Edith Layton (19 page)

B
ridget read the note twice but learned no more from the second read through it. When she looked up she saw Gilly waiting for her to finish, so she slipped the note into her pocket and closed the door, motioning Gilly to sit. She seated herself opposite her visitor before she spoke again.

“Tell me,” she asked, “why did you say such strange things about me? Why would you want to take Betsy away? This place is good for her, surely you can see that for yourself.”

“Aye, so ’tis
—now
,” Gilly said, turning her hat round and round in her hands. Those small hands were red and callused, the fingernails stained and blunt. They were hands that worked, and worked hard. Gilly hunkered down over the wretched hat, but then looked up, her peculiar golden eyes full of sorrow and fury. “N
ow
she’s fine, I see that. Any fool could. But what about in a year or two?”

Bridget smiled in relief. “Oh. I see. Don’t worry, I’m only waiting here; my husband will be returning from London anytime now. That’s why I’m still here by myself and why Betsy’s not settled yet. But when we get to his father’s estate we’re going to foster her to a worthy family there. I’ll make sure of it. Don’t fret; she’ll be educated, she’ll learn.”

“Huh! That’s what I’m afraid of.” Gilly scowled, then she sighed heavily and ducked her head, staring at the hat in her hands.

“Listen, Miss Bridget.” she said in a gruff little voice, “you don’t have to do no fancy dancing with me no more. I ain’t green—can’t be in London, can you? Plain talk between us, then. If you don’t mind being a gent’s convenient, why then, more power to you, says I. It’s a good life for some. But not for the likes of me and Betsy. Maybe some can do it, but me? I don’t even like to have to touch a gent’s hand.”

Bridget couldn’t speak. What Gilly thought of her was so awful she felt a pang in her chest, as though she’d been hit with a fist.

“But Betsy ain’t so bad as me. She ain’t got cause, thank God,” Gilly went on relentlessly. “But she ain’t petticoat goods neither. She’s too kind and too loving for the game. See, it’s hard to keep your heart whole if you’re a gent’s mistress, ’specially if you learn to care for him—like poor Annie Haynes, her that attached that handsome young baron? Oh, she was the envy of all the tarts on the street. But she kilt herself when he lent her to his friend, she did. And more’s the pity, ’cause she
was a good girl with a warm heart till she give it away to the wrong man.”

“Gilly!” Bridget gasped, as horrified by what Gilly was implying as she was by what she was saying. But the girl went on relentlessly.

“So you got to have a cold heart
and
a hard head to walk that road,” Gilly insisted. “Even if you get a good ride for your money with a fair protector, even if you keep your wits about you, it ain’t your wits they’re paying for, is it? As for keeping them and your profit, why, you got to be shrewd as you can hold together. It ain’t easy hanging on to your money once your looks go. Some can—not many, though. Just look at where I live in London. Them that don’t keep their gold wind up as low as they lived high. They end up walking the streets. Streets? Hah!
Gutters
, more like.”

“Gilly,” Bridget said firmly, “that
is
terrible. I understand your fears. But you can’t have understood. I’m
married
. Betsy was at our wedding. I’m not the Viscount’s ‘convenient.’ I’m his wife now.”

Gilly sighed. “And if you really believe that, then I’m that sorry for you. For it ain’t true. You ain’t no viscountess, nor his wife neither. Listen,” she said wearily, “why’d you think I come tearing up here to get Betsy? I don’t want her living with a demi-rep and that’s that. The whores who don’t work in houses, them that call themselves ‘demi-reps’”—she snorted in derision—“like giving a thing a Frog name makes it better. The ones with protectors and fancy places of their own to live in, I mean. They live soft, and they like to take on little girls, like pets, I s’pose. for company, ’cause their days are so lonely until the nights, when they work. She coulda lived pretty as you please with her own room and a soft
bed, stead of sharing a blanket in a corner with me. But I wouldn’t let Betsy go to them, no matter how good they live, nor will I let her stay with you neither.

“A girl learns from her elders, and there’s truth. I work like a dog, and that ain’t the best thing for Betsy to learn. Granted. But it’s a sight better than working on her back until no one will buy her anymore. A woman can always find decent work if she’s willing to work hard. But the other kind of life, soft as it is, don’t prepare her for nothing but nothing, in the end.”

