by Rose Lerner
Mrs. Bridger now arranged her husband’s pen and penknife at perfect right angles. “There’s something else, ma’am.”
“Yes?”
“We’ve had an offer to employ Mary Luff. Deborah Tice saw one of the baskets she made here and was quite impressed.”
Lydia’s heart pounded. She did not want to make this decision. “And Joanna?”
“Of course Miss Tice can’t add an infant to her household. I know you didn’t want to see them separated, ma’am, but Miss Tice says Mary might have the makings of a milliner.”
It was another place they were lucky to be offered. But Lydia knew Mary wouldn’t want to go.
Nobody who wanted to take Mary would take Joanna. Must Mary grow up in the workhouse then, feeding old women gruel, and know no trade at all when she was older?
Mrs. Bridger asked Lydia’s advice on these matters because Lydia was a reliable source of income. If that changed, she and her husband would make these decisions themselves, or leave them to the overseers. Lord Wheatcroft had been an overseer, and Lydia was well acquainted with those who remained. For the most part they were kindly, generous men and pleasant dinner guests, but their visits to the workhouse were perfunctory at best. They would never think that the feelings of an inmate should guide them in any way.
Lydia imagined the wreck of a conversation that would ensue if she tried to convince Jamie to be an overseer.
The maid of all work poked her head into the little office. “Pardon me, Miss Reeve, Mr. Cahill and Mr. Ralph Cahill are here to see you. What shall I tell them?”
Mr. Cahill would understand how much this decision mattered. She wanted to hear his opinion. She wanted to share this responsibility. “Do you mind if I ask them in?”
Mrs. Bridger smiled at her, deferential as always. “Of course not, ma’am.”
Her skin tingled a little when Mr. Ralph walked in and gave her one of his conspiratorial smiles—mostly from embarrassment. Mr. Cahill’s cheerful nod set her positively buzzing. She thought that was mostly not embarrassment.
His coat was ill-tailored, rumpling over his brawny upper arms and tenting behind his neck. It would have made him appear hunched had it not been for his bearing—nothing like his brother’s confidence, but a simpler comfort, as if he gave his body the same friendly, undemanding acceptance he seemed to give everything else.
She didn’t understand how or when she had gone so quickly from more pleasant than handsome to I notice the way his coat wrinkles.
When greetings and introductions were over, she said, “Mr. Cahill…Mary Luff’s been offered a position.”
He stiffened. “What about Joanna?” He remembered their names.
“Joanna would have to be boarded out. But it’s a good place,” she said pleadingly. “She might be a milliner someday, if things go well. I don’t know what place she’ll find that will allow her to bring an infant with her. What do you think we should do?”
“This is the little girl with the sister?” Mr. Ralph asked.
Mr. Cahill’s eyes flickered to his brother. He nodded.
“Maybe Mary deserves a chance to live her own life,” Mr. Ralph said. “Maybe—maybe a nine-year-old girl shouldn’t have to be a mother.”
Mr. Cahill’s tanned face went very still. Lydia felt a pang of vicarious humiliation. She wouldn’t have liked it much either if the brother she’d struggled to make a happy home for and cherished from birth gave her a measuring look and said she’d have been better off without him. Before strangers, no less.
But Mr. Cahill smiled the next moment and turned to her. “Maybe so. Miss Reeve knows the child best. What is your opinion, ma’am?”
She twisted her hands together. “I don’t know. Mary adores Joanna. But she hates it here.”
“Why don’t we ask her?” Mr. Ralph said.
Lydia drew back. “Oh, she’s too young! What if she abandons her sister, and later regrets it? No one should have to make that choice.”
“Ralph is right.” Mr. Cahill gave his brother a look that was a little sad and very proud. He shook his head. “If you’d told me at nine that when I was grown I’d be like all the other adults and think I knew best about everything…” He turned his deep-set brown eyes on her. “Mary’s got two things in the world. Her sister, and this choice.”
