My True Love Gave to Me

by Barbosa, Jackie

  “Five,” she answered promptly. “Well, six if you count me.”

  Artemisia met her husband’s gaze and knew they were thinking the same thing. There was no way Mrs. Knowles could afford to maintain a building as large as the one that housed the orphanage on the annual stipend for the care of just six children. Not unless she was independently wealthy and supplementing with funds from her own pocket. Or unless she was cheating. And Artemisia knew which option she considered more likely.

  “Why didn’t you want the baby to become one of you?” she asked, hating herself for hoping the answer would confirm her suspicions.

  The child’s eyes filled with tears. “Because Mrs. Knowles sends all the boys and most of the girls off to work when they are barely six years old. She only keeps one girl to look after the rest of them and right now, that’s me. But I never know where they go, and we never hear from any of them again. Ever.”

  Walter made a growling noise deep in his throat. Artemisia knew what he was thinking and the thought appalled her as much—or possibly more—than it appalled him. Although her own path into the life of a courtesan had been both voluntary and lucrative, she’d spent enough time on London’s less-than-legal fringes to know that not everyone got there by choice. And that some got there before they could even have made a choice.

  The girl, however, misinterpreted his reaction as being directed at her. “I keep trying to stop her. I tell her they’re too young, that—”

  His expression softening instantly, Walter reached across the table and covered the child’s hands with his own. “None of this is your fault, Jane. I understand your reasons, and you were right to bring the baby to us.”

  “So you aren’t going to take him back to the orphanage?” Her eyes—a light shade of brown that nearly matched her hair—were wide and pleading.

  “No,” Artemisia said firmly. “We are not. The only reason we visited was in the hopes of locating a wet nurse.” But at least the expedition had not been a total waste of time. Now, at least, they could be sure that no one would be missing Noel. He’d been abandoned into care. “Unfortunately, Mrs. Knowles said she did not know of anyone.”

  “Well, that isn’t true,” Jane said. “There’s Mrs. Thomas in Meathop village. Her babe is only six months old, and her husband died two months ago of an ague. I took the baby to her first to see if she would take him, but she said she couldn’t on account of she would need to be paid and I couldn’t pay her. But she did feed him the once while I was there so he wouldn’t cry when I brought him to you.”

  “Do you think this Mrs. Thomas would be willing to come and live here with us?” Walter asked. “Of course, she could bring her own child with her.”

  Artemisia’s lips twitched. “The more, the merrier.”

  Jane nodded solemnly. “She said she doesn’t know what she’s going to do when the rent comes due.”

  That was one problem solved. But there was another. “Do we have enough evidence to bring to the magistrate now?” she asked her husband.

  He frowned and shook his head. “To my knowledge, there is no law that requires a child to reach a particular age before being sent out to work.”

  “But six years old, Walter!” she protested. “It’s…monstrous.”

  “I agree,” he said grimly, “but provided Mrs. Knowles is disclosing the age of the children to the people she’s sending them to work for and reporting to the parish that they’re no longer in her care—”

  “But she isn’t,” Jane piped.

  Both adults stared at the child in astonishment.

  “How do you know?” Artemisia asked.

  “I can read, can’t I?” she said, somewhat indignantly. “Wouldn’t be able to teach the little ones their letters and numbers if I couldn’t, would I? And Mrs. Knowles leaves the documents on her desk, and I’ve seen them and there are sixteen names on them still.”

  Walter leapt to his feet and slapped the table. “That’s how she’s doing it,” he ground out, outrage turning his voice cold and hard as marble. “She’s getting paid by the parish for ten children who are no longer at the orphanage. No wonder she can keep the place looking so pristine. Next to no children to cause messes and plenty of extra money to keep everything spotless.” Then his face broke into a fierce, triumphant grin. “But fraud should be enough to put Mrs. Knowles behind bars and close the orphanage for good.”

  “Close the orphanage?” Jane repeated, her eyes widening with sudden apprehension. “But if it’s closed, where will Charlotte and Annabelle and Charles and Isabella and Benjamin live? Where will I live?”

  The answer, of course, was obvious to Artemisia. She didn’t need to know any more than that children were in need of a home. Still, she cast a quizzical glance at her husband to verify his agreement. His steady gaze told her all she needed to know. Rising from her chair, she went round to kneel by Jane’s chair and wrapped her arms around the girl’s fragile form, pulling her into a gentle embrace.

  “You’ll live with us, of course. You all will.”

  Jane’s body slumped with relief, but she gave Artemisia a dubious look. “Here? Sure and this house isn’t big enough for all of us.”

  This was certainly true. The vicarage possessed only six rooms that could be used as bedchambers, and four of these were already occupied—one by Mrs. Graham, one by Mrs. Appleby, another by the scullery and chambermaid, and the fourth by Walter and Artemisia. Squeezing seven children, a nursemaid, and a governess—for Jane, at least, would certain require one—into the remaining two rooms would hardly be practical.

  Fortunately, there was another option.

