Light spilled into the street. The theatre was lit up like a beacon. Swinging carriage lamps and torches carried by footmen further brightened the area—as did the sparkle of embroidery and jewels on the ladies and gentlemen moving to ascend the broad steps.
Emily Spencer stepped out of the shadows. “Excuse me, miss. You dropped this from your reticule.”
The grandly dressed young woman raked her with a bored gaze, took in the rough, ill-fitting linen of her dress and the dirty cloth hiding her hair. She looked away. “It’s not mine. You are mistaken.”
Emily did not let rudeness deter her. She stared with admiration at the young woman’s gown, allowed her eyes to wander upward, and gave a happy little gasp. “Oh, my! Are you not Miss Paxton? You are even more beautiful than I have heard!”
The young lady’s head swiveled back, her expression warmer. “Thank you. Yes, I am indeed Miss Paxton.”
“Oh, how wonderful! And your dress! It’s so beautiful. Surely it will be described in the papers.” She focused on the sheer overskirt. “How cunning that garland is, how beautifully embroidered!” Emily deliberately looked up, then. “And it is repeated on your headdress. I’m sure you’ll start a new fashion, Miss Paxton!”
In fact, Emily was more than passing familiar with that particular embroidery. She’d been present for many hours while her own mother labored over it. She’d also been on the premises of one of London’s preeminent modistes, making a delivery, when Miss Paxton had returned the bill for the garment, including a note stating that the dress was unsatisfactory, and not fit to be worn.
“You’ll be dictating fashion when you are a countess, Miss, won’t you? Many congratulations to you on your engagement!” Emily bobbed a curtsy. “The streets are full of talk of your splendid match.”
The ice descended once more. “Thank you.” The young lady turned her back and stepped forward.
“Oh, but wait . . .” Emily allowed a mask of confused dismay to wash over her. “Your betrothed is the Earl of Ardman, so why would you be carrying a gentleman’s handkerchief with these initials?” She ran a finger over the MLH stitched onto the linen.
Emily knew very well why—because Miss Paxton was engaging in some very illicit behavior with Marcus Lionel Holt—the middle-aged earl’s younger cousin.
“Hush, you meddlesome creature.” Miss Paxton had turned back. “That doesn’t belong to me, I told you.” Her eyes narrowed. “But give it to me and get from my sight.”
“Oh, Miss Paxton!” Emily’s voice ranged a bit higher. “Tell me you never stepped out on your betrothed?” She pressed the hanky to her mouth, hoping the linen hid her nerves and allowing the initials to face outward. At least she didn’t worry that it might be unclean. After all, she had purchased and embroidered it herself.
Miss Paxton snatched at the offending piece of linen.
Emily stepped back, out of reach. “You did!” she wailed accusingly. “You played the Earl of Ardman for a fool!”
“Lower your tone, you tiresome troublemaker!” The lady was glancing about now—and beginning to truly worry.
There. That was the look Emily had been waiting for.
“I will.” She dropped the subservient, eager-to-please note completely. “For five pounds.”
Miss Paxton gasped. “Why you grasping little cheat!”
“Katharine, come along!” The stout matron ahead beckoned Miss Paxton. “We do not dawdle in the street!”
“Ten pounds,” Emily said flatly. “Or I start to cry about the poor, mistreated earl. Loudly. In detail.” She steeled her nerves and tilted her head. “I could mention that tryst in Green Park, perhaps? The one in which Mr. Holt tore the sleeve of the rose under-dress you wore beneath a green pelisse?”
“I don’t have ten pounds.” Miss Paxton could barely speak for gritting her teeth. “Ladies do not carry such vulgar amounts of money.”
Emily raised her chin. “Nor do they carry on in such vulgar ways in the shrubbery.” She pursed her lips. “An earring will do—if those diamond chips are real.”
“Of course they are real. As is the ruby!” Miss Paxton’s face had gone red with outrage. “Even one is worth far more than ten pounds!”
“Is it worth more than your betrothal?” Emily asked heartlessly. She hoped she sounded heartless—and convincing. “I won’t get its full worth when I pawn it, in any case.”
Miss Paxton speared her with a deadly glare. Emily gave her credit. She showed more spunk than she had expected—growing angry instead of dissolving into a teary puddle of guilt and fear. Good heavens, she would never have had the spine to stand there emanating hatred and calculation.
Luckily, the reckoning went Emily’s way. Without another word the heiress removed the earring and tossed it at her.
Emily caught it with shaking fingers and tucked it away.
“Give me the kerchief,” her victim hissed.
“No.” Emily turned to go. “I’ll think I will keep it for insurance.”
