Soon, Roger’s pitiful club was profitable, and all because of Unity. She reached her majority—and a decision. She would ask her cousin not just for fair wages, but for a commission. After all, the club wouldn’t be turning any profit if it weren’t for Unity.
Roger answered by kicking her out of his club and out of his home. She had her freedom. She wasn’t his ward anymore. If she thought she was such an important kingmaker, well, off she went then to make her own fortune. Roger didn’t need a slip of a girl under his expensive heels.
With no money and no references in the middle of winter, some might think her cousin had left Unity with no choice but to take shelter in a brothel, just to have a roof over her head.
But there were sometimes choices, if one knew where to look.
She pulled open the front door of Eshu’s Altar and stepped into the smoky, noisy gambling den.
Shouts of “Miss Unity!” rang from all corners, followed immediately by good-natured groans, begging her not to join this table or that, lest she swindle them out of the pot they were surely going to win.
She ignored the whist and faro tables for now, and made her way to the bar instead.
Sampson had a glass of her favorite brandy ready before she reached him. His black hair was cropped short and the deep brown of his jaw freshly shaved. He looked as though he might be off to church—not off to reap a small fortune from the luckless gamblers wagering at the gaming tables.
“Looking lovely today, Miss Unity,” Sampson murmured politely.
Unity arched a brow.
“Some men find your general air of fire and brimstone to be lovely,” he protested. “It may not be for everyone, but that’s why God invented individual taste. What are you furiously thinking about today?”
“My cousin Roger,” she admitted.
Sampson grinned and poured himself a matching glass of brandy. “Please tell me he still wakes up every morning despising me.”
“He does,” Unity promised.
Sampson clinked his glass against hers. “To making our betters jealous.”
When Unity had darkened his doorstep for the first time, Sampson Oakes hadn’t had the least inkling who her fashionable, self-important cousin was. But hehadbeen passingly familiar with Unity’s mother, who had grown up not far from Sampson’s relatives.
Mother’s family had money. Unity’s maternal grandfather had built a large church in the neighborhood, and provided affordable loans to enterprising residents who were turned away by the big banks that serviced the ton and the landed gentry.
Mother had said the family money was enough to last for generations. That Unity would live well, and so would her children.
But Grandfather must have given every penny out as loans. Roger said there was no information on how to collect it in the will—or any mention of Unity. He took in his grieving cousin due to familial responsibility but not by choice. He said more than once he wished there was some other cousin she could leech upon. A Black cousin, preferably, to keep her far from Roger’s exalted circles.
Unity wished the same thing. She’d felt far more at home in her old neighborhood than she ever did at her cousin’s stale residence. If only her church aunts had been related by blood, her life would have turned out differently. Perhaps she would have met Sampson sooner—and not as a homeless beggar.
By some counts, there were ten thousand free Blacks in London, and by other counts twenty thousand. A big number, scattered throughout a big city, and yet oftentimes, it still managed to feel like a small community, where everyone knew everyone else—or knew someone who did.
Sampson hadn’t been looking to hire a new maid. Unity hadn’t wanted tobea maid. She wanted to help him attract more clients than his gambling den could handle. Sampson didn’t have a man of business. Unity didn’t have a home. In exchange for room and board, she’d prove her worth, if he’d just give her a month’s grace to try.
He gave her three months. Then six. Then a year. By then, his gaming establishment was the most frequented in Cheapside and he didn’t need Unity’s help anymore.
She’d hoped he’d offer her a job.
Instead, he’d offered her marriage.
Sampson was kind and clever and handsome, but Unity was not in the market for a man. If a woman married, the husband would ownher. No matter how much Unity helped in the gaming hell, it would never be hers. She would always be the assistant, not the one in charge.
So she’d left. Despite there being no contract requiring him to do so, Sampson had settled a tidy sum on her nonetheless, in appreciation of her work.
What coin was left was hidden beneath a floorboard. Unity sipped her brandy. She needed to stop thinking and startdoingbefore all she had left to show for her dreams was a blank space in the dust under her rented floor.
“Thank you.” Brandy in hand, she strolled through the gaming hell just like she used to do. Besides her, the only other women were serving maids.
“It’s Miss Unity!”