  “We have a cottage, outside of town, and no one lives there at present save the staff.” Artemisia smiled as she pictured the little stone cottage that had once been her mother’s and then had come to her. The place where she and Walter had made love for the first time. And its setting, on a sizable plot of land overlooking Moorcambe Bay, would be ideal for children, she thought. Plenty of room to run and play and simply be young. “It won’t be quite the same as living with us, I admit, but it is near enough as makes little difference.”

  Jane made a sniffling sound. “So really just another orphanage, then.”

  “No,” Walter said with a firm shake of his head. “Not another orphanage. A home. A real one, until you are ready to leave it and not a moment before. If that is what you want, of course.”

  8

  Joy to the World

  “But I n-never had any r-reason to check up on the orphanage.” Archibald Brooking stuck his finger between his clerical collar and his throat and tugged at it as if this might relieve his stuttering. “Mrs. Knowles’s reports were always t-timely and complete, and there were never any c-complaints.”

  “And who would you expect to complain?” Walter demanded, his eyes narrowing like arrow points on the other vicar’s reddening countenance.

  Really, Artemisia thought, her husband looked exceptionally handsome when he was in a high, righteous dudgeon. She rather wished he got into them more often.

  “The housekeeper, who is no doubt being well-paid to keep her mouth shut?” Walter went on. “The other servants, who likely have no idea that anything untoward is going on? Or the children, all but one of whom are under the age of six?”

  Brooking gave up on his efforts to stand up to Walter’s justifiable anger and collapsed onto the nearest pew. Mopping his sleeve across his brow, he said weakly, “It just never occurred to me there might be a problem. And it’s all the way over in Meathop.”

  “Ah, well, that explains it,” Walter replied, his tone caustic. “Two miles might as well be India.”

  “I’m not as young and able-bodied as I once was.” The vicar of St. Paul’s gave her husband a wry, appraising look and added, “As you currently are.”

  Artemisia was beginning to feel just a tiny bit sorry for Brooking. First, they had descended unannounced on his church after Sunday services to accuse him of failing to discharge his parish dutie
s properly. And second, he clearly was not in the best of health, as manifested by his increasingly mottled complexion. Although she doubted he was more than a decade her husband’s senior, Brooking’s slow, stiff-jointed movements suggested someone considerably older.

  With a sigh, Walter seemed to come to the same conclusion. “I suppose there’s no sense in prolonged recriminations. But you could have asked for my help, Archie. Until yesterday, I had no idea the orphanage even existed, let alone that it had been running without oversight for more than a decade.”

  The other man shrugged sheepishly. “It all seemed above-board. But if you say it’s rotten, I take your word for it. You’ve always been square with me, Walter. So I’ll be happy to sign the letter to the magistrate.”

  * * *

  Walter, Artemisia, and the magistrate, Lord Grayson-Smythe, arrived on the doorstep of the Lindale-Meathop Home for Orphans two hours later. Within an hour after that, Mrs. Knowles was placed under arrest for fraud and misuse of parish funds.

  By rights, the woman ought also to have been charged with abuse and neglect of the children in her care, but as there were no laws against abusing or neglecting children, Artemisia had to be grateful that the orphanage’s proprietress had been foolish and greedy enough to commit the crimes she had. Otherwise, there would have been no way to close down her operation, despite the fact that conditions for children had been far worse than Jane’s revelations had led Artemisia to imagine.

  In the first place, the children were much younger than she had thought. The youngest, Charlotte, was just past two, an age at which most foundlings would still be in the care of their wet nurse. In order to increase her own income, however, Mrs. Knowles retrieved the children as soon as they were old enough to be weaned. Next, to further reduce her expenses, she hired neither nursemaids nor tutors for the children, but entrusted this responsibility to an older girl. This was currently Jane’s duty—and she had insisted on returning to the orphanage the previous night because she had to be present in the morning to care for her charges—but Artemisia had assumed the children were at least four or five years of age, not as young as two and three. It was a heavy burden to place on a twelve-year-old, but worse than that, Jane had been saddled with the task since before she turned ten, for the girl who previously held the position had been sent out to work when she turned fourteen. And finally, every one of the children was undernourished and all were clad in threadbare, cast-off clothing and tattered, ill-fitting shoes.

  Artemisia wanted to weep. She wanted to rage. Most of all, she wanted to claw Mrs. Knowles’s evil eyes out.

  But instead, she made plans. Because now she had a cause. A calling.

  And that calling was not becoming a parent to seven children. No, it had just become so much bigger than that.

  “You are looking very fierce,” her husband observed as they stood in front of the window in the orphanage’s parlor and watched the wagon that would convey Mrs. Knowles and her accomplice, the housekeeper, to their cells in the local jail trundle down the drive toward the main road. His lips quirked in a wry smile. “Happy Christmas?”

  She slid her arm through his and leant her head against his shoulder. “Rewarding rather than happy, I would say.”

  After the wagon rounded a bend and vanished from sight, Walter said seriously, “We have taken on a very large responsibility. Seven children, all at once, when we never expected to have any.”

  “Do you regret it?” she asked.

  “God, no! But…” He took a deep breath and gave her a wary look. “I never needed children to be content. You are and always will be enough for me.”