She walked off into the dark, leaving Miss Paxton fuming behind her—and telling herself that she felt not a smidgen of remorse. Girls like Miss Paxton did not deserve it. She’d been born with everything—health, wealth, a large, warm home, fine clothes, a name that meant something, and a family that cared for and wanted the best for their daughter. So she’d been engaged to an older man? By all accounts the Earl of Ardman was a kind man, a good caretaker of his properties, a fair lord to his servants and tenants. Perhaps the gentleman had lost a few hairs—he also had a ready smile and a good heart and a willingness to lay them all at Miss Paxton’s feet. And she had repaid him with betrayal.
Nothing riled Emily Spencer more than watching a person in possession of a treasure willfully toss it aside.
She stuffed the linen into a pocket as she left the scene. It was still in good shape. She could pick out the initials and use it again—if she could stiffen her backbone enough to try something like this again.
“She’s a stone-cold ‘un, ain’t she?” The boy, several years younger than she, melted out of the darkness to walk at Emily’s side.
“Yes. Be sure to steer clear of her. I don’t want her to catch a glimpse of you and figure out that you had a hand in watching her.”
Jasper shrugged. “I talked to Finch. He’ll open early and said for ye to come to the back door.”
“Thank you.”
“They looked real sparkly in the street lights,” he said eagerly. “Will we get the month’s rent out of it, d’ye think?”
“First thing, we must give the modiste her share for that gown. It’s only fair, even if she doesn’t know how or where the money came from. But we should cover this month, and next month too, as long as long as Miss Paxton has not played her family as false as she played her betrothed.”
“No fancy mort could be that wicked,” Jasper said cheerfully. “We’ll be on easy street for the next few weeks, Em!”
“I hope so, Jasper.” She thought of her mother’s fingers, lying still in her lap while she rested her head against a window frame. “I hope so.”
***
“Paste!” Mr. Finch announced with a shake of his head. “What is the world coming to when the young ladies wear paste to the theatre?”
Emily’s heart sank. “I should have known,” she groaned. “It’s what I get for allowing myself to sink to her level.”
The fence gave an apologetic shrug. “I can take it apart, make something new and fake out of it—but I can only give you a few shillings.”
“I’ll take what I can get, I suppose.” Emily fought back a surge of despair. She wouldn’t have pulled such a trick had she not been desperate. But her mother was growing thinner and more tired by the day. She’d given up full-scale sewing several months ago, leaving Emily to fill those few orders they could get from busy modistes. Emily had convinced her mother to restrict herself to the fancy ribbon embroidery she was so skilled at—and that was still popular with both the modistes and the high-end milliners.
But her mother’s fingers moved slower these days. She didn’t walk out to take the air like she used to, but stayed at the window, working longer hours—and producing fewer finished pieces. Emily knew she wasn’t eating well. Their meals were meager enough, and still her mother slipped some of her share to Jasper, or tried to push it on her daughter.
They couldn’t go on like this. Emily wouldn’t allow it. Her mother was the sweetest, gentlest soul that ever lived and Emily would not allow her to fade away—even if she had to get up to a bit of wickedness to prevent it.
An image flashed in her head—of her near encounter in the park the other day. She sighed. No, not even if she had to swallow her pride.
But, oh, what a bitter pill it would be, going down.
She took the meager payment from Mr. Finch and set out. She had deliveries to make today. As did Jasper, who made money acting as an errand and delivery boy for several milliners and modistes, and even a tailor in Saville Row. She met him at the corner, near Bond Street. Her heart sank again as she met his hopeful gaze with a shake of her head.
“Who would have thought it?” he asked mournfully after she’d delivered the bad news. “Miss Paxton wearing fake jewels—and her from one of the highest families in the land?” He sniffed. “Though Mr. Waters has griped that her papa is none too quick at paying his shot, either.”
“I should have come up with a different scheme,” Emily sighed, taking a few of his burdens from him.
“I’ll keep my ear out for more gossip,” Jasper offered. “We might yet try again.”
“Perhaps.”
They walked in silence for a moment. “Are you for Madame Lalbert’s?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m to deliver a ball gown to Mayfair.”
“She sent word to Mama yesterday that she has some ribbons she wishes enhanced. I’m to pick them up. I hope I can talk her into at least an over-slip as well.”
“Well, keep your blinkers peeled,” Jasper warned. “I notice the new head wrap. It looks dowdy enough. Had any further sign of the old gentleman?”
“No, not since I spotted him roving up and down Bond Street.” She shook her head. ‘He must have tracked down that jarvey that caught me hitching a ride. Can you imagine the money and manpower he must have expended, to find that driver?”
It sent shivers down her spine. The Duke of Danby. Why should he spend so much time and effort trying to find her? “What on earth do you think he wants?”
Jasper glowered. “Nothing good. Not his sort.”
“You should have seen him, Jasper. He must be twice Mama’s age, and yet you would think them contemporaries.”
