And besides, who can blame Joanna for being so picky? I guess if I had a Marquess in love with me, I’d be picky, too.
So Rosie resolved to shield her friend as best she could from the harsh realities ahead of her, and to face them herself, if need be, on Joanna’s behalf.
The baby came six weeks early. Joanna told Rosie she knew precisely when to expect her little one—after all, there was no question as to when the pregnancy had happened.
“October 21st—the day of the equinox,” Joanna mused lazily. Heavy with child, Joanna moved through the spring days in a lethargic haze.
“Then—” Rosie counted on her fingers. “Six, seven, eight, nine…July 21st, Joanna. That’s when Baby will arrive.
“Of course, it might be later. My gran used to say the first baby usually takes its time.”
But as it happened, Joanna’s labor pains began the first week of June. “Don’t tell anyone it’s happening,” Rosie warned the little maid who shared her room with Joanna. “She’s going to need time to get her strength back, before Madam starts bothering her.”
In truth, Rosie hoped that the extra few weeks of secrecy would give her and Joanna more time to plan for Joanna’s escape with Baby, before Mrs. Hartnell started watching her movements like a hawk.
It was a girl, and she was beautiful. She had dark mahogany curls—“More like her Papa than like you,” Rosie commented. Her features were lovely and delicate. It wasn’t clear what colors her eyes might turn out to be, but already, like Joanna’s, they were of two different hues.
“What are you going to call her?” asked the little maid, who had assisted at the childbirth.
The maid, despite her youth, knew all about babies. “Didn’t me ma have one a year, and me havin’ to help bring most of them into the world?” But she was in great awe of Joanna, who had won the love of a Marquess, and she behaved as if she were attending the lying-in of the Queen Mother herself.
“How about Hannah?” Rosie suggested. “Like your name, Joanna, but still her very own name, too.”
So it was decided. The little beauty was to bear the name Hannah.
In Rosie’s heart, though, she would always be “Lady Hannah, daughter to the Marquess of Clydekill.” Rosie sometimes practiced saying it to herself. It made her very happy.
* * *
Hannah was a lovely baby, but she was colicky. She could not keep anything down—not her mother’s milk nor the cow’s milk Rosie brought her from the Empire’s kitchen. Her stomach hungry, the child cried incessantly. It was enough to drive the other women mad from the sound of it.
There was no sleep for Joanna. And there was no sleep for her roommate, the little maid, although the girl valiantly tried every homespun remedy she had learned from her own mother.
Hannah’s piercing cries began to draw complaints from the other women of the establishment. This was a place of work, not a nursery. They needed their sleep, else their gentleman callers would complain about their lethargy.
Other women, women who had put in years of service here, had found themselves pregnant and were forced by Mrs. Hartnell to leave immediately. The other courtesans began to ask who was this Joanna—a woman who hadn’t even paid her dues as a “working girl”—to be so cosseted?
And so the complaints reached the Madam’s ears. She called for Joanna.
“My dear, this will not do,” said Mrs. Hartnell.
“She’s getting better,” Joanna insisted. “Last night, she slept for three straight hours, and she didn’t whimper once.”
“I repeat—it will not do. It’s not good for the other women, whose welfare is under my protection. It’s not good for the baby, who needs to be in quiet quarters, not in a place where the festivities continue the whole night through. And my dear, it’s not good for you. You’re losing your looks—you’re haggard and distressed. I will have a hard time finding customers for you, if you keep this up. And then how will you repay me? You’ve lived in the lap of luxury here for many months. You need to start working, the sooner the better.”
Joanna bridled noticeably. Her chin shot up, and her fiery eyes took on a defiant glint.
“Mrs. Hartnell, I will gladly work off whatever I owe you, doing whatever household tasks you set me. But I cannot, and I will not, be a prostitute.”
“Hoity-toity!” sneered Mrs. Hartnell. “Too good for this life, are you? Well, you weren’t so particular about your morals when you lifted your skirt for whatever man sired that baby. Don’t try your airs and graces on me—I’ve seen your type of girl before. Don’t you realize I could call for a bailiff this very instant, and you’d be clapped into debtors’ prison until someone paid off your debt for you? Not that I see anyone lined up to take responsibility for you, my girl—else you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
“Give me time,” Joanna pleaded. “I will find a way to pay you back every penny I owe you. I promise you.”
“My dear girl, if I believed in all the promises people make to me, I’d be in the gutter myself. Here is what we’re going to do. By a fortnight from now, I will have located some decent couple who want a child. They will raise her to never know the shameful circumstances under which she came into this world. You will have nothing further to do with her—to you, it will be as if she was never born.”
“I don’t believe you!” Joanna railed. “I think you’d take her and have her raised to the same sordid life you’ve given these other poor women!”
Mrs. Hartnell smiled cruelly. “What of it? You’ll never know, either way. Once the child is gone, we will begin grooming you for your new life. Truly, I believe you’ll come to enjoy it. You’re good-looking, and with the right coiffures, gowns, and jewels, you’ll soon pass for a duchess, I promise you.”
