by Merry Farmer
“Do you need help?” Ram asked his brother.
“No, no. I can manage.”
Ram watched as Ajay stepped through the curtain and into the other room. Then he turned to Noelle, lowering his voice. “I was hoping to do this the easy way, but there’s no arguing with Faye when she’s in a mood.”
“It’s all right.” Noelle started toward the dining room. “I’ll find someplace to sleep tonight.”
“You’ll sleep here,” Ram whispered as she passed him. He grabbed her arm, a thrill of mischief making him smile.
“What?” Noelle whispered. “But you heard your sister-in-law.”
Ram shook his head, leaning even closer to her. The scent of baked goods and coffee still hung on her, whetting his appetite in more ways than one. “My room is in the attic, right at the top of the house. There’s a balcony off of one window, and a ladder for escape in case of fire.”
Noelle blinked at him, so he went on.
“After supper, when everyone is sleepy and Faye is putting the children to bed, I’ll escort you out. But I’ll really take you around back and show you where the ladder is. You can climb up and spend the night in my room.”
Noelle’s eyes went wide. “Ram, that’s incredibly dangerous. What if your brother or sister-in-law sees me or hears me knocking around upstairs?”
“You’ll be quiet,” Ram said, unable to keep from smiling.
He liked his idea more and more with each passing second. The thrill of keeping a secret from his family was almost as tempting as the thought of having Noelle share a room, and possibly a bed, with him. He wouldn’t dream of asking her to do more than she cared to—especially since the noise from that kind of activity would be a dead giveaway—but the thought of being able to provide shelter and safety for her in a world that was anything but safe made him feel bold and powerful.
“No one goes up to my room anyhow,” he went on. “The attic takes up the entire second floor, and is my space alone. Ajay knows that and Faye knows it too.”
“What about the children?” Noelle glanced to the ceiling. “Do they ever creep up there?”
Ram shook his head. “Sam is four, Louise is only three, and Dev is one.”
Noelle pressed her lips together, staring at Ram as if considering.
“Are you coming?” Ajay called from the other room.
“Are you staying?” Ram asked, prickling with excitement.
Noelle gave him that look as though rolling her eyes, and more parts of him than were proper sprung to life. He would have pulled her into his arms and kissed her into submission if she’d have let him.
At last, she let out a breath and shook her head. “All right. I’ll agree to stay the night, and we’ll see how things go.”
“Perfect.” He squeezed her hand, only just realizing he hadn’t let go when he’d caught her. “Everything will work out. You’ll see.”
CHAPTER 5
A s sunlight began to peek its way over the tops of smoky, East End buildings, Noelle blinked herself awake under a pile of blankets in Ram’s bed. Just one night had turned into five, and there didn’t seem to be any end in sight.
Noelle slipped out of bed, tip-toeing across the room to use the chamber pot, hidden behind a screen in the corner. She listened intently for any sound of movement from the floor below. Indistinct sounds of children talking and moving about filtered up through the floorboards, but Noelle guessed they were still in their beds and Faye wasn’t there. She poured water from the pitcher into the basin on the wash table under one of the windows, scrubbed herself as fast as she could, then dressed in clothes that needed cleaning.
“You’re up early.”
Noelle jumped at Ram’s morning greeting. She twisted to face him, pressing a finger to her lips to silence him. Her hand slowly fell away from her mouth as she looked at him. She always found him handsome, but the sight of him disheveled in the morning, a faint growth of beard across his chin, eyes sleepy, made her heart speed up. It was hard enough sleeping in the same bed with him—even though they’d built a wall of pillows between them—without giving in to temptation. Watching him climb out of bed, bits of his caramel skin showing through gaps in his nightshirt, only made her want to throw her new dedication to purity out the window.
She turned away, reaching for her hairbrush on the windowsill, to distract herself.
“It’s too early for Ajay or Faye to hear us,” Ram whispered, moving closer to her. “Ajay will still be in bed, and Faye will be busy in the kitchen, starting breakfast.”
The mention of breakfast made Noelle’s stomach rumble. Ram’s sudden closeness as he made his way to the wash stand had her skin prickling. Her body was a riot of sensations, but none of them were remotely useful.
“I need to get to the café early to see if Mr. Platte will pay me today, since it’s the end of his week,” she whispered, trying not to watch the way rivulets of water trickled down Ram’s neck as he scrubbed his face.
He glanced sideways at her. Noelle snapped her eyes away, her face going hot. She couldn’t keep a guilty grin off of her lips.
“Why are you still working for that greedy bully?” he asked. The question was serious, but his tone was light, teasing. He must have seen her smile.
That didn’t stop the hopelessness that seeped through her. She dropped her shoulders and any pretense of ignoring him. “What else am I supposed to do?” she asked, more than a whisper, but not loud enough for anyone to hear. “I need the money, and I still haven’t found another position.”
No matter how hard she looked, no respectable café, pub, or shop in London was willing to hire an American, fresh off the boat, who didn’t have any references. And the job offers she had received were less than tempting. She thought of the business card that Lord Shayles had given her. It was still in the pocket of her coat, tempting her as much as Ram’s mischievous eyes. Her money problems could be over in a heartbeat if she just visited the address on that card.
