by Ruth Owen
The Red Queen,
“Oh, we’ll meet again, my red-haired lassie,” he breathed quietly. “There’s more of Dan’l Murphy in you than you know.”
* * *
“The mistress wants to see ya.”
Sabrina laid aside her book, reluctantly giving up the first free moment she’d had during the week since her father’s death. Tilly, the second maid, leaned against the doorjamb of her attic room. The ribbon had come free from her sloppily tied mob-cap, and a shank of blond hair hung down across her forehead. A plump, blowzy girl with a lazy disposition, Tilly had nevertheless managed to become one of Widow Murphy’s favorites without doing a lick of real work. Personally Sabrina suspected that Tilly’s lofty status had more to do with Albert’s approval than his mother’s, but she kept that opinion to herself. “I’ll be done with this in a quarter hour. Please inform my stepmother that I’ll be down directly.”
“You want me to go all the way down them stairs again?” Tilly complained.
“Yes, I do,” Sabrina replied evenly. “Unless you can think of another way to tell her.”
Their gazes met in a test of mettle, but Tilly broke the stare first. Looking down, she sniffed loudly and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I’ll tell mistress,” she said with reluctant compliance, then shuffled away, grumbling.
Unbidden, Rina’s lips curved up in a slight smile of triumph. She knew it wasn’t Christian to feel so pleased at Tilly’s expense—her mother had often reminded her that the Lord charged His people to turn the other cheek. But she’d been “turning the other cheek” to Tilly for months—tucking in the sheets on the half-made beds, hanging out laundry that had been washed but not dried, finishing the leftover supper dishes from the boarders’ meals. Her stepmother made a business of hiring lazy help, finding their services could be purchased at a cheaper wage. Rina was expected to take up the slack and she had done so—initially because she was too young to argue, and later because it kept a semblance of harmony in the household. But Tilly was the worst of a bad lot, and Rina doubted that even God would begrudge her a little satisfaction at putting her out. Still, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to say an extra prayer of penitence at tomorrow’s Sunday morning service.
Sunday…
Rina bent back to her book, but instead of words she saw Quinn’s button-bright eyes. Since their meeting in the graveyard she’d tried her best not to think of her father’s old mate. But it was no use. At odd moments during the day she’d catch herself recalling his cryptic offer, and speculating about the unknown situation that he’d claimed would make both their fortunes.
Her sudden tendency to daydream unnerved her. She was a sensible woman—she’d had to be, with a father like Daniel Murphy. During the black years after her mother and baby brother had died, she’d been more adult than child, cooking and keeping house while her brokenhearted father drank himself into a stupor. Her role didn’t change much when he married her stepmother, except that the house was larger and the drinking spells were longer. She wasn’t given to whims or fancies, or anything that smacked of chance and Lady Luck. She was a sober, respectable woman with a sober, respectable future, albeit unremarkable.
So why did she find herself dreaming of country houses, with flower gardens, hedgerows, and high-spirited horses?
She rubbed her tired eyes. She was worn out—yes, that was it. Her father’s death and Mr. Quinn’s sudden arrival had been too much for her. In any case, he was leaving tomorrow, and that would be an end to it. She closed her book and placed it on the shelf with the half-dozen volumes that she’d inherited from her mother.
Like the carefully shelved books, everything had a place in life. And hers was as a spinster teacher in the Hampton School for Young Ladies.
Sabrina’s musings had caused her to carry over the quarter hour, so she hurried out of her room and down the stairs. The town house stairs were narrow and steep, built for function rather than beauty, but some imaginative carpenter had carved characters into the edge of every step. Years of use had worn away much of the detail, but Sabrina could still make out the tail feathers on the flustered parrot, and the carrot in the mouth of the lop-eared rabbit.
When she was twelve and first arrived in the house, she’d made up for her loneliness by naming every character and making up stories about their lives. Six years had passed, but she still smiled when she recalled that the rabbit was named Cotton-top and he had an allergy to carrots, and that the parrot Napoleon had ruby feathers and was vain as a peacock. In a month she would say farewell to this house and all its unpleasant memories, but her stair characters were one of the few things she’d regret leaving behind.
She was so engrossed in studying the steps beneath her that she didn’t see the shadow near the bottom of the stairs until she collided with the substantial bulk of a large man’s stomach. Plump, moist hands reached out to steady her, touching her in indelicate places.
“You should watch where you’re going, sister Sabrina.”
She stiffened as she heard the slur of liquor in her stepbrother’s voice, and smelled the stale odor of cigars on his expensive lapel. Fine clothes couldn’t hide his self-indulgent, dilettante nature. Disgusted, she pushed herself away from him, and batted down his questing hands.
“Stop it, Albert. Let me pass.”
“Come, Sister. Is that any way to talk to a man who only wants to…assist you?”
the barely disguised proposition brought a hot blush to her cheeks. Albert had assisted most of the parlor maids in the boardinghouse, including poor Kitty who had been turned off two months ago without a reference. The widow had hired Kitty for a song because she was so young, but the girl proved to be a hard worker and had earned Rina’s respect and friendship. Unfortunately, the sweet, trusting girl had also fallen completely in love with Albert.
