The Unsuitable Secretary (A Ladies Unlaced Novel)

by Maggie Robinson

  “We can manage. We did fine when you were convalescing over the summer.”

  Harriet wanted to remind him Mrs. Evensong, that generous soul, had still paid her. “But the twins’ school fees—”

  “There’s no point in them getting above themselves. I’ve talked to Mr. Pendergast at the bank. He’s willing to take them on. Train them as couriers at first. If they show aptitude, there will be room for advancement.”

  What advancement? Harriet wanted to shout. Her father had been with the bank for almost fifty years and barely earned more than when he had started.

  As a courier.

  Her eyes welled with tears of frustration. She should move out. Stand up and pack and leave the three of them to their own devices. She had no idea where she might go; there was no kindly grandmother or aunt to turn to.

  Mrs. Evensong. Even as Harriet conjured the name, she knew she wouldn’t bother the old woman with her troubles. Her father didn’t beat her or deny her anything. What was she to say, that he was old-fashioned? Moses Benson was certainly not alone. Many thought the rise of young women in the workplace was scandalous. Her father claimed they were taking hardworking men’s places, disrupting the natural order of things. Harriet no longer tried to discuss women’s suffrage with him, as it was pointless. He belonged in the last century, like so many of his peers.

  But it wasn’t until she took her current position with Sir Thomas that he’d become so agitated. Really, Sir Thomas was a perfect gentleman, practically harmless. Well, perhaps not that. He did have a reputation. But he’d never be interested in an ungainly woman like her. Even as a little girl she’d been taller than her stepmother, and the years had done nothing to reduce her size.

  She swallowed the rest of her tea. “I should like to give my notice in person, Papa. We are to meet tomorrow to look at a property. It’s only right that I give him some time to find another secretary. His project is very important to him, and it’s just now beginning to show some promise.”

  “What a lot of folderol. The place will be a bordello before he knows it.”

  Harriet shut her eyes, seeing the tenants’ rules she and Sir Thomas had devised. She’d typed up six copies, and the contracts were already signed in the applicant’s files. There was no point in explaining to her father—she didn’t have the energy. All she wanted to do was lie down as her typical afternoon malaise took her. It seemed worse today after all the upset and deception.

  “He is a gentleman, Papa. There was never a hint of anything wrong between us. You must believe me.” Harriet covered her yawn.

  “I know you’re a good girl, Harry. But if there isn’t anything now, there would be. Men like Featherstone don’t care who they hurt or what they break.”

  “Truly, Papa, he’s not like that at all.” Her voice sounded very far away. Goodness, if she didn’t get up and put herself to bed, she’d fall out of her chair.

  She could turn to Sir Thomas for help. Beg him to take her in and put her in one of the endless number of bedrooms at Featherstone House. He could buy her nice things that fit properly, and then take them off her . . .

  Harriet struggled to her feet. “I’m so sorry, Papa. Could I impose on you to clean up the lunch dishes? I just don’t think I can.”

  Her father gave her a concerned look. “My poor dear. Of course. I’ll just leave them by the sink, what? Then when you wake from your nap, you can take care of them.”

  Harriet nodded numbly. There would be dinner to fix, too. Thursday meant beans on toast.

  Harriet managed to make it to the room she shared with her brothers. A curtain was stretched across a line tacked to the ceiling to provide a semblance of privacy, which was not nearly enough to screen the boys’ nightly antics from her. They were like Labrador retrievers, rolling about in muck. Perhaps her father was right to want to send them to work and contribute an income. If she wasn’t employed, they’d need to do something.

  She clutched at the curtain when the wave of nausea struck, pulling it down as she fell. Too exhausted to rise, she wrapped it around herself and fell asleep on the ragged carpet.

  Chapter 7

  Over four hours later, Harriet woke with a start. Looming above were two scapegraces grinning.

  “I say, Harry, you’re drooling on the rug,” John said. At least she thought it was John. It seemed she’d lost her glasses in her graceless stumble.

  “Watch where you step! My glasses—”

  “Are here, Harry.” James passed them down to her. They were only slightly smudged.

