“A young woman of inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the family!”
—JANE AUSTEN, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
“Wait here until I can let you in.” Shivering, the girls waited next to the front entrance of the Mason house while Abby entered through the servants’ entrance down the side steps.
The other servants had gone to bed; the butler was just locking up for the night. He gave her a curious look as she came in but all he said was, “Just in time.”
While he was still occupied, Abby sped to open the front door. The three girls slipped quietly inside and hurried up the stairs to Abby’s bedchamber. When Abby shut the door behind them there was a moment of complete silence. Then . . .
“We did it!” Jane exclaimed, hugging Damaris, who was half laughing, half crying in reaction.
“Softly, softly!” Abby cautioned them, hugging, laughing and weeping a little herself. “We mustn’t let anyone hear us.”
Jane hugged Abby again, then sat on Abby’s bed with a thump, as if her legs had collapsed. “We’re safe, Damaris,” she whispered. “Safe!”
“I know. I can hardly believe it,” Damaris whispered back. “I keep thinking that any minute someone’s going to throw open that door and it’ll be Mort come to fetch us back.” She glanced at the door and shivered.
“I told you my sister would help us.”
“Yes, without her and Daisy . . . Thank you both,” Damaris whispered fervently.
“Oh, Daisy, you were so brave!” Jane leaped up to embrace Daisy again.
Daisy squirmed and protested and wriggled out of the hug as soon as she could.
Abby had a thousand questions, but the girls needed a bath and something to eat. A proper bath wasn’t possible, not at this hour, not for a governess, and not without raising a lot of unwelcome curiosity downstairs. But warm water in which to wash—and bathe their chilled and dirty feet—that she could manage.
She fetched towels and a kettle of steaming hot water from the nursery.
“Give ’em here, miss,” said Daisy, relieving her of her burden. “A wash is just what the doctor ordered. Them two is frozen.”
“No wonder, with the little they had to wear! And, Daisy, please call me Abby.”
“Is there anything to eat?” Jane asked. “I’m starving.”
Even as Jane spoke, Abby’s own stomach rumbled, and realized she hadn’t eaten since the apple she’d had for lunch. “I’ll see what I can get.”
All was quiet downstairs. Abby crept to the kitchen. In the pantry she cut half a dozen slices of bread and a large chunk of Wensleydale cheese—Jane’s favorite. She filled a large cup with fresh milk, took a handful of ginger nuts from the biscuit tin and slipped two oranges into her pockets.
A large meat pie, freshly baked, still warm and untouched, sat on a shelf in the larder. She cut a generous slice. There would be hell to pay in the morning, but Abby didn’t care. The pastry was light and flaky and the filling oozed out a little, fragrant and delicious. Her stomach rumbled again.
“Is that all?”
Abby whirled around. Blake, the butler, stood there.
“I . . . I’m hungry,” Abby said with a defiant air. Servants were not allowed to eat outside mealtimes.
The butler sniffed. “Give it here.” He took the knife from Abby’s resistless grasp, sliced a much larger chunk of pie—fully one-third of it—and slid it onto the plate. “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”
Abby gave him a puzzled look.
He quirked an eyebrow. “Your sister won’t thank you if the two of you have to share that mingy little slice.”
“My sis—” Abby gasped. “How did you know?”
He snorted. “I heard the Masons refuse to let her stay. Heard you open the front door after you came in tonight, and put two and two together. How many years is it since you’ve seen your sister?”
“Six.”
“Then it warrants a little celebration.” He placed a bottle of wine and two glasses on the tray. “Be careful; the cork is only lightly replaced.”
He saw Abby’s amazement and winked. “Old skinflint docked your wages a full day, didn’t he? So take it in kind.”
“It’s very good of you, Mr. Blake. Thank you,” Abby whispered, a little overwhelmed by the unexpected kindness. She carried the tray upstairs, feeling a little guilty.
What would he think if he knew that as well as her sister, she’d smuggled in two complete strangers? And that all three of them had come directly from a brothel?
