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When he rang the bell it was answered by another woman, so fat the fabric strained at the se
ams of her gray dress. Her florid face was already angry even before she saw him.
“We’re full up!” she said bluntly. “Try the orphanage over the river at Parsons Green.” She made as if to close the door.
Looking into her bleak, blue eyes Monk had a sudden very ugly idea, born of knowledge and experience.
“I will, if you can’t help me,” he replied tersely. “I’m looking for girls about ten or eleven, old enough to start work and easy to train into good ways. I’m setting up house a few miles from here. I’d sooner have girls without family, so they’re not always wanting days off to go home. I could try city girls, but I’ve no connections.” He could easily have been stocking a brothel or selling girls abroad for the white slave trade, and she must know that as well as he did.
Her face altered like sunshine from a cloud. In an instant the line of her mouth softened and the ice in her eyes melted.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said smoothly. “I’m fair mithered to pieces to take poor children I ’aven’t the means ter care for, though God knows I’m willin’ enough. But you can’t feed ‘ungry mouths if you in’t got no food.” She straightened her skirt absentmindedly. “It’d be a fair blessin’ if yer could take two or three girls, sir. Make room for two or three more wot’s infants an’ can’t do a thing for theirselves. I’ve got several as is both willin’ an able ter please, an’ comely enough. Jus’ coming inter young ladies, like.” She smiled widely and knowingly at Monk. Perhaps in her youth she had been buxom enough; now she was grotesque. His knowledge of her trade made her repellent to him.
He forced himself to look interested. It was difficult to keep the disgust from his face.
“Best young,” she went on. “Teach ’em your ways before they get taught wrong by someone else. Come into the parlor Mr….?”
For some reason he did not want to give his own name. He did not want any part of his true self connected with this business.
“Meachem,” he answered, giving her the first surname that came into his head. “Horace Meachem.” He must make sure he remembered it! “Thank you.”
She opened the door wide enough to allow him in. The thin woman who had been scrubbing the step shot him a look of withering contempt. He wished he could have told her the truth, but it was a luxury beyond him.
The hallway was bare and painted gray. A stitched sampler with several mistakes proclaimed: “The eye of God is upon you.” He hoped it was. Maybe there would be more justice in eternity than there was here.
He was led to a parlor decorated in red and a world away from the hall in comfort. She invited him to sit down and sat decorously opposite him, rearranging her bombazine skirts with fat, wrinkled hands. Then she reached for the bell and pulled it sharply.
“I’ll have several girls brought for you,” she said cheerfully. “You can take your pick. Very glad of a place, they’ll be, and the price’ll go towards carin’ for more abandoned waifs, so we can give ’em a start in life … that’s no more than a Christian duty.”
He loathed what he was about to do. The words would barely come off his tongue.
“I’d like nice-looking girls. At least one will be a parlormaid, in time.”
“O’ course you would, sir,” she agreed. “An’ nice-lookin’ is wot I’ll provide. We don’ send ’omely girls for that sort o’ position. They goes for scullery maids an’ the like, or ter wash pots or such.”
“I heard you even took in disfigured girls,” he said relentlessly. He wished he could take the girls she would bring. God knows what would happen to them. Perhaps the uglier ones would be better off … eventually.
“Oh … well …” She prevaricated, her sharp, cold eyes weighing how much he might know. He was a customer, and he looked from his clothes as if he might have money. She did not want to offend him. “I don’t know ’oo told you that.”
He met her gaze squarely, allowing a slightly supercilious curl to his mouth. “I made my enquiries. I don’t come blind.”
“Well, it’s only charitable,” she excused herself. “Got ter take ’em all in. Don’t keep ’em, mind. If they’re bad enough, put ’em in ter work in the mills or someplace like that, w’ere they won’t be seen.”
He looked skeptical. “Really?”
“ ’Course. Wot else can I do wif ’em? Can’t carry no passengers ’ere.”
The bell was answered by a child of about ten, and the woman sent her off to fetch three girls she named.
“Now, Mr. Meacham,” she resumed. “Let’s talk money. This place don’t run on fresh air. An’ like you said, I gotta feed the useless ones as well as the ones wot’ll find places.”
“Let’s see them first,” he argued. He could not bear to think of the wretched children who would be paraded in front of him, like farm animals for him to bid on; he knew he could take none of them. “How long have you been here?”
“Thirty years. I know me job, Mr. Meacham, never you fear.”
“That’s what I heard. But I want to be sure what I’m getting. I don’t want any unpleasant surprises … when it’s too late to bring them back.”
“You won’t!” she said sharply, narrowing her eyes. “Wot you ’eard, then? Someone blackenin’ me name?”