“It’s what a lifetime of country air, good food and plenty o’ blunt will do for ye,” the boy said sagely.
“Yes, and an absence of cares and worries. And if he can offer Mama any of that, then perhaps we should let him?”
Jasper scoffed. “That old toff ain’t here to do ye any favors, Em, and ye know it. More like he means to run ye right out o’ Town.” They ducked down the alley that would take them to the back entrance to the modiste’s shop. “It’s exactly why Molly Standon left. The family came fer the Season and wanted no chance that the younger generation would catch a glimpse of her, waltzing about London looking fer all the world the very image of their father.”
“You might be right. But I don’t look overly like him, nor does mama. So he might have a kinder purpose in mind.”
“If he did, why wait until now?” Jasper shook his head and held open the door for her. “I’m telling ye, that toff’s up to no good, should ye ask me.”
“Which toff is that?” Madame Lalbert asked. She stood at a table in her backroom, tying a decorative bow around a large dress box.
Jasper eyed the girl cutting into a jonquil silk at the next table and shrugged.
Madame Lalbert shifted her gaze from him, to Emily and back. “Josephine,” she said thoughtfully, “will you run up to the storage room and bring down that white Brussels lace we bought last week? I’m thinking it will look well with that promenade dress.”
The seamstress rose and left the room and Madame crossed her arms over her formidable bosom. “Let’s hear it.”
Jasper explained while Emily fidgeted. “Do you think there’s a chance that he means well?” she asked when her friend had finished.
The modiste sighed. “That one? I don’t know. The old duke is notorious for being picky about his family. He runs riot over the lot of them, it’s said, bullying and manipulating until he’s got them married off to his satisfaction.”
“Well, he can’t want to marry Mama off, nor me. Why would he interfere in our lives, after all of this time?”
Before he died, her papa had asked her to be gentle, if the topic of her mama’s real parents ever came up. “She never got over thinking they might come and enquire after her,” he’d said. It had explained finally, just what her mother was longing for, when she grew quiet and that dreamy, hungry look came over her. It had explained the hopeful tone with which she’d always greeted new customers in their storefront, and the tiny wrinkle of disappointment that always creased her brow, as if she was continually waiting for someone who never came.
Madame shook her head. “I’m sure I could not guess, but the man has such a reputation for being crotchety and insistent on his own way, I would be careful, were I you.”
Emily nodded, her protective instincts surging. That was not the sort of man whom her mother dreamed of, she felt sure. “I will be careful. Mama is fragile enough, without having her heart broken, too.” She sighed. “But I cannot very well stay inside all day. We need the work.”
“Speaking of which, here is the ribbon I wish to have embroidered.” She fetched a roll of blue silk. “It’s for a sash. I’d like that garland motif that your mother does so well, in darker blues and greys. And for you,” she turned to Jasper, “that box needs to go to Lord Dayle’s in Bruton Street.”
Emily bargained a moment, managing to convince the modiste that she’d need a trim to go with a matching spencer or pelisse, as well, and then she and Jasper set out again. They would have to split ways soon enough, and were making plans to meet up again in the afternoon, when a pair of boys tumbled out of a shop right in front of them.
“Three Fingered Jack!” one cried, holding his flat, wrapped package high.
The other thrust a victorious fist in the air, “The Terror of Jamaica!”
Emily laughed, then quickly stepped around them when a little girl and a young woman emerged to join them.
Jasper elbowed her as they moved on. “Ain’t that the one in the park? The one we seen Miss Paxton snub?”
“Yes, poor thing. She looked devastated, too.” She’d seen the incident and felt sorry for the girl. “Miss Paxton only cut her because of her unfortunate gown,” she whispered.
Jasper was looking back over his shoulder. “It didn’t learn her nuthin’. She’s dressed no better today.”
Emily had seen. “Miss Carmichael, I think, is her name.” Again, she looked a fright in a walking dress too large, too out of date and covered with too many questionable frills and furbelows.
It was too bad. She seemed amiable and kind. Looking back, Emily watched her usher her brothers and sister along with patience and smiles. Lord Ardman would have done better to choose a girl like this over a cat like Miss Paxton. But the vainglorious gentlemen of the ton would always flock to a fashion plate over a quiz, would they not?
Poor girl. She was likely the victim of an unskilled, untutored village seamstress with a collection of old fashion magazines. She only needed someone knowing to take her in hand and she’d strike a far better note with the young bucks.
She stopped suddenly. Now, was that not a thought?
“Are ye comin’?” Jasper asked.
“No. I think I’m going back to discuss something with Madame Lalbert.”
“Suit yerself.” Jasper lifted his chin. “See you tonight!”
Emily nodded and started back the way they’d come. Perhaps, just perhaps, she’d hit upon a scheme that would let her turn things around without selling her soul or sacrificing her pride.