Chapter 6 #2
She knew she’d lost her ambition, she reflected ruefully, but she hadn’t realized she’d lost it as badly as that.
Slowly, she walked back to Miss Jessie’s, having returned the bag of cough drops to the druggist with a murmured apology.
She supposed she could ask Jessamine for payment, but she suspected the lack of it so far had not been unintended.
And really, a few hours of sewing and darning a day didn’t warrant much of a salary, not when she was already being fed and housed, along with Danny and Brendan.
She suspected that if she asked Miss Jessie for some kind of remuneration, the madam would crisply inform her she was already being more than generous with what she was giving them.
The truth was, Maggie knew, the life they’d built here, such as it was, wasn’t remotely suitable.
Not only was it not respectable—something she had learned to let go of—but it wasn’t even financially sustainable.
And now that she had no money to fall back on, she was actually worse off than when she’d arrived in the city. How could she have let that happen?
With her mind swirling with these unwelcome thoughts, Maggie let herself inside the house.
It was nearly noon, and the day’s first guests would soon be arriving, to sprawl in the living room with a jug of fruit punch laced liberally with rum, and a girl—or two—on their laps.
Maggie always tried to make herself scarce as soon as the men started arriving, but she still heard their rumbling voices and low laughter, the sudden shriek or squeal, sometimes good-natured, sometimes not—of one of the girls in response.
Upstairs, the girls were in various states of undress, trailing petticoats and peignoirs, some of them laughing and gossiping, others already looking exhausted as they gazed at their reflections in the mirrors of their dressing tables, dabbing a bit of blush onto their pale cheeks, or unwinding their hair from its curling papers.
Despite the steak dinners and boxes of chocolates, the endless supply of champagne and jugs of rum punch, the fancy gowns and even fancier peignoirs whose delicate lace the guests seemed to delight in tearing, it was, Maggie knew, a hard life for them.
Better, perhaps, than the girls stuck in cubicles in the shabby, flea-bitten cribs, the lowliest of the places of prostitution, serving one man after another, but still far from what any woman wanted for herself.
And sometimes it could seem a very hard life, she acknowledged as she paused in the doorway of little Jenny’s room. The young girl was still in her nightgown, curled up in bed, her hair in two blond braids that made her look about ten.
Maggie’s heart gave a painful twist at the sight.
“Jenny?” she asked gently. “Are you all right, dear?”
Jenny gave her an unhappy smile, the freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks standing out in relief on her pale face. “Yeah, just tired as all get out,” she replied on a sigh.
“Maybe you could ask Miss Jessie for a rest?” Sometimes, Maggie knew, Jessamine let the girls have a night off, especially if they were feeling peaky.
Resolutely, Jenny shook her head. “Nah, I need the money, and I’ll be having my monthlies soon enough.
I’ll get a rest then, whether I want it or not.
” She heaved herself up to sitting, grimacing as she did so, one hand pressed to her stomach.
“I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me, I guess,” she told Maggie.
“One of them fancy shrimps Miss Jessie puts on. I’ve been feeling sick to my stomach all morning. ”
Maggie tensed, for although she’d never experienced them herself, she knew the symptoms of pregnancy well enough—and it was certainly a possibility in a place like this, despite the rudimentary precautions the girls took.
“Have you been feeling poorly for a while?” she asked Jenny, and the girl looked at her blankly for a moment.
“Maybe a few days? Come on a week, now that I think of it.” She frowned, and Maggie knew the exact moment when the same suspicion she’d been having came upon the girl, for her eyes widened and her face drained of color, leaving her even paler than before.
“I couldn’t be…” she whispered. “I’ve been usin’ the sponge, just like Miss Jessie said?—”
“Such methods aren’t always foolproof,” Maggie told her gently.
Not that she knew of such things herself, but six weeks in a brothel had given her an entirely new education in such matters.
As she looked at Jenny, so pale and woebegone, her heart ached for her.
The girl was so young, far too young for the life she led, never mind becoming a mother herself.
“I can’t be,” Jenny said again, more urgently. She reached out one hand toward Maggie as if she’d grab her sleeve. “I’m not going to have some old hag down a back alley tearing apart my insides!” she cried, tears starting in her pale blue eyes.
Maggie drew back, unable to hide her shock at such a dreadful notion. “Jenny,” she soothed, “if you are with child, which you may not be, you could give the baby up for adoption?—”
“And not work for months and months?” Jenny shook her head despairingly. “Miss Jessie’ll throw me out on my ear if she finds out about this.”
Maggie stiffened with surprise. “She wouldn’t do that?—”
Jenny glanced at her scornfully. “Ah, sure, you think she’ll let me have my room for six months or more until I’m back to work? Let me laze about in bed while I get as fat as a cow?” She dropped her head into her hands with a moan. “What am I going to do, what am I going to do?”
“Jenny, you might not even be in that way,” Maggie told her as she came closer to clasp the girl’s cold hands in her own.
“You said yourself you’re not expecting your monthlies till next week.
Wait and see, at least, before you worry yourself sick, and then we can think what to do.
I’m sure we’ll find a way forward that doesn’t involve back alleys or being tossed out on your ear.
I promise.” She spoke firmly, as if all this was in her power, when already Maggie knew full well that it wasn’t.
Jenny clung to her hands, her expression heartbreakingly childish and pathetically eager. “You promise, Miss Maggie?” she asked, squeezing her hands hard. “You really promise?”
Maggie swallowed hard, well aware that such promises were not truly hers to make.
She had little sway over anyone here, and her own resources were already spent.
And yet Jenny was a child, and despite the hardheaded nature of Miss Jessie’s business acumen, Maggie truly believed the woman was kind.
She’d taken in her family as well as Brendan, not to mention Evie, after all, and certainly that had been an act of charity.
“I promise,” she said, forcing a smile as she squeezed the girl’s hands with as much reassurance as she could muster.
If Jenny were indeed pregnant, she would find a way to help her.
Somehow, no matter what it took.