Chapter 7 #2
Mrs. Spickey’s pinched expression reminded her of Aunt Althea’s.
Mrs. Spickey would never be invited into the drawing rooms of the upper class.
“Lord Daring at a conversational evening,” she said.
“And now visiting the parish workhouse? I did not think either of those activities in his usual style.”
“Perhaps there is more to Lord Darien than we have been given to believe,” Henrietta said.
“I will not allow Constance to talk to him,” Mrs. Spickey decided. “And you must not encourage him, Henrietta.”
“So I have been informed by my brother and Sir Pelton,” Henrietta said firmly. “Several times.”
Constance trailed behind her mother, her hair primly tucked into a straw bonnet, lace mittens covering her hands.
She was a darling, biddable girl, and she could not be trusted out of her mother’s sight because she had never been taught to use her own mind.
Henrietta thanked her lucky stars and Aunt Davinia for Miss Gregoire’s Academy for Girls.
She only hoped she would not have to guard Constance from Lord Darien, in addition to everything else.
The infirmary ward for women and children was occupied past capacity, with rows of cots bracketing the walls.
Light and air being considered unhealthful and possibly carrying disease, the few high windows were shuttered, and tallow candles sputtered smoke.
The air stank with illness, medicinal herbs, and the chamber pot in the corner behind a sheet, its contents emptied outside the one open window as needed.
Henrietta looked around and wondered where to begin.
“Ooh, ’ere’s a rum mort,” squealed a woman in a ragged gray cloak, long unwashed. “Draw your bung for ye, shall I? Fancy there’s some gelt in that nugging dress!” She reached for Henrietta’s skirts.
Henrietta clamped a hand over her pocket. The woman’s breath held the stink of rotten teeth, and her face was scarred from smallpox.
“I haven’t any coin,” she said, it having been emphasized by the Auxiliary matrons that any money they distributed would at once be extorted or traded for gin. “Would you like one of these?”
The woman seized a knitted shawl and turned to Darien. “Yer Jemmy fellow, then?” She tugged down her bodice to expose a pair of heavy round breasts. It was only her face and hands that were worn, Henrietta realized; she was, in all likelihood, young.
“’Ere, ye great gorger,” she cooed at Darien. “Tip me a hog and I’ll tickle your rod! Blow your pipe for a kick!”
Darien tried and failed to tear his eyes away from the woman’s bared bosom and the dark, prominent nipples pointing straight up.
How like a man to be knocked senseless by the sight of a woman’s bosoms, Henrietta thought as Darien sent her a stricken look.
She pulled the shawl firmly about the woman’s shoulders, tying her up in a tidy bow.
“Do you require stockings as well?” she asked.
“Not the drawers you got, gawkey!” The woman laughed and moved away to proposition the porter.
“Shift yer bob, ye draggletail!” James cried after her. “An’ quit sportin’ the dairy.”
“I needs me one o’ them shawls,” piped a woman sitting on the floor.
Henrietta offered her one, noting the dirt and scars on the woman’s face, the tangles in her hair, the shabby, threadbare state of her dress.
The Sisters of Benevolence would never allow their tenants to remain unwashed or thinly clad.
The woman rose and hiked up her skirt, pulled the shawl between her legs, wrapped and tied it around her waist, and then dropped her skirt back into place.
It was fair to say she was wearing neither drawers nor stockings.
“It’s thanking you I am,” she said, patting the bulge at her hips. “Ran out of small clothes, I did, and bleedin’ like a stuck pig all o’er the place.”
Henrietta tried to stand her ground as other women surged forward and plucked at the items in her boxes, fighting over the ones they wanted, throwing those useless to them on the floor.
This was not at all like her missions to the hospitals and workhouses of the north.
There, she bent over cots and tucked soft blankets around the shoulders of shivering women, swaddled babies, exchanged words of hope and encouragement in quiet, soulful murmurs.
Here, faces swirled before her while handkerchiefs, blankets, and stockings flew through the air and her arms were pulled this way and that.
“Please,” Henrietta said as one woman wrenched a small blanket out of her arms. “That’s for a baby.”
“It’s fer me now, ain’t it!” the woman cried. “Stiff rump! Dog’s wife!”
“Sauce box!” James yelled back.
The woman turned and spat. Henrietta clamped her teeth together and fought the impulse to throw the box at them and run away, shrieking.
All of a sudden Darien was before her, one strong arm sweeping the crowd of women away.
“Stand back, all of you,” he said in a commanding voice.