“It’s been less than a week,” Ram reminded her as he stepped behind the screen in the corner. “London is massive. You haven’t even begun to explore your options.”
“Ssh! Keep your voice down,” she cautioned.
It felt too odd to step closer to the screen so that they could talk while he was using the chamber pot and washing up, so Noelle moved to the bed, stashing the pillows that made up their wall under the bed and putting everything else into order. Ram refused to let her pay him in any way, but at least she could help keep his room clean and tidy. If only she could say the same for her own things.
“I need to find a laundress who will wash my clothes for pennies,” she told Ram when he was clean and dressed and ready to start the day.
He shook his head. “Do your laundry here. I’ll tell Faye that you’ve asked to come by and borrow her wash basin and board and to hang things on our line.”
Noelle crossed her arms, rested her weight on one hip, and stared at Ram. “Your sister-in-law doesn’t like me.”
Ram snorted a laugh. “She met you one time.”
“And she didn’t like me,” Noelle repeated. “She stared bullets at me through the entire supper the other day.”
“She just doesn’t know you.”
“She doesn’t think I’m good enough for you.”
Ram’s brow shot up. “How can you say that?” He stepped toward her, resting an arm on her shoulder.
The air in the room seemed to heat. Noelle struggled to hang on to the notion that the two of them were just friends and that he was simply helping her out of a sense of charity.
“Faye thinks I have designs on you, which simply isn’t true,” she said, hoping he’d contradict her.
Ram took a step back, almost as though her words had stung him. Maybe he was interested in more than friendship after all. If he was, she’d just stomped on his hopes. Her heart squeezed hard in her chest. Her new life was turning out to be far more fraught than she’d ever dreamed it would be.
Ram recovered quickly. “What we need is some way to show Faye, and my brother, that you’re an asset to have as a friend, not a burden.”
Noelle’s arms were still crossed, and she hugged herself tighter. “How do you propose to do that?”
An impish smile spread across Ram’s face. “Ajay likes to take the family to Stepney Green Park on Fridays for a picnic. There are usually bands playing, people promenading, and other ways for him to show off how well he’s done with his investments.”
Noelle blinked. “Investments?”
Ram’s smile broadened. “He has many of them.”
“How?” She let her arms drop to her sides.
Ram shrugged. “Ajay lost his leg when a crate crushed it during a storm at sea several years ago. Captain Tennant was generous in compensating him for the injury and for the difficulty he would have finding employment from that point on. He also advised Ajay of several areas where he could invest his money, including purchasing stock in various merchant ships. Ajay has a head for business, and not only was he able to make good on those investments, tripling his initial capital, he’s gone on to several other lucrative speculations.”
Noelle knew very little about how money worked beyond its ability to buy things, but she knew enough to ask, “If he’s made so much money, why is he still living here? No offense, but I’ve seen enough of London now to know this isn’t the best part of town.”
“Faye’s family has owned this building for decades,” Ram explained. “She’s the one who doesn’t want to leave. They earn income from renting out other flats too.”
“So what does Ajay do with all of his money then?” Noelle asked.
Ram’s smile broadened. “He invests in the ambitions of his clever younger brother.”
Noelle laughed, then clapped a hand to her mouth to keep quiet. “Ajay is funding your dream of opening a store?” she whispered.
“He is.” Ram wiggled his eyebrows—a gesture that made Noelle’s heart sing with fondness each time he did it.
“You’re lucky,” she sighed. “It must be a wonderful thing to have a family that can help you through the world.”
Ram’s expression softened. “You’ll have a family of your own someday. I’m sure of it.”
A shiver of pleasure zipped down Noelle’s spine. She had a sudden vision of what that family might look like, complete with warm, brown skin and teasing eyes.
But she was a long way from being able to indulge in those sorts of fantasies.
With a sigh, she crossed to the window that led to the balcony and the ladder that was her escape route. “I need to find a better job with an employer who will actually pay me before I can do any of that,” she said as she unlatched the window and swung it open. A burst of cold air hit her, like the realization of the troubles that still faced her. At least it wasn’t as cold as it had been for the past few days. “Maybe I could go work in a laundry somewhere and kill two birds with one stone.”
“You hated being a laundress,” Ram reminded her, stepping up to her side. “And you’re meant for better things.”
“True,” she agreed, giving him a teasing smile. She took her coat from a hook beside the window, put it and her gloves on, and stepped over the window’s ledge and onto the balcony. “All I know is that there has to be something better than the life I’ve got now.”
“It’s not all bad, is it?” Ram asked as she edged toward the ladder. “You’ve got plans to meet me at Stepney Green Park today after all, don’t you?”
His words were more of a question than a statement. Noelle shook her head as she started down the ladder. “I do,” she said, as loud as she dared, before descending to the mews below.
It might have appeared to an outside observer that Ram wasn’t doing much but enjoying Noelle’s company as she secretly bunked down with him every night. And while he wasn’t going to deny that he was quickly coming to love the sound of her steady breathing, just a pillow wall away from him each night, and the scent of her that infused his sheets, he was doing much more than indulging in fantasies.
