Chapter Twenty-One #2
“Come on, then,” she said. “If Selina is in the library, she may know where Bassett has hidden the cake.”
Nathaniel followed her out and closed the door behind them.
***
The following morning Nathaniel sat at his study desk and discovered, with some irritation, that there was nothing urgent upon it.
There were estate accounts, certainly. Three letters required answers. A tenant at Wexford Park wanted permission to alter a boundary wall, and Bassett had left a tradesman’s account beneath the correspondence.
None of it was dangerous.
He sat back.
The distinction was proving unexpectedly difficult to become accustomed to.
For years there had always been something beyond the ordinary business of the day: Georgiana to watch, the household to keep beyond reproach, some possible consequence of his mother’s history to anticipate before it arrived.
He had become so accustomed to arranging himself around the next difficulty that the absence of one felt almost like an omission.
Bassett brought the coffee at eleven.
“Will there be anything else, Your Grace?”
Nathaniel looked at the orderly desk.
“No.”
Bassett waited.
Nathaniel looked up. “Apparently not.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
Bassett withdrew before Nathaniel could accuse him of finding the situation amusing.
The peace sat there in the room, and Nathaniel could not think what to do with it.
He had never had any.
He had just begun considering whether an inspection of the stables constituted legitimate occupation or cowardly flight from leisure when the door opened.
Selina came in carrying several closely written sheets.
Nathaniel looked at the papers. “What have I done?”
“Nothing yet.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It was not meant to be.”
She crossed to the table and set the pages before him.
“I have been working on something.”
“So I see.”
“You are going to have opinions.”
“I usually do.”
“Yes. I have allowed for them.”
Nathaniel drew the first sheet towards him. Selina remained standing until he looked pointedly at the chair opposite.
“This may take some time.”
After a moment, she sat.
“What is it?”
“A foundation.”
He looked down at the first page.
“For what?”
“For