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“It truly was a lovely time. Thank you, Pen.”
“You looked quite sad a moment ago, though. Is anything amiss?”
Not for the first time, Helen cursed the fiery Miller disposition that made it so difficult to cloak her thoughts or still her tongue. Though she tried to answer carefully, she revealed the truth, at least in part. “I couldn’t help but think of the seamstresses we passed on the way out of the shop.”
Pen reassured her that Madame Robillard was a fair mistress, and Helen hoped so. But her concerns were also selfish.
If the tea venture was unsuccessful, aside from marriage—a fate worse than death—her only option would be the grueling sort of work given to an unmarried woman past her prime. No one would hire her to tend to a business as she’d done for her father’s, then husband’s, benefit.
No, she would end up in a position like a needlewoman, working long hours hunched over candlelight. The employees who bustled around Madame Robillard’s shop cut and stitched with precision, measured with care.
Even when her mother had been alive and they’d sewn together, Helen hated the work and showed every inclination of being an impatient and poor needlewoman. Her stitches were as jagged as her seams were uneven.
It wasn’t only the dreariness and boredom of a life spent toiling over needle and thread that made her feel ill; dread took her by the throat as she contemplated a subsistence based on an loathsome task to which she was ill-suited.
Staring out the carriage window, Helen realized that the grand, symmetrical perfection of the Georgian facades meant they were passing Bedford Square already, a short distance from the house.
Her house for now. Soon she would be moving, of course.
One task at a time.