“And you’re certain you don’t have any open positions?” he asked a local businessman whom he’d known to have hired female clerks for his office now and then as people gathered to head the band in Stepney Green.
The man shook his head. “I hire all my girls out of St. Dunstan’s Girls Finishing School. Your friend would do better to take an unskilled job and work her way up.”
Ram swallowed his frustration as the man walked away to join his family.
“Why do you keep accosting every shop owner and warehouseman in the park today?” Ajay asked him. Ajay wore his false leg for the family stroll through the park, but also leaned heavily on his cane. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned with your own business venture?”
“I’m trying to help Miss Walters,” he explained.
On Ajay’s other side, Faye sniffed. “If you ask me, that piece of skirt is only after one thing.”
Ram frowned. The fact that Noelle seemed to be right about Faye’s opinion of her didn’t sit well with him. “Noelle is an honest woman trying to build a new life for herself in London.”
“What was so wrong with her old life, then?” Faye asked, eyes narrowed, bouncing baby Dev in her arms. “Why’d she have to come all the way over here from America anyhow?”
Ram couldn’t answer. The truth would only set Faye off even more. He watched his niece and nephew playing hide-and-seek in Faye’s wool skirts for a moment before saying, “I wish you’d give Miss Walters a chance. She could use a female friend in London.”
“She could use something, all right,” Faye mumbled.
“Let the girl find her own job,” Ajay said. “You’ve got better things to think about.”
“Miss Walters is having trouble finding a suitable position because she doesn’t have any references,” Ram said, wondering if there was any point explaining.
“That’s her problem, not yours,” Ajay said.
Ram shook his head, teeth clenched. He’d never stopped to consider how lucky he’d been to have gone to work for Captain Tennant, and to have a list of references he could draw on. He imagined his irritation was only a fraction of what Noelle was feeling. At least he could offer her a bed to sleep in.
The seed of a much bigger idea took root in his mind. He’d known her for just over a week, but perhaps there was a more permanent way she could both sleep in his bed and not have to worry about finding a job with no references. But was he ready to take that massive step himself?
As if his thoughts summoned her, Noelle came striding around the corner from Redmans Road, making her way onto the grass of Stepney Green. A smile lit not only Ram’s face, but warmed his insides as well. He stepped away from his family to meet her.
“Where are you going now?” Ajay called after him.
“Oh Lord, it’s that American,” Faye grumbled.
Ram ignored them, forcing himself to smile as he met Noelle along one of the paths. The crowd was increasing by the second, and with his brother and Faye watching, the best greeting he could give her was a tip of his hat.
“You look well today, Miss Walters,” he said, pretending it had been ages since he’d seen her, in case Ajay and Faye were listening.
“And you, Mr. Singh. Fancy meeting you here.” Noelle played along. Her eyes sparkled, but the lines of her face seemed more strained than usual. She must not have had any luck convincing Mr. Platte to pay her. “The café?” he asked.
She shook her head and swallowed. “No money, and I no longer have a job there,” she whispered.
Ram’s heart sank. He should have been surprised, but he wasn’t. “Something better will come along,” he said.
“I know,” she answered, shoulders drooping. She didn’t look like she believed it.
He smiled anyhow, hoping to make the best of things. “Would you care to listen to today’s concert with me and my family?” he asked loud enough for his family to hear.
“Yes,
please.” Noelle gave him the best smile she could.
He offered his arm to escort her back to Ajay, Faye, and the children.
Faye grumbled something to Ajay that Ram didn’t hear. He hoped Noelle didn’t hear either.
“Ajay, Faye, you remember Miss Walters, don’t you?” He introduced Noelle as if she hadn’t been secretly living under their roof for the past five days.
“Miss Walters.” Ajay smiled warmly and nodded to Noelle. Ram could only hope the gesture was sincere. “It is a pleasure to meet you again.”
“Thank you. Likewise.” Noelle tried to smile, but her anxious gaze slipped past Ajay to Faye. “Thank you again for the lovely meal the other night, Mrs. Singh.”
Faye tilted her chin up and hummed, avoiding answering Noelle directly by focusing on Dev squirming in her arms.
Noelle’s smile crumpled. Ram felt the need to fight someone to get her the respect she deserved, but the only people there were the ones he cared about the most.
“So, Ram. Have you heard anything more from Mr. Titus about the space for your shop?” Ajay asked, his voice slightly louder than it should be.
The band who was set to perform made their way to the platform in the center of the park and began tuning their instruments. Ram had to raise his voice slightly to answer. “Nothing since we spoke on Monday.” He frowned. Ajay knew that. Why was he bringing the subject up now?
Ram got his answer as Ajay turned to Noelle. “My enterprising little brother here is about to open a shop of his own. A new kind of shop. A shop that will be all the rage. It’s called a department store.”
“Yes, I know.” Noelle smiled back at him, her posture stiff, but not defensive. “Ram has told me all about it.”
“Then he has told you how much dedication and attention to detail beginning such an endeavor entails,” Ajay went on.