Bridget was appalled at Gilly’s knowledge of the world—a different world from any she’d ever seen. But how could the girl know that? She opened her lips to set her straight, but Gilly fixed her with a golden stare. “I don’t know what Betsy was doing with them flowers that day,” she said ruefully, “nor why you had a feast after it. ’cause near as I can tell—and I can find out anything—you ain’t married to no one at all.”

Bridget’s gray eyes flew open wide.

Gilly went on with difficulty, because Bridget’s reaction was upsetting her. “You look sick, Miss Bridget. But things have to be said. See, there weren’t no notice in the
Times
. Now, if a gent gets married, it would be there. Everyone knows that. I can’t read, o’course, but I know them that does, and it weren’t never there, they said. I asked and I asked. And I know where to ask. Nor did anyone who knows the Viscount know he was wed neither. He was, o’course, all them years ago. But not since.

“And if he did marry again, it would be to someone high as he, or someone whose looks…” The dark scar on Bridget’s face stood out in bold relief across her sudden pallor, and Gilly paused. She gazed at the hat she twisted in her hands. Her voice became lower and sadder.

“Miss Bridget, you may be greener than grass, but you got to know some gents will do anything to get a female they fancy into their bed. You
got
to know that. And Sinclair, well, all know he’s a rake. And this place—it’s where he takes his women. Well-known fact, even in London. I kept track of Betsy, I got my ways. When I heard you was here, that’s when I started worrying. Now I see he’s gone, and I ain’t wondering anymore.”

“It can’t be,” Bridget said, shaking her head. “It’s not!” she said with more vigor. She remembered Ewen and raised her head.

“I
am
married, Gilly. My husband was called to London. That’s why I’m still here and not at his father’s house yet. I just received a message from him—why, that message I got just now was his. He sends me a message every day….” Her voice trailed off. Being a good correspondent was no proof of anything.

And so what
? Bridget told herself, her chin coming up higher. I
know him
. “He asked me to wait. He’ll be here soon.” she said staunchly, holding out the note with a trembling hand before she remembered Gilly couldn’t read—before she remembered she didn’t have to prove herself to anyone. She pocketed the note, took a steadying breath, and spoke with all the authority she didn’t feel.

“He’ll explain everything when he gets here. Why. I hate to even ask him about this. I’m sure he’ll be hurt by my doubting him.” She laughed, but the sound came out shrill. “Let Betsy stay until then. Just until he comes home. Then you’ll see. It would be a crime to take her away now.”

I’
m not pleading
, Bridget told herself. A
nd it’s not just for
B
etsy’s sake; the girl’s only a slum child
I’
m doing something char
itable for
. I
t’s the principle of the thing
. But suddenly she was terrified at the thought of being alone here, although she didn’t want to dwell on that.

“In fact,” she added quickly, “why don’t you stay, too? At least until my husband comes back. I’m sure we can find a room for you, although that mightn’t be necessary at all.” She laughed, hoping it sounded like she was laughing gaily. “Why, he could be back any hour now!”

“Might as well,” Gilly said resignedly, “but if I have to stay the night, I’ll share with Betsy, thanks.”

Bridget relaxed.

“Could be I can do you a good turn, too. Who knows?” Gilly asked sadly, rising to her feet and looking around the elegant room. “Maybe you’ll want to come back with us when he gets here—if he ever does, that is.”

Gilly had traveled hard, and she went to bed early that night, after eating a huge dinner. The kitchen staff may have winced to see such a grubby creature at their table, but Gilly insisted on eating in there instead of with her hostess.

“I can scrub my mitts,” she told Bridget, “but I’m too tired for a proper wash and too dirty for such a fine place the way I am. And I only got the clothes on my back. I’ll wash them out and let them dry overnight. Tomorrow I’ll give myself a proper soak in a tub full of suds and dress from the skin out in clean clothes. Then I’ll be fit for dining with a duchess—if you got one around. But now? All I need is something to stick to my ribs, a place to kip, and I’ll be right as rain in the morning.”

Betsy ate with her beloved sister, so Bridget dined alone. She walked alone after dinner, too, pacing the salon until it was time to go pace in her room—their
room, as she kept reminding herself. Not that she had to. His presence was stronger in their bedroom than anywhere in the house. The implications of that notion didn’t comfort her much now.

