Ruthless Charmer (9 page)

"Yes, indeed," her father said curtly, and grasping Claudia's elbow, moved her down the center aisle of the church as he nodded imperiously to acquaintances on both sides, muttering under his breath, "Must be a particularly cold day in hell if Kettering has decided to join us, hmmm?"

Yes, well, not only had he decided to "join" them, he had also decided to sit directly behind her. As a result, Claudia's skin prickled throughout the service—she could feel him watching her, could feel his eyes burning the skin of her neck, and in the middle of the sermon, she was quite certain she could feel his breath on her nape! His sudden fascination was making her insane, extremely anxious, and making her imagine she felt things she could not possibly feel. She sat rigidly, her hands clamped tightly in her lap, afraid to move even a fraction of an inch lest he think he had affected her somehow.

When the congregation rose for a doxology, his rich baritone voice slid over her like silk, and foolish as it was, she actually felt faint. As they resumed their seats, Claudia could not stand it another moment and stole a furtive look at him over her shoulder. He lifted one brow and nodded politely. Oh! She could hardly endure this! She would not endure it! Perhaps he could persuade other ladies with his charm, but not her. Oh no, not her. When the service at last ended, she marched up the aisle on her father's arm without so much as a glance in his direction, certain he was laughing, and determined more than ever to end this absurdity once and for all.

Across town, Doreen Conner, a woman with callused hands and failing eyesight, sat in her rocker as she did every day until well past midnight, doing any piecework that she could get. It was hard, tedious work, and at times her back ached more than she thought she could bear, but it was better than where she had been, and she was grateful that she could still work.

Doreen had come to London from Ireland more years ago than she could remember, before the Catholic Emancipation and before her papa discovered she was carrying Billy Conner's child. She and Billy had come so they wouldn't have to work the land like their parents, who struggled just to put food on the table. They married at a small church near the Billingsgate fish market, and with the coins they had saved—supplemented by a few from the kind vicar—they had rented a room above a cobbler in St. Giles.

Billy left every morning in search of work and came back every night, sometimes in his cups, other times just plain sullen. Doreen tidied the little room, washed their linens and took them down to the communal pump to rinse, bought their daily portion of bread and tried to make a meal of it. Sometimes, when the baker was feeling generous, he'd give her a potato for soup. By the time little Neddie was born, Doreen had figured out Billy would never find work. He had fallen in with some bad-blooded Irish lads, but it made Billy mad for her to say so, and when he had drunk a glass or two of his favorite Irish whiskey, he'd hit her if she even thought it.

Whatever those useless lads did during the day, it was not enough to feed them, let alone provide for Neddie. So Doreen began taking in piecework from the textile factories. That barely paid enough to feed them, so when a new factory opened, Doreen hired on there to be a weaver. She brought home a few shillings each week, hiding what Billy didn't drink, and it seemed to her that she worked from dawn to dusk so that Billy could have his Irish whiskey.

One night, Billy didn't come home. Doreen was frantic when one of the laddies told her he had cocked his toes up down on the banks of the Thames. In near hysterics, she rushed down to the place they buried paupers. A kind old man took pity on her, and led her around to the back where they laid them in one big hole, and she and the man had wrenched the boots off Billy's stiff feet. Clutching the boots to her chest, Doreen had headed home. In the end, she could thank Billy for two things: giving her Ned and a sturdy pair of boots. She still had the boots.

After Billy was gone, the cobbler didn't want a woman living in a room for which he could get a pound or two more from a family man. So Fanny Kate, a woman she had met at the pumps, took her in for awhile. Doreen shared part of her weekly earnings with Fanny Kate in exchange for her watching little Ned along with her own children while Doreen worked her hands to the bone as a weaver, putting up with the overseer's roaming hands and lewd suggestions. She despised that man, with his big belly and his bad teeth, but she had no choice except to endure it, because it was the only work she could get.

One day, when Doreen returned from the factory, Ned wasn't at Fanny Kate's to greet her. Fanny Kate lifted her head from her piecework long enough to tell her that Ned had run off with some ragamuffins. For the first time in her life, Doreen had known real panic. She had set out in her dead husband's boots, walking every street in St. Giles, looking in every doorway and every alley for her six-year-old son. With each step she took, the more she realized she could not raise her son to manhood, not like this.

