Cates, Kimberly (34 page)

I am returning to Northwillow if you will still employ me. Please send money for the stage and take it from my first month's wages.

There was far too much left unsaid. She had no delusions that the widow would allow her to keep such silence on the subject once she arrived back in Norfolk. Yet Juliet couldn't write more.

She signed it, sanded it, then sealed it with wax and scrawled the widow's direction on the front. She would take it downstairs, ask one of the footmen to post it.

Pressing the letter to her bosom, she crept out into the corridor, down the stairs. She'd almost reached the table in the entryway where his lordship's correspondence awaited posting, when she heard voices through a half-closed door.

"No, Millicent, you've stitched it on upside down. Let me show you."

"But Juliet said—"

"Juliet's not here," Violet said. "We'll just have to get along as best as we can without her. Now, let me help you rip the stitches out and we can begin again."

Puzzled, Juliet crossed to the door, peering through the crack, astonished by the scene unfolding before her eyes. The chamber buzzed with industry. The pianoforte stood in the corner, draped in half-stitched petticoats. The rug was all but obliterated by a length of amber cloth, Felicity on her hands and knees, snipping out a pattern with borrowed shears.

Millicent and Violet were clustered with the younger women, bent over their sewing with a fierce concentration. Gowns in various stages of construction littered the room. Mouths were pursed in frustration and determination, brows furrowed, fingers busy with needle and thread.

There was a valiant defiance in the little scene. One that knotted emotion in Juliet's throat, made her flatten her hand against the door and push it wider still. Not even the flighty Violet glanced up from her labor.

It was Angelina who glimpsed Juliet first—and then only because she was forced to retrieve her thimble.

"Juliet?" She all but shoved the bit of silver behind her back, like a child caught with a forbidden bonbon. Countless gazes leapt from the work to Juliet's face, and she was stunned to see the women peer at her with a curious mixture of defiance and reproach.

"What are you doing?" Juliet asked, one hand still on the door latch.

"Stitching on a sleeve," Millicent said with a toss of her head. "I got it upside down last time. But don't worry, this time I'll set it right."

"But you hate sewing."

"Discovered I hate sitting on my skirts, all helpless, even more."

Felicity rose to her feet, the shears clasped in her chapped hands. "His lordship was going to hire seamstresses to make gowns for us. But Millicent said if we made our own and— and do well enough, his lordship might give us a little of his lady's sewing now and again."

Juliet stared, astonished. Millicent, who had spent every sewing lesson grumbling as if she'd been ordered to spin straw into gold, rallying the others to stitch?

Millicent heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Me and my brilliant ideas. Probably the only chance I'll ever get to have a gown made by a fancy lady's seamstress, and I cast it away!"

"But—but why? This makes no sense. I thought you didn't want... I mean, you made it clear that you couldn't wait to escape Angel's Fall."

"I told Harry Tupper he was the handsomest man alive, too, and he looks like a rat with his cheeks stuffed," Violet said. "Don't worry, Juliet. You don't have to concern yourself with us. We've got it all talked out, the lot of us. You don't have to be saddled with us any longer."

"What she means is, we understand," Elise amended hastily. "You want to leave London, after all the ugliness and trouble you've suffered. But, you see, we... we have to stay here. We were thinking, if we all work together, we might just have a chance to make a better life."

Shame burned in Juliet's belly, rushed up into her cheeks. It was what she had worked for, dreamed of, this sudden bond linking the women together. It was something she'd despaired would ever happen. The knowledge that they had done so now, when everything was lost, was both bitter and indescribably sweet.

"I know what you're thinking with that look on your face." Millicent brandished the bodice she was working on like a sabre. "You're thinking we've lost our minds. Well, you're not the first. Isabelle thought so, too. The instant we told her our plan, she swept out of the house to find herself a protector. And today she packed up her treasure box and took herself off for good."

"Good riddance, I say!" Violet tossed her head. "We didn't let her slow us so much as a single stitch. Nor will you when you trundle yourself back to Northwillow."

"Don't trouble yourself about us, Juliet," Elise said far more gently. "We'll be just fine. You taught us well enough. From now on, we'll help each other."

