Chapter One
Chapter One
The coal box was empty. The larder contained some cheese, some bread, and very little else. Serafine walked to her room with a heavy heart. In her dresser drawer there was a small metal chest – the sort that, in another life, she might have used as a jewellery box.
She turned the key, and opened the chest. She stared at the contents, as despair gripped her. The box contained only ten pounds. Ten pounds that were their last remaining money. And, carefully wrapped in a scrap of silk, a heart made of lace and ribbon and beads, all sewn onto a piece of parchment.
Lace that was all she had left of her grandmother. Everything else had been sold.
Sewing that heart had been just for fun, then – it seemed an eternity ago – before ‘the fall ’ as she thought of it. Before her fool of a brother had gambled away everything, drawn into a tawdry gaming hell by that demon Pendholm, and bled of everything that had any value in their lives. Before her brother had committed the ultimate betrayal, and killed himself because of it.
Before the ton had shunned them for the scandal of a suicide in the family. Before…
She shut the thoughts away. At least they had the house.
It was small, and in a rather unfashionable part of town – not quite respectable at all – but it was her mother’s outright, left to her by her aunt, shortly after Serafine’s father’s death. Although an unheated house, with no servants, and little furniture left was not exactly the most pleasant place to live, at least it was theirs.
She took out two pounds, her finger absently stroking the lace as she did, then shut and locked the chest, hiding it away again. Today, she could buy food and coal. What would she do on the day when there was no longer any money to do so?
*****
Serafine sighed, holding the bag of food close against her. It was heavy, but she treasured the weight – it was the substance of survival, at least for a little longer. The coal would be delivered later in the day – enough for a month, if she was very careful.
The food would not last near so long.
Passing the shop on the corner, she paused to look in the window a moment. Once, she would have thought such a shop beneath her – now, what it contained was as far beyond what she could afford as the moon was above the earth. Yet she still liked to look at pretty things. A little collection in one corner of the window caught her eye. A pile of what might be called favours – little cards and items, decorated with ribbons, lace and sometimes paste gems or feathers.
Pretty little nothings that a man might give his mistress, or a woman he was courting.
One, in particular, a little stained on the edges, but still pretty, reminded her of the heart with her grandmother’s lace – it was the sort of thing that some called a Valentine. She stared at it for a while, feeling as if it was important, but not knowing why, then shrugged, lifted her bags again, and went home.
*****
The next day was clear and bright, but very cold – they would likely have snow on Christmas Day.
Serafine sat at the window of the parlour, sewing. She was nearly finished embellishing the gown for Mrs Johnson, which was a relief, for it meant that she would be paid for the work, but also a worry, for there were no more dresses waiting her attention. And her sewing was their only income –the only way to stretch out what money they had, for a little longer.
The ladies of the merchant classes, who lived all around them, those who had some money, but were not rich enough to ever consider going to a modiste in the heart of London, they were her customers. They found the idea of a Lady born sewing for them somehow satisfying (not that anybody ever called her ‘Lady Serafine’ any more – that manner of address belonged to before – now she was just ‘miss’ most of the time. And to those who knew her name at all, she was Miss Sera – Serafine had seemed a lovely name to her mother, who was fascinated by old mythology and similar, but now it was simply out of place for her current station in life.).
The merchant ladies appreciated her fine sense of fashion. But more than that, they appreciated her affordable pricing.
She hummed as she worked, her clever fingers sewing beads onto a tracery of lace on the hemline of the dress, but her mind was elsewhere.
Her thoughts kept going back to that sad little pile of favours in the shop window. She wondered if they sold well, and what sort of people bought them. She’d seen a few things like that… before … but she’d never thought much of it. She thought of it now. They were such little things, and sewing them was, she suspected, not so different from sewing embellishments onto dresses.
Were they a thing that members of the ton might buy?
Perhaps – if someone important bought one, or gave one to someone noticeable… if that happened, then others would follow – there were always those who simply copied everything the arbiters of fashion did, or the royal family did. She brought her attention back to sewing the last few beads onto the dress – what a goose she was, dreaming about the royals and the ton ! They had nothing to do with her world now, nothing at all.