At that word, something inside Joanna screamed, protesting the bitter fate that had taken her away from the man she loved—a man who truly would be a duke someday, a man who would gladly have made her a duchess.
But she would not give Mrs. Hartnell the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
* * *
Clearly, Joanna and Hannah had to escape, before Mrs. Hartnell put her plans in motion.
But how? Rosie had almost no more money to contribute—her pockets were empty after months of bribing the other inhabitants of the Empire into helping Joanna.
One possibility occurred to her. “Joanna, there’s a girl, Betty, who I used to work with—no, not here, she’s nowhere near posh enough for the Empire. These days, she works as a barmaid at a place down behind Covent Garden. She might take you and Hannah in for a little while. It’s a bit of a rough place, Joanna. You’d have to earn your keep there, and Hannah’s, too. There aren’t any free rides for women like us. And Joanna? Could I give you a word of advice? Don’t go in there acting like you’re too good for the place, all right? If they take you in and give you work, they’ll be doing you the favor, not the other way around.”
“Why, Rosie, I’d never—!” But Joanna shut her mouth and left the rest of the sentence unsaid. I did act that way here. And Rosie may have forgiven me, but in her heart she hasn’t forgotten.
Joanna felt ashamed all over again.
Chapter 22
Learning the Hard Way
Joanna hated her life at King John’s Reward, the public house where Betty worked.
King John’s Reward was a dark, dirty tavern hidden in the back streets behind the famous opera house of Covent Garden. As Rosie had warned her, it was a rough place. It stayed open all night, and its clientele was a cross-section of the denizens of that neighborhood.
Because rich folk frequented the opera house, beggars, streetwalkers, and pickpockets loitered in the area, looking to make a few shillings off the gentry. King John’s Reward, with its gaudy signs showing hellfire and pitchforks surrounding a crown, was a known meeting place for these petty criminals.
Occasionally, on their way to or from the theater, drunken young bucks from the ton would stop by and mingle with the lowlifes there,
as if daring each other to wallow even deeper in the gutter.
The public house was also popular with carters who loaded wagons with crates of Covent Garden’s flowers, fruits, and vegetables, bound for markets around London. After a night of backbreaking labor, they were happy to slug a tankard or two of ale or porter there.
There were several small, dingy rooms above the public house. Here Betty, the head barmaid, lived with her three squint-eyed children. An ancient crone named Gwenda also lived there. She also worked at the bar, but her principal job seemed to be looking after Betty’s offspring.
The owner and his wife, a pair of hard-bitten Cockneys, apparently had lodgings elsewhere, as did the handful of waiters and doorkeepers who worked various shifts at King John’s Reward.
Betty, a plump little redhead with a sassy smile, remembered her old friend Rosie fondly. So she was glad to recommend Joanna to the proprietor for a job.
“Come up in the world, has our Rosie,” Betty chuckled. “I can remember back when she was on the streets, like me. Well, she’s made her fortune now, working at a grand place like the Empire.”
“But I’ll bet she’s still the same sweet Rosie. No airs and graces, not forgetting where she came from, like some would do.” Betty gave Joanna a sideways glance, as if to gauge whether she was one of those who’d try on such airs and graces.
Joanna immediately tried to look appropriately humble. She assured Betty that Rosie was still a real sweetheart. “She’s been a good friend to me,” Joanna said.
It was quickly arranged that Joanna would work the early evening hours, and Betty would cover the later shift. “That way there’s always at least one woman serving drinks. The men like that—and it’s good for business. But you’re good-looking. Before long, you’ll have your own crowd of handsome admirers hanging around here, competing for you.”
From the look of the place, I can’t imagine any man who’d drink here would be the kind of admirer a girl would want! But remembering Rosie’s warning, she tried not to let her disdain show.
Old Gwenda agreed to watch Hannah along with the other children. Betty swore she’d rather have Gwenda tending her children than the best-trained nanny in the Buckingham Palace nursery.
* * *
Three years passed in a blur. There was never a night when Joanna wasn’t bone-tired from the work.
She learned to fill multiple tankards of ale at one time, serving them up to thirsty customers without ever spilling a drop, all the while dodging the annoying hands of patrons trying to molest her.
She learned to quell her own nausea at the filth of the place. She came to ignore the fecal smell of dogs and humans rising from the alleys alongside the tavern, even in summertime, when the smell was at its worst.
She applauded the never-ending battle of Old Tom, the tough, one-eyed ginger cat, against the rodents that infested the place. Old Tom was always on the job, except for those nights his nature drove him out into the alleyways, searching for a mate. But even on those occasions, he was back at his post by morning.
In time, Joanna got to know the tavern’s regulars. Her favorites were the grizzled carters, old before their time, who slaved at loading wagons every night for a few pennies. They were honest in their way, and they reminded her a little of the Travellers she had grown up with.
Other regulars were less pleasant. Among the worst were the sly, slippery men who unsuccessfully pressured her to work for them out on the streets. She knew their sort—she saw how the young women who trusted them ended up.
Almost as bad were the well-dressed young rogues who dropped by for a night of slumming. They seemed to think she’d be honored by their crass attentions, and impressed by their lewd talk. Christopher, are any of these horrible men among your friends these days? Would you ever act this way toward a woman?