By the time she returned, the girls had washed and changed into Abby’s warm flannel nightgowns. “You don’t mind us borrowing your things, do you, Abby?” Jane asked.
“Of course not, silly. Now, here’s supper.” She set down the tray in front of the fire and spread the food out on the cloth, like a picnic.
The girls fell on the feast with delight.
“They wouldn’t let us eat yesterday or today,” Jane explained between mouthfuls of pie.
“Why ever not?”
Jane and Damaris exchanged glances, then laughed. “Damaris made me sick.”
“What? Why?” Abby glanced at Damaris. With her face freshly scrubbed and her shiny dark hair hanging loose down her back, Damaris looked as young and innocent as her sister. And perhaps she was. If Jane could be stolen away, drugged . . .
Abby felt ashamed of her earlier prejudice.
“It’s how she saved me, Abby. She made this nasty-tasting tea and soon I felt terrible, and when they took me down for the auction I—”
“Auction?”
“Yes, for my first time. Men will pay a lot for a virgin, apparently, so they hold an auction,” Jane said matter-of-factly.
Sick outrage filled Abby’s throat. “What happened?”
Jane shuddered. “It was horrible—all these men staring, and me with hardly anything on—they just let me have a length of gauze, like some Greek statue—but suddenly the stuff Damaris gave me worked and I threw up—all over the men standing in front.” She chuckled. “The starers. I was feeling too sick to notice, really, but they were furious. And so was Mort. He gave Damaris a whipping—”
“It wasn’t too bad,” Damaris assured her quickly. “He didn’t want to mark my skin.”
Abby swallowed. She’d so misjudged this girl.
“—and they took me away and put the auction off for another night.” Jane started shivering again, but it wasn’t the cold.
“Tonight,” Daisy said into the silence. “In about an hour.”
“So that was why . . . Oh, thank you!” Abby hugged the little maid again. “I cannot thank you enough, Daisy.”
Daisy blushed and muttered an embarrassed, “Weren’t nuffin’.”
“No, you’re a heroine!” Abby insisted. “You saved Jane and Damaris at the expense of your own job.”
Daisy snorted. “I was leaving anyway. I hate what that place has become. When Mrs. B ran the brothel it was a happy place—nobody doing nothing they didn’t want to, and all the girls there of their own free will. Nobody was ever drugged or locked up, and nobody made to whore unless they wanted to. But since Mrs. B retired and her son Mort took over . . .” She shuddered. “He’s a bad lot, Mort.”
Daisy glanced at Damaris and Jane and added bitterly, “One of the girls told me yesterday that Mort had promised me to one of his gentlemen—one of those as likes to hurt girls. Fancies hisself a little cripple, so he said, and Mort won’t take no for an answer.” She touched her bruised cheek gingerly. “All those years I worked for Mrs. B, from a little girl, and never once did she try to sell me—and she could’ve, believe me. She asked me once, and I said no and that was that. But Mort . . . he didn’t care.”
She cut herself a slice of cheese and said to Abby, “So you don’t owe me nothing, miss; I was doing it for meself as much as these two. And you’re puttin’ me up for the night and fed me, so I reckon we’re square.”
Abby didn’t agree. She owed Daisy much more than that, but right now she wanted to find out about her sister. “Jane, how did you end up there in the first place? You were on your way to Hereford.”
“I know, and I have no idea how it happened. I did set out.”
“On the stage?”
“No, one of the governors of the Pill—the Pillbury Home for the Daughters of Distressed Gentlewomen,” she explained to the others. “That’s the place where Abby and I were sent after Mama died. Well, Sir Walter Greevey—he’s one of the governors; he’s ever so nice—he arranged the placement at the vicarage in Hereford, and he sent a carriage to convey me there. We stopped at an inn to change horses and I had a drink and something to eat and after that . . . I don’t remember a thing until I woke up wearing nothing but a chemise—and it wasn’t even mine!—and Damaris was in the room with me.”