  The room was in near darkness. She sat up, slipping her hair back into its pins. Her suit must be a ruined, wrinkled mess. “Thank you. My goodness, how late it must be. Is Papa home yet?”

  “We’ve an hour before the old killjoy comes home. What’s to eat, Harry?”

  “Don’t spoil your dinner by looking for anything! It’s beans on toast, of course. Go do your homework.”

  “Nag, nag, nag.” John stuck his tongue out.

  “Someone has to keep you two in line,” Harriet said irritably. “Hang the curtain back up, will you?”

  She walked through the house to the back door, stepping into the cold December evening. The privy was just steps away in the tiny walled yard. The Bensons were fortunate they didn’t have to share with another family, although not fortunate enough to have the indoor plumbing the flats above boasted. The pipes gurgled all day and night, a taunting reminder that her father had been too mean to allow the conversion. He’d struck a bargain with the landlord that their rent would be reduced instead.

  She took care of her needs, then hustled back into the relative warmth of the kitchen. There was a spotty mirror over the sink—at least they had running water there—and she caught sight of her reflection. Despite her lengthy nap, her face was gray and the bags under her eyes had portmanteaux. She was still muzzy-headed, too.

  Tea. She should make a cup to try to perk up. She set the kettle on the range and hastily washed up the lunch dishes, bemoaning the fact that most of them sported chips and cracks. Surely they could afford some replacements, even if they came from a resale shop.

  Harriet would speak to her father, though she didn’t hold out much hope. She knew he was a pinchpenny, saving as much as possible of both their salaries for a rainy day. The boys together couldn’t possibly earn as much as she did—Sir Thomas was a generous employer.

  Perhaps it was just as well she’d stop working for him. She was beginning to feel things. Silly things that no secretary should feel.

  Harriet took a tin of tea from the shelf and took a sniff. It was the oddly-flavored one, the one her father raved about and forbid the boys to drink, the one he saved for their private lunches. She’d do with the children’s tea for today, and tossed some leaves into the plain brown teapot.

  For the next half-hour, she set the little table in the parlor, heated the beans, toasted the bread. Everything was ready on the dot of six fifteen, when her father was expected to walk through the door and take his place for grace.

  Except he didn’t come. The boys bounced in and out of the room, and by ten minutes past seven she decided they could eat if it would save her eardrums from their whinging. She put her father’s portion in the oven to reheat it.

  Eight o’clock arrived. Then nine. By now Harriet was distinctly alarmed, the beans dried up and the toast charred. She sent the boys to bed and tried to read that musty, mildewy book by the lamplight, but her mind was scattered. What if her father was lying in an alley somewhere? Their flat was not all that far from the bank in the City, and his walk was a short one. The neighborhood, while shabby, was relatively safe.

  He was getting on in years, too. Almost forty when he finally saved up enough to marry her mother, fifty when he married her stepmother. He’d be looking at seven decades soon.

  She set the book down when she heard the keys jingle. Running to the door, she unlocked it and let him in.

  She knew at once something was dreadfully wrong. Her fat
her smelled of spirits, and there was a bleak look on his face she hadn’t seen since her stepmother died and he’d been left with two squalling infants.

  “Papa! What is it?”

  “They let me go. But they gave me a watch.” Suddenly, he began to laugh, an ugly cackle far removed from good humor.

  “The bank let you go?”

  Moses Benson collapsed in a chair. “That young devil Hugh Westlake. Said he wanted a proper clerk. Someone who could type. Like you, I suppose,” he said bitterly. For a second her father’s malevolence flared. Harriet wasn’t sure if it was directed toward her or Mr. Westlake.

  “But you’ve been with them so long!”

  “Not quite long enough for a severance package, apparently. He pulled a box from his pocket. Harriet recognized the name of an eminent jeweler. “I suppose I can pawn this so we can pay the rent for a few months more.”

  “Nonsense, Papa! I still have my job, and you must have savings. I shall write to Louisa Cooper in America. It’s her bank—she needs to know what’s going on.”

