Ever His Bride

by Linda Needham

  “How many … students do you have, Mr. Rundull?”

  “Seventy-three, as of yesterday’s count. Twenty-eight girls, forty-five boys. And seven… teachers. So you see, you wouldn’t be cooking for many.”

  The kitchen wasn’t large enough to supply a single family, let alone a school full of children. The oven couldn’t manage more than a half-dozen loaves a day. The stove bore the remains of some grainy gruel drying against the sides of a dented cauldron. It couldn’t have been left from lunch; there hadn’t been a live fire in the hearth for at least a day.

  “What happened to the last cook?”

  “Well, I think that’s my business, isn’t it?” Rundull opened a small closet at the rear of the room. “Here is the larder. Well stocked, as you see.”

  She peered inside. Well stocked with two sacks of flour, one each of oats and indian meal, and a barrel of some sort.

  “Have the children eaten since breakfast?” Felicity asked.

  Rundull touched his lips with his knuckle and lightly cleared his throat. “As you can see, we were entirely without a cook.”

  “All day?” Felicity couldn’t mask the outrage in her voice. “Do you mean the children haven’t been fed since yesterday?”

  Little spots of color blotched Rundull’s face as quickly as if she’d hit him with a tomato.

  “You won’t succeed in my school if you take that tone, Miss Mayfield. The welfare of my students is paramount with me.”

  But she couldn’t hold back the question. “Have they been fed today?”

  He fixed her with glower. “Yes. Of course they have.”

  They both knew he was lying.

  “Then I beg your pardon, Mr. Rundull, for my impertinence. Let me start dinner. If you don’t approve of my cooking, you can fire me without having ever hired me. Although …” She turned liquid eyes on him, tears that came quite easily given the horror of the last half-hour. “I do need this job. More than you could possibly imagine.”

  The man’s face broke into the benevolent smile of the philanthropic victor. “Well, then. A half-cup each of porridge is the dinner fare. Nothing more. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my tea is getting cold.” He left her.

  She listened to the blackguard’s footsteps receding down the hall. Not a single child had eaten that day, and yet the man was concerned that his own tea might become cold. She ought to snatch it from under his chin and distribute it among his victims.

  But what to do now? She didn’t want to waste precious moments cooking, but she needed time to find Giles and escape with him. And if she stayed to cook, seventy-two other children would go to bed without hunger gnawing at their innards.

  She’d known hunger herself, the inconvenient kind that might come from a long train ride, or an unreasonable schedule. And she had always had friends like Mrs. Paget to put her up indefinitely. These children had no one but Felicity Claybourne.

  She built a fire in the stove and took a quick inventory of the kitchen. Besides the grains, she found salted herring and a good measure of pepper. She sent Arthur out with a few precious coins to find a bushel each of carrots and onions. He returned with her order just as she was putting the scrubbed-out cauldron to boil.

  “Rundull’s not going to like this, Miss Mayfield.”

  “Don’t worry; he’ll never know you aided me. Does he supervise the meals himself?”

  “Nah. The guards bring the kids to the door and they eat standing in the hallway.”

  “I should have guessed.”

  So that’s when she would see Giles, and they could plan his rescue.

  She added the carrots and onions to the water and soon had a hardy brew boiling. Sweat and tears salted her face as she worked.

  She tried not to think of her husband, his ill-humor and his bloody secrets. The warmth of the blighter’s embrace.

  An hour later, a line of children snaked past the kitchen door. They lifted up their grimy little bowls and their weary-eyed thank-yous to her. They were supervised by a bandy-legged man whose hands were as tanned as the leather he worked, and streaked with white scars. He barked his orders, and the children obeyed in silence.

  Then she found Giles. She knew him even with his head bowed. He wore workhouse gray, and his hair had been mowed nearly to his scalp, but his back was still straight.

  He looked up from his bowl and Felicity heard the small cry in his throat; saw relief in the start of his smile. Then the joy and hope in his eyes faded into a surly, red-faced anger.