He took one of her boxes and stepped forward, shielding Henrietta from the horde.
“Do not pull Miss Wardley-Hines about. Sit down,” he said over his shoulder, without looking back.
“Where?” Henrietta asked with a shaky breath, looking around.
In a corner of the room, a young girl lay on a cot under a thin blanket, an infant at her side. The poor child squirmed and kicked weakly. The girl stretched out a hand to soothe it but did not lift her head.
Henrietta laid an extra blanket over the girl’s legs. “Look at you,” she cooed at the baby. “Is this your brother? Sister?”
“Brother?” The girl had a thin, freckled face, but her eyes were unfocused. She was either under the influence of opiates or exhausted. “’E’s mine.”
Henrietta blinked. “Oh. I did not think you old enough to be a mother.”
“Hush, ye great roarer.” The girl patted the wailing infant with a thin hand. “’E’s sick as a horse,” she told Henrietta. “Nothing settles ’im. Can’t eat, can’t sleep. An’ never stops crying.”
“He may need his breeches changed,” Henrietta said, detecting a distinctive smell.
“I run out of cloths for him,” the girl said. “Wash day’s Friday.”
Henrietta gagged when she opened the swaddling clothes.
There was a bucket in the corner that appeared to be the sole water supply; she poured some onto a cloth and carefully cleaned the baby.
He stopped squalling and watched her with a resigned squint, as if he already knew the world he had been brought into was a cold, cruel place.
“How old is he?” Henrietta asked.
“Six months,” the girl said with a tired smile. “A fine banging boy, aye?”
“He’s lovely,” Henrietta murmured. She’d had a hand in the care of all five of her half-sisters, so she managed a fair swaddle in a fresh cloth and blanket. The poor mite poked a fist into his mouth and watched her with hopeful eyes.
“I believe he’s hungry.”
“I barely got milk,” the girl said, her lashes drifting closed. “And what grub I give ’im, ’e shoots up.”
And how could she nourish a baby, being malnourished herself?
Henrietta looked around and saw a small dish of something clotted and brownish gray not far from the girl’s head.
She poured a little water into the dish to make a thin paste of the gruel.
Then she took off her gloves, scooped gruel onto her finger, and slid it into the baby’s mouth.
He mewled and turned away, giving that thin, hoarse wail.
“What’s his name?” Henrietta asked. The noise of the room had faded. It was just her, the baby, and this frail girl, at sea on a frayed blanket.
“I named ’im Elijah.” The girl watched her son with a small, sweet smile. “The one so special that God took ’im straight up to Heaven, aye?”
“Yes,” Henrietta said past the lump in her throat. “Yes, I believe he was.”
“’E won’t make it if ’e don’t eat,” the girl said with a weary sigh.
Henrietta’s stomach clenched. All those days and weeks she had sat at Fanny’s bedside, able to do nothing.
She knew that helplessness. It was part of what drove her to assist Lady Bess with her rescues.
Now, given that Pinochle had recognized her, she’d be thwarted in her role of assisting rescues.
Lady Bessington might be immune to gossip or criminal charges. Henrietta Wardley-Hines was not.
But there were other ways she could help.
“I am Henrietta Wardley-Hines,” she announced. “What is your name, dear?”
“Mary Ann Dowdy. Named after both me grandmothers, I am.” The girl heaved herself up and held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Henrietta smiled at her manners. “How long have you been here, Mary Ann?”
“Two days. I can stay, but they want to send Elijah to a baby farm.” She blinked away tears. “I don’t want ’im to go, but we got nowhere else.”
The London workhouses frequently sent infants out of town to be nursed and raised, it being thought they had a better survival rate in the country.
This also left their parents free to work.
“Your home?” Henrietta asked, knowing Mary Ann would not be in the parish workhouse if she had other options.
“Rushy Green.” Mary Ann clenched her jaw. “An’ if I go back, my da’ll just trade me to another man to pay his debts. I left to get away from ’im.”
Henrietta swallowed the bile rising in her throat. Such great, undeserved fortune she’d had, born the daughter of Jasper Wardley-Hines, a man who would never abuse those in his care.
“E’ryone said there’s work in London.” Mary Ann’s voice was a thin thread.
The baby cried silently as he worked his face against Henrietta’s arm.
“I said I’d do anything. Scullery maid. Sweep stables.
But no one’ll take me with a belly full.
” Mary Ann tried to keep her expression hard, but Henrietta saw fresh tears gathering in her eyes.