“That’s terrible,” Abby exclaimed. “What about the coachman—why didn’t he stop them? Or was he in on it?”
Jane shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think he was drunk. He was drinking from a bottle every time I saw him.”
“He deserves to be sacked.” Abby turned to Damaris. “Were you kidnapped too?”
She looked away. “My situation was different.” She looked uncomfortable.
Abby bit her tongue, annoyed with herself for embarrassing the girl, but Daisy chimed in unexpectedly. “Mort bought her off a ship a couple of days before your sister come in. I saw them bring her in after dark. She was struggling, weren’t you, miss?”
“Not that it did me any good,” Damaris murmured.
“Mort wasn’t too happy with her,” Daisy said. “Sickened the day she arrived. He was worried she’d brought some foreign illness in, but you’re a sneaky one, aren’t you?” Daisy grinned at Damaris. “You made yourself sick, didn’t you? With tea, like Jane said?”
Damaris nodded. “But Mort caught me picking more of the weeds in the backyard and put two and two together. He had Jane and me stripped and locked up together, and given no food, only water.” She glanced at Abby. “I was due to appear downstairs tonight too. That’s why I was all painted up. The golden-haired virgin and the Chinese whore.”
“Chinese? You’re not Chinese,” Abby said.
“No, but I’d just arrived from China,” Damaris explained. “My parents were missionaries there. They died,” she added, anticipating Abby’s next question.
“And you were forced into a brothel? It’s . . . it’s iniquitous!” Abby said fiercely. “We must inform Bow Street first thing in the morning!”
“No!” Three voices spoke at once.
Abby stared. “Of course we must report it, else these atrocious practices will continue.”
“No!” Daisy insisted. Jane and Damaris nodded in urgent agreement. “You can’t, Abby; you can’t.”
“Why not? I don’t understand.” To Abby it seemed unquestionable that they ought to seek help from the authorities, but the others’ fear was palpable.
“I told you before, miss,” Daisy said. “If you go telling the law about us, we’ll be done for. Mort’s got spies everywhere—even Bow Street—and the minute he gets a sniff of any of us, he’ll send blokes to fetch us back—and after that it won’t be pretty.”
Jane shuddered. “It’s true, Abby. You don’t know what kind of man he is.”
“I would rather die than go back,” Damaris added with quiet intensity.
Abby frowned. “But how could he possibly find you? This Mort fellow doesn’t know anything about me, and nobody knows of my connection with any of you—”
Daisy said, “Anyone who reports something to Bow Street has to give their name and address, right?”
Abby nodded. She supposed so. She’d never actually reported a crime before.
“We share the same name,” Jane said. “And Chantry isn’t a common name.”
“And then they’ll come after us,” Daisy finished.
“Who will?”
Daisy shrugged. “Someone. We won’t know who. But they’ll get us, and they won’t be friendly-like.” She shuddered. “Better we just disappear, miss, with no ripples.” Jane and Damaris nodded in fervent agreement.
Abby looked at them helplessly. It went very much against the grain to do nothing, but she was ignorant of the criminal world. She hadn’t experienced what the girls had. And Daisy had grown up in that environment. Abby would be foolish to ignore her advice.
“Very well. I don’t like it, but I won’t go to Bow Street,” she said reluctantly. “But what if I send an anonymous letter?”
Daisy shrugged. “Won’t do no good. Mort’ll know about it two minutes after it gets there, and by the time anyone gets to the brothel it’ll be sweet as pie. But if writin’ a letter makes you feel better . . .”
“It will,” Abby said.
Exhausted and emotionally drained, they went to bed soon after they’d eaten. Jane shared Abby’s bed, as she had when they were children. Daisy and Damaris slept on a trundle bed brought in from the nursery.
The three girls fell asleep in minutes, but Abby lay there, wide-awake. So much to think about. How had Jane ended up in that frightful place? Why had the coachman not reported her disappearance? Why hadn’t the vicar reported Jane’s non-arrival at the vicarage? Or Mrs. Bodkin at the Pill—surely she would have been informed, so why hadn’t she written to Abby? Over and over her mind turned over possibilities, and yet nothing, no explanation came to her.