  Her heart twisted with love…and with remorse. Because she knew what he feared. What he had always feared, however misguidedly.

  But then, she had similar worries. Would he wish, one day, that he had married a woman who could give him children? Or, perhaps even more likely, one better suited in both temperament and experience to the role of a vicar’s wife than she? The more she loved him and the more she depended on his strength and support, the more vulnerable she became to the possible loss of his devotion.

  “Am I enough for you?” he asked, his voice a choked whisper

  Turning toward him, she slid her arms around his neck and dragged his head down to hers until their lips met. The banked embers of desire that always lay between them flared to life, but this kiss wasn’t merely about physical passion. Instead, she used the kiss to tell him what mere words could not express: You are enough. But I will also never have enough of you. There will always be more for us: more mystery, more adventure, more discovery. More love.

  The sound a throat clearing from the parlor door caused them to part. Over Walter’s shoulder, Artemisia saw Lord Grayson-Smythe, the expression on his weathered but handsome countenance carefully neutral. Walter’s eyes, glazed and dilated, met hers for a second of perfect understanding before he turned to see who had interrupted them.

  “I’ll be on my way now,” the magistrate said gruffly. “Must draw up the charges. I assume you’ll be willing to give evidence should the need arise.”

  Walter nodded. “Yes. And thank you for giving up your Sunday afternoon for this.”

  Grayson-Smythe’s mouth twisted in a cynical half-smile. “Crime never takes a day off. And if you were willing to drop everything and make the trip here after your own Sunday services, vicar, I can hardly complain at the inconvenience.” He gave the pair of them a searching look. “You’re sure you’re prepared to take on the raising of all these children? This parish is responsible for them, after all, not yours.”

  “Quite sure,” Artemisia said with a sunny grin. Once the magistrate had departed, she pulled her husband down onto the divan and kissed him again, this time on the cheek. “For such a perceptive man, you really can be quite obtuse at times.”

  He frowned and shook his head. “I saw how you reacted when I handed Noel to you. It was love at first sight.”

  “True,” she admitted, “but not because I lost a baby more than a decade ago. And not because we don’t have any children of our own and I was in any way desperate for them.”

  “Then wh-?”

  Before he could complete the sentence, she pressed her finger to his lips. “I fell in love with him because he is a baby—small, innocent, and helpless—and deserves to be loved and cared for, not abandoned in a stable. I feel the same way about Jane and the rest of these children, although they are not quite as small, innocent, or helpless as Noel. But they should have a home and not live in constant threat of being forced into virtual slavery when they are barely old enough to tie their own shoes. And I don’t believe that would have been any different if I had already had a dozen children of my own.” Then she shook her head and laughed. “Though I suppose it would complicate matters rather badly if I did. Where would we put them all?”

  Walter’s expression softened, and he released a slow sigh. “God, sometimes I can be a perfect fool. I just assumed you must crave motherhood and that was why Noel made such an impression on you.”

  “Heavens, no!” she exclaimed, so forcefully that she realized she’d made it sound as if she hated the idea of being a mother. Which was not at all the case. Moderating her tone, she clarified, “Raising these children—caring for them and, I expect, coming to love them as if they were our own flesh and blood—is something we are both bound to do. You are going to be every bit as much their father as I will be their mother.”

  “Of course. That goes without saying.”

  “I certainly hope so, because I wouldn’t dream of taking this on without you.” Lacing her fingers through his, she pulled his hand into her lap. “But it’s not enough for us—for me—to rescue these seven children.”

  His eyes widened with mock horror. “Please don’t tell me that you mean to rescue every orphan and foundling in Great Britain.”

  “I would if I could,” she said fiercely. “But no. Rather, what I plan to do is to advocate for the passage of laws that wil
l make the abuse and neglect of children a criminal offense. Because if Mrs. Knowles hadn’t committed fraud, we could not have stopped her from mistreating the children in her care. We might have managed to pry these children from her grasp, but there would be more. No one could have stopped her from sending them to work in factories or workhouses or worse places. Children should be protected and cherished, not maltreated and exploited for the financial gain of adults. And it is disgraceful and outrageous that this country not only allows but seems to encourage these ills.”

  “That will be a long, uphill battle.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “But definitely one worth fighting.”

  “And I owe the discovery to you.”

  He blinked. “To me? How?”

  “If you hadn’t been determined to find out where Noel had come from, if you’d simply decided we would keep and raise him, we would never have found out about this place. We would never have visited, Jane would never have come to us, and I would never have learned what I know now. I might have gone through the rest of my life, blissfully unaware that this sort of thing was happening.”

  “Surely you knew about foundling hospitals and workhouses. You lived in London for quite some time.”

  “I did. Of course, I did. Looking back now, I don’t know why I didn’t take more of an interest.” Frowning, she shrugged. “But that is neither here nor there. I am interested now. Someone has to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves, and I’ve realized that someone is meant to be me.” With a sigh, she released his hand and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you, my love. You have given me the most magnificent gift anyone could hope for.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “And that is?”

  “A grand purpose. Perhaps,” she added with a mischievous grin, “you might even call it a vocation.”