Lydia was never afraid to meet anyone’s eye. She knew they couldn’t see a thing she didn’t want them to. But for a single vertiginous moment, she had to remind herself that her eyes were little balls of flesh and jelly, not a shop window to her soul with all her secret thoughts prettily displayed for his perusing.
It would be stupid to marry his brother, when he himself made her feel like this.
“I agree with Miss Reeve,” said Mrs. Bridger. “And we can’t let it get about that paupers may simply choose to stay here if they don’t like the situations we find for them. What will the overseers say?”
“I suggest we don’t tell anyone,” Lydia said ruefully. “If it gets out, I’ll talk to them.”
Lydia didn’t think Mrs. Bridger was convinced, but she clearly didn’t feel strongly enough to start a genuine disagreement with three gentlefolk. She shrugged and rang for the maid, instructing her to bring the girl in. “Ask her to leave Joanna with one of the other children, please.”
Mary curtsied as she entered, her eyes going from face to face, trying to guess why she was here. Everyone waited deferentially for Lydia to speak.
Lydia’s heart bled. “Mary, I want to ask you something.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“We—we have an offer of a place for you. Miss Tice, the milliner, saw the basket you made and would like you to come and work for her.”
“At first it will be weaving straw,” Mrs. Bridger added, “but she tells me if you show promise, there’ll be a chance for you to learn the whole trade.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Mary’s square little face was still. “What about Joanna?”
“Joanna couldn’t go with you,” Lydia said. “That is the question I have for you—do you want to go live with Miss Tice, or stay here with Joanna?”
Mary hesitated. “I’ll stay, ma’am. Thank you.”
Somehow the bleeding in Lydia’s heart didn’t stop. “You don’t have to answer so quickly. You must consider what’s best for you and what’s best for Joanna, and not only now, but for the rest of your lives. It isn’t likely that you will find a place that will allow you to take your sister, and then when you’re older, you will have no trade and be less able to help her. But perhaps being with a sister you love, who loves you, is more important than that. It’s a big choice for a little girl, but we thought it was too big for us to make it for you.”
Mary was silent for nearly a minute, thinking, her small shoulders tense. “What would happen to Joanna if I left her, ma’am?”
“She’ll go to a nurse in the country until she is older, and then come back here until a place can be found for her.”
“Could I still see her?”
“Yes, but perhaps not very often. You will be working most of your time,” Lydia said. “If our usual nurse can take her, she’ll only be a few miles off, but that’s a long walk for a little girl.”
“What do you think I should do, ma’am?”
Lydia looked around the room for help, but there wasn’t any. Mr. Cahill was watching her, and Mr. Ralph was watching Mary. Mrs. Bridger merely looked patient. “I don’t know,” Lydia said haltingly. “I think there are good and bad aspects to both choices. Love and duty may guide you equally in either direction. All you can do—all any of us can ever do in this life—is your best. I think that you are a brave, good girl, and—and no matter how you choose, I’m very proud of you. So are your parents in Heaven.”
Mr. Ralph stepped forward abruptly, and knelt down so he was looking the little girl right in the eye. “Good aftern
oon, Mary. My name is Ralph Cahill. Of course you don’t know me, and have no reason to value my opinion, but I want to tell you that when you’re turning this over in your mind, it’s all right to think about what’s best for you, as well as what’s best for your sister.”
Mary glanced doubtfully at Lydia. Lydia hesitated. Of course one must think of others first; of course one’s duty to one’s family outweighed all else. Lydia herself had always acted on that principle. But Mary had been here three months, and she was thinner and paler than she had been, and more discontented about the shoulders.
Lydia nodded. “Mr. Ralph is right, Mary. If you ruin your health or your happiness it will profit no one, really.”
Mr. Cahill, who had been silent and still through this whole scene, turned his face away and pressed his knuckles to his mouth. Lydia, her gaze caught by the movement, saw that he was hiding a smile at her hedge, brown eyes crinkling. Even at this terrible moment, she felt a flash of desire.
