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“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
Meredith gasped. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. Thirteen and alone in the world, with no other way of earning bread, no coin to go home … I didn’t think my mother would even want me back.” A little smile curved her lips as she stared down at the tea. “But she did. When I went to see her just last month, she told me she’d prayed for me every single day.”
“Of course she had.” Meredith poked at the fire. Smoke stung her eyes, giving her a convenient excuse to blink away a tear. The girl’s story was undeniably moving. Stirring enough to blow years of accumulated dust off her maternal instincts. She might be barren, but the Three Hounds worked like a magnet for unwanted adolescents in need of a friend. First Gideon, then Darryl. Now this girl, too.
She took the towel from Cora’s hand and prepared to remove the rolls from the oven. “And how old are you now?”
“Eighteen, ma’am. And I don’t want to go back to that life, I don’t. Please let me work for you, Mrs. Maddox. By the time I leave here, mayhap I’ll have prospects for better employment. Perhaps Mr. Bellamy or Lord Ashworth would see fit to furnish me with a character reference, and I could find a post in service. Could send my mother some money from time to time, and she wouldn’t have to worry where it come from.”
“Well, I can see you’ve thought it all through.”
“Lay awake half the night, ma’am. I suppose that’s why I overslept.”
Meredith offered her a fresh roll, and Cora accepted it eagerly, crying out in alarm when it singed her fingertips. Meredith smiled at the ensuing juggling act, and at Cora’s bubbly, girlish laugh.
“Is there jam?” she asked hopefully, her cheeks flushing pink.
“Yes. Yes, there is. And honey too.” And the next time she saw Gideon, Meredith would ask him to bring round some chocolate.
As she retrieved the pots of sticky sweetness, Meredith thought of herself at Cora’s age. She’d already been caretaker to her invalid father and the family’s only potential wage-earner. All that, plus desperate and hungry. Fortunately, thanks to her father and dear late mother, she’d had some skills and education. Sometimes she’d suspected Maddox of marrying her out of pity. Or perhaps simply because she knew how to read and write and do sums better than most anyone in the village. Certainly better than Maddox himself.
She’d been lucky. By contrast, Cora had found herself friendless, penniless, uneducated, and transplanted to an unfamiliar city at the age of thirteen … after being crudely indoctrinated into womanhood by some passing “gentleman” with a high-sprung carriage. It was remarkable that she’d survived at all, and her tale certainly explained why she acted like a girl who was thirteen-nearing-thirty.
It made a tragic sort of sense that a child stripped of innocence might cultivate another, more willful naïveté to replace it. She thought of Rhys, and his stubborn belief in fate. What lies would an abused boy tell himself, rather than believe he’d somehow earned such vile treatment?
Cora poured two cups of tea, and Meredith took a cautious sip. “Not bad at all,” she said, savoring the rich warmth spreading down her throat. “I’ll teach you coffee next. There’s an apron hanging on a nail, just the other side of the onion bin.”
The girl clapped her hands together. “You’ll allow me to work for you?”
Meredith nodded as she took another sip of tea. She wanted to give the girl a chance, and there was no doubt she could use the extra help. Once the new construction started, she’d have a crew of hungry men to feed. And those hungry men would be earning wages, a portion of which they’d slide right back across the bar at the end of the day.
“You’ll be my new serving girl,” she said. “Your day starts at breakfast, and then you’ll help Mrs. Ware with the cooking until the noon meal. Your afternoons will be your own from two to five, and then it’s back to tend the bar until close. How does that sound?”
“Oh, it sounds lovely.”
“Lovely?” Meredith chuckled. “We’ll consider this first week a trial. Innkeeping is difficult labor. You may not take to it.”
“Oh, I will.” Cora’s cheeks dimpled with a grin as she looped the apron over her arms. “I’m stronger than I look.”
“I don’t doubt it. We women usually are.” She slid a bowl of risen dough in the girl’s direction and demonstrated the way to form rolls. “But mind you, this isn’t London. Some of the men hereabouts are of a rough sort. If they give you any trouble, you’re to tell me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t go wandering the countryside on your own. The moor can be dangerous if you don’t know your way. If there’s anywhere you need to go, the stable hand will take you.”
“Not at the moment, he won’t.” A deep voice interrupted them. “Darryl’s occupied putting up my mare.”
Meredith turned to spy Gideon standing in the doorway between kitchen and tavern. Leaving the rolls to Cora, she hurried to meet him. God, she hoped he hadn’t …
“No. No wagon today,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “I’ve come on horseback, just to suss matters out. Brought your newspapers, though.” He held them aloft. “There’s a fine bottle of port in my saddlebag, and …” His gaze drifted over her shoulder.
“And bloody hell, whoisthat?”
She looked over her shoulder at Cora. The girl was covered in flour to her wrists, industriously pulling the yeasty dough and shaping it into knots. The lumps of risen dough bore a marked resemblance to her pale breasts, overflowing her bodice in two healthy scoops as she leaned over the table.