For all her bitterness toward him, she could not believe Christopher ever would.
* * *
Despite having promised herself she would do her best to forget Christy, he was often in Joanna’s thoughts. For good or ill, by becoming her lover, he had awakened a hunger in her that would not be satisfied by abstinence.
Late at night, as she lay in bed and listened to the raucous shouts from the public house below, she could not sleep. She needed Christy. Not just as the kind companion who had won her heart with his sweetness and strength. No, she needed him as a woman needs a man, and at times her unsatisfied lust was almost physically painful.
Night after night, she lay there in her little room at The King’s Reward, reliving the one time they had been lovers. As her own hands roved over her body, she imagined it was Christy caressing her—Christy who was squeezing and suckling her breasts, Christy whose strong arms were holding her down, Christy who was taking her, rough in his urgent need of her.
Sometimes, her imaginings were so vivid that her pleasure came to a shuddering climax, just as if he had fulfilled her.
Then she was back in the darkened, musty room again, faced with a hard day’s work to come. But her feverish imagination brought her some relief—the best she could hope for if she could not lie with Christy himself.
* * *
Women frequently came in to King John’s Reward. Some were down on their luck. Others were obviously already petty criminals. Joanna, herself open to society’s harshest judgment for desiring a married man, for having given birth to a bastard child, learned not to judge them.
Nights when business was slow Joanna would amuse the women by pretending to read their palms and tell their fortunes. She was a true gypsy, she told them, and she had the power to see their futures.
She had no such power. But she was quick-witted and intuitive—she could sum up people in the first moments she met them. So she quickly developed a reputation as one skilled in the dark arts.
Joanna quite liked gaining this reputation. She was glad, too, of the extra coppers it earned her—coins to buy Hannah pretty hair ribbons and sweet treats to enjoy.
For Hannah was her whole life. Hannah was the reason she woke up every morning—Hannah was the reason she slaved all night long. Hannah was all Joanna had left of Christopher…and in truth, living in this dirty place, Hannah was all Joanna had left of her own pride and dignity.
The child was three now. She grew more lovely, and more like her mother, every day. Just as Joanna had been as a child, Hannah was strong-willed and spirited.
Those were the traits in me that Christy understood and loved.
But Joanna had been fortunate. Her natural sweetness had been encouraged by the father who adored her, while her willfulness was gently but firmly bridled by the wise old Maggie Mae.
Joanna had mistakenly assumed that Gwenda was another Maggie Mae. She seemed like her in many ways—Gwenda was Welsh, and her Celtic fancies and superstitions were not unlike those Maggie Mae had inherited from her Druid ancestors.
But that was where the resemblance ended.
Joanna came up the stairs late one evening to hear a commotion going on in the room above. Hannah, like many a three-year-old before her, was having a tantrum over something Gwenda had asked her to do.
“No! I won’t!” the little girl screamed. And Joanna heard the sound of a smack, followed by Hannah’s heart-rending sobs.
“Do ye want more, ye little brat? Keep up that noise, and the next one will be a good sight worse.”
Hannah had reached the point where she could not have stopped crying, even if she wanted to. “I’ll teach ye to shut yer gob when I say so,” the old woman hollered.
Joanna ran into the room in time to see Gwenda pull the child over her knee and spank her hard. Like a fury, Joanna screamed at the old woman, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her.
“You old devil!” Joanna yelled. “Don’t you ever, ever touch my child again!”
As she turned away in disgust, she spied a half-empty bottle of gin on the table next to Gwenda’s knitting. “You’re drunk!” she shrieked. “You’re taking care of four children, and you’
re drunk!”
Joanna cradled the sobbing child in her arms and carried her downstairs, prepared to warn Betty about Glenda’s unfitness to be left alone with children.
But to her shock, Betty took Glenda’s side.
“Every brat needs a good smack now and again,” Betty said. “I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. By the time you’ve had three, like me, you’ll learn it’s the only way to keep them under thumb. My young ones would end up on the streets picking pockets in a few years, if they weren’t so cowed down by Glenda and me. Mark my words, you spoil that little girl, and she’ll come to no good in the end. It’s in the Bible: ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’. And if you don’t mind my saying so, Miss High and Mighty, your daughter is already a spoiled little madam. Only three years old, and she answers every one of us back, like she was the parent and us the children! You’re doing her no favors, being so soft with her.”
Joanna bit back a sharp retort. Clearly, she had to get Hannah out of here, but first she had to find some safe place to go. Meanwhile, she’d keep Hannah by her side every minute, even if it meant the child would have to sleep on a pile of blankets behind the bar.
Chapter 23
A Duke’s Obligations
Miles away at Gresham Manor, Christopher’s mind was also on children—or, more accurately, on the lack of them. Christopher was the Duke now, but after more than three years of marriage, his wife had as yet failed to produce an heir.
It must be said that this was not entirely the Duchess’s fault. A wife is unlikely to bear children when her husband avoids her bed like it was infested with the plague.
Christopher truly hated his wife. When he was first courting her, her very voice had made his skin crawl. Time had not improved things between them.
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