Sheri Cobb South (2 page)

With the loss of her position, however, the task of finding her father must yield to the more pressing demands of keeping food in her belly and a roof over her head. Squaring her shoulders and thrusting her chin forward, she opened the door of the milliner’s shop and marched inside to inquire after a position.

She repeated the process frequently on her way home, but the answers to her queries were variations on the same theme: with the migration of the
beau monde
from Town, no new workers were being hired. By the time she reached Henrietta Street, where she lived with a linen-draper’s family in a hired room over his shop, her spirits were utterly downcast. She had lost her old position and had no hope of finding a new one. She had no choice but to swallow her pride and return home in defeat—if, in fact, her meager store of coins would stretch to the cost of a ticket on the stagecoach.

The bell over the door of Hargett & Son, Linen-drapers, jingled as she entered the shop, its cheerful music a sharp contrast to Polly’s dispirited sigh. If only she had thought before flinging her apron and cap back at Mr. Minchin! They might have fetched a few pence at a used-clothing shop. But the provocation had been too great to resist, and she had always been impulsive to a fault; indeed, good Reverend Jennings had often said it was her besetting sin. Now, besides admitting that her impulsive trip to London had been but one more of her rash starts, she would have to endure the added humiliation of requesting the vicar to send her money he could ill afford for the return trip.

And he would do it, too, she thought with a sudden rush of affection for the man who had stood
in loco parentis
to her for the last six years. He would send her the needed funds over his wife’s objections, and never utter a word of censure.

“Why, Miss Hampton, you’re home early,” observed her landlord, Mr. Hargett. “My Tom will be sorry he missed you,” he added with a broad wink.

“Business was slower than usual,” she answered vaguely, unwilling to reveal the whole truth just yet. Mr. and Mrs. Hargett were kindly enough people, but Tom Hargett, the junior half of Hargett & Son, had been making sheep’s eyes at her almost from the day of her arrival, and his fond parents lost no opportunity to let her know how much they would welcome a match between their only son and their genteel young boarder. Polly doubted they would be so cruel as to turn her out immediately, but remaining under their roof now that she could no longer pay her keep would make it exceedingly awkward to repulse their son’s ever more pressing advances. And so she said nothing of her misfortunes, but watched as Mr. Hargett artfully draped a bolt of fabric the better to catch a customer’s eye.

“Pretty,” she remarked, fingering the crisp folds of printed cotton.

“That’s the future you’re looking at,” the loquacious Mr. Hargett informed her. “So far as I know, it’s the first fabric to be woven and printed all under the same roof. A man named Brundy produces it at a mill near Manchester, and I’ll wager it won’t be long before every textile mill in the North will be doing the same. I met the fellow myself many years ago, when the old man—Mr. Brundy that was—brought him to London to show him this end of the business. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old at the time, but already he was as shrewd as he could stare. Of course, his name wasn’t Brundy then—he changed it when the old man died and left him the mill, lock, stock, and barrel.”

“His family must have been pleased at his good fortune.” Polly feigned an interest she did not feel, grateful that Mr. Hargett had apparently dropped the subject of young Tom.

“Oh, he had no family. That’s what made his story so unusual. The old Mr. Brundy got him from the workhouse when he was only a tadpole.”

The mention of the workhouse brought unpleasant memories to bear. Polly, unwilling to face those memories just yet, sought to stifle them by seizing upon the familiar name.

“I heard some mention of a Mr. Brundy in the bookshop today,” she remarked when her landlord paused to draw a breath.

Mr. Hargett grinned knowingly. “Oh, there’s been gossip a-plenty about Mr. Brundy since he married a duke’s daughter and set himself up as a gentleman in Grosvenor Square. Bookstores aren’t the only place where fashionable customers talk, you know,” he added with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

“No, I suppose not,” she said with an answering smile before heading for the back stairs. Suddenly she longed for the privacy of her room and the opportunity to rest for a moment before facing the task of composing a suitably penitent letter to Reverend Jennings.

“Crump!”