"But where will you go? Where will you stay?" Juliet asked, the countless difficulties involved in such a venture racing through her mind.

"Mr. Adam—he's seeing to it now," Felicity piped up. "He just told us this morning that—"

"Hush!" Angelina blustered. "We're not supposed to tell!"

Juliet turned to Elise, who picked nervously at a seam. And she knew the best tactic for getting to the bottom of this mystery would be to get her away from the others, wangle an explanation. "Elise, could you help me with something in the hallway?"

Elise put her work aside and hastened to do her bidding. Yet the girl who followed Juliet into the corridor seemed a stranger. For the first time since she'd known Elise, the young woman was blooming.

"Elise, what's this all about?"

Elise raised glowing eyes to Juliet, her thin fingers trailing to a miniature suspended around her neck by a faded ribbon. A tiny chipped image Juliet had never seen before. "Mr. Slade is going to find us a place to live."

"He's searching for a home for you?"

"He's been searching ever since we came here but hadn't confided in anyone but the earl. This morning, Adam told us what he was doing."

Juliet blinked, her memory filled with images of Adam trudging into Glenlyon House at such odd hours. Not in an effort to avoid her, as she'd believed, but rather because he was championing the cause of her scattered angels. Was he mad? She'd finally admitted he was right—that she'd been naive and idealistic and foolhardy.

"But it's dangerous!" Juliet objected. "Whoever set that fire is still out there, lurking somewhere in the city. If they were bold enough to strike once, they will do it again."

Elise's chin bumped up a notch. "We know there are dangers. But some things are worth the risk. He said... oh, Juliet!" Elise's eyes filled with grateful tears and she clasped the miniature in her hand. "Our children... they can come to us."

"Children?" Juliet glanced down to see the miniature Elise displayed—a tiny chubby-faced babe grinning toothlessly up from the porcelain. So this was the explanation for so much of the sorrow in Elise's face. The indescribable sense of loss that had haunted her eyes.

Juliet was sick with regret and self-blame. Why had she never pressed her friend? Prodded her to tell what was bothering her? "Elise, I didn't know you had a babe. Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"About my little Will? There was nothing you could do. Nothing anyone could. It hurt too much to even speak his name."

"But how... how did it happen? How did you get with child?" Juliet grimaced. "I'm sorry. That was a ridiculous question. Of course, if you were entertaining men, it was bound to happen sooner or later."

"I wasn't a—one of those women then. Only after when I had no choice."

"Then how—?"

"When I was fifteen I went into service as a maid at the Darlington estate. Lord Darlington had just come into his inheritance. He was... quite glutted on power, I fear. He forced his attentions upon me."

"That's abominable!" Rage at the injustice seared through Juliet.

"I don't know why he fancied me, shy and solemn as I was. But it was a game he played, catching me tidying up the bedchambers or changing the linens. He'd lie in wait and..." Elise shuddered.

"You should've put a kitchen knife in your apron pocket."

"And stabbed the master?"

"But someone should have stopped him."

"Who would have believed me if I'd told? His mother? She would have condemned me for inviting him, luring him. I would have been turned out into the streets. My little brother was all the family I had left, and he was ill. What coin I earned paid for his keep. After a few months, Alexander died. But by then, I was already with child."

"But it was his lordship's child! He was responsible!"

The pain of that time, the helplessness, was still etched in Elise's face. "When I couldn't conceal my pregnancy any longer, his lordship's mother turned me away without a character. No decent household would hire me after that."

"And Lord Darlington just let you go?" As vicar's daughter she'd heard enough to know the horror, the suffering of the poor and weak. "You might have starved! And your baby! When I think of it..."

Elise shrugged. "I suppose I was lucky in a way. At least Lord Darlington promised to see to the baby's upbringing, see he wasn't hungry or cold and was taught some useful trade. But there was one condition. I wasn't ever to see Will again."

"That's inhuman to separate a mother from her child! So cruel! You should have told him to go to blazes!"

