
And children . . . She ached for children of her own, children she could love as much as she wanted to, children nobody could take from her.
But these days, Abby had few illusions about her marriageability. Laurence had seen to that. She turned to Damaris. “What do you want?”
Damaris didn’t even pause to think about it. “I want a home of my own, a place where I belong, truly belong. A small cottage, a cat, a dog, some chickens.”
“Don’t you want to get married?” Jane asked.
“No man would want me now.”
“You don’t know that,” Jane said. “And anyway, how would he know? You don’t have to tell him. You don’t have to tell anyone. It wasn’t your fault.”
Abby frowned. Damaris was acting as if . . . “I thought you hadn’t been . . .”
“No, not at the brothel. But . . .” A blush rose to her cheeks and she looked away and said in a hard little voice, “I’m not a virgin.”
Her face in the candlelight glowed, framed by her long dark hair falling straight as rain to her waist. “If I ever gave myself to a man again—and I doubt I ever would—I’d wish to give myself wholly, without reservation, with nothing between us, not even secrets. But that won’
t happen, so . . .” She shrugged.
There was a long silence. Then Jane turned to Daisy. “And you, Daisy, what’s your dream?”
“Me?” Daisy swallowed. “Girls like me don’t have no dreams.” But a blush slowly rose on her face.
“Yes, you do, Daisy. Go on,” Abby prompted her.
“Yes, tell us, Daisy.”
“Nah, you’ll think it’s stupid.”
“No, we won’t.”
Daisy’s pale freckled face was almost beet red by now. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“We promise.”
Daisy looked down and picked at her fingers, seemingly debating whether to say anything or not. After a moment she climbed off the bed and collected the bundle she’d brought with her from the brothel. “It’s why I brought me bits.”
She unknotted the outer cloth and onto the bed spilled a tangled glory of ribbons, braids, old lace, sequins, strings of buttons, offcuts of satin and velvet, taffeta and other fabrics—even a few strips of fur.
In a gruff little voice she mumbled, “I want to make dresses, real pretty ones, to me own design. I want to own me own shop, a place where the quality come to buy their clothes.” She darted them a quick glance and scowled at her boots. “See, I told you it was stupid.”
“It’s not stupid at all,” Abby said quietly.
Jane nodded. “Yes, it’s a lovely dream, Daisy. And those pieces are beautiful.”
“Daisy is a talented seamstress,” Damaris told them. Daisy looked up in surprise. Damaris went on. “I saw some of the garments she made for the girls in the brothel, and she has an eye for style and something of an original flair.” She looked at Daisy. “I’d be happy to work with you to help your dream come true.”
“Would you, miss?” Daisy gasped.
“We all will,” Jane said warmly. “Won’t we, Abby? Abby?”
Abby blinked. “Sorry, I was woolgathering. I was thinking of something,” she said slowly. “About our various dreams . . .”
“Tell us,” Jane said. She turned to the others. “Abby always has wonderful ideas.”
Abby grimaced. “I don’t know about wonderful, but I was thinking . . . It’s going to be hard to meet handsome gentlemen—of the respectable sort—in London.”
In a city the size of London, respectable society, let alone the genteel society that her and Jane’s birth should have entitled them to, was far out of their reach. They could promenade at the fashionable hour in the park, and that was about it.
And if any offers from gentlemen were forthcoming, they wouldn’t be the respectable type at all.
“What if we went to Bath?” She let the thought sink in a moment. “Anyone can visit the Pump Room—”
“And all sorts of people, from dance instructors to duchesses, go to take the waters there,” Jane said.
“And any respectable person with the price of admission can attend the public assemblies,” Abby finished. In Bath, among the old and infirm, Jane’s youthful beauty and innate sweetness would stand out; she had a much better chance of meeting respectable gentlemen, and receiving a respectable offer.
She looked at Daisy. “But if we are to dazzle handsome gentlemen, we’ll need beautiful clothes. And how better to make a splash in Bath society than to have these two beautiful young ladies”—she waved a graceful hand at Jane and Damaris, who bowed graciously back—“dressed by a most exclusive, exquisite and original dressmaker.”
“I love it!” Jane exclaimed.
“I can make the clothes, miss; I promise I can,” Daisy said breathlessly.
Damaris nodded. “But we’ll need money.”
“I know,” Abby said. “We’ll need to work until we earn enough to hire rooms in a fashionable part of Bath. And it’ll be easier to find work in London.” Besides, Bath society would shun them roundly if Jane or her sister were known to have had anything so vulgar as a job.
“So it’s a plan?” she asked.
The others nodded. “We oughta drink to it,” Daisy said, and lifted her cup of weak black tea.
They all clinked cups. “To the plan.”
Before she went to bed, Abby wrote some letters: to the vicar in Hereford; to Mrs. Bodkin, the matron in charge of the Pill; and to Sir Walter Greevey, whose driver had been so drunk and careless as to allow his passenger to be kidnapped.