She turned back to Mary. “You may have until tomorrow to decide, if you like.”
Mrs. Bridger nodded. “But if you wish to take up the position with Miss Tice, you must start the day after. Christmas is one of her busiest seasons.”
Mary’s eyes widened. “You mean—you mean I won’t be with Joanna for Christmas?”
Now, finally, Mr. Cahill spoke. “The shop will be closed for Christmas, I imagine. If you want to go to Miss Tice, and you trust me enough to travel with, I’ll take you to visit Joanna on Christmas Day.”
Mary gave him a narrow scrutiny, though whether gauging his sincerity or his trustworthiness Lydia couldn’t tell. “Do you promise?”
“On my mother’s grave.”
Mary took several deep breaths, chest swelling. Then she said in a deflating rush, “I want to go and earn my own money.”
Lydia swallowed hard.
“There’s a clever girl,” said Mrs. Bridger, looking relieved. “Now come along with me, and we can talk about what you’ll need in your new life.”
Mary looked around the room, not sure who to talk to. “If Joanna cries, she likes to be picked up and sung to. ‘Ye Sons of Albion’ will quiet her every time. She likes to feed herself, and she hates raisins and dogs—the little ones, big ones are all right—and people shouting—”
Lydia stood very still and tried not to cry as Mary was led away by Mrs. Bridger, still giving detailed, slightly desperate-sounding instructions. She remembered Jamie at Joanna’s age, how suspicious he was of strangers, his inexplicable fear of wardrobes, the way he put the end of her braid in his mouth. “It isn’t fair,” she said. “It isn’t fair that some people have everything and some people have nothing.”
“It’s God’s plan. Isn’t that what the Tories believe?” There was an edge in Mr. Cahill’s voice. Lydia looked at him in surprise; he had seemed so calm. Now he was stony-faced, eyes fixed on the door.
“Ash.” Mr. Ralph gave her a sympathetic glance. “When I say something like that, Ash always says, ‘Yes, and the world should be shook out and made over like an old dress, but it probably won’t happen today.’”
Mr. Cahill smiled, a polite, meaningless curve of his mouth. “I’ll be outside. Miss Reeve.” Bowing in her direction, he strode jerkily out and shut the door softly behind him.
Mr. Ralph sighed, looking troubled. “He doesn’t usually take things so much to heart. I—I’m sorry, I think I should go after him.”
Lydia wanted to go after him too. She wanted to tell him that she didn’t think this was God’s plan at all. There had always been rich and poor so God must have a reason for it—she didn’t know what it was but there must be one—but she knew He couldn’t want anyone to be this poor. No one needed to be, if the rich would do their duty.
She wanted him not to be angry with her. She wanted to stop feeling as if what had happened to Mary was her fault somehow.
What right did he have to make her feel this way? He was a gentleman, just as she was a gentlewoman. He gallivanted around England, living to please no one but himself, while she worked every day, and—
What difference did Lydia’s hurt feelings make, when Mary had had to give up her sister?
Mr. Ralph smiled at her, squeezed her shoulder, and left her there. She tried not to cry.
Rafe didn’t say anything when he came out the front door, just bumped Ash’s shoulder with his own—well, with his upper arm, given the difference in their heights—and stood at his elbow, silent and hulking, as if misery could be physically intimidated. Maybe it could, because Ash felt better at once. “Did she give you an answer?”
“I didn’t wait,” Rafe said. “You were upset.”
“And I would still have been upset in five minutes after you’d talked to Miss Reeve.”
“It isn’t like you to let something get to you this way.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Rafe said, almost shyly. “It’s—it’s nice. You always brush things off so easily, and I—can’t.”
“There’s nothing nice about the way I feel,” Ash said sharply. This was why he was careful to open his heart so far and no farther, because England was full of Mary Luffs, and there was only so much Ash to go around. He needed that pane of glass between him and the world. Why couldn’t he manage it this week? Was it because Rafe was leaving? Or was Miss Reeve’s damned earnestness getting to him?