She found Neddie down on the docks begging fancy lords for a ha'penny as they climbed onto their fancy boats that would take them upriver to their big fancy homes. Doreen took Neddie back to Fanny Kate's and sat up all night thinking about what she had to do. The next day, she and Neddie called on the overseer at his room near the factory. Doreen offered the use of her body in exchange for a place to sleep and keep her Ned.

That arrangement worked as well as could be expected until the old goat got a child on her. He didn't care so much for her then, and when she got big, he threw her out. Doreen found her way to a workhouse, where she and Ned were allowed to stay because Ned was eight and old enough to work. The two of them worked side by side in the carding room of a factory until her water broke, and Doreen gave birth to a perfect little girl she named Lucy. It was God's will, she supposed, that she managed through those years to keep food in her children's bellies. She went to other men as necessary, but fortunately, none of them got a child on her.

When Ned grew tall and lean and handsome, he wanted nothing more than to be a sailor. He'd watch the boats come up the Thames and brag that one day he would see the world, and that he'd bring a handsome sailor home to marry Lucy and fancy dresses for his mama. Doreen wanted nothing more than for Ned to have his dream, and she worked every day, even when she was so sick with fever she barely knew her own name. She scrimped and saved and finally had enough coin to buy him a pair of fine new boots and two good woolen shirts so that he could go off and be a sailor. Her Ned left her one bright morning when he was fifteen years old, and Doreen knew as she watched him walk away with his cotton sack slung over his shoulder that she'd never see her boy again.

She and Lucy continued on at the factory as weavers. Lucy grew into a pretty girl with green eyes and yellow hair, and when she began to grow into her curves, the lads took notice of her. Doreen tried to do her best by Lucy—she warned the girl what men were about, but the lass never seemed to hear her. The girl was only thirteen when the overseer's son took her out behind the factory and showed her what a man did to a woman. She was only fourteen when another lad got a child on her. And she was all of fifteen when she and that baby died in her dirty old cot, neither of them able to separate from the other as they ought.

When Lucy died, Doreen felt as if she'd lost her right arm, but she went back to work the next day just as she always had. She let the new overseer tell her that she was late and owed a fine for it, and let the other women steal the bread from her bucket so they'd have enough to feed their children that night. She let the whole world roll over her day after day, feeling nothing. She'd smile when the fancy ladies came to do their charity work, feeling nothing at the looks of appalled revulsion as they passed by. She let the overseer maul her breast when he wanted, feeling nothing when his rank breath filled her lungs. She moved down the line when a new woman came and wanted her spot at the carding station. She just felt. . . nothing.

Until one cold, wintry morning. Doreen reckoned she would never know what changed between the time she went to sleep and the time she woke. But she felt different when the whistle blew and it was time to start work. She knew she was different when the new woman told her to move and she pretended not to hear her. She knew she was different when the charity ladies appeared, all shiny in their fancy clothes and jewels, and she scowled at them as they passed. And when the overseer told her she'd have to man one of the big spooling machines that caught and tore her skirts, Doreen heard herself say no. She stood up, looked the little man square in the eye, and just said no. The overseer didn't believe his ears, and he took out the stick he used when the women didn't do what he wanted, and struck her hard across the shoulders. But Doreen just said no again, only louder, and the man might have beaten her to death if the angel hadn't come and taken her away.

Of course she knew it wasn't a real angel. She was one of those charity ladies, with pretty grayish eyes and dark auburn hair and a gown made of fabric so fine that Doreen had never seen anything like it. She had put her hand on Doreen. None of the charity ladies ever touched her when they came to look around. But the angel put her hand on Doreen, helped her to her feet, and Doreen had walked out of that factory for the last time.

The angel had brought her to a tidy little town house on Upper Moreland Street, far from the factories. That had been a year ago, and Doreen had been at the little town house ever since, because Miss Claudia had asked her to stay and look after it. In the course of the year, several other women had come and gone, all down on their luck, some of them bruised, others just needing a place to keep their children safe for a time until they could figure out how they were going to feed them. The house was a secret for the most part because Miss Claudia said there were times a woman needed to find her bearings without her man or the magistrate or the overseer interfering. That was the one rule she had for the house: Any woman who stayed had to promise she wouldn't tell a soul about it, unless that soul was another woman in need.