  She touched his hand, but he yanked it away, sloshing the soup across his wrist as he left her.

  She swallowed the insult, tried to understand, but felt a great stabbing in her heart. She’d come to help.

  What if he wouldn’t let her?

  She was just recovering her wits when she saw Betts and her heart nearly stopped.

  What a bloody, blind idiot she’d been! Betts and Andy were workhouse children. They’d been on their way to the Blenwick School, not into the arms of their parents! She had them safe in her care, and she’d let them go!

  Betts’s face brightened and she opened her mouth to speak, but Felicity shook her head, gave a warning not to, and Betts saved her whisper for her brother’s ear. Andy grinned as Felicity filled his bowl, and kept grinning back at her even as Betts led him past the kitchen door.

  Dear God, she’d come for one, and now there were three.

  More than three—there was an entire workhouse full of children who needed rescuing.

  She bit her tongue until they had all been fed then leaned against the wall and wept.

  Hunter’s neck ached and his back had stiffened. The inspection had dragged on far longer than he had expected, and it was early evening before he returned to the Brightwater. To a man, the inspectors had concluded, as his own wife had, that Hudson’s contractors were at fault, that the original safety inspection report had either been faulty or fraudulent. What that meant for the rail line itself was anybody’s guess. If the Board of Directors for the line was interested in a pennies on the pound resurrection, he might be interested in making a purchase and financing the refurbishing, if the profits were high enough.

  His wife wasn’t in the common room, though it was time for dinner, and he’d hoped to smooth over some of the rough edges.

  But, damnation, the woman was a cascade of questions, sticking them between his ribs and twisting them. He’d have to learn to answer them with more aplomb.

  Perhaps she had retired early, and was sprawled out on his bed. He had ached for her all morning, watched for her to come waltzing along the track, listened for her footfalls in the gravel. But she hadn’t come.

  And their chamber was empty.

  “Mrs. Claybourne?” Stupidly, he looked around the back of the door. She wasn’t there either.

  A sourceless panic set in, a spooling out of his connection to something he hadn’t known he’d been lacking. His business yielded him hard, hollow comfort; an existence he’d grown use to. But his wife … Felicity—yes, he ought to start thinking of her as Felicity. Felicity had softened the edges, filled in the hollowness, quite without his permission.

  He had come to anticipate the remainder of the year with not a little joy.

  “Blasted woman!”

  Then he remembered telling her in a voice she might interpret as angry that he didn’t know when he’d return.

  To which his wife had replied, “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Claybourne. I may be gone by then. To Northumberland.”

  Not good. Worse, because he very definitely recalled his parting words to be, “Go wherever the hell you want,” before slamming the door behind him.

  Northumberland. But she couldn’t very well have left by train, the tracks between Blenwick and Durham would take months to repair.

  Damnation! Her portmanteau; she’d never leave without it! He searched the room, every corner and shadow, but the blasted thing was gone!

  And so was Felicity! She could be hours ahead of him by now!
Or still waiting for a coach at the station! The train wreck had made a shambles of schedules and routes. And hadn’t Sawyer commented that every coach and wagon for miles around would be commandeered into service to clear the wreckage. Of course, his wife was still in Blenwick. It might be days until she could get away.

  She’d no choice but to return to the Brightwater tonight. He’d be waiting for her in the dining room. He settled at a table facing the front door of the inn, and ordered Yorkshire Pudding, savored the wine and read the copy of the Times he’d brought down from their room. But as the evening wore on and the woman didn’t come Hunter began to imagine Felicity’s reaction to being told that she couldn’t leave Blenwick any time soon.

  Hell and damnation, she would walk to the next station! Or hire a horse or beg a seat in a bloody dray.

  He threw the Times into his chair and headed for the kitchen. The cook looked at him in honest innocence when he demanded to know where his wife was.

  “I haven’t seen her since breakfast, sir. She left right after.”

  Hunter checked his temper. “Did she say she was going to Northumberland?”

  “Don’t know about that, sir. Asked about the Blenwick School.”