When he didn’t keep his heart under control, he made mistakes. He’d worked so hard to make Miss Reeve like him, and now he’d put everything in jeopardy. His brother’s future depended on this. What good did this rending pain do anybody?
Rafe looked away. “I didn’t mean…I’m sorry.”
Ash couldn’t be angry. If he could behave like Mary and give Miss Reeve a list of foods Rafe did and didn’t like, he would.
You’re thirty-four years old. Stop behaving like a child. But he felt like a child, adrift in a large world whose rules were both arbitrary and stacked against him.
“Mary’ll be all right,” Rafe said.
“Everybody is until they’re dead,” Ash agreed lightly. He looked around for somewhere to sit and wait for Miss Reeve. In these small towns, people didn’t want you to sit on their stairs.
She came out before he’d finished his assessment, marching right up to them with a smile and saying to Ash, “Mr. Cahill, might I talk to you privately?”
Ash blinked. But it wasn’t that unusual for a flat to trust most the brother she’d met first, to want a little reassurance before agreeing to a deal. It was a good sign, really. “You don’t mind, do you, Rafe?”
Rafe shook his head, and Ash followed Miss Reeve down the street a little ways before she gestured him into a narrow space between two houses—neither of which, he saw, had windows on the facing wall. She was a woman who noticed things.
She looked at him, that chin of hers tilted up. Her eyes were red. “Do you know of the proposal your brother has made to me, Mr. Cahill?”
“I do.”
“Do you approve?”
Ash shrugged ruefully. “I suppose I always thought he’d marry for love, but he needs the money and I don’t have it.” He smiled at her. “He likes you, though. He could do worse. Maybe in time—”
She shook her head. Ash’s heart sank. “I like your brother too. But…” She squared her shoulders, her chin going up even higher. He could see her pulse hammering just under the black ribbon of her bonnet. “I like you better. If you’ve any inclination, I’d rather take the same offer from you.”
Ash’s heart stopped, or maybe his ears. He couldn’t hear a sound from the street. “What?” What was common. He should have said I beg your pardon. He should have said something cleverer than either.
“I know it’s very forward of me.” Her voice trembled but her gaze didn’t falter. She had bottom. “But we’re past the proprieties, and marrying a man
for convenience’s sake while nursing a tendre for his brother is something out of a tired French farce.”
“A tendre?” Trust her to use a word he didn’t know. But her meaning was all too clear. “For me? But—Rafe is—”
The corner of her full mouth curved up softly. Tenderly, even. Maybe that was what tendre meant, tenderness. “Mr. Ralph is very handsome. But chacun à son goût, as they say.”
He looked at her blankly.
“Tastes differ?”
The enormity, the implausibility of this reversal—had he done something, said something—
Of course he had. He liked her. She’d attracted him from the first moment, and somehow he’d let her see it.
Could he find another life for Rafe this good again? Would Rafe be willing to wait while he tried? He’d been practicing his whole life for this swindle, this moment, to give Rafe this. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—fail like some amateur, like a flat. But he couldn’t speak.
“We have a—a connection, do we not?” she tried again, her words almost echoing in the silence. Those big brown eyes wobbled back and forth a little over his face, where she apparently saw something she wanted to marry.
I have a connection with twenty people a day, he wanted to shout at her. What does a connection matter?
She stepped forward. She didn’t want him to see how nervous she was, but it showed in her silent staccato breaths. The fine hairs on the fur trim of her pelisse trembled as her breasts went up and down. She stood there for a second, waiting for him to say something, and then she sighed and undid that black velvet ribbon under her chin.
He should leave. If she was ready to take the deal from him, then once he’d turned her down she’d probably take it from Rafe.
But she’d only do that if he could get out of this without embarrassing her. He had to turn her up so sweet she wouldn’t mind seeing him again. He would be her brother-in-law, and she didn’t know that soon he’d be out of the picture for good.