And now that she had her sister safe, what to do next? Jane couldn’t stay here; that was certain, and yet, Abby didn’t want to send her sister away.
She ought to. Her own meager savings wouldn’t support the two of them for long. It would be the sensible thing to send Jane back, either to the Pillbury or to the vicarage in Hereford, to take up her position as a companion.
Jane started up from her sleep, whimpering in fright.
“Hush, love, it’s all right,” Abby soothed.
Jane turned to her, shivering. “Oh, Abby, you are here! Thank God. I thought I’d only dreamed you, and that I was still in that place.” She wrapped her arms tightly around Abby. “I’ve missed you so much, big sister.”
“I’ve missed you too, little sister.” Her eyes blind with tears, Abby kissed the crown of Jane’s head. “You’re safe now, love, so go back to sleep.” She stroked her sister’s hair as she had when Jane was a little girl, until Jane’s breathing slowed and she was asleep.
One thing was settled, Abby thought as she finally drifted off to sleep in the wee small hours of the morning: There was no question of sending Jane anywhere; they’d stay together as a family. Somehow, Abby would manage it.
“My sister and her companion and maid were set upon and robbed.” Abby stood in the morning room, explaining to Mr. and Mrs. Mason why three strange women had been discovered in her bedchamber. Mrs. Mason had come to Abby’s room to demand something and found them.
Jane and Damaris, dressed in Abby’s clothes, waited with Daisy in the hallway.
Abby continued. “They’d just arrived in London and with no money, no baggage and nowhere to go; what was I to do?”
“You had no right to bring them into my home,” Mr. Mason said. “You know my policy on staff visitors.”
“It was an emergency,” Abby said calmly. She was skating on thin ice, and her position was on the line, but she refused to apologize. “I will also need to take some time off this morning to see my sister settled. She is not yet eighteen and a stranger to London.”
“No, you’ve just had a half day—and returned from it late,” Mr. Mason said in a bored voice, and returned to reading his newspaper.
“Yes, but this situation is both unexpected and urgent. I need at least half a day to make arrangem—”
“No,” said Mr. Mason from behind his newspaper. His wife nodded in self-righteous approval.
“I would ask you to reconsider,” Abby said quietly. “I’ve worked for you for four years and have never once asked for anything extra. You must understand this is a family obligation.” Abby’s time here was over; she knew it, and she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of begging.
But the thought of being jobless and having to support four people on her meager savings terrified her.
“The only family you have any obligation to is mine,” Mr. Mason said.
“That is your last word?”
“It is.”
“Then I hereby tender my resignation, to take effect immediately.”
“What?” Mrs. Mason gasped.
Mr. Mason lowered his paper. “You cannot.”
“You’ve left me no choice,” Abby said, amazed at how calm she sounded. “I will leave this morning, as soon as I have packed my things.”
“Leave? But what about the children? Who will take care of them?” Mrs. Mason demanded.
“They’re your children. You look after them—you might even get to know them, poor little things.” Abby turned on her heel and marched from the room.
Behind her Mrs. Mason squawked, “Don’t you dare turn your back on me—I’m not finished with you, young woman! Do something, Edwin! I’ve never in my life been treated to such insolence! Come back here, Miss Chantry!”
Abby kept walking. She would miss the children desperately, but she had no choice.
* * *
“What are we going to do?” The four girls had gathered in the small bedroom they’d rented in a respectable lodging house. It was their first evening as independent women.
“Find a job,” Daisy said. “Find a place to live. I can’t afford to stay here.”
“I think we should stay together,” Abby said. She’d given it a lot of thought during the night.
Daisy said in a cautious tone, “What, all of us? Me included?”
“Yes, all of us,” Abby said firmly. “Mama used to say, ‘A woman without family is so vulnerable,’ and she was right. Alone each of us is vulnerable, but together we can be stronger, like a family.”
