Marksman prompted, “Someone from our past?”
“Seen her before. Some time back. With a man who appeared tobe passing off a fake bank note. I think it be Erwin Albans, but I couldn’t be confident. They spotted me and turned away.”
“Who was the woman?” Marksman pleaded.
“Margaret Childers.”
“You think this has to do with the convertible value of Bank of England notes?” Duncan asked. “Such was not what we expected.”
“Why not?” Marksman asked. “We originally thought Honfleur meant to swindle members of society with his tales of a French marquisate in which they could invest. Flooding London’s streets with fake bank notes could spell a true disaster for the British economy.”
Duncan observed, “William Pitt never handled the situation well, though his scheme likely saved the Bank of England back in the 1790s. Pitt kept public confidence in the circulation of paper money currency by claiming the Bank of England was actually still very affluent, but the suspension ofspeciepayments had been a temporary measure at the government’s request. None of you will recall when Parliament authorized the Bank of England to issue all notes in denominations of less than five pounds to ease the shortage ofspecie, for the public had been hoarding coins for several years. If Honfleur is hoping to flood the markets with fake bank notes, it could mean a disaster in the making.”
“The Bank Restriction Act has been renewed again,” Benjamin reminded them.
“But we are on the brink of war with America,” Graham countered. “Britain cannot afford to be caught with its trousers down when that happens.”
Benjamin frowned his disapproval. “How many wars must we fight?”
No one answered, for they all despised the idea of more war, but, at length, Marksman said, “Margaret Childers has been suspected of passing forgeries in the past, but she was never convicted because those in the rookeries would consider her tricking a legitimatemerchant a badge of honor, rather than a criminal act.”
“Then we must discover with whom Margaret Childers associates and whether her plans are small or large. Though, if she passed a message to Lady Caroline Moreau, the plans are for more than earning a bolt of cloth at a warehouse,” Duncan summarized.
Mr. Sustar andLady Cunningham had been quite pleased with Victoria’s work, so much so that her ladyship had recommended Victoria to friends and acquaintances, and they, too, had sought out the seamstress at Sustar’s drapery shop. They had also placed orders, so many that Victoria could not sew fast enough to meet all their demands, even if she sewed four and twenty hours per day.
“I am quite sorry to admit, Mr. Sustar, that there is no means for me to complete all these orders in a week, not even in a month,” she had told the gentleman when he placed another folded over cloth on the second of the tables now crammed into her small work area. “I could do all the decorative touches—small leaves and flowers and the like if we had one, perhaps two others, who could do the hemming, which is a much easier stitch to execute. Nearly every woman in London would be able to hem the drapes.”
Mr. Sustar did not immediately complain about her suggestion, which was a step forward. “I like the idea of expanding our services. No other drapery shop is offering personalized services, at least not to this extent. Most of the formal houses employ women to make and repair bed linens and the like, but they must hire someone to come in and complete the type of work your nimble fingers offer. I will speak to Mrs. Sustar and learn her opinion of having more women in the shop. We do not wish our young men to be distracted from theirduties.”
“Naturally,” she said, while attempting to conceal her sarcasm.
“Mrs. Sustar only permitted your presence because you are the daughter of a vicar. Her father had been a curate before he passed.”
“Yes, I recall,” Victoria said obediently. “Mrs. Sustar has spoken of her father often.” Yet, she did not abandon her hopes. “Admittedly, it could be difficult to find more relatives of a cleric to serve the store, but there must be other godly women seeking employment. You might ask Mrs. Sustar’s opinion of what questions you should ask the women when you speak to them. Perhaps ask for a recommendation from their clergyman.” Victoria knew the new vicar overseeing her father’s former parish would not have extended such benevolence to her, but surely in a city the size of London, two or three such women existed that would stir up the confidence of a cleric to recommend them.
Victoria let herselfinto Mrs. Holland’s boarding house in the wee hours of the morning. She had spent the majority of the night making intricate little flowers along the end of a pale, olive green drape. She still had to do the same for the valance, but she had returned home when dawn had provided enough light to know a modicum of safety. She had promised to return to the shop after she had claimed a meal and some sleep. Mr. Sustar would have preferred she had stayed and finished, but Victoria had convinced him her care and accuracy would suffer if she had no rest.
She tiptoed up the stairs to her quarters. She planned to eat a bit of hard bread dipped in leftover tea to soften it enough to chew the scraps. Sustar had recently presented her a small raise—only a fewpence each quarter, but she had been placing the extra coins aside to present to Cassandra, if and when her sister showed herself again.
Victoria froze when she opened the door. The room was simply furnished. A bed against the wall. A small round table and two chairs. Tonight, the blankets had been left crumpled in the middle of the bed, but such was not the way she had left them. Victoria tended to be very structured—everything in its place. She waited by the open door for at least a full minute, allowing the shreds of daybreak to claim the corners of the room enough that she could make out that no one else was in the room.
Tentatively, she entered, edging along the wall to reach where a lamp sat upon the nearby table. She fumbled a match from its cylinder and struck it against the iron plate on the top of the small stove used to heat both the tea kettle and the room in winter. She lit a candle, and the shadows crawled deeper into the room’s corners. Victoria noted her breathing had eased.
Though the room was messy, no one remained inside. Her frown deepened as she slowly made her way along each wall, looking for any clue as to who might have entered her room. Mrs. Holland ran a very structured boarding house. No gentlemen callers permitted above stairs. All the boarders were ladies, such as was she, with most working in the nearby shops for pennies per week. Only Mrs. Taylor, an elderly woman on the first landing, ever had visitors, and they were, generally, the woman’s son and her grandchildren.
Victoria slowly made her way towards the wall holding the still open door, but the sound of what could only be called a chirp had her standing perfectly still and again studying every shadowy corner of the room. The chirp was followed by a grunt and then a whimper. She had deduced the sound had come from under the table. Victoria had heard tales of rats in London homes, but she could not imagine any rat would dare to make an appearance in any of Mrs. Holland’s rooms.
She edged cautiously around the table. Mr. Sustar had permittedher to take several scraps from the ends of the rolled cloth from the store, and Victoria had sewed them together to make a covering for the table.
“Nothing,” she murmured, and then the toe of her boot bumped something hard under the table. This time she heard a squawk.
She knelt down and lifted the end of the cloth to reveal a basket—a basket filled with a baby, who obviously was not happy to be disturbed. “Shush,” she told the child when it screwed up its face as if he meant to cry. His eyes grew wide when she tugged him from his hiding place and made cooing noises to entertain him.
She gently rocked the child as she looked it over carefully. “When did you come into the world, little one, and where is your mother?” She lifted the babe into her arms to hold it closer to her body. She walked slowly about the room, swaying gently from side to side as she had seen the women on Betts’s manor do when they carried their newborns about. Eventually, she closed her still open door.
“So, Cassandra used her key sometime yesterday to rejoin me,” she told the child who stared up at her in what appeared to be wonderment, though Victoria doubted such a young child could possess a variety of emotions. “Do we know where your mother has taken herself? Hopefully to find something to feed you. I assuredly am not equipped to do so, though Cassie should be, so maybe she went to find food for herself, not you.”
She gently rubbed the child’s back as she continued to walk the room. Exhaustion wished to claim Victoria, but she dared not place the child down, fearing it would cry and wake the whole household. “What am I to do with you, little one?” She glanced down to the child. “Perhaps, until your mother returns, we might rest together.”