"And strip away the only chance my child had of a full belly and warm hands and toes? How could I risk exposing my child to the kind of life I was forced to lead after I left the Darlington estate? There are people in the brothels, evil people who would take a child's innocence and delight in it." Elise trembled.

"I sold my mama's wedding ring for the money to pay for this portrait." She brushed with reverent fingers the chipped miniature. "The day my babe was weaned from my breast, one of his lordship's servants came and took Will off to a place his lordship had found. Simple people, they were, who cared for him until he went off to school. Sometimes, I'd stand outside the gate and watch him. He looked so sad, so alone. I always feared he was wondering why his mama didn't want him."

Juliet forgot her own pain, reached out to clasp Elise's thin hand.

"That's when I started sending him things. Little toys and sweetmeats. It sickened me, the way I had to earn the coin, letting other men touch me. And Will could never even know that his mother had sent the gifts. At least not until he was grown. But it was the one thing that gave me pleasure, picking out little trinkets for my boy. A few weeks ago Lord Darlington found out about the gifts. He guessed the truth. That was why he accosted me on the street that day."

"The vile despicable monster!"

"I wasn't whoring anymore, Juliet. I swear it. I just... just had a few coins tucked away—"

"Hush. It doesn't matter."

"Lord Darlington pushed me against the wall, lifting my skirts as if he were tormenting me
that
way. But in reality he only wanted to conceal from his friends the fact that he was warning me. He whispered in my ear that if I ever sent anything to my boy again, he would fling Will out into the streets."

"Oh, Elise..." Juliet felt the fiercest regret. Elise had wrestled with this terror, this pain, alone.

"Will was his child, Juliet. How could a boy's own father be so cruel?" Elise swiped the tears from her cheeks. "Last night, I couldn't sleep. The earl, dear man that he is, has the place fairly riddled with his children's toys. I was looking at a Noah's Ark, thinking how Will would be amazed by all the little animals, when Mr. Slade, he came trudging in, all tired. But he stopped, so kind, though he tried to hide it with gruffness. It's just his way."

"I know." Juliet could remember countless sips of tenderness she'd tasted in her days with Adam Slade. The tiniest spark in those ebony eyes, twist to his lips. The bashfulness, the compassion hidden behind blustering and fierce denial. A tenderness all the more precious because he took such pains to hide it.

"He saw the miniature, asked me about it," Elise continued. "I've not taken it off a single day since it was painted, but I always kept it tucked under my clothes, where no one could see. I couldn't bear anyone asking about Will, for fear I'd cry. And once I started weeping, I'd never stop. But that night, Mr. Adam looked so sad and forlorn, I thought maybe my tale would distract him from his own troubles. I never expected..."

A shiver of pure joy worked through Elise. "When I told him the story, he sent Fletcher off straightaway to get Will. Promised me that he'd bring him home."

"Adam did that?"

"He said he'd go himself, but there was some business he had to see to first. Something important. He thought he might be closing in on the person responsible for the fire. But he thanked me, and said that if we were going to build Angel's Fall again, we'd need a nursery. With a pack of women like we would gather, Will wouldn't be the only babe to come along."

The enormity of the girl's confession staggered Juliet. Her knees went weak, and she grasped the back of a gilt chair for support. "You said Adam was going to find you a house. Someplace to live. That's not the same as—as a haven like Angel's Fall. Surely he can't mean—he thought I was insane! He told me so a hundred times!"

"Well, he must've lost his mind as well, because I never saw a man work harder, or be more determined, than he is."

Juliet reeled. Adam promised there would be another Angel's Fall? A home for Elise and the others to make their own? And a nursery—she hadn't even thought of including a nursery. But Adam had. He knew all too well the children who resulted from such liaisons. He might have suffered like Will, been alone, friendless, had his father tired of his mother.

She'd never thought what bastardy meant. A castoff child. A child most sanctimonious fools would say should never have been. A child whose unforgivable sin was just daring to be born.

Adam had seemed so scornful of everything Juliet had tried to build, just like Millicent and Violet and the others. But somehow, in the crucible of the fire, something extraordinary had been forged. Something far more precious than walls and tables and cloaks and even necklaces wrought in golden lilies.