But when she lay down in their bed at last in the broad moonlight, she imagined his dark head on the pillow next to hers. She reached out a hand and stroked the cool sheet, remembering the warm, muscled body that had lain next to her own, remembering the way her slightest touch could make him wake and take her in his arms, remembering how she’d shared warmth and ecstasy with him. His hair had been silken as the coverlet she stroked now. His hands on her breasts had been harder and yet gentler on her skin than her own, the scent of him had been warm and musky. At the thought her body seemed to swell, tingle, yearn—a dry patch that had once known such sweet rain.

She remembered the quick pace of his breath on her neck, his voice in her ear, urgent, wanting, willing….

She flipped over on her belly and groaned, pulling a pillow over her head. She missed him body and soul. And she was very, very frightened.

Gilly cleaned up amazingly well. Her hair looked like corn silk, not dirty straw, in the morning light. Her complexion was fair under all that removed dirt. And she was much younger than Bridget had thought—until she looked into those strange yellow eyes and saw how old they were. But at least now she looked like a presentable, if strange, young lad.

They actually made a pretty picture as they strolled through a meadow pied with purple clover and busy with butterflies. Bridget was shapely and graceful in a
cream-colored gown, her bonnet swinging from her fingers, her hair glowing with rich mink tones in the summer sunlight. Gilly looked like a slender flaxen-haired lad striding along by her side, and bright little Betsy skipped before them.

“And so then it was give Betsy over to the beadle and go on by myself, or keep her. Well, that weren’t no decision at all, I can tell you,” Gilly was saying as she told Bridget her story.

“You had no relatives?” Bridget asked.

“I had them—just lost them somewheres along the way,” Gilly said with a grin. “Like I said, my dad worked like a mule, lading on the docks. He just dropped down one day, stone dead. Folks said it was his heart. He was a good man, that I do remember. Ma took in washing and such to keep us going, but then when she got the fever she was so worn out she just laid down and died. They was both from the country come to the city to make their fortunes. All they made was Betsy and me.”

“And they didn’t keep in touch with home?”

“More like they didn’t want to, I think. The land was all taken and there wasn’t room for no more mouths to feed there.”

Bridget nodded. She understood. Her parents had come from a higher class, but it was much the same for them. Decently bred daughters from the middle class found themselves in the same no-man’s-land as the poor did these days.

Everything was changing. War was changing the face of the world, and industry was changing the face of England. People couldn’t work at home anymore; common land was becoming private as property was fenced off. Even the rich knew life wasn’t going to be the same
as it had been for their fathers. An extra mouth to feed and an extra body to dress were often hardships or threats to the well-being of those who had just enough for themselves, or thought they did.

“But you can’t go on working like a man, much less dressing like one,” Bridget argued.

“Oh, can’t I?” Gilly said, bristling. “Listen, Miss Bridget, I got no use for men. But if I can act like one, that’s fine with me. I don’t want to make my bread serving them, and if a girl got no one else to depend on, how else is she to earn her keep? If not serving them in bed, like some do”—she had the grace to look down as she said that—” then she’ll be serving them in taverns and such, bringing them vittles and drink. They don’t make much, anyway. I don’t want to work in some rich man’s house scrubbing up his messes neither—besides, I don’t know no one who’d recommend me for such. The rich don’t hire no one they don’t know, and who can blame them? I can’t read nor write. Don’t got a family in a proper business, like selling milk or coal, or sharpening scissors or selling fish,” she said enviously.

“Selling fish?” Bridget said, startled. “You think that’s a fine occupation?”

“I’d do it in a flash if I could,” Gilly said fervently. “Good money and brisk business. But where am I to get fish from, I ask you? Standing with a pole on London Bridge? Huh. Them that does sells fish, even in the streets, has connections,” she said bitterly, “family and friends with boats, and such. Fresh fish ain’t easy to come by elsewise.”

Bridget had never considered fishmongers as particularly lucky people, but she now could see why Gilly did. She’d never thought about it. Her parents might
not have been wealthy, but they’d been from a different world than Gilly. Her father had been a learned man, her mother an educated woman. She had never actually met a girl like Gilly before—although she supposed she’d been surrounded by men and women like Gilly all her life. She’d never felt particularly privileged before, either. Now she realized she was.