On the night Kitty left, she confided to Sabrina the happy news that she was going to have a baby. Rina was the first to know—the girl hadn’t even told Albert yet, but Kitty hadn’t a doubt in the world that the Master, as she called him, would marry her. The young girl had dropped her gaze and blushed like a new bride. “Miss Sabrina, I’d ever be so pleased if you’d be my bridesmaid at our wedding.”
Just a few minutes later, Kitty was in her room packing up her few belongings, sobbing miserably. Apparently the Master had denied everything, and demanded the “lying chit” be fired. Rina’s last glimpse of Kitty had been of a small, lost figure walking away down the dark cobblestones of a London street, her pale breath rising like curls of smoke in the bitterly cold December night. Albert hadn’t even let a week pass before he’d taken up with Tilly.
Now, it seemed, he’d grown tired of the second maid as well.
“You’re drunk,” Sabrina said, her voice brittle with disgust. “Let me pass.”
Albert’s smarmy smile deepened. “Well, I don’t see why you’re so high-and-mighty. That da of yours was always in his cups.”
Disgust turned into rage. Her father had indeed come home more often drunk than sober, but even on his worst day he had never treated a woman with anything less than complete respect. She clenched her hands into fists. “Let.Me.Pass.”
Albert’s cheeks paled at her threatening tone. He might not have respected her person, but he had a healthy regard for her temper. Like most bullies he was a coward at heart, and her well-placed kicks and punches had left him with more than one black eye and bruised knees over the years. He backed down the stairs, and stood aside to allow her to go by him. She hurried down the silent hallway without a backward glance, but just before she turned the corner she heard the slurred whisper of a malicious promise.
“You’ll get yours, bitch. By God, you will.”
Sabrina walked along the musty downstairs hallway leading to the half-open door of her stepmother’s parlor. The hallway had once been stately. Its oak ceiling and moldings had been carved with the same eye for detail as the stairs, but years of neglect had left the walls stained and yellowed, and
the once elegant wood trim dull and scarred. Eugenia Tremaine had bought the town house shortly after her first husband had been reported missing in action during a battle on the Peninsula. It was common knowledge in the Cheapside neighborhood that Sergeant Tremaine had left his widow and their son fairly well-to-do, and it was hoped tha she would restore the old town house to its former glory.
Instead, the widow had put the barest minimum into the house’s upkeep, and had rented out the four extra rooms to any who had the coin to pay. What she did with the money was the subject of much speculation, but it was a safe wager that she did not spend it on the house.
With puritan thrift, she’ rented her rooms to God-fearing families, invoking both legal and heavenly wrath if they missed their payments. Only once in all her years as a landlord did she waver in her ironclad standards, and that was when a notorious, smooth-talking gambler with a charming smile inquired about renting a room for himself and his young daughter—
“Sabrina! I hear your footsteps!”
Her stepmother’s eyesight may have deteriorated over the years, but her hearing was sharp as a cat’s. Squaring her shoulders, Sabrina stepped into the parlor and pulled the heavy door shut behind her. she padded across the threadbare carpet to the fireplace, where an inadequately stoked coal brazier tried its best to heat the room. The room smelled musty and sour from the odor of the cheap lamp oil the widow preferred to use over the cleaner-burning but more costly beeswax candles. Except where Albert was concerned, Rina’s stepmother was frugal to the point of being parsimonious…in affection as well as money.
The widow looked up from her account ledgers and stared over the rim of her pince-nez. “You’re late.”
The censuring words weren’t much of a greeting, but Rina knew from long experience that they were all she was likely to get. A brief, fleeting vision of Rina’s beautiful mother rose up in her mind, her radiant, generous smile at odds with the widow’s sour expression. Rina stifled a bitter dose of heartache, and settled stiffly into the straight-backed chair that was placed beside the fire.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I was…detained.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Tilly said you had your nose stuck in one of your silly books,” Widow Murphy said curtly, the long “oo” in books betraying the lower-class upbringing she’d tried hard to eradicate.
Rina went rigid. Her books were some of the few things she had left from her mother, and were her most beloved possessions. Her hands, folded demurely in her lap, gripped and twisted the black wool skirt of her dress. Pay it no mind, Rina-lass. Pay it no mind.
Taking her silence as compliance, her stepmother’s mouth twisted into a satisfied smile. She rose from her desk and came closer to the fire, sitting on the chair directly across from Rina. The faint firelight slid over the dark, slick material of her well-worn mourning dress, and Sabrina found herself wondering if it was the same gown she’d worn after her first husband passed away.
“I’m talking to you, gel! That’s your trouble. Always have your head in the clouds when there’s practical matters to be settled on.”
“Practical matters?”
“Matters of your future. Your father’s death was a blow to us all,” she said, though her tone betrayed little remorse, “but you must see that it ends my obligation to you. In the eyes of the law I’d be well within my rights to turn you out. Of course, I am far too charitable a person to do that.”