  “Write to the bloody pope if you please. It won’t make any difference. Westlake’s given me the sack. I got the chuck, my dear. And this goddamned watch.” He tossed the box on the side table, where it skittered against the lamp. “Fired on a fucking Thursday, not even a Friday. The young whelp never could do anything right.”

  Her father never cursed. Never drank, either. All his life he’d been abstemious and rule-following. A churchgoer, no matter what the weather and how the boys rebelled at rising so early on a Sunday. And this was his reward.

  Harriet fell to her knees in front of him and clasped one of his trembling hands. “It will be all right, Papa. Surely you would have retired soon anyway.”

  “Would I have? And what would we eat, then, as I lived this life of idleness? The boys will have to leave school. I’ll look for another position, but it may take some time. Westlake didn’t even offer a letter of reference.”

  Harriet would write to him, too! It was unconscionable that the banking scion would use her father so badly after all his years of service. Why, his grandfather had hired Moses Benson, and had always praised him for his loyalty. Harriet’s father had kept the commendations; surely they would prove useful, even if old Mr. Stratton had been dead for decades.

  “Get up, girl, and fix me a cup of tea. Not the special sort.”

  Harriet struggled to her feet. “There’s still dinner if you want it,” she said in a tentative voice. “I’m afraid it’s not quite what it was.”

  Her father waved her away. “I had a meat pie in the pub. Go on. I want to think.”

  Harriet left her father in the gloomy parlor and went into the kitchen. Her father’s special tea was likely to be unaffordable, a thing of the past now. She measured out the leaves from the everyday tea. She wouldn’t join him tonight—not even a cup of tea would soothe her nerves.

  At least her father was not apt to lock her in tomorrow morning. He would recognize they needed her job, wouldn’t he?

  As it happened, she needn’t have worried. Moses Benson snored through the noise of the boys getting ready for school and her own exit from the flat. Unfortunately Harriet still had been unable to retrieve her coat or Sir Thomas’s handkerchief from her father’s hiding place, so once again she wore her stepmother’s cloak. She dearly hoped Oliver Palmer wouldn’t tease her too much when he saw her.

  Chapter 8

  Friday, December 30, 1904

  It was Josephson’s day off, so Thomas drove the Pegasus himself today, avoiding pedestrians, bicycles, wagons, and omnibuses with considerable skill. Horses seemed to be adjusting to the latest invader on London’s streets, though much of the populace was not. Thomas passed more than one shaken fist and scowling face, and rolled over enough horseshit to choke a horse.

  Progress was never easy, he assured himself. People clung to their traditions long past their prime, though he had no objections toward horses per se. He had a string of hunters eating their heads off at Featherstone Park, fine animals all. Thomas prided himself on his collector’s eye, whether it came to horses or paintings. He had a facility for detecting line and color which made him rather fussy, he supposed.

  This extended to his clothing, not that anyone would take him for a dandy. What he wore was conservative yet meticulously made, which is why it pained him so to see Miss Benson standing out in front of a red-brick building with her arm raised in greeting.

  Those damned pigeons must have ruined the poor woman’s coat, for she was wearing that ridiculous moth-eaten tweed thing again, which barely covered the upper half of her body. Good Lord, she must be freezing on a day like this. Even the automobile had balked when he attempted to start it the first time. It wanted the relative warmth of the mews garage, and Thomas should have been sitting in front of a roaring fire in the library watching Miss Benson’s chocolate-colored topknot bent over a pile of papers.

  No, not a pile. She would stack things with precision in order of importance. She had a very compartmentalized mind, and would make some man a wonderful wife, someone who would order a household so that a fellow barely had to think or exert himself in any measurable way.

  Thomas’s own house ran like clockwork, of course, but there were times when he wanted a bit . . . more. His butler never wasted a smile on him—hell, Hitchborn had probably lost his ability to smile around the time of the last Ice Age. Not that the man was impertinent in any way, just so damned proper butler-y.

  “I say, Miss Benson,” Thomas shouted out as he rolled to a precarious stop, “is there such a word as butler-y?”