“Four orphans: one family,” Damaris said. “I like the sound of that.”
“I like it too.” Jane held out her hands. “Let us take hands then, and make a vow to become as sisters to one another.”
“Sisters? I can’t be your sister,” Daisy objected.
“Why not?”
“’Cause you’re all quality born and I’m just a foundling from the gutters.” She hesitated, then added, “I can’t even read.”
“I’ll teach you,” Abby and Damaris said at the same time, and laughed.
“Yeah, but—”
“Daisy, darling, if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t even be here,” Jane pointed out. “So come along and swear.”
So, with the heady air of freedom firing their blood like a sweet and potent wine, they vowed to be as sisters to one another, to become a family. They toasted their pact with weak tea and then returned to the question of what they were going to do.
The answer was the same for each of them—get a job, earn a living. The question was how?
Eventually Abby said, “What if you could have whatever you want?”
“Ooh, yes.” Jane, who was drooping over the edge of the bed, sat up eagerly. “Abby and I used to play that game when we were children—what we’d want if we could have things exactly as we’d wish,” she explained.
Abby smiled. “It doesn’t hurt to dream.” Dreams had long been Abby’s friend.
Jane clasped her hands and thought for a moment. “I want to have a come-out like Mama did—remember the stories, Abby? She’d go to dances and balls and picnics and plays and concerts and . . . and everything. I want that. I want to go to balls and wear pretty dresses and dance with handsome men. And one of them—he’ll be tall and handsome and rich, of course—will make it his business to attend all the same balls that I go to, and he’ll ask me for the supper dance and the last dance of the evening. . . . And then he’ll ask for my hand.”
Abby’s eyes were misty. “Just like Papa did with Mama,” she said softly.
Jane nodded. “Except Papa wasn’t rich. I know it’s not possible, of course, but that’s what I want, Abby—what Mama had. And what do you want?”
Abby smiled. “That’s what I want for you too, Jane.” And she swore her sister would have it, one way or another.
“No, I mean for you—what do you want? Don’t you want the same?”
“Of course I do,” Abby said lightly. To not be lonely ever again, to feel loved and wanted . . . To have someone to talk over her worries with, and maybe even to lift the burden of care from her shoulders . . . who wouldn’t want that?
And children . . . She ached for children of her own, children she could love as much as she wanted to, children nobody could take from her.
But these days, Abby had few illusions about her marriage-ability. Laurence had seen to that. She turned to Damaris. “What do you want?”
Damaris didn’t even pause to think about it. “I want a home of my own, a place where I belong, truly belong. A small cottage, a cat, a dog, some chickens.”
“Don’t you want to get married?” Jane asked.
“No man would want me now.”
“You don’t know that,” Jane said. “And anyway, how would he know? You don’t have to tell him. You don’t have to tell anyone. It wasn’t your fault.”
Abby frowned. Damaris was acting as if . . . “I thought you hadn’t been . . .”
“No, not at the brothel. But . . .” A blush rose to her cheeks and she looked away and said in a hard little voice, “I’m not a virgin.”
Her face in the candlelight glowed, framed by her long dark hair falling straight as rain to her waist. “If I ever gave myself to a man again—and I doubt I ever would—I’d wish to give myself wholly, without reservation, with nothing between us, not even secrets. But that won’t happen, so . . .” She shrugged.
There was a long silence. Then Jane turned to Daisy. “And you, Daisy, what’s your dream?”
“Me?” Daisy swallowed. “Girls like me don’t have no dreams.” But a blush slowly rose on her face.
“Yes, you do, Daisy. Go on,” Abby prompted her.
“Yes, tell us, Daisy.”
“Nah, you’ll think it’s stupid.”
“No, we won’t.”
Daisy’s pale freckled face was almost beet red by now. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“We promise.”
Daisy looked down and picked at her fingers, seemingly debating whether to say anything or not. After a moment she climbed off the bed and collected the bundle she’d brought with her from the brothel. “It’s why I brought me bits.”