And you’d lose your best unpaid servant. Rina thought about the letter from the Hampton School that she’d tucked away safely in her dresser—a letter she hadn’t yet had the opportunity to discuss with her stepmother. “That is…commendable of you, Mother, but you need not trouble yourself on my accou—”
“You are a headstrong and willful girl. You need to be taken in hand. A firm, God-fearing influence is the only thing that can save you from a lamentable future. That is why I have determined you must marry.”
If her stepmother had told her to sprout wings and fly, Rina could not have been more surprised. “But there is no one…I mean, I have never…”
She stuttered, suddenly feeling eight years old rather than eighteen. There was a time when she’d dream of marriage—of a little house full of children and laughter, of a man’s warm smile, and…other things that brought a hot blush to her cheeks. But dreams were all she could have. “I’m plain,” she stated with unvarnished honesty. “You have said so many times yourself. I doubt any man could ever fall in love with me.”
Widow Murphy bent down and took up the fireplace poker, thrusting it savagely into the undernourished flame. “Love doesn’t have a thing to do with marriage, my girl. It’s a glittering bauble, a puff of smoke in the wind. It ain’t real and it won’t last, not for long it won’t. And when it’s gone it leaves you hollow, as if someone sucked out every one of your dreams and wishes.”
In the ruddy glow of the fire, Rina glimpsed a sorrow in her stepmother’s eyes that she’d never seen and never suspected. It was common knowledge throughout Cheapside that Daniel Murphy had wooed and married the widow Tremaine for her money. But now Rina saw that there was at least one person who had not been privy to that knowledge, at least not in the beginning. Rina leaned forward and laid her slim hand over her stepmothers, dry, bony fingers. “I’m sorry, Mother, I didn’t realize—”
The widow jerked back.
“Don’t try that Murphy charm on me. I know your heart, and it’s as wicked and dishonest as your shiftless father’s. The sooner a God-fearing husband takes you in hand, the better.” She replaced the poker, clanging it loudly against the brazier’s metal screen. “You’ll marry Albert before the month is out.”
Chapter Two
“Albert?” Sabrina asked, her voice strangled by shock. “You cannot mean my stepbrother?”
“And why not? My Bertie’s worth twice as much as any man on this street.”
Only if you measure by the pound. Rina stared at her stepmother, wondering if the grief of her father’s passing had somehow unhinged her.
“You must know…you must comprehend…” Swallowing her astonishment, she tried again. “Albert has not the slightest regard for me.”
“Nonsense. Bertie just ain’t the kind of popinjay to wear his heart on his sleeve. Just the other day he was saying that he’d grown fond of you.”
A cold shiver went down Sabrina’s spine. She thought back to her earlier meeting with her inebriated stepbrother. At the time, she’d thought his amorous advances were the result of drink. But now, in light of the widow’s announcement, his actions took on a more sinister meaning.
Albert may have been cruel and self-indulgent, but he was not a fool. He knew his mother held the purse strings, and he was quite prepared to do whatever was necessary to entice her to loosen them. If his mother wanted him to marry her, then marry her he would. And she would be trapped in the widow’s household until the day she died, sharing Albert’s name, Albert’s bed…
She bolted to her feet. “I thank you for your consideration, but I cannot marry your son. Not ever.”
Her stepmother’s eyes narrowed cruelly. “Take a look in the glass, gel. It’s not as if anyone else is going to offer for ya.”
Rina winced, surprised that after all these years those words still had the power to wound. “I know I’m not well-favored,” she said slowly, carefully keeping any hint of pain out of her voice. “That is why I’ve taken steps to secure a future where my plainness will be of no consequence.”
“A future as what? A kitchen drudge?” the woman sneered. “Or maybe you’re thinkin’ of asking your grandfather for a helping hand.”
Anger flared in Rina’s heart. During one of his drunken spells, her father had unwisely told her stepmother about his first wife’s death—how Katie had caught the measles while tending the sick in their country parish. When she’d failed to improve, her father had written to her mother’s wealthy father, asking for money to take her to a warmer climate to recover. Her father had written repeatedly, promisin
g to pay back the money, to turn himself in to the Irish authorities—to do anything Lord Poole wanted if he would just help his daughter in her hour of need. But the nobleman had not answered even one of those letters, and in the end Katie had died, taking Rina’s stillborn brother with her. Her heart still ached at he memory of that terrible night.
Now the widow was using the memory of her grandfather’s indifference to mock her. Rina lifter her chin, meeting her stepmother’s eyes with a steady gaze that betrayed none of her turbulent emotions. “I have accepted a teaching position in Sussex,” she said bluntly, and had the rare pleasure of seeing the older woman struck dumb with surprise. “I will be leaving within the fortnight.”
Mrs. Murphy rose to her feet and gripped the stone mantelpiece, as if to steady herself. “You wicked, ungrateful girl. You’d leave, just like that. After all I’ve done for you—”
“You’ve done nothing for me!” Rina cried. “You’ve used me shamefully, treating me more like a servant than a daughter. Not once did you ever make me feel welcome, or cherished, or loved.”