  Miss Benson’s brows came together. She really should pluck them a bit; it might make all the difference. “I know cutlery is a word. I believe a butlery is a butler’s pantry, is it not? To what is this in reference?”

  “Never mind.” Thomas climbed out of the car and set the block in front of the tires in case the Pegasus had a mind to roll down Mount Street. He looked up at the house, a very handsome double bow–fronted establishment. A painting or two could easily be displayed right in each current uncurtained window. “Where’s this Oliver?”

  “He’s inside, Sir Thomas.”

  It was Thomas’s turn to frown. “Sir Thomas” didn’t really sit well for him coming from Miss Benson’s full, unrouged lips. He’d rather she call him Thomas—it sounded a bit friendlier. They were partners in crime of a sort, weren’t they? Thomas depended upon her good sense as they navigated these property waters.

  He couldn’t just say, “Call me Tom.” Not that his friends did anyhow. To them, he’d always be Tubby, the boy who flooded the dormitory with his ambitious armada. He’d started off as T.B. for Thomas Benedict, and it had been child’s play to corrupt his initials into something more stinging.

  She was staring at him now through her lenses, her brown eyes magnified. He could see every eyelash. He also noticed the dark circles and wondered what had caused her lack of sleep.

  “Is your father quite well this morning?”

  “F-father?” Her cheeks reddened.

  Dash it—he was an idiot. It was too cold to converse on the street. Thomas took her elbow and guided her up the steps to the front door. “You said he was ill yesterday.”

  “Oh. Yes, yes. He’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

  Miss Benson sounded as if she were trying to convince herself. Thomas let it alone, as the door pulled open. The angelic-looking blond young man behind it gave him a broad smile and knew better than to extend a hand. Properly brought up Englishmen had a horror of handshaking.

  “Sir Thomas! Delighted to make your acquaintance. I’m Oliver Palmer, Mrs. Evensong’s assistant.”

  Thomas looked the man over. At most, he was five and twenty, but it was not difficult to picture him in the thick of Evensong Agency intrigue with his confident air and extreme good looks. Parlor maids’ hearts must flutter at their interviews, and matrons seeking extramarital amusement would be putty in his hands.

  “Com
e in, come in. Mrs. E said I should let you wander at will. Take all the time you want. Harry has already toured the property with me this morning, so she knows what’s where. Should you be interested, stop by the office afterward and we can come to agreeable terms.” He gave “Harry” a brief hug, which deepened her blush. “Don’t be a stranger. We miss you something awful at the office. Lots of changes, lots of changes, but time marches on, what?”

  “Indeed,” Miss Benson said faintly. She looked a little stunned at Palmer’s obvious affection, as if she wasn’t used to physical contact at all.

  Thomas didn’t really know much about her background, only that she lived with her father and two younger brothers in very modest circumstances in Shoreditch. The poor girl was probably working herself to the bone running their household and working for him as well, and getting no thanks for it. No wonder she was not strong.

  Thomas was a charitable man, but he couldn’t figure out how to help her any more without being obvious. He was already overpaying her, but Mrs. Evensong had driven a fiendishly hard bargain while he was in his Harriet-stupor, and he wasn’t one to quibble over a few pounds per annum.

  Thomas and Miss Benson stood in the spacious hallway as Palmer disappeared down the steps whistling. The house was surprisingly warm, and Thomas said so.

  “It’s the boiler. Mrs. Evensong has hired a man, a wounded veteran, to maintain the heat at a level so the pipes won’t freeze, and do general maintenance. I think he expects to come along with the property if you lease it. He has a room in the basement.”

  “That’s not a problem. We need a porter anyway. Is he up to additional responsibilities?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, and he’s not here to ask. Oliver couldn’t find him this morning.”

  “No matter. I’m sure he’ll turn up. Well, shall we?” Thomas extended an elbow.

  Miss Benson stared at it as if she’d never seen a gentleman’s arm before, and Thomas quickly dropped it to his side. She was so skittish. It was best he not try to touch her anyway. Could he stop himself if he started? He’d worked hard to put her in the safe secretary cubbyhole and didn’t want to tempt himself. “After you.”