Embrace the Day (2 page)

Genevieve and Prudence entered number thirty-six Bedford Row through a servants' entry in the back. Prudence looked abominably pale and shaken, and Genevieve meant to take her immediately to her room. They passed through the scullery and made their way to the back stairs.

Genevieve nearly collided with a young boy, Andrew, the Brimsbys' son. He gave her a dismissive glance and pushed past her.

"Miss Moon, you must come," he insisted, pulling Prudence through the passageway toward the schoolroom. "Emily has spilled ink all over the map I was drawing and—"

"Miss Moon! Is that you?" Angela Brimsby arrived on a swish of silk and lace. Touching a pampered hand to her brow, she frowned at Genevieve.

"Lord, haven't I had my share of scruffy visitors today!" she snapped. Without glancing at her son, she propelled him back toward the schoolroom. "You should have left the laundry in the kitchen instead of traipsing through— Never mind, just leave my things and get Meeks to pay you. I hope the linens aren't scorched this time—"

Mrs. Brimsby broke off and gave Genevieve a keen look. "As long as you're here, you might as well make yourself useful." She extracted a slip of paper from her bodice and handed it to Genevieve. "Take this to Pembroke's pawnshop and instruct him to deliver the clock to me first thing in the morning. He'll be paid when the piece is in my hands."

Genevieve gave Prudence a helpless look and started for the kitchen with her basket. She stopped, though, when Angela's strident voice addressed Prudence in anger.

"Where have you been, Miss Moon?" she demanded. "The children are completely unsupervised. It's difficult enough now that Nurse has given notice—"

" 'Tis my afternoon off, ma'am," Prudence said softly.

Angela's skirts rustled as she paced in agitation. "The afternoon is nearly over. Now, if you've concluded your visit with the
laundress
, I'd like you to go to the schoolroom and hear the children's lessons."

Little Emily appeared, grabbing at Prudence's sleeve and howling that Andrew had pulled her hair.

"Yes, ma'am," Prudence said wearily. There was a vaguely greenish cast to her complexion, and she swayed slightly, putting her hand against the wall.

"That's better," Angela said above Emily's howling.

As Prudence turned, her narrow shoulders sloping in misery, Genevieve was filled by a fierce, protective instinct. Her basket hit the floor with a thud. She stepped in front of Angela and tossed her dark head in defiance.

"Prudence isn't well. She's going to her room."

Angela's nostrils dilated. "What did you say? I won't have any cheekiness from—"

Prudence put a hand on her friend's arm. "Genevieve, please. I'll be fine."

"No, you won't, Pru. I won't have you working yourself to death."

Angela's face reddened beneath the layer of powder that concealed a trace-work of flaws. "See here, girl. You are forgetting your place. I suspect it's your influence that's causing Miss Moon to be so troublesome."

At that moment, Edmund Brimsby entered the passageway, wiping a film of snuff from his lip and frowning at the sound of raised voices. Genevieve's green eyes flicked over him contemptuously. She resented him, from his immaculately wigged head to the tops of his perfectly polished shoes. He was a comely man in a soft, almost effeminate way.

"What is this? I just stopped Andrew from fairly breaking Emily's arm." His voice was clipped and nasal, with tones schooled into him by England's finest academies. "Why aren't the children at their lessons?"

"I'm glad you're here, Edmund," Angela said. "Prudence is shirking her duties and is being encouraged, I fear, by this, this slut off the streets."

Genevieve felt her fists close into small knots of outrage. Prudence begged her with a glance to hold her temper. She managed, just barely.

Edmund Brimsby cleared his throat, obviously annoyed by this small disaster in his well-ordered household.

"Miss Moon, the children are in need of supervision. Please say goodbye to your friend and see to them."

His wife made a sound of disgust, clearly dissatisfied with her husband's mildness.

Hearing this, Edmund pressed on. "Miss Moon, I pay you a good wage, and for that, I expect some measure of cooperation."

Genevieve couldn't help herself. Prudence was defenseless against the man she claimed to love and his haughty, domineering wife. She wouldn't stand by and watch her friend being ordered about.

"You're a fine one to talk about cooperation," she shouted at Mr. Brimsby. "Prudence has done a bloody sight more than the work expected of her."

