“Oh, thank the heavens. It is long past time,” her mother said.
Chapter Three
Day Two: December 26
Madelina made a hash of giving the staff their boxes that morning. So fraught with nerves was she that she handed Mrs. Bird’s box with its length of worsted wool and hand-painted wooden recipe box to Dutton, Maman’s lady’s maid, and almost gave Dutton’s box with its black silk, blonde lace, and Maman’s least favorite paste brooch to Tofty. The first footman nearly walked away with the first housemaid’s new mob cap of pristine white linen, and Tofty’s pouch of tobacco and the blend of tea that Madelina had specifically ordered for him almost went to the head groom.
At last she had all the gifts properly delivered to their recipients and waved the servants off to their holiday, the reprieve for their hard work serving the family the day before. The Moisenays would subsist on a cold collation for lunch, and for dinner Madelina would attempt soup and the pudding.
“But of course you will stay here with us,” Maman argued when Madelina popped her head into the parlor to take her leave. “We have your wedding to plan! I’ve waited twenty-two years for this joyful day. And to Lord Warin! It’s as if the match were fated.”
Madelina, miserable creature that she was, hadn’t the heart to tell her mother her engagement was a ruse thought up by a rake to squeeze him out of a predicament. Of courseMadelina wouldn’t accept him, and he knew that. Whatever he said about taking up her foolish offer of years ago, he must know she wouldn’t have him now. She’d changed too much.
And he hadn’t.
“What is the matter, child?” Aunt Hermione asked, reading Madelina’s face. “He’s not rich enough? Too old? Too young? Too close a neighbor?”
“None of those things, Aunt Mony,” Madelina shouted into the ear trumpet. “It is only…”
She had no excuse. She could not even explain it to herself. The man she had loved since she’d reached the age of reason had offered to make her his bride, and she had cried herself to sleep.
“Too seasoned for her tastes, and too long on the Continent,” Tante Victoire, shrewd as always, guessed. “You needn’t fear his reputation,louloutte. Rakes make the best husbands, you know.” She winked. “After all their roving, they are glad to settle down, and they know a good thing when it’s handed them.”
As if she were a choice piece of meat being served up to a connoisseur. Madelina fled.
St. George’s just off Hanover Square was a surprise to all who stepped inside it for the first time, for the grand row of Corinthian columns and the clock tower outside belied the austere elegance of the interior. Today, the simple symmetry soothed Madelina’s nerves.
Though the church was becoming a fashionable venue for the upper classes to display themselves, the line out the church doors today comprised a much humbler segment of society. The Feast of St. Stephens was historically the day the church opened the alms box and distributed its contents to any in the parish who had need. While a portion had been aside for the workhouse that the parish of St. George’s supported, there were still manywithin the increasingly wealthy district of Mayfair whose need was great.
Madelina took her place in the line of benefactresses, opening the box of Mrs. Bird’s tumblets, small pastries of flour and sugar with just a dash of lemon peel. Coin was all well and good for giving alms, Mrs. Bird said, but a bit of sweetness might be needed to leaven the sermon distributed with it. Madelina understood when she observed how some of her fellows doled out lectures with their charity, counseling the men and women—so many women, so many with children—on how to amend their lives and provide a better example for their offspring.
Madelina didn’t think it her place to lecture another on moral strictures. Her own place in the world, the future of the family estate, and the fate of her brother depended in this moment not on their own moral integrity but the whim of French revolutionaries who had decided the old system, if it generated so much poverty and want, needed to be replaced with something new. Of course the Millfords, her mother’s family, had been long established in Woughton on the Green, and they would always have a home at the Old Rectory Farm. But her father’s ancestors had lived and worked on their French estate for centuries. That land was not just their livelihood; it held their roots, their blood. What would happen to her father if he lost Vallon?
“Polly,” Madelina said, recognizing a woman who worked at her favorite tea shop, now accompanied with three children each holding a fistful of Polly’s apron. “Never tell me you’ve left your place with Mrs. Hurst?”
Polly Cox sighed and pushed a lock of dark hair beneath her mob cap. “Mrs. Hurst wishes me joy of the happy event I am anticipating,” she said, and a child’s tug on her apron showed the small bulge beneath. “But when I goes to tell Mr. Cox at his business premises that our family’s to enlarge, what do I find?He’s got two other wives pressing babes on him, and none of us knows whose marriage lines are true and whose babes are fatherless. It’s looking for work I am.” She pulled her lip between her teeth, fighting back tears.
“That blighter,” Madelina swore. “That absolute, unfeeling rascal. We’ll have him hauled before the magistrate.”
“Oh, my dear young thing,” said Mrs. Warters, one of the deacons’ wives, as she placed a coin into Polly’s palm. “That is why a woman should never let herself be cozened by the sweet words of men. You ought to have been better on your guard, my dear.”
Mrs. Warters turned to the next in line. “Mrs. Potter,” she said sternly, “did I not counsel you last time we spoke about abusing the gin bottle? We absolutely cannot support you if you will insist on spending our alms on spirits.”
Madelina pressed a packet of tumblets into Polly’s hand, pierced to the heart by the young woman’s predicament. How easy it was for men to rove, to make their promises and protestations, while the woman was left with the belly to show for it.
“Sweets for your sweetlings, and come call on me when you can. Number Three Grafton Street,” she whispered. “I will introduce you to the Sisters of Benevolence, and between us, we will find a way to help you with your babes.”
Polly nodded, sniffing back tears. “Thank ye, miss.”
The next woman had children and a dark bruise on her cheek with a healing cut in the center. She wouldn’t meet Madelina’s eyes when she accepted a packet of tumblets.
“Knocked a vase off a high shelf, and it smacked me, it did,” she said, with a slight lisp that suggested a loose or missing tooth. “Clumsy as an ox, I ams.”
“Leave him.” Madelina seized the woman’s hand. “You cannot stay if it is not safe.”
The other woman looked up in surprise. “And where’m I to go, I ask ye? They’ll just find me and bring me back. The constable won’t take him up for usin’ his fists when ’tis a man’s right to rule his own home. But he can take my children and claim I’m unfit.”
Madelina felt her stomach carved out as she watched the woman walk away, her children peering into the packet of sweets as if they’d never had a treat in their life.
