“Why on earth wouldn’t you bring it yourself?”
“I have no means to bring it.” Sometimes Mrs. Wraxhall needed to be reminded of the facts of life for those not born to wealth and status. Alice had no money to hire a private post chaise and nip over to the vicarage several counties away.
“While we’re at Eastgate Hall, you’ll use my carriage,” Mrs. Wraxhall said, in the manner of one explaining the alphabet to a child who ought to have learnt it already.
“No, no,” Alice protested, realization dawning. “I’m not going to Eastgate Hall.” As if being here in a fine house in London weren’t bizarre enough. To start traveling to house parties? Impossible.
“Of course you are. You’re my companion. I require your company.” She said this with a smile, as if telling Alice of a special treat. “It’s not so close to your father’s parish that you need to worry about anyone having heard of your...” She let her voice trail off.
Alice hadn’t even thought of that. Eastgate Hall was perhaps an hour’s ride from the village where she had grown up, but she had so seldom ventured farther than the nearest market town, that Eastgate might as well have been as unreachable as Paris or the moon.
“No, I’m not worried about gossip following me to Eastgate Hall.” She tried a different line of argument. “The house party will be filled with people who are clever and amusing. You won’t need me in the least. I could stay in London and...” She desperately rummaged around her brain, trying to think of some excuse to remain, some service she could perform that would warrant her staying in town, but that was the crux of the problem: she had no purpose, either in town or country or anywhere else on earth. She had nothing to do, and no one to do it for.
Mrs. Wraxhall cocked her head. A lock of her carefully curled brown hair had escaped her cap. “Have you no wish to be among clever and amusing people, Alice?”
“I... but...” Alice sputtered. She would, in fact, rather be burnt at the stake than spend a fortnight at a strange house among people who had in common a wealth and education that she did not share. Every conversation would be like embroidering a flower she had never seen, only heard of second- or third-hand. “I’ll oblige you in any way you wish, of course.”
Mrs. Wraxhall sighed. “Perhaps you’ll meet ladies and gentlemen who will properly appreciate your worth.”
No doubt this was meant as a compliment, but Alice knew her worth. She knew it down to the tuppence. She knew that despite her sleepless nights and tireless work, she wasn’t worth so much that she couldn’t be cast aside with scarcely a backward glance.
Or perhaps Mrs. Wraxhall thought that among the guests, there would be a gentleman—a semi-impoverished curate or a gentleman farmer of the middling sort—who might find it cheaper to take a wife than to hire servants. That would be familiar enough ground. A part of her wanted to jump at the chance to return to a life she understood.
“I doubt my sister will receive me anyway,” Alice said in a rare moment of self-pity. “So it doesn’t signify.” She turned the package over and over, so gingerly, so carefully, when really she could have tossed it into the fireplace for all it mattered. “My letters are always returned unopened.”
It had been months since Alice’s father had cast her out. Months of silence, months of shame. If it hadn’t been for the happenstance of Mrs. Wraxhall—who had her own reasons for seeking to thwart the wishes of imperious men—being near to hand when Alice’s misfortune had occurred, Alice would have been without a roof over her head or bread on her plate. As it was, she was lucky. All she had lost was her family, none of whom evidently gave a fig for her. And, of course, she had lost her purpose
“I had heard as much.” Mrs. Wraxhall’s mouth was a tight line. “But I thought that perhaps if you brought them in person...”
“I can hardly act surprised,” Alice said, even though a part of her indeed was surprised whenever one of her letters was returned. “Disowning would be rather meaningless if we kept up a correspondence.”
“Idiots,” Mrs. Wraxhall said under her breath. “Fools.”
The paper wrapping the parcel crinkled under Alice’s fingers as she clenched her hand. She must have been deluded to think that these silly fripperies could possibly get through to her family when years of Alice’s honest work hadn’t mattered in the least. She would toss the entire parcel directly into the fire and be rid of it.
“What rankles the most,” Mrs. Wraxhall went on, “is that he’ll never meet with justice in this world, and I have sadly little faith in justice being meted out in the next.”
Alice was momentarily taken aback. Justice was in the same category as diamonds and gold—utterly unavailable to her, and therefore not worth thinking about. She was rather surprised that Mrs. Wraxhall still believed in it. But then again, people clung to stupid ideas long past the point of reason. She glanced at the parcel in her hands. Hope was one of them.
“Oi!” Molly grabbed Miss Stapleton’s wrist and tugged it away from the fire. “Stop that!”
“I beg your pardon!” the lady said, all offended-like, as if Molly were a pickpocket. Her cheeks were red and her eyes blazing bright, and this was the most color Molly had yet seen in her face.
“Won’t,” Molly said. “Not till that parcel is well away from the fire.”
“Have it your way.” The lady dropped the little bundle into Molly’s hand. “Do what you please with it.”
Molly narrowed her eyes. “Really? These the handkerchiefs?” Miss Stapleton nodded. “You spent a couple months squinting over them, and now they’re kindling?”
“I don’t care what they are.” She was in a fine state, was Miss Stapleton.
Molly raised an eyebrow. “Then you don’t mind if I sell them?” It said no good things about Molly’s character that when confronted with a person on the brink of a towering rage, she had to go the distance and topple them right off the edge.
Molly hadn’t expected a loud trill of laughter, though. “Please yourself.” Oh, and that little sniff of indignation the lady gave was something special. “I doubt you’d get a shilling for the lot.”
“Oh, you’re wrong there.” Molly knew what a brand-new, prettily embroidered handkerchief would fetch, because she had stolen and pawned her fair share. A matching set? Now, that would bring a tidy sum to tuck away for Katie. “Maybe a guinea?” she mused aloud.
Well, that got the lady’s interest. “A guinea,” she repeated.
