Blood to Blood (4 page)

She moved around the table, kneeling at his feet, his hands in hers. "Jonathan, I forgive you that."

He bit his lips, then blurted the words she'd expected to hear. "Was he… Gance… because of what that blood in you made you feel?"

"In the beginning. At the end it was how I felt," she answered honestly.

"And if Gance hadn't died in Transylvania, would you be here now?"

"I don't know," she answered. She poured another brandy, noting his disapproval—silent and obvious as always. She looked at him and added, "Should I be here at all?"

"I brought you here because it is your home. I'd like us to go back to the way things were when we were first married, before any of…"

She had to struggle to keep from shuddering, from revealing any of the terror she felt at the thought of that life. "Never again, Jonathan," she whispered. "I can't abide being useless, and that is what I have been in this house. What I should like instead is a position. I am skilled enough to be a clerk in your office. We could work together."

"We're not shopkeepers, Mina. It isn't done."

"We'd be the first, then."

"It isn't done. But there are other things. In your free time, you can work with Winnie Beason at the hospital. Take some of that money Gance left you and put it to good use. I can help you with that."

She considered the compromise, then asked, "And what would you expect of me?"

She leaned toward him as she spoke those last words. The sweet taste of brandy was on her lips, the heady warmth of it already running through her, driving out the chill of the journey. All he had to do now was kiss her and everything, everything that had happened would be forgiven.

But he didn't. He actually looked as if he were forming a list in his mind. She picked up the bottle and took a candle from the sideboard. "I'll sleep in the guest room," she said and started up the stairs, moving slowly, begging him to stop her.

He said nothing, just as she knew he would say nothing the following day, and the months and years after.

At least he had made her decision easy.

Concentrating on that small bit of happiness, she went to bed.

She woke late in the morning, not surprised to find that Jonathan had already left for the office. His note mentioned an early appointment that would be impossible to postpone. It asked that she please stop by the office so they could go to lunch.

Not likely today, she thought. There was too much to do.

She stepped outside, inhaling the damp June air, taking in the quiet of the street, the splashes of sunlight in the puddles from last night's rain. A messenger on a bicycle passed by and she hailed him, asking him to find her a cab and send it to the house in an hour. She tipped him well and went inside to pack.

There wasn't much she wanted to claim, and little that she really needed. From her room, she took her clothes, the pictures of her parents, a few keepsakes. From downstairs, her typewriter and her favorite photograph of her and Jonathan, taken soon after they returned from her first journey east. Since they'd recently married, she considered it their wedding picture.

She moved through the rooms, running her hands over furniture willed to them by Mr. Hawkins, realizing that nothing in these walls mattered at all to her.

Except the memories, she thought. And in this house only the earliest ones had been good.

Jonathan's Aunt Millicent would undoubtedly tell him that at least he should be thankful she left so soon.

She heard the driver outside and went to the front door, where she already had her trunk waiting. She reached into her handbag, her fingers closing around the key Mr. Quarks had given her, the freedom Gance had spoken of.

For being an utter libertine, he was remarkably astute.

The trip took them past the children's hospital. Mina asked the driver to stop for a moment. As she expected, Winnie wasn't in so early, so she left a note with her address and an invitation for Winnie to call as soon as possible.

The cab continued on through narrowing streets.

Exeter did not have the slums of London, but like any large town, it had poverty of its own, and the shortest route to her new home took her straight through it. The driver took her past factories and dilapidated rooming houses. Glimpses down the narrow lanes between them revealed small children playing in the gutters, splashing in the water from last night's rain, water mixed no doubt with the droppings from slop buckets. Young beggars stood on the corners, rushing to her cab and asking for pennies every time her driver was forced to slow down.

She wanted to give some of her wealth away, but she knew where the generosity would lead. The poor would flock to the cab like geese at a morning feeding until the boldest of them realized that her voluntary generosity could be easily bypassed.

So she kept her eyes straight ahead and ignored any approaches.

In the narrow passage between two buildings, she saw a woman leaning against a man. her skirts lifted and wrapped around them both. Later she spied another woman leaning on a man's arm, both obviously drunk or drugged. The woman's hand against the man's dark coat revealed two missing fingers. Her skirt was ripped and filthy. Had one of these factories maimed her, then spit her out when she could no longer work? Had pain driven her to drugs or drink?

Mina tried to keep her eyes straight ahead, but she kept glancing at the sadness around her—women leaning against sunlit doorways, women holding children as ragged as they were, women in taverns, on benches in workyards sharing bread.

And last, a copper-haired young woman whose blue dress and bonnet were worn, but clean and mended. She had just left a workhouse, and her expression appeared desperate. But there was still color in her cheeks, and she appeared well fed. Most likely this wasn't the sort of work she was used to, Mina decided. Her driver had only traveled on a few hundred feet before Mina rapped her umbrella on the side of the cab and asked him to stop.

Stepping out of the cab, Mina called to the woman. She wasn't surprised when the woman looked at her as if she might know her. As Mina suspected, she had been someone's servant. "What is your name?" Mina asked as the woman approached her.