He stared at her coldly. "I suggest you leave straight away. And don't expect my wife's patronage again. You and your common ways are no longer welcome in my house."

"Common, am I?" she raged. "God blind me, then, Mr. Brimsby, how do gentlefolk behave? I wonder if you know just why Prudence is so ill."

Prudence gasped. "Genevieve,
no—"

But Genevieve was too angry to stop. " 'Tis because you've gotten her with child, you bleedin' sod, and if that's your idea of gentlemanly behavior, then I believe you could use a lesson or two from a 'commoner' like me!"

The silence that followed her tirade hung in the air, a tangible, throbbing tension. At last, pale and tight-lipped, Angela spoke.

"Those are filthy insinuations."

Genevieve thrust her chin up. "Mrs. Brimsby, I'm sure your husband will deny every word of it, but that won't alter the truth. Prudence is ruined, and the bugger should bloody well face up to his responsibilities."

Prudence began sobbing softly, hands covering her face.

"Get out," Angela Brimsby ordered. "Get out, or I'll have you thrown out onto the street." She opened her mouth to summon a footman.

Genevieve ignored her. Her arms went firmly around her shuddering friend.

"Will you be all right?"

Prudence nodded weakly.

"Pru, I know it wasn't my place to speak out for you, but I couldn't stand to see the way they treat you. There now, go up to your room and rest a bit. I'll be back soon."

She gave the Brimsbys a glower that promised certain trouble should something ill befall her friend.

She left the quiet avenues behind and wended her way back to the seedy East End, a maze of muddied, rank-smelling streets and alleys, shadowed by top-heavy buildings that nearly met in crooked arches over the roads. A few blocks east rose the grimy edifice of Hawksmoor's church, empty of worshipers. No one made the mistake of identifying the poor as Christians.

Creaking carts lumbered by, and hawkers called out, offering the last of the day's spoiling fish or limp vegetables. With a stab of premonition, Genevieve studied the women who came out to barter with the vendors. They wore ragged dresses and dirty aprons and had pale, thin faces creased by worry and want. Invariably, three or four hungry-eyed, bare-legged children clung to their skirts. The women were hardly older than Genevieve's own seventeen years.

She walked on, fighting a now-familiar feeling of restlessness. She didn't want to end up like these creatures, hopelessly trapped in the slums, destined to eke out her life and die before her time, as much from loss of spirit as from disease and want.

As she turned down Farthing Lane, an alley of singular tawdriness, she tried not to see the poverty around her. At the head of the lane were a few crumbling, rat-infested residences inhabited by an unending procession of the transient poor. A moneylender's office, halfway down the street, operated on the very fringes of the law. Across from it a brothel was thinly veiled as a boardinghouse. Worst of all, the butcher's shop at the end of the lane strewed offal out into the gutters for all to see and smell. Some said London had sanitary wagons to take care of the leavings, but Gene had never seen one anywhere near the vicinity.

Sighing heavily, she approached her father's tavern. The alehouse was marked by a peeling sign that bore a crude picture of a sheaf of barley. Elliot's was frequented by a regular scruffy crowd of workmen and idlers, sailors and traders from the wharves. Though unappealing, the place was packed to the walls every night because the ale was cheap and plentiful and no one objected to the illicit gaming that took place in the back room.

Genevieve walked around back to the cramped upper quarters she shared with her parents and two brothers. She deposited her empty basket and made ready to shoulder the even more unwelcome burden of the night's work in the tavern. Hours would pass before she could return to the loft where she made her bed.

"Well, miss," said her mother. "You took your time getting back."

"It's a long walk."

"Aye, well, you've missed supper and they're bangin' their tankards downstairs."

Genevieve sighed. The meat pasties she and Prudence had shared on the wharf would have to suffice.

"I'll go." She tied on an apron and neatened her cloud of dark-brown curls with a comb. She knew her appearance didn't matter to the revelers below, but Prudence's influence had given her a sense of propriety that made her want to present herself at her best. She kept her corner of the sleeping loft clean, her two sets of clothes well-mended. Each week she trudged to St. Martin's to bring in fresh straw for her pallet.

