A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock #1)(44)
Which meant she must lie and pretend to have experience and references. She had read Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management from end to end. She knew that turpentine could remove stains from clothing and that spirit of wine was good for cleaning pokers.
But domestic service had its own drawbacks. In smaller households she might be harassed by her employer or other servants. In larger households, run with military precision, she was safer from unwanted attention—she might never see her employer except once a year at the servants’ ball. But she faced a greater risk that someone might recognize her, leading to her expulsion—or to being blackmailed.
Was it any wonder she had spent most of the day staring at the ceiling? Why expend the energy—and wear out the soles of her boots—just so she could spend the next several years on her knees cleaning out grates while fearing either the son of the house or a sharp-eyed fellow servant who might have seen her from her pre-scandal days?
Much better to stay put. That way she’d at least be less hungry.
But when the rain stopped, she left for her daily pilgrimage to the General Post Office, in the hope that there would be a letter from Livia or Inspector Treadles—she hadn’t heard from him again after he embarked on his investigation.
Temperatures had dropped. Unlike Livia, Charlotte enjoyed leaden skies and daylong drizzle. Even better if they coincided with raw winds that rattled roof tiles, while the last few brown leaves shivered on bare, swaying branches.
But winter was a pleasure only for those who could afford it. Who could sit before a blazing fire, a steaming mug of mulled cider in hand, and watch the storm pelt against windowpanes while nibbling on a slice of still-warm plum cake.
Winter would not be at all enjoyable for a woman who didn’t even possess a winter coat anymore. Who had only enough money to last her two more weeks in the city, provided nothing untoward happened in the meanwhile.
At the end of those two weeks, if she hadn’t experienced a sudden reversal of fortune, she would need to swallow her pride and go to a man.
Besides her father, there were two men she could call on. One she didn’t want to visit because she wasn’t sure whether he would help her. The other gave her pause because he would—and she would rather not need his help if she could at all avoid it.
No good choices. But then, what had she expected? Even before she ran away from home, she had reached a point where every choice was unhappy and every decision costly.
When summer ended, it would be an eternity before summer returned again.
As if to further emphasize how far she’d fallen from grace, it poured anew, forcing her to seek shelter beneath the awning of a printer’s shop, so that the rain wouldn’t ruin either her hat or the hem of her dress.
A long quarter hour to stand in place and stare into a future the unknowns of which were becoming all too grimly clear.
The rain lightened and became scarcely damper than mist. Charlotte set out again. She took a different route to the post office these days, since she was coming from a different direction, bypassing the spot held by the mother-and-daughter beggar-and-thief team. But whenever she was in the vicinity, she still looked about, not so much afraid of being stolen from again as fearing the mortification if she were to run into them.
The beggars were nowhere in sight. But the man who had waited out the rain across the street from her was twenty feet behind.
Was he following her?
She hadn’t feared for the safety of her person in broad daylight. But now unsavory possibilities bombarded her. After a minute, she looked again. But he was no longer there.
Had it been a figment of her imagination? Had the man simply been on his way to his own destination?
She turned onto St. Martin’s Le Grand and stopped under the side portico of the post office’s fa?ade. If the man were following her, he would catch up to her at some point and she’d see him.
She saw no one who resembled the man, but the beautifully overdressed woman from the other day walked past, staring down at a stack of mail in her hand. With every step, she shuffled the letter on top to the bottom, a sharp line creasing her lovely brow.
A herd of men came around the corner, obscuring Charlotte’s view of the woman. She studied the men: None of them proved to be the one she suspected of following her.
When they had all passed, she saw a letter lying at the edge of the portico. When no one rushed back to claim it, she picked it up.
The letter, in a less-than-handsome script, was addressed to a Mrs. Jebediah. Mrs. Jebediah herself was already some distance away. Charlotte called after her; she didn’t turn around, but headed inside a tea shop.
Sometimes Charlotte wondered what women did, before tea shops came along and provided venues where an unaccompanied female could dine respectably in public. She could only be thankful that this, at least, wasn’t one of her problems.
The tea shop had a fair crowd, comprised mostly of those leaving work from the post office and other nearby establishments having a bite to eat before they set out for home. Against this backdrop of somberly attired men and women, Mrs. Jebediah was as easy to spot as a toucan among pigeons.
A waitress in a black dress and a long white apron hurried past, carrying a tea tray toward a table full of clerks. The aroma of eggs scrambled in plenty of good butter assaulted Charlotte.
She could not in good conscience complain about her current boarding home. It still clung to respectability—tooth and nail—and maintained a semblance of hygiene. For the price she paid, it was a miracle that any meals had been thrown into the bargain at all. She went to each supper full of gratitude, left still mostly hungry, and filled her tummy the rest of the time with two-day-old bread bought at steep discount from the bakery down the street.