"Estelle Toth, mum. Essie." She smoothed back a lock of honey colored hair that had escaped from under her bonnet.

"And are you employed, Essie?"

"No, mum. I was. I was a maid for Judge Charles Proctor and his wife."

Judge Proctor. Mina frowned, trying to recall why the name sounded so distasteful. "And you are no longer there?"

"No, mum. I had a disagreement with Judge Proctor."

Mina suddenly recalled a piece of gossip about the man, told her by one of the children's nurses at the hospital. Given the attractiveness of the girl, Mina could easily guess the reason for the disagreement. "Can you read?" she asked.

"A bit. More than I need to get by."

"Can you provide a reference?"

"Only Mrs. Proctor, mum. But she is an invalid and may not be up to answering your inquiry."

"I'll check with her anyway. Can you come by my home the day after tomorrow?"

Essie sighed and shook her head. "I'm sorry, mum. I need to find something sooner, and if I do, then it wouldn't be right to desert my new employer."

Mina had always prided herself on knowing real character when she saw it, and she was sure she saw it now. "Then you shall start as my maid immediately," she said. "Can you come with me now?"

"I'll need to collect my things, but I can be there by two."

Mina wrote down her name and an address and pressed the paper and a coin into Essie's hand. "Get something to eat and someone to help you bring your bags."

As the cab pulled away, Mina watched Essie stroll down the street toward the rooming houses, walking faster now than before. Mina had given Essie a most unexpected gift, and another to herself as well.

She had a house, and now a servant to help her maintain it. Best of all, she was following her instincts, and they felt so correct.

The day was starting out much better than she'd ever expected.

Dr. Felix Chandra Rhys sat at his desk in his Exeter clinic, carefully explaining the needs of his tiny patient to its mother. As he spoke, he dangled his pocket watch before the toddler, noting the boy's lethargic interest in the bauble. He doubted the woman understood half his explanation about nutrition, so he relied, finally, on a simpler set of directions. "Every morning I want you to go to the Loden Brewery and ask for Mike Farrell. Tell him you need a bit of the unfermented malt blend. Have Roddy suck down as much as he'll take for the next few days."

"Beer?" the woman asked, shocked.

"Not beer. Hops and barley and molasses. Just what Roddy needs for the next few days. Can you do that?"

"I've a couple shillings that I was planning to—"

He understood. "No need to pay me now. Just see that Roddy gets what he needs." He showed the woman to the door, hoping that she would follow his orders, but hardly certain. Still, he tried. If the child survived, so be it. If he died, well, Rhys shared his own mother's beliefs in reincarnation and hoped the child would have a better life the next turn of the wheel.

Rhys had a successful practice in another part of Exeter much like the one he'd abandoned in London the year before, but once a week he spent a day in this dingy storefront just a few blocks from Winnie Beason's charity hospital, tending to the needs of Exeter's poorest citizens, just as he had in

London's East End. Over the past year his main surprise was how many poor there were in this small city and how, in spite of the huge numbers who died far too young, their numbers seemed to grow so quickly.

But he did not abandon the charity work he'd begun years before. His charity cases were, after all, in keeping with a promise he'd made a decade ago to his mother. He didn't care that she was long dead when he made it, since he knew her spirit was with him. Now every person he saved was a way of thanking her for ensuring his own survival through infancy. He could scarcely remember her, yet his aunt told him often enough that she had been a remarkably courageous woman.

And he had a gift for dealing with the poor. Hardly surprising since his first few years had been spent among them in London's East End, a place that made this dank section of Exeter seem like Paradise.

He'd hated it there—the poverty that made children into beggars and thieves, the drink that turned men into brutes and women into harlots. And the terrible way that vice spilled from those who inflicted it on themselves to the innocent whose only crime was to trust too well.

Then there were the ones like this mother—well-meaning but destitute. He did not mind his vow so much when he worked to heal ones such as these and the innocents they bore.

As he watched the woman leave with her child, he spied Essie Toth coming down the street. Her bonnet was a bit skewed, her hair windblown, but she had a wide smile on her round face. The factory must have work for her, though he shuddered to think of the sort of labor she would have to do. She wasn't trained for it, but she would learn. They all did.

"They hired you, did they?" he called to her.

She walked toward him, waiting until she was close to answer. "Better! I have a real position. Servant to a Mrs. Wilhemina Harker."

"Even after what—"

"She acted like she'd heard the rumors about Judge Proctor. Perhaps I should have tried some of the other families instead of thinking that no one would have me when he let me go"

He shrugged. Treading in both worlds—and because of his race, accepted in neither—he knew how shallow the rich could be when it came to scandal.

"So I've come for my things," she went on.

He took a key from his coat pocket and opened the door of a cupboard that took up all of the rear wall of his office. Hers was one of many bags and boxes, treasures he kept safe for those with no rooms of their own in which to store them.

Essie's canvas satchels were two of the newest and cleanest, recently given to her by Mrs. Proctor. He wondered if the poor invalid had guessed that they would be parting gifts. "Shake your things out well before you go inside her house or you might regret it," he suggested as he handed them over. The office was as clean as he could keep it, but that hardly kept bugs and worse from invading in his long absences.