Short and slight though she was, Genevieve had to stoop beneath the beams of the stairwell that led down to the taproom. The noise and smells of the room greeted her before she actually emerged. Raucous laughter and bawdy remarks mingled with the clinking of the stoneware and pewter tankards. She stepped into the taproom and was immediately met by the pungent scents of tobacco and malt and strident requests for service.

"A pint 'ere, girl, and be quick about it."

"Bring that tray o' rolls, will ye? We're fair t' starvin'!"

"I'll have gin; the beer 'ere ain't fit for swine!"

Through years of practice, Genevieve had learned to heft a tray loaded with mugs, carefully snaking her way about the crowded room. For the better part of two hours she waited tables ceaselessly, until at last the drinking slowed. Then she went to the sideboard to wash tankards, arms submerged to the elbows in tepid water.

Her father, Watney Elliot, came to sift through the handful of coins she had in her apron pocket. He was a man of middle years, small and compact, but possessed of a crude sort of arrogance that gave the impression of a much larger man. His hair was brown and tightly curled, showing no sign of gray. His sharp, small eyes darted, missing nothing. He quickly summed up the take and pocketed it.

"Should be more," he grumbled. "You could do much better, girl."

Genevieve ignored him and continued with her washing. She'd endured her father's complaints for a lifetime that suddenly felt much longer than seventeen years.

"Look at you, girl, stern as a judge, when you know well and good these men would pay extra for a smile, or a glimpse of bosom or leg."

She whirled on him, green eyes snapping with outrage. "I don't doubt you'd bloody well have me sell my body if it would fill your pockets."

"There's worse ways of turning a coin, miss. You're a cheeky one, always have been, when you should be thanking me for keeping your belly full and a roof overhead."

"I owe you nothing. Everything you've given me I've earned, and if your bleedin' customers expect any more than their ale from me, they're sure to be disappointed. If it's a dockside whore you want working here, you'll have to look elsewhere."

"Listen to you, talking like that high an' mighty governess friend of yours. You wouldn't put on airs if I—"

Genevieve pushed past him, unwilling to listen to more. "Excuse me," she said coldly. "I've work to do."

Through the rest of the evening she was plagued by what had transpired earlier in the day. A hundred times she wondered if she'd done the right thing in exposing Edmund Brimsby. Things would undoubtedly go badly for Prudence now, but at least Brimsby would be obliged to look after her. A small pension and a house on some quiet street perhaps. That was all Prudence needed. Genevieve would settle for nothing less for her friend.

Roarke Adair despised the city of his birth. London was a human anthill, and not a very clean one. He had a dim memory of his mother saying sadly that the soot of the wharves might never be washed off, even as she scrubbed away at his ankles in the tiny, battered tin tub. The noise and the smells and the smoke were inescapable, day and night.

The street Piggot took him to was among the worst Roarke had ever seen. He looked away from a vacant-eyed beggar crouched in a doorway and gritted his teeth. Now that Angela had denied him a chance to escape poverty, he could well join the beggar one day.

Stooping beneath a peeling sign, Roarke followed Henry Piggot into the tavern. The taproom was dimly lit by a single lantern on the mantel and a few candles impaled on rusty iron spikes. The crowd was a seedy assortment of idlers and day workers who swore fluently and laughed loudly. Roarke and Piggot found a table near the rear door.

Piggot raised his hand to call for service. "See there," he said, gesturing at the girl who approached. "Not the sort of wench you'd expect in a place like this."

Roarke raised his eyes and found himself staring at a remarkably pretty girl. She was young, maybe sixteen, with dark-brown hair rippling over her shoulders. The features of her small, heart-shaped face were fine, almost dainty. Her person was unexpectedly clean for a wench in a place like this. There was an odd poignance about the perfectly cut squares that patched her skirt, the hem of which was just a shade too short.

As she neared the table, Roarke amended his first impression. The girl wasn't merely pretty. She was a beauty.

"Two pints," Piggot said, pressing a coin into her hand. Her uninterested gaze swept over the two of them, and she went to fetch their ale.

"A cold fish," Piggot grunted. "Won't even talk to the regulars."

Roarke said nothing. He didn't blame the girl. The men in the tavern weren't fit company for warehouse rats. When she set a tankard in front of him, he gave her a smile. She hesitated just for a second, looking nonplussed at his gesture of genuine friendliness. He held her eyes with his.