My Lady Marzipan (Rare Confectionery Book 3)

by Sydney Jane Baily

  Edward took his younger brother and sister into the next room, and the grown-ups, waiting in silence for his return, could hear the squeals of joy from the littlest Percys. By the look on Charlotte’s face, she wished she had more to give them.

  “Would you care to sit?” Mrs. Percy asked. “I can’t offer tea as we ran out, but you don’t have to stand like you’re waiting for the omnibus.”

  So as not to offend, Charles pulled out a chair for Charlotte, which she graciously took, then he went to do the same for Mrs. Percy, but she looked affronted. He waited for her to sit. When she didn’t but only stared at him, hard, against all common courtesy, he finally took a seat.

  Now what?

  Thankfully, Edward returned and took the chair across from Charlotte, so the explanations could commence. “I’m sorry, miss, I truly am,” he began.

  “Don’t say nothing,” his mother warned him.

  “Mrs. Percy,” Charles began, “we are not the police, but we do already know that Edward stole sweets from Miss Rare-Foure and turned them over to you. There’s no point denying the obvious.”

  “I didn’t steal from Miss Rare-Foure,” Edward protested. “I ... I just kept some confectionery back from my deliveries. But I gave you all the money,” he said looking at Charlotte. “I didn’t keep a ha’penny nor a farthing.”

  “So you stole from the hotels and restaurants,” Charles said, thinking Charlotte might have too soft of a heart to say the obvious.

  “Yes, sir,” Edward agreed, “but ... not money. I would never steal money.”

  Charlotte sighed. “Edward, in a way, you did. I cannot get some of those contracts back, so that money is gone from the shop. And it was revenue I was counting upon.”

  Edward hung his head. His mother had said nothing, simply looking between her two unexpected guests and her son. Now, she sat down heavily in the last chair and fixed Charlotte with a desperate stare.

  “Are you pressing charges against my son?” she demanded.

  Charles thought she was going to be belligerent, but her voice broke on the last word. Then Mrs. Percy added, “Remember, he’s done good by you, miss, working like someone twice his age. I know how dependable my boy is.” Her words ended on a quiver of emotion.

  “No,” Charlotte said without hesitation. “I am not going to press charges against him.”

  “Oh!” the woman said, sitting back. “Against me, then? You’d rip a mother away from her three children? I work hard as a shirt-finisher for 3 shillings a week. If I could afford a machine,” she trailed off sounding more desperate. “But you can’t send me to Newgate.”

  Edward jumped to her defense. “No, Mum, Miss Charlotte never would.”

  “He’s right,” Charlotte assured the woman.

  Charles felt the whole scene was like something from a Dickens’ novel. Too clichéd by far, too trite, and far too sad when it happened to be real life.

  “Then why did you come here?” Mrs. Percy demanded.

  “Edward didn’t show up for work, and neither did Mr. Tufts,” Charlotte pointed out.

  Mother and son exchanged a glance. For a moment, Charles wondered what it would be like to have such a close relationship with his own mother that they could communicate with a quick look.

  “Who is this Tufts really?” he asked.

  Edward looked down at the table. His mother took a deep breath and sighed. “He went into the workhouse last year for unpaid bills. Separated us as if we were cattle, they did.” Then she sat up straighter. “Cholera took my husband, or so they told me. Mr. Tufts was there, too, in the same ward as my Richard. When Mr. Tufts got out, he found me and the little ones beyond hope, living in a single room with another family, up the Whitechapel Road. He said my husband had asked him to take care of us, and he moved us in here.”

  “They were friends?” Charles asked.

  The woman shrugged, looking weary. It was Edward who spoke next.

  “Mr. Tufts told me to tell everyone he was my uncle. I’m sorry, miss.”

  “Was it his idea for you to keep some of the confectionery meant to be delivered?” Charlotte asked the boy.

  “Yes, miss,” Edward said, his voice hardly above a whisper.

  “He was right about selling it at Covent Garden. Easy as falling off a log,” Mrs. Percy said.

