The Discerning Gentleman's Guide. Virginia Heath
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outfit brought back a whole host of unwelcome memories—hunger, cold, tiredness, hopelessness—but it also gave her strength. She was more than these old clothes, always had been and always would be, but at least now she could use them to help others suffering from the dreadful disease known as poverty.
Judging the back door to be the best exit for a woman who looked like she did, Amelia hurried down the ornate staircase and darted back towards the kitchen. With any luck, nobody would see her.
‘Miss Mansfield?’
Lovett, the butler, appeared out of nowhere and regarded her with open curiosity. There was nothing for it; Amelia had to explain her appearance. Sort of.
‘I am off to do some charitable work with the poor.’
The butler looked her up and down, taking in the shabby grey dress that had been washed once too often, the ratty woollen shawl and the old and scuffed boots. ‘Are you sure? If you go to help them looking like that, they might take pity on you and offer you charity instead.’
His face might be deadpan, but his tone was definitely sarcastic. Even so, for some reason Amelia was certain that she had found herself an ally. ‘Where I am going, people are suspicious of fine clothes.’
‘Then I am not altogether sure that I approve of you going there. Where is this place you can only go dressed like a vagabond?’
She seriously considered lying but already knew that the wily butler would immediately become suspicious and might well send a footman to follow her. ‘Covent Garden.’ It was almost the truth.
One of Lovett’s eyebrows quirked upwards. ‘Who would require your charitable efforts there? The market traders perhaps? Or one of the theatre owners? I doubt the brothels or gaming hells need the help of a gently bred young lady.’ He tapped one foot impatiently and Amelia found herself squirming in the intensity of his gaze.
‘If you must know, I am going to help out in a soup kitchen in the Church of St Giles.’
The butler’s reaction was instantaneous and quite explosive. ‘Seven Dials! The most degenerate slum in the entire city? Are you quite mad, Miss Mansfield? His Grace will hit the roof if he finds out that I allowed you to head to the Rookery!’
‘Please don’t tell the Duke, I beg you. I can assure you that I shall be perfectly safe, Lovett. I know the people there and they know me.’
Unsurprisingly, he did not look convinced. ‘Seven Dials is filled with criminals. Thieves and crooks the lot of them.’
‘Which is exactly why I shall be perfectly safe there, dressed like this,’ she said reasonably. ‘Nobody has anything worth stealing and all of the thieves and crooks go to Mayfair or Bond Street to practise their trade.’
Lovett’s mouth opened to correct her and then closed as he regarded her quietly. ‘I have never thought of it like that. I suppose you might be right—but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to let you go there alone. Soup or no soup. His Grace will have a fit. You are not to leave the house.’
‘I am a grown woman and it is my afternoon off to spend exactly where I so choose. Like you, I am a servant. I doubt anyone tries to tell you what you can and cannot do in your free time. At least I am using mine for a good cause. It will be much easier for both of us if you keep it to yourself.’
The butler watched her for several seconds and, to her complete surprise, acquiesced immediately. ‘Very well. Just this once I shall keep it between us. But I shall expect you home well before it gets dark or I will tell His Grace and then there will be hell to pay.’
Relieved that he had relented so easily, Amelia beamed at him. ‘Thank you, Lovett. I shall be back by four. I promise.’
‘Will you be coming in through the back door, Miss Mansfield?’ When she nodded he smiled and gestured her to the passageway behind the kitchen. ‘This is the door to the servants’ stairs. Go up two flights and veer left. The third door brings you right out near your bedchamber.’ That confirmed it. He was her ally. Amelia stood on tiptoe and kissed the man on the cheek.
* * *
Seven Dials looked exactly like it had when she had left it a year before. The narrow streets were still filthy, the doss houses and dwellings were still barely fit for the rats to live in and the dank smell of despair permeated everything. As she had predicted, nobody gave her a second glance in her ragged clothes, although one or two did stare at her boots covetously. Boots, even battered ones, were a rarity here.
The only decently built brick edifice was the parish workhouse that dominated Norfolk Street and the sight of it sent an involuntary shiver down Amelia’s spine. Only the truly desperate ventured through those doors and her poor mother had been one of them.
Clutching the small bunch of violets that she had just bought from a street vendor, Amelia marched past the workhouse and turned into the tiny overgrown cemetery lying next to its walls. There were very few headstones here. These were paupers’ graves and all of them were unmarked. Somewhere under the grass were her mother’s remains. She did not know where. There had been no formal burial ceremony for her to attend. Her mother had gone into the ground with all of the other wretched souls who had died in the same week. It had been a cruel and insignificant ending to a lovely young woman who had once been toasted as the most beautiful heiress in Philadelphia.
Amelia placed her tiny posy on the ground and stood for a few moments, allowing all of the memories, both happy and sad, to wash over her. Just once a year she allowed herself to remember the pain. Any more than that and the anger it created threatened to consume her. It was far better to channel that anger constructively, doing good deeds, giving something back, to forget about all of the cruelty and malice that had sent her here in the first place.
She had been just eighteen when her mother had died. Despite her best efforts, Amelia had been unable to save her. By then they’d been penniless and destitute. Once her father had secured an annulment, as far as he was concerned they were both dead to him. The seventeen-year marriage might never have happened and he had had no contact with either of them for years. That had destroyed her mother and plunged her into a pit of self-pity and self-recrimination that she was never inclined to claw out of. She had been raised to be a rich man’s wife and had blamed herself for the end of the marriage. ‘If only I could have given him a son, Amelia, then he would still love me.’ From the age of twelve, Amelia had heard those words at least once a day. By the time she’d turned sixteen she had completely lost patience with them.
By then, her mother’s physical health had been deteriorating rapidly too. Amelia had done her best to earn enough to keep a roof over their heads, but as her mother needed more care even that proved to be impossible. The only place that they could turn to for help had been this workhouse, and Amelia had been determined not to go there.
In a last-ditch attempt to get her father to do the right thing, she had trudged through the dark streets to Mayfair in biting rain and sleet to beg for his help. As usual, he’d refused to see her. He no longer had a daughter. How could he have a daughter when he had never been married? When she had kicked up a fuss and refused to leave, two burly footmen were sent to forcibly drag her down the street and threw her face down in an alleyway, warning her never to darken His Lordship’s door again.
One dank, wet February morning a few days later, her desperately ill mother had walked into the building behind her and had never walked out. Consumption had made her poor lungs so weak that pneumonia killed her. Apparently, her last words were words of love for her former husband because, even when things were at their worst, her mother still clung to the hope that he would want her back.
For a while Amelia had drowned in bitterness. Her American grandparents had died shortly before their daughter had married, she had no money, no home and no one to turn to. After a series of low-paid and menial jobs, she had learned how dangerous life for a woman alone truly could be. At least in the workhouse all they had required of her was her work. Out on the streets, her youth, beauty and petite size made her the target of every lecher in London. On numerous occasions she’d barely escaped with her virtue intact.