  “A school?” Good, then she was still in town! “What sort of a school?”

  “As I told her myself, sir, it isn’t really a school—”

  “What is it then?”

  The cook shook her head. “It’s a workhouse. And she seemed to get mighty agitated when I mentioned it wasn’t a school for apprentices like she’d thought. Nearly swooned, she did.”

  A workhouse! Damn the woman and her meddling! She’d gone after those two kids who’d followed her around after the accident. They were orphans, or had been abandoned—he had known it from the moment he’d seen them with her. Even in the dimness and the disorder, he’d seen the emptiness in their eyes, had smelled the taint of the slums. He had kept it from her, because he feared the very thing she had gone and done.

  Well, then, let her go. Let her chase after her conscience. It would do her no good. Pull one wretch out of the sewer, and you’d find two more hanging on to his ragged trouser legs.

  She’d soon learn that a hand held out in charity was an admission of guilt, a firebrand in the gut. He refused to bear the guilt of someone else’s misfortune. Allow them to set their own course; that was the guiltless thing to do. Every man, every child for himself.

  Let her discover the uncharitable truth herself.

  Felicity had just finished washing out the bowls when a tiny face peered around the corner.

  “Betts! You shouldn’t be here!”

  But Andy ran past his sister and wound his fists into Felicity’s skirts. “Oh, miss, we’re so glad to see you.”

  She bent down and held him tightly; she might have been holding a ragged sack, packed loosely with spindle sticks.

  “And I’m glad to see you, too. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here?”

  “Have you come to cook for the school, then, miss?” Betts put her arm over Felicity’s shoulder. “Be grand to see you every day.”

  She tried to keep her tears at bay as she ran her fingers through Betts’s chopped-off hair. “I’m not going to be the cook here. And you’re not staying either. You’re coming with me.”

  Betts dipped her chin and plucked at the front of her shirt. “Please don’t fun us now, miss. Are you wroth with us?”

  “I’m not angry with you, or funning you. We’ll be leaving tonight, but you can’t stay here in the kitchen right now. I don’t want Mr. Rundull to see us together. And surely the guards will strap you if they find you’ve left the workroom.”

  Andy wasn’t listening at all. He’d taken up his thumb and a hank of Felicity’s skirt and seemed perfectly happy snuggled against her breast, rocking gently, his head tucked under her chin.

  “Dear heart, you must go with Betts.” When she stood up and lifted him away, his eyes puddled and hers did too. “Don’t cry, sweet. But you must hurry.”

  Betts seemed to understand the urgency and grabbed her brother’s hand. “Come, Andy. Best we do what the miss says.”

  Andy went placidly with his sister, though tears slid down his gray cheeks and his badly shod feet shuffled against the dirt. Betts turned back at the door.

  “I know you’re not funnin’ us, miss, but, if you change your mind, and you think it best to leave us— then I thank you anyway for givin’ us the lovely thought.”

  Then the little girl was gone around the corner.

  She jammed her stained skirts against her eyes, anything to sop up the brittle, hot tears. Taking only three children, when she ought to take seventy? When she ought to burn down the loathsome school and the detestable Rundull with it.

  “I. Smell. Onions!”

  Rundull was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He looked smug and well fed, a crumb of bread caught in his mustache.

  “I found no onions in the larder, Mr. Rundull, so I … obtained some from the grocer.”

  “Inventive, Miss Mayfield, but not in my budget.” He sauntered into the room like a country squire surveying his hen house. “You’ll get no money back from me.”

  “No, sir.” She busied her hands folding the flour sack she’d used for a drying cloth, hoping to distract the anger from her voice. It wouldn’t do to be evicted just yet.

  He drew his fingers along the scoured table and peered into the clean caldron sitting on the dying heat of the stove. “Have you given up making dinner? Where are these very expensive onions?”

  “The children have been fed and returned to the evening shift.” She laced her hands behind her back, but loosened them when Rundull’s gaze slid across the front of her bodice. The corners of his mouth lifted, and she moved away from him to close the larder door. “I’ve cleaned and straightened, as you can see.”