  “Is he really a builder?” Charles asked, wondering at the audacity of the woman crowing about how she’d sold stolen sweets so easily.

  Mother and son again exchanged a look. “We don’t know what he did before,” Mrs. Percy said. “He wanted whatever I still had of my husband’s. Said my Richard had promised it all to him.”

  “But he’s not a builder,” Edward added. “He stole the tools from somewhere after I came home and told my mum about the shop expanding. He was listening and said I had to introduce him.”

  Charles looked at Charlotte’s face. She was calm and accepting, not hysterical or angry at the deception perpetrated upon her.

  Then she asked, “Did you know he would make a hash of it?”

  Edward’s cheeks grew pink. “I wasn’t sure, miss. I hoped he knew what he was doing.”

  Charles looked at the pale face of Mrs. Percy and the embarrassed one of her son. “Why are you both helping him?”

  “He lets us live here,” Mrs. Percy said. “If he didn’t, we’d be in the street or the poorhouse, and my children would end up God-knows-where.”

  “And he has a temper,” Edward said quietly, making Charles stomach flip. The idea of a grown man committing violence upon a family — and it was another man’s family at that — sickened him.

  “He’s not all that bad,” Mrs. Percy said. “We’re not living in constant fear as some I know, and he’s not keeping us here. We could leave if we wanted to.”

  “If you had somewhere to go, but he knows you don’t,” Charlotte pointed out.

  “I have no way to make money excepting the piecework,” she said nodding toward the stack of fabric. “Shirt finishing,” she added, looking at Charles as if it were his fault she needed to sew. “It’s the beast to do and pays worse than hop-picking, but Edward’s money and mine pays for the food and some of the rent.”

  “And how does Mr. Tufts make his living when he’s not pretending to be a builder?” Charlotte asked.

  “He’s no shirkster,” Edward said. “He never sits idle. Sometimes he does a scaldrum dodge down by—”

  “A what?” Charlotte asked.

  “He pretends to be injured so he can beg,” Charles told her.

  “Right, my lord,” Edward said, looking impressed.

  “A lord!” Mrs. Percy exclaimed, pushing her chair back. “Why, I never!”

  “He’s a viscount, mum,” Edward said, looking more like his old self, now that he knew neither he nor his mother was going to be charged.

  Charles didn’t want to become the topic of conversation. “So Tufts begs to help support you?”

  “He’s also a smatter, a sneeze-lurker, and a snidesman,” Edward continued, “not to mention a wipe-hauler, a dragsman, and a speeler using weighted tatts.”

  “None of that sounds good,” Charlotte said, looking to Charles for the meaning, but this time he was as lost as she was.

  “Tatts are dice,” he offered lamely.

  The boy nodded, as did his mother, who added, “He’s got a lot of swank in any case for someone with no steady job except for being a skilled tooler. A pickpocket, you understand?”

  Charles nodded. Of all the people whom Charlotte could have chosen to build a staircase!

  “He said you were the perfect pigeon,” Edward added, staring at Charlotte.

  “A pigeon?” she repeated.

  “A victim,” Charles explained, having heard the term many times around the courts.

  “Oh.” At that, Charlotte rose to her feet, forcing Charles to do the same. She paced the small room. “I’m not particularly pleased with being a pigeon,” she said. Then she looked at Edward. “And I’ve promised
the manager at The Langham that I would handle the problem with the deliveries coming up short. How do you think I should do that, Edward?”

  He swallowed, looking less talkative again. Charles felt sorry for the boy, and they both waited for Charlotte to fire him on the spot.

  “I will tell you how,” she added. “I think you should work extra hard for me and my family, and even put in a few hours for free to make up for it. In return, I won’t let you go. But you must never compromise the good name of Rare Confectionery again. If you can’t promise me that, then you must say so and leave my employ.”

  Charles was impressed by her generosity, as was Mrs. Percy.

  “Thank you, miss. He was only doing as he was forced to do. But my boy won’t let you down again, will you?” She turned to her son.

  “No,” Edward said, his voice a little firmer.