She unknotted the outer cloth and onto the bed spilled a tangled glory of ribbons, braids, old lace, sequins, strings of buttons, offcuts of satin and velvet, taffeta and other fabrics—even a few strips of fur.
In a gruff little voice she mumbled, “I want to make dresses, real pretty ones, to me own design. I want to own me own shop, a place where the quality come to buy their clothes.” She darted them a quick glance and scowled at her boots. “See, I told you it was stupid.”
“It’s not stupid at all,” Abby said quietly.
Jane nodded. “Yes, it’s a lovely dream, Daisy. And those pieces are beautiful.”
“Daisy is a talented seamstress,” Damaris told them. Daisy looked up in surprise. Damaris went on. “I saw some of the garments she made for the girls in the brothel, and she has an eye for style and something of an original flair.” She looked at Daisy. “I’d be happy to work with you to help your dream come true.”
“Would you, miss?” Daisy gasped.
“We all will,” Jane said warmly. “Won’t we, Abby? Abby?”
Abby blinked. “Sorry, I was woolgathering. I was thinking of something,” she said slowly. “About our various dreams . . .”
“Tell us,” Jane said. She turned to the others. “Abby always has wonderful ideas.”
Abby grimaced. “I don’t know about wonderful, but I was thinking . . . It’s going to be hard to meet handsome gentlemen—of the respectable sort—in London.”
In a city the size of London, respectable society, let alone the genteel society that her and Jane’s birth should have entitled them to, was far out of their reach. They could promenade at the fashionable hour in the park, and that was about it.
And if any offers from gentlemen were forthcoming, they wouldn’t be the respectable type at all.
“What if we went to Bath?” She let the thought sink in a moment. “Anyone can visit the Pump Room—”
“And all sorts of people, from dance instructors to duchesses, go to take the waters there,” Jane said.
“And any respectable person with the price of admission can attend the public assemblies,” Abby finished. In Bath, among the old and infirm, Jane’s youthful beauty and innate sweetness would stand out; she had a much better chance of meeting respectable gentlemen, and receiving a respectable offer.
She looked at Daisy. “But if we are to dazzle handsome gentlemen, we’ll need beautiful clothes. And how better to make a splash in Bath society than to have these two beautiful young ladies”—she waved a graceful hand at Jane and Damaris, who bowed graciously back—“dressed by a most exclusive, exquisite and original dressmaker.”
“I love it!” Jane exclaimed.
“I can make the clothes, miss; I promise I can,” Daisy said breathlessly.
Damaris nodded. “But we’ll need money.”
“I know,” Abby said. “We’ll need to work until we earn enough to hire rooms in a fashionable part of Bath. And it’ll be easier to find work in London.” Besides, Bath society would shun them roundly if Jane or her sister were known to have had anything so vulgar as a job.
“So it’s a plan?” she asked.
The others nodded. “We oughta drink to it,” Daisy said, and lifted her cup of weak black tea.
They all clinked cups. “To the plan.”
Before she went to bed, Abby wrote some letters: to the vicar in Hereford; to Mrs. Bodkin, the matron in charge of the Pill; and to Sir Walter Greevey, whose driver had been so drunk and careless as to allow his passenger to be kidnapped.
Abby didn’t mention the brothel—she didn’t want any whiff of scandal to attach itself to her sister’s name—so she simply wrote to say Jane would be living with her sister in London from now on.
She also asked Mrs. Bodkin for a character reference. The Masons had refused to give one to Abby. It was a devastating blow, for without one, no respectable employer would take her. And with four people to support, Abby’s savings would disappear in no time. She gave her return address as the post office at Charing Cross. Their current lodgings were so expensive, they would have to move shortly.
Finally she wrote an anonymous letter to Bow Street, to report the brothel for kidnapping girls and holding them prisoner. Daisy might be right—the letter might do no good—but you never could tell, and Abby had to do something.