  “Yes, I see you very well, Miss Mayfield.” He rubbed his palms together. “Tell you what—I’ll hire you for a week’s trial. If your work appears satisfactory, you’ll be paid your ten shillings, less room and board, of course. If I am not satisfied with every measure of your work, then I will let you go, and you will owe me seven shillings for your keep. Do you understand?” He raised an eyebrow as if he were the most honest and fair-minded employer in the world.

  Her neck stiffened in anger, but she nodded. “Yes sir.”

  “Good. Then bring your bag and I’ll show you to your room.”

  Rundull led Felicity out the door and through the workshop.

  The smell within was worse than she had imagined. Vinegar and unwashed bodies, and the chemical sting of boot blacking.

  She found Giles when their eyes met across the room. He was standing over a table, shame drooping his shoulders. She found hope in that—maybe he wasn’t too angry to leave with her.

  But the boy shook his head and turned back to his work to lay a ringing hammer to the end of a chisel.

  Betts and Andy were bent over a shoe-form in one of the stalls ahead of her. Betts was wisely doing her best to keep Andy from spotting her, but the little boy was wriggling and fussing and not paying attention to his stitching. He took an angry stab at the shoe top and jammed the huge needle into his thumb. He let out a wailing howl.

  Felicity winced in sympathy but continued trailing after Rundull.

  Andy whirled away from Betts’s attempts at comforting him, his injured thumb stuck like a stopper in his mouth.

  “Quiet that boy,” Rundull shouted across the shop to a guard who was already on his way toward the commotion.

  Andy’s weepy gaze found Rundull, and then Felicity. His eyes widened and his tears came even harder. He stumbled to his feet and started toward her, sobbing. What could she do but bend and let him come into her arms before the guard could reach him.

  Betts was on his heels. “Oh, miss, we’re sorry for this. We are.”

  Felicity hushed and cuddled the boy, and took Betts into her arms all the while Rundull stood staring at w
hat must be a singular and most preposterous scene taking place in his school.

  “What the holy hell is going on here, Miss Mayfield?”

  The guard made a grab for both children, but Felicity was faster and scrambled out of his reach behind a brick pillar.

  Rundull grabbed at the guard’s nape. “Stand away, Flint I’ll take care of this!” He snapped the guard out of his way and came toward Felicity.

  Rundull’s face was rage-mottled, his neck bulged out above his collar. He pointed at her. “You are fired, Miss Mayfield.”

  “I was never hired, Mr. Rundull.” She lifted the children onto both hips and stomped away, surprised at her own strength. “Come along, Giles!”

  Rundull was on her before she had made a half-dozen steps. “I’ll have you in jail for this.”

  Felicity shoved the children behind her and planted herself in front of Rundull. “I’ll gladly pay for the time they spent here and for your efforts at bringing them. And for that boy’s charges as well.” Giles cringed when she pointed at him.

  “Pay me?” Rundull said with a sneer. “On a cook’s salary?”

  “I’m not a cook, Mr. Rundull, I’m a … .” She couldn’t very well say she was a travel writer—what kind of threat would that be? “I’m an investigative reporter for the Hearth and Heath.”

  “A reporter?” Rundull unballed his fists. His shoulders dropped abruptly, and his voice mellowed as he straightened his skewed neckcloth. “Madam, you have taken us wrong. We are an apprentice school, doing our best here. I’m paid by a number of London parishes to school their castoff children—”

  “Mr. Rundull, this is no kind of school!” She looked out across the room and realized that work had come to a standstill and every eye was on her.

  “They learn the shoemaking trade,” Rundull hissed, his attempt at hiding his anger from a reporter gone in a puff of smoke.

  “And they pay for it with their crooked backs!”

  Rundull growled and grabbed a double hold of her hair at the back of her head, and yanked her against him. “It’s time you leave here, Miss Mayfield. But you’ll be leaving with a strap laid across your back to remind you of your visit.”