  “What happens when Mr. Tufts returns,” Charles asked, looking at Edward’s mother, “and expects your boy to continue providing sweets for you to sell?”

  “I already told him I was found out,” Edward said.

  “I suppose that was why he abandoned the ruse,” Charlotte said. She was staring at Mrs. Percy with a thoughtful expression. “I’ve had a thought or two during this enlightening discussion.”

  They all stared at her. Charles hoped she would get on with disclosing her ideas, since they’d pushed their luck in staying as long as they had. While he had no doubt he could defeat Archie Tufts in a duel of fisticuffs, he had no wish to bring danger upon this family or Charlotte.

  But she shook her head. “My parents have returned from a brief trip, and the shop is really my mother’s, so I cannot say any more without speaking to her first. In any case, nothing can be done as long as you are associated with Mr. Tufts. While I don’t wish him ill or even for him to end up at Newgate, I don’t intend to be his pigeon again.”

  “Have you nowhere else to live?” Charles asked Mrs. Percy, wondering if the woman had formed a romantic relationship with the aforementioned snidesman.

  “We wouldn’t be here if we had,” she said with a lift of her chin, then added, “your lordship.” Frowning, she asked, “Or it is my lordship?”

  Before he could answer, she said, “To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never spoken to a member of the nobility before, and I cannot believe my eyes that one is in my own home. Honest to God, you look like a regular person.”

  Charles felt like a zoological specimen. “That’s quite all right. Let me speak plainly. Are you intent or compelled for any reason to stay with Tufts?” He hoped that was clear enough. Did the woman want to get away from the charlatan or not?

  “I see no way to leave, but if I could, I would. I have no—” she glanced at Edward, who wore his normal earnest expression. “I have no particular feelings for the man.”

  “Very well. I sit on the council of the Society for Organizing Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity. They may be able to help.”

  “Mendicity?” Mrs. Percy asked.

  “Begging,” Charles said.

  She drew back, affronted. “Mr. Tufts gets up to all sorts of things, most I don’t ask about, and it’s true, he’s forced us to do his bidding in some things we ought not to have done,” she glanced at Charlotte, then back at him, “or we’d have faced his nasty temper, your lordness.”

  Charles nearly corrected her but wisely held his tongue, as the woman was working her way into high dander.

  “But I am no beggar, nor was my husband, God rest his soul. He was in the shoeblack brigade when he was younger up the old York Road at King’s Cross, and even went to school four nights a week. When he was sixteen and too old to be in the brigade, he got a job as a cobbler with my own father, God rest his soul, too. Last year, we lost the shop,” Mrs. Percy said, her tone thick with emotion. “Then we lost it all.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Charlotte said, sounding overwrought, and Charles, too, felt the lump in his throat.

  So many of London’s lower classes lived insidiously close to the edge of ruin and poverty. They might work all their lives and still end up dying in the workhouse, as Mr. Percy had. Charles had known this fact all of his life, but knowing it was entirely removed from spending time with Edward, and also seeing his two younger siblings with very little chance for their lives to come to anything.

  “I was going to send my Edward to the same shoeblack brigade after Easter.” Mrs. Percy reached over and touched her son’s hand. “He would have had to be declared homeless and destitute and live with the other dozens of boys there, and I would have sorely missed my son.” She sighed, and Charles again was touched by the look they exchanged. She would have done what was right for him even if it meant having to send him away.

  “Then he found work with you, Miss Rare-Foure. Learning to make sweets seemed far more promising and safer than being out on the street cleaning and blacking men’s shoes. Some boys ain’t given a good pitch — you know, a station — and they don’t make much. And sometimes, the gentlemen don’t pay after having their shoes done. Now, that’s a tooler for you!” She nodded emphatically. Then looking directly at Charles, she said, “No offense to you, my lordship.”