Mr. Hargett’s exclamation interrupted her flight, and she turned back.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Crump, his name was. Ethan Crump,” he said, pleased beyond bearing at this feat of memory. “Isn’t it funny, the things the mind recalls after so many years?”

“Funny, indeed,” Polly agreed, and climbed the narrow staircase to her room, a cramped chamber furnished with a bed, a rickety washstand bearing a pitcher and basin, a single straight chair, and a writing table over which a cracked mirror was hung. She removed her bonnet and hung her shawl on a peg behind the door, then collapsed onto her bed. She had not the luxury of a long repose if she hoped to make the day’s post. She rose quickly, washed her face with water from the basin, and sat down to write. She struggled with this epistle, as she could not spare more than a single sheet of paper in the attempt and thus had to choose every word with care, but at last it was finished. She folded it and sealed it with a wafer, and was about to take it downstairs to be mailed when a knock fell upon her door.

“Miss Hampton?” The voice belonged to Mrs. Hargett, her landlady. “You have a letter, dear.”

So she had missed the post, after all. Somehow this relatively minor setback seemed perfectly in keeping with everything else that had happened to her. She opened the door and took the letter, then broke the seal and spread the single sheet.

She glanced down at the signature first, and found that the sender was Mrs. Jennings, the vicar’s wife. The discovery was enough to fill Polly with foreboding, since Mrs. Jennings had never approved of her husband’s generosity to one born in sin and had never hesitated to voice her views on the subject, so long as her husband was not there to chide her for her lack of Christian charity.

As Polly deciphered the spidery script, she felt decidedly unwell. It pained Mrs. Jennings to inform her that Mr. Jennings had been carried off quite suddenly by an infectious fever of the lungs. . . They could be thankful that his sufferings, though severe, were not of a long duration. . . It would mean so much to him to know that Polly was well established in London. . . As for herself, she would now be making her home with her widowed sister in Hampshire... .

There was no mention of the location of this sister’s house, nor anything else that might be construed as an invitation for Polly to join her there. The message was clear: Polly was now “well established in London,” and Mrs. Jennings considered any obligation on her part to have been fully discharged. There was no home to go back to, even had she possessed the funds to do so.

Chapter 2

A man’s house is his castle.

SIR EDWARD COKE,
Third Institute

“Miss Hampton? Are you all right, dear?” asked Mrs. Hargett, watching in unabashed curiosity as her boarder turned pale upon reading the missive. “Not bad news, I hope?”

“No, Mrs. Hargett, merely surprising,” Polly stammered, hastily refolding the letter and tucking it into her bodice, safe from her landlady’s prying eyes. “It appears I will be leaving you soon.”

“Leaving?” echoed Mrs. Hargett. “Whatever for?”
Because I can no longer afford to pay for my room,
Polly might have said. But her grief was too raw, and her future too uncertain, to allow her to confide in anyone as yet. Instead, she fixed her features in a smile and said, with a fair semblance of eagerness, “Only fancy, Mrs. Hargett! I’ve been offered a new position in a fine house!”

Mrs. Hargett’s somewhat protuberant eyes narrowed in suspicion. “And was it a fine gentleman offered you this new position?”

Polly, accurately interpreting Mrs. Hargett’s inferences, blushed rosily. “The position is that of—of companion to an elderly lady. I had the privilege of serving her in the bookstore one day, and she liked the way I read aloud,” she added, her landlady’s skepticism spurring her on to new heights of creativity.

Mrs.   Hargett   clicked   her   tongue   reproachfully. “‘Companion,’ my eye! The best position for a pretty young thing like you is to be wife to a handsome young man who’ll provide for you decent. My Tom will inherit his father’s business one day, you know,” she said pointedly.

“I hope for Mr. Hargett’s sake that that day is far into the future,” Polly replied, ignoring her landlady’s insinuations.

“Oh, to be sure! But don’t you be thinking that Tom’ll not have a penny to call his own until then! Lawks, no! He’s more nor capable of supporting a wife—aye, and a couple o’ young ‘uns, too, come to that!”

