Chapter Three #2
The truth was easier than the fiction, actually, once she let herself reach for it.
“That is a lie. I have no aunt. I am running away from a marriage to a terrible man, and I arrived in Bath this morning with a travelling-bag full of poor decisions and a sixpence that I have since spent on tea, and I realise that I have now eaten your bread and drunk your tea and have absolutely no means of compensating you. I am genuinely, deeply sorry, and I would be very happy to wash your dishes.”
Mrs Bramble said nothing for a moment, listening to the low pop and settle of the fire, while the ginger cat yawned elaborately from the windowsill, as though this sort of confession happened at least twice weekly and he had grown weary of the drama.
She regarded Molly for a long, steady breath.
She took in the damp copper hair, the bruise on her jaw, the swollen ankle, and the travelling-bag with its absurd protruding shoe.
At last, her gaze settled on Molly’s eyes, which were brown and bright and brimming with a terror the girl’s smile was working very hard to keep beneath the surface.
Mrs Bramble made a decision.
It was a decision she had made before, more than once.
For a kitchen maid whose husband had left bruises in places sleeves could cover.
For a widow whose landlord had tried to collect rent in a currency that was not money.
And, thirty years ago, for herself, when she had walked out of a bad situation with a valise and a refusal to go back, and had built this house with nothing but her own two hands.
She recognised courage.
Even when it was dressed up as chaos and eating bread it had no way of paying for.
“You may have a room for three nights,” she said, drying her hands on her apron with the brisk finality of a woman closing a ledger.
Molly stared at her. “I—thank you. I cannot—”
“You can thank me by answering plainly.” Mrs Bramble set the towel aside. “This terrible man you mentioned. Does he have a name?”
Molly’s fingers tightened around the edge of her plate.
“Lord Vyne.”
Mrs Bramble’s face did not change, but her eyes sharpened. “And your father means you to marry him, I take it?”
“He—yes,” Molly said, too quickly. “He thinks of the estate, and the tenants, and the debts, and my mother’s grave, and all the reasons that make it seem less monstrous if one says them in the proper order.”
“But monstrous it remains.”
Molly looked down. “Yes.”
A silence passed between them, brief but sufficient.
“At least we know what we are about,” Mrs Bramble said. “Three nights. After that, we shall sit down properly and discuss terms.”
“I could work.” Molly’s voice caught, just slightly, on the edge of a gratitude she was trying very hard to keep from becoming tears.
“I am excellent at… well, I am certain I am excellent at something. I learn quickly. I have been told I have a pleasant manner, and I can carry a conversation, and I am moderately good at arranging things, and I am very willing to scrub anything that requires scrubbing.”
“Can you be quiet for more than a minute?”
“That is… less certain.”
Mrs Bramble made a sound that was nearly a laugh, caught it, and converted it into a pragmatic sigh.
“The room is at the top of the stairs. Second door on the left. The sheets are clean, the door locks, and breakfast is at seven. The cat’s name is Wellington. He will judge you, but he judges everyone, so you should take no personal offence.”
“I would never take offence from a cat of such obvious distinction.”
“Mercy preserve me,” Mrs Bramble muttered, and turned back towards the kitchen.
She paused in the doorway.
“What is your name, girl?”
“Molly. Molly Granger.”
“Well, Molly Granger. You have three days. Use them wisely.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, and Molly heard the sound of crockery being moved with pointed efficiency.
She sat at the table in the warm parlour with her cold tea and her empty plate and the cat regarding her from the windowsill, and thought, I am in a place I have never seen before, in a house belonging to a woman I met mere minutes ago, with a swollen ankle, no money, no plan, and not the faintest notion what I am to do tomorrow.
She caught the cat’s eye. He held hers, unblinking.
“I am going to be fine,” she told him. “I am resourceful and cheerful, and I have survived an entire day on one roll and the kindness of strangers, and I am going to figure this out.”
The cat flicked his tail once, which Molly chose to interpret as cautious agreement.
The room at the top of the stairs was small, clean, and spare, with a narrow bed, a washstand, and a window that looked out over a little garden.
It was the most beautiful room she had ever seen, because it was hers, and because the door locked, and because no one in this house was going to study her as Lord Vyne had studied her across her father’s dining table.
Because, for the first time in a long while, she could breathe all the way to the bottom of her lungs without the weight of someone else’s plans pressing down upon her chest.
She sat on the bed.
She opened the travelling-bag and took out the contents one by one: two dresses, wrinkled beyond social acceptability; a hairbrush; a novel she had read twice; one evening shoe in pale blue silk; and her mother’s locket, which she lifted out last and held in her palm, running her thumb over the clasp.
“I did it, Mama,” she whispered. “I jumped.”
The locket was warm from the bag. The room was quiet. Somewhere below, she could hear Mrs Bramble moving through the kitchen, and the low domestic clatter of a household easing into its evening rhythm, and it sounded like safety. Like walls built to keep things out rather than keep things in.
She unclasped the locket.
The tiny portrait inside was her mother’s face, painted in miniature, smiling as Molly remembered her smiling—with her entire self, as though joy were something she had too much of and was forever looking for places to put it down.
Molly closed the locket, fastened it around her neck, and lay back on the narrow bed. Her ankle throbbed, and every muscle in her body was registering complaints that she had been too busy to hear all day.
Three days.
Mrs Bramble had given her three days.
She was going to need every single hour.