Abby didn’t mention the brothel—she didn’t want any whiff of scandal to attach itself to her sister’s name—so she simply wrote to say Jane would be living with her sister in London from now on.
She also asked Mrs. Bodkin for a character reference. The Masons had refused to give one to Abby. It was a devastating blow, for without one, no respectable employer would take her. And with four people to support, Abby’s savings would disappear in no time. She gave her return address as the post office at Charing Cross. Their current lodgings were so expensive, they would have to move shortly.
Finally she wrote an anonymous letter to Bow Street, to report the brothel for kidnapping girls and holding them prisoner. Daisy might be right—the letter might do no good—but you never could tell, and Abby had to do something.
Chapter Three
“Her mind was all disorder. The past, present, future, everything was terrible.”
—JANE AUSTEN, MANSFIELD PARK
Six weeks later
“You can’t—it’s too risky,” Damaris hissed. “What if you’re caught?”
“I don’t have a choice,” Abby whispered back. “We haven’t a penny, and the doctor won’t see her otherwise.” She glanced across to where her sister now tossed and turned on a straw pallet on the floor of their attic room, her normally bright golden hair dull in the pale moonlight. Jane lay oblivious. She was muttering, delirious. On the edge of death.
On another pallet beside her, Daisy slept—it was her turn. The two girls and Abby had been tending Jane for two days now, taking it in turns to sleep.
All their bright dreams lay shattered. Work had been harder to get than they’d thought, food more expensive, rent dearer. Only Damaris had regular work, painting plates in a pottery. She’d be paid at the end of the week, but Jane was sick now. . . .
Abby looked out across the rooftops of London, her gaze returning again and again, like a tongue probing a sore tooth, to the window on the second floor of the grand house behind them.
The window was open, as it had been every day and night since they’d moved there.
A seventeenth-century mansion on the Strand. What might it contain? A few small valuable items nobody would miss?
Nobody was in residence—only a skeleton staff. At night, no lights shone in the main part of the house, only in the domestic quarters where the servants were.
That open window was temptation, a taunt, an open invitation.
All evening, ever since the idea had come to her, Abby had found herself mentally plotting the course she could take—down the drainpipe, along the top of the wall, up to the second floor with the aid of another drainpipe, and then it was just a stretch to the open window.
Was it breaking and entering if a window was already open?
She shook her head. Semantics. Whatever she called it, the punishment—if she were caught—was transportation. Or worse.
But if she did nothing . . . She glanced across the room.
“Oh, Papa, forgive me,” she whispered. All those years of anger she’d felt toward him for getting himself killed, for leaving it to twelve-year-old Abby to somehow hold the family together, Mama fading before their eyes with some dreadful, wasting illness, and little Jane only six years old.
Now Jane twisted on her pallet, muttering with fever, hovering on the edge of death, and Abby understood now what had driven Papa to do what he did. Desperation.
Because if the risk paid off . . .
She turned back to the window. The first dry night in a week. Clouds scudded by, riding the light breeze. The moon cast shifting shadows. Perfect conditions. Fate beckoning.
Fate twisted on su
ch frighteningly slender threads.
She pulled on the breeches she’d borrowed earlier in the day. It was just a matter of screwing her courage to the sticking place. . . .
“So you’re really going to do it?” Damaris whispered.
Abby nodded. “I’ll be back soon. Take care of her.”
“Good luck, Abby.” Damaris returned to Jane’s bedside.
With damp palms Abby raised the sloping attic window and climbed out onto the roof. She paused, her gaze sweeping the horizon. Chimney pots, a few still smoking gently, and the sharp angles of rooftops as far as the eye could see. Between the houses she could see the silver gleam of the river, could smell it on the breeze.
How many years since she’d climbed a tree? Surely one didn’t forget. She carefully inched along the sloping slate roof until she reached the drainpipe. It was old, and rusty in places. Pray that it would hold.
Clinging to the pipe, she climbed down to the next level, then edged her way along until she reached the place where the back of the building met the side wall. It was just a matter of stepping between the shards of glass embedded in the wall. Lucky her feet were narrow and her balance good.
She had rehearsed this in her mind. She could do it.
Taking a deep breath, she set out across the back wall. The brisk night wind sliced through her thin garments. It was supposed to be summer, but it was cold, so cold. She ignored it. Steady, stay steady. One foot after the other. Watch out for the glass. Don’t look down.
Pounding heart. Shallow breaths. Don’t think about the height, the broken glass. Balance was all. It was no different from walking on a line drawn in chalk. Nearly there. Three more steps . . . two . . . and then she was on the other side. Just one small jump to reach the other house now. She jumped, teetered and clung to the wall, her fingernails scrabbling at the stone in desperation. Steady now. Deep breaths. See, it was easy. Now one last climb, the pipe that ran up right beside the open window on the second floor.
The sash window was stiff, but she managed to push it up some more. She leaned in, listened, checked. Not a sound. A bedchamber. She could see the heavy hangings of the bed, an ornate wardrobe, a dressing table. No sign of life.