As Mr. Hargett’s establishment did a thriving business, Polly could not dispute this statement; unfortunately, Tom’s wife would have to accept along with his successful business and respectable income a husband whose character was reflected all too clearly in his bovine countenance. But of course Tom’s doting mama could not be expected to welcome the information that Polly had known cows with more intelligence than her son, and so Polly doggedly packed her meager possessions into a battered valise, paid her disapproving landlady for her last week’s rent, and set out to face an uncertain future.

Having already exhausted the possibility of finding work in a shop, she was obliged to lower her sights to domestic work in a private house. For one who had been reminded all her life that she was Quality, at least on her father’s side, this was a comedown indeed, but after examining her options, Polly came to the conclusion that respectable work polishing silver, making beds, or even sweeping out grates was preferable to the sort of position which Mr. Minchin proposed. Her flagging spirits were somewhat bolstered by the slim but ever-present hope that her father might visit the house in which she found employment, and so she set off on foot for the more fashionable residential districts, her valise banging against her knee with every step.

Alas, here too it seemed fate was against her. At her first stop, the housekeeper inspected her hands and, finding them soft and white, pronounced that she had never known a day’s work in her life—a false accusation which, due to her lack of references, Polly was unable to disprove. Her second attempt appeared more promising, at least at first, for here the housekeeper invited her in and instructed her to take off her bonnet and shawl. When Polly obeyed, she was ordered to turn around. She sketched a slow circle under the woman’s watchful gaze, at the end of which the housekeeper said, “His lordship sent you, did he?”

“His lordship, ma’am?” echoed Polly, all at sea.

“Aye, he always did have an eye for a pretty young thing, although I’ll admit you’re a bit more ladylike than most.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite—”

“Well, you tell my lord that he’ll have to set you up in a house of your own, for her ladyship will eat me for breakfast if I help him install one of his fancy-pieces under his own roof, and no mistake!”

Finding her bonnet and shawl thrust into her arms, Polly wasted no time defending herself against false charges, but beat a hasty retreat, helped on her way by the offended housekeeper. Her next stop had certain similarities to this one, the main difference being that it was not the master but the eldest son who was known to raid the kitchen at night for things other than bread and cheese. Subsequent attempts were equally fruitless. Many of the houses had already been closed for the summer, the door knockers removed and the servants dispatched to their masters’ country estates or released to find other employment in Town.

Alone on the sidewalk, Polly dropped her valise to the pavement and collapsed wearily onto it. The sun was beginning to sink in the west, and she had nowhere to go, save back to the Hargetts and their dim-witted Tom. If only she had been successful in her search for her father, how different her life might have been! As it was, she could almost see the doors of the workhouse yawning wide to receive her.  Would she be so determined to defend her honor after a few weeks in that living hell, or would she leap at Mr. Minchin’s offer? For it was common knowledge that once one entered those dreaded portals, escape was well nigh impossible.

Except, of course, that one
had
escaped. Mr. Hargett had described him at great length, and Lady Farriday had spoken of him to the fashionable gentleman in the bookstore. Perhaps, having a similar history, he might be willing to help her find her father. But no, according to Lady Farriday, Mr. Brundy was an unscrupulous businessman who had used his wealth to coerce the beautiful Lady Helen into marriage—hardly the sort of man upon whose mercy one might throw oneself. Still, begging charity from a stranger was preferable to the few other options which presented themselves, and so Polly rose wearily to her feet and tightened her grip on her valise.

Deciding that it would not be at all the thing to trudge to fashionable Grosvenor Square on foot, she was obliged to part with one of her precious coins in order to hire a hackney to take her to her destination. Alas, not until she was set down in that modish neighborhood did she realize that she had no idea which one of the imposing residences lining the square housed the man about whom she had heard so much.

“Excuse me,” she called to the crossing sweeper plying his trade on the corner, “do you know which one of these houses belongs to a Mr. Ethan Brundy?”

“Aye, miss, that I do,” he replied, and turned back to his broom.

With a little huff of annoyance, Polly sacrificed another coin to the cause.

“That would be number twenty-three,” he said, jerking a thumb in the right direction with one hand while he pocketed her hard-earned pay with the other.