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“Not at all,” Lizzie responded.

“You know where we are if you should need anything.”

Lizzie nodded. “What time do you suppose we can expect Benedict and Jack back tomorrow?”

“I can’t imagine they would get here much later than midday,” Frank answered. “I’ll be sure and fetch you some water in the morning.”

Lizzie nodded. “That would be very good of you.”

She ate her solitary tea by the campfire with Sebastian gnawing on his bone at her feet. When it came time to turn in, she was disappointed to find she still could not coax the dog to accompany her inside. It seemed the step was as far as he would go. Instead, she arranged Sebastian’s blankets for him and bade him goodnight before climbing into the wagon.

Wrapping the sheets around herself, Lizzie opened her bible and read a while, seeking comfort from the good book as had always been her habit. She had been too busy eking out her new life to really miss St. Joseph’s, but she was determined that her faith would remain constant, even if regular church attendance was no longer guaranteed.

After extinguishing the lamp, she lay awake a good deal longer than she thought she would after such a tiring day being jolted around on the road. She would have to do some laundry soon, she thought, for she had run out of clean underwear and the skirts of her navy dress were muddied. The thought of attempting laundry without the aid of a heated copper was a daunting one, but it would have to be faced, nonetheless.

At least, she would not be expected to launder for the entire family as it seemed likely poor Maggie had been. Frank seemed nice enough, but she did not envy his wife’s drudgery. Really, who could blame Maggie for running away under such circumstances?

Resolving to ask Niamh about it on the morrow, she rolled onto her side and dragged the blankets up and over her shoulder. It was a little after ten o’clock. She had no idea if Benedict would yet have fought in his match. She was sure he would win; she just hoped he managed to be gracious about it and rebuild some bridges with his former acquaintance. Deep down, she knew this was important to him, however much he claimed it was all over and done with.

She could not help a twinge of misgiving when she remembered the event was unsanctioned by the law. If there were to be some trouble, would her husband not suffer harsher consequences due to his being so recently released from prison? It was a disquieting reflection. What would happen to her if Benedict was clapped in irons again? She had no family of her own to support her, and Benedict had deliberately kept her apart from his.

She rolled onto her back and lay there a moment, filled with uneasy thoughts and fears. Strange, she thought suddenly, she could not remember doing this since she had left Mrs. Napp’s. This past week at Greenwich, she had not lain awake once weighed down with worries. Even at Sitwell Place, Lizzie had been a worrier, often lying sleepless well into the early hours. Somehow, lying tucked into Benedict Toomes’ side, was not conducive to nameless dread.

Closing her eyes, Lizzie allowed herself, just for a minute, to remember how he had sat her in his lap and told her he would buy her a new wedding ring, a gold one this time. Without opening her eyelids, she felt for the brass ring on her third finger and turned it about like a talisman or good luck charm. Let him come safely home to me, she wished in silence.

Then she gasped, her eyes springing open. Home. Did she think of this small space on wheels as her home now? She gazed about her at the shadowy interior. There was next to nothing to it. Two trunks and a bed, that was all. The contents of the trunk were clothing and a few basic household essentials only. And yet … what there was felt homely in a way that Sitwell Place, for all its attendant comforts, never had, not to her.

At the end of the day, it had been the house of her aunt and uncle. She had been there under sufferance. No, she thought, rolling onto her other side. That wasn’t fair. They had been gracious about doing their duty by their niece. When all was said and done, perhaps she had been as much a charity case as the Napps. The thought surprisingly did not make her feel any worse. Had she already known this all along, she wondered, on some unspoken level?

She had at one point, lying on the floor in Mrs. Napp’s overcrowded bedroom, wondered if her aunt and uncle would have thrown out their own child if it had been Betsy that had seen Reverend Milson help himself to that brooch instead of her. She considered it again now impassively and fancied she knew the answer only too well.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she told herself it was pointless raking over this old ground. She had been disowned and was nothing to them now. She had a new family, and by that she did not mean the Toomes family as such.

She had Benedict, that much was true, but she also had Sebastian and new friends like Niamh and the twins. Her brothers-in-law, too, she felt instinctively would become closer to her over time, for even if Benedict was not aware of their import to him, it was clear the Toomes brothers were close in their own fashion.

Lizzie knew she was not the type of person to draw others to her with natural warmth or an engaging manner, but against all the odds, she did think she had found a new place to belong. Strangely enough, it was at Benedict Toomes’ side. When she finally fell asleep, she did so hugging her pillow tight and thinking of her husband.

She woke early the next morning, but even so, she had scarcely dressed and relieved herself in the adjacent field when Frank turned up to collect their buckets for water. Lizzie handed them over and set about gathering firewood. When she had a decent pile, she selected the last of the meat bones from Sebastian’s store and then set up the cast iron rigging to go over the fire with the chain and hook for the kettle.

She was fetching the box of matches from inside the wagon when Frank returned.

“Let me do that for you,” he offered and soon had the fire lit and water on to boil.

“It does not look terribly busy,” Lizzie commented, gazing three fields away where a very few tents stood fluttering in the breeze.

“There will be more going up. We haven’t set up our booth yet.” At Lizzie’s surprised look, he explained. “It doesn’t get started till midday here, except for on Wednesday.”

“Really? Oh.” For a moment, she wondered what she was going to do with herself for the next few hours. Then she remembered her resolve the night before. “I’ll dedicate the morning to a wash day then, I think.”

Frank offered to fetch her more water, and she accepted his offer gratefully. After checking on Florence and feeding her from a bag of oats and corn that Benedict kept in the wagon, Lizzie set about collecting up the laundry that needed doing. When she had a substantial pile, she delved back into the trunk for the bar of lye soap she had seen in there before going back outside to tackle the laundry.

It was hard going, and it was when she was elbow deep in suds, her skirts tied about her calves, that she had her first visitor. Ma Toomes came strolling about the corner of the wagon with a pipe sticking out the corner of her mouth.

“So you ain’t so fancy you can’t turn your hand to a bit of scrubbing when the occasion calls for it, I see,” she said with a disparaging glance at the nearby thorn bush over which Lizzie had draped her first lot of clean washing.

“Good morning to you,” Lizzie responded after a moment, straightening up. Sebastian bounced up from his seated position to give a loud bark.

Ma Toomes eyed him warily. “That dog of yours is needs tellin’, unfriendly varmint.” Her pipe waggled as she spoke.