"I'll stop and do it sometime during the walk so Mrs. Harker won't see."

He frowned. The name was familiar. He would have asked Essie about her, but he doubted the girl knew anything worthwhile yet. "Where does she live?" he asked.

"On River Road."

"That's quite a hike from here. If you wait a bit, I can take you there," he suggested.

She looked from him to the door, the pair of women waiting outside, one leaning against the other. "Looks like you have more patients. I wouldn't want to keep you from them."

He glanced at the pair, then remembered that he had promised Winnie Beason that he would definitely come by the hospital today to look in on a couple of her children.

He smiled at Essie as he opened the door for her. She accepted the gesture naturally, as if she were one of the ladies she served. In a way, she was, especially when compared to most of his patients—derelicts and whores, some half insane from poverty and drink and the diseases that stemmed from them.

Essie paused as she passed him. "Thank you for everything," she said.

He watched her go, repeating the name of the woman she would be working for. "Wilhemina Harker."

As soon as he could, he would find out everything he could about her. Essie was one of his special charges. He vowed to look out for her, and make certain that she came to no harm.

He motioned to the next patient to come inside. Both women did. "She can't walk without help, sir," the healthy one said.

Rhys studied his patient—the sweat on her forehead, the deep, hacking cough. Tuberculosis, most likely, though it was possible that typhus was coming early this year.

Sometimes he wished it would wipe out the lot of them, and leave space in the world for more decent folks.

Essie's bags weren't heavy, and Exeter was hardly a huge city, so she decided to walk to her new home. The route took her north, through the center of town, then up a narrow road that ran along the Exe River. The houses weren't grand, but they were well tended enough that she guessed most of them employed a gardener. It made her feel better about her future, until she spied number 37, her mistress's home.

The stone wall and iron gate in front of it seemed imposing enough, and the entry garden with its stone fountain was untended but still beautiful. Needs a bit of work, not much, she thought as she slipped through the half-open gate. There was no narrow path to a side entrance, so she walked toward the front door instead, listening all the time for some sign that Mrs. Harker was at home.

The door wasn't locked, and no one answered her call, so she stepped inside.

The first thing she noticed was that the air smelled of a man—sweet pipe tobacco and bay rum cologne. And it was a man's house, with its thick oriental carpets and dark leather settees. Essie ran a finger along the sofa table, noting the sharp line she left in the dust. "Mrs. Harker," she called again, and heard a reply, faint with distance, from the rear yard.

She moved quickly through the house, frowning when she saw its small scale, and the disappointingly tiny kitchen, then went through the rear door into another garden, this one sloping gently down to the riverbank.

Mina Harker had changed into a light green dress. She was stooped down, pulling vines away from the rose bushes. "I always wanted to see this garden in its full summer beauty." she said. "I hardly guessed that I would have to restore it first."

"Did you purchase the house recently?" Essie asked.

Mrs. Harker looked up at her for the first time, and Essie saw that her eyes were wet. "I inherited it from a friend. It belonged to Lord Gance," she explained.

Essie turned away to look at the house again and to hide her knowing expression from her employer. Having worked for a wealthy family, she'd overheard enough gossip to know Gance's reputation.

"He was no gentleman as you would think of them," Mrs. Harker said, as if reading her mind. "But he was hardly the sort of ogre your last employer turned out to be."

"You've checked my reference already?" Essie asked, amazed.

Mrs. Harker stood and smiled. "Merely remembered," she replied. "Let's get out of this heat, shall we? I'd forgotten how small this house was. After we have something cool to drink, we'll have to find you a bit of privacy until I can arrange to have some rooms added on."

Essie pumped water from the well, cool and tasting faintly of iron. They cut the taste with wedges of lime. When they'd finished, her employer took her on a tour.

Essie blushed when she saw the upstairs bedroom, something out of one of those dirty magazines, and marveled at the bathrub that drew water from the heater in the kitchen. As Mina opened the doors that led to the narrow second-floor porch, Essie saw a bug scurry toward the fringe on the carpet. She caught it with her boot before it could escape.

"How long has the house been unoccupied?" she asked.

"It was never…" Mina began, then concluded, "eight weeks."

"Then it needs a good airing, mum."

"Call me Mina, Essie. Let's just shake out the bedcovers and worry about the rest tomorrow. I'm sure you're as exhausted as I am."

Essie spent the night on the setee in the solarium with the doors that led to the rest of the house shut to give her some privacy. She wasn't used to such huge windows, nor the view of the open spaces beyond, and when she woke in the middle of the night, it took her a moment to get her bearings.

When she did, she stood and with blanket wrapped around her, walked closer to the glass. Outside, the half moon lit the garden and turned the river into a precious glowing ribbon.

Without really thinking, she opened the doors that led to the garden, intending to step outside. Something unseen scurried away from the door, and she heard a beating of wings, the ghostly call of an owl. She shut the door quickly and stood with her back pressed against it, shivering with fright and exhilaration, like a housecat who had just realized the freedom that lay beyond an open door.

"There's nothing there. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all," she whispered, then padded quickly back to her makeshift bed.