Doreen kept the little house clean, made sure everyone had plenty of food and a clean bed to sleep on, and in exchange for that, Miss Claudia gave her a monthly stipend. But it was too generous to Doreen's way of thinking, so she spent her evenings doing the piecework, hoping someday she could repay Miss Claudia for all her kindness. She doubted there was enough coin in all of London to do that, but she worked at it all the same.

And she was working the afternoon she saw Miss Claudia's carriage pull up to the curb. She paused and watched her alight, taking the box the driver handed her. A frown creased Doreen's brow; something was different since Miss Claudia had come back from France. Oh, she still smiled that sweet smile of hers, but there was a distant look to her eyes and a bit of hesitation in her speech. It was almost as if her mind was in another world. It was none of Doreen's affair, but nonetheless, she had a notion of what ailed her—she hadn't worked around women all her life not to know a thing or two about them.

"Good morning, Doreen!" Miss Claudia called cheerfully as she stepped inside.

"It's afternoon. You've a fever?" Doreen asked, folding her arms across her chest.

Miss Claudia looked startled. "A fever? Of course not," she said, and laughed.

"You don't look quite right. Haven't since you come back," Doreen insisted.

"I am quite well, I assure you," she said, and swept into the parlor, where she set the box down. She removed her bonnet, let it dangle from her hand for a moment as she stared into space. "Oh my, the chair has not yet been repaired? I asked Mr. Walford to come by as soon as possible," she said, and absently dropped her bonnet. On the floor.

"Mr. Walford says he will come on the morrow—"

"He said the same on Monday—"

"He'll come when he's the time. Sit now, while I pour you some tea," Doreen insisted, but Miss Claudia ignored her. She set the broken chair upside down and attempted to screw the leg in herself. "It would seem rather easy, yet I can't seem to make the leg fit properly."

"I've already tried. That chair needs a man's hand." She glanced at Miss Claudia from the corner of her eye as she stared, hands on hips, at the chair. "Same for you, truth be told."

With a startled gasp, Miss Claudia gaped at Doreen. "I beg your pardon?"

Doreen flashed a rare, gap-toothed smile. "Ain't none of my affair, miss, but you've got that look about you if you don't mind me saying—have since you come back from France," she said, and calmly poured a cup of tea.

"That look? What look?" Claudia demanded as she marched across the room to accept the cup of tea Doreen offered her.

"That look. The one a woman gets when a man has gotten in her head and she can't shake him out." The suggestion was enough to make Miss Claudia turn a bright shade of pink, and Doreen sank into a chair, bracing her hands on her knees. "I'll be. It is a man!" she exclaimed, grinning.

"No," Miss Claudia said with an emphatic shake of her head.

"Who's the bloke?" Doreen asked, cheerfully ignoring the denial.

The pink in Miss Claudia's cheeks turned red. "There is no man, Doreen!"

"One of those high and mighty lords in Mayfair, ain't he? Ooh, I'll wager he's a handsome one, too. Sure, all those lords are handsome. Blimey, some dandy has set his cap on you, ain't he?"

Claudia's teacup rattled on the chipped saucer; she hastily put it down. "You've a vivid imagination, Doreen!" she said, and laughed as she self-consciously fumbled with her sleeve.

"Bloody hell, the gent has you by the tail!" Doreen exclaimed gleefully. "Well, I'm glad for it. A pretty woman like you ought to be married. Aye, a woman like you is what those dandies want in a wife."

Claudia stood, looked around the room, then suddenly sat again. "I_. . ._ I forgot to ask. Is there anything you need?"

Doreen laughed for the first time in a long time. Miss Claudia was always so confident, so poised—exactly how Doreen imagined the queen to be. Yet at the mere mention of a chap she was a basket of nerves. "We've more than enough," she said, still chuckling, and nodded toward the box. "I reckon we fare as well as the king here. You needn't worry about us."