  “None taken, I assure you.” His valet always polished his shoes, so Charles knew he’d never bilked a young shoeblack out of his pay. “As I was saying — or I think I was, at any rate — I sit on the council of a society that helps people. There are about thirty-two members doing the work of hundreds, but they do succeed in finding affordable housing, and they raise money each month so there is usually enough to get someone on their feet. It’s considered temporary assistance, but it can get you out of a bad situation.”

  “How quickly?” Charlotte asked him. “I mean, if Mr. Tufts has a temper, I wouldn’t want to wait one day too many.”

  “Don’t worry about that, miss,” Edward said. “I can protect my mum.”

  Mrs. Percy sniffed at her boy’s courage. “I can protect my children,” she insisted, “but I would welcome the help. When my husband died, no one at the workhouse could tell me where to go or what to do.”

  Charles knew that was one of the problems. The charitable society could have the best of intentions, but if they didn’t get out into the poorest communities and offer assistance, what good would they do.

  “I will go to the society’s headquarters directly,” he said, thinking of the tidy suite of rooms on Buckingham Street in the Adelphi neighborhood. “With their help, I’m sure we can find you a place to live.” And if he couldn’t, he would put them up in his own townhouse until he could.

  “Edward can come back to work tomorrow,” Charlotte said. “He will have to apologize to my mother and to the places where he made deliveries, but I won’t make him pay for all the stolen confectionery. We’ll call it a lesson learned, and I shall be glad to have him back.”

  Edward’s face had gone through a myriad of emotions, but at the end of it, he said simply, “Thank you.”

  “I thank you too, miss,” his mother said. “And I’m sorry for selling your chocolates and such.”

  “I understand why you did it,” Charlotte said.

  Admiring her generosity, Charles thought he’d fallen in love with her just a little more at that moment. “We’d best be going. I need to get to the society before four.”

  “I’ll see you first thing,” Charlotte said to Edward. “Mrs. Percy, you’ve raised a good boy.”

  “He gets his smarts from his father,” she said, looking sad.

  “Do you have enough food for your family tonight?” Charles couldn’t help asking.

  “Yes.” Her voice was tight, and he figured she was holding back tears. He wanted to get out before they were shed.

  “Come along, Miss Rare-Foure. My driver will think we’ve fallen asleep up here.”

  “Delia!” she exclaimed. “I’m shocked she didn’t come in here and try to forcibly remove me.”

  But when they returned to his carriage, they found Delia sitting on the dickey besi
de his coachman, so lost in laughter and chatting, neither noticed their master or mistress’s arrival.

  “Perhaps a new romance has sprung up between our households,” Charlotte mused.

  Charles wanted to tell her one certainly had, but it was not the time to try again to make her his own.

  “Bertie, help Miss Rare-Foure’s maid down and let’s get going. You both must be sick of the view of the Aldgate pump.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Charlotte was certain she would never recover the money she’d paid Mr. Tufts, but she was relieved that Edward and his mother were not dishonest people, merely desperate.

  “Will you tell me the idea you want to discuss with your mother?” Charles asked, as they headed back along Fenchurch Street.

  “Of course.” Charles had become practically her dearest friend, next to her sisters. “I think Rare Confectionery should have a permanent place at Covent Garden, either a stall or a cart, and Mrs. Percy can run it.”

  She appreciated how he considered it, rather than dismissing it out of hand, but after a moment, he shook his head.

  “I believe she does piecework at home so she can look after her little ones.”

  He was right. She’d forgotten about that. Obviously, they were too young for school.

  “I wonder where the children were when she was at Covent Garden before?”

  “If she left them here alone, that’s dangerous, and you wouldn’t want to encourage such a thing,” he pointed out.

  Charlotte didn’t want to let that stop her from helping Edward’s mother out of poverty and give her the ability to stand on her own two feet without relying on the duplicitous Mr. Tufts.

  “We shall figure it out,” she vowed. “If you can find her a place to live, hopefully a bit farther west of the pump, we can think of a place her children can stay while she works There must be many a mother in a similar situation.”

  He nodded. “I’ve sat on that council for two years and felt useless. They always have a member of the nobility on the board to help with fundraising. But this will be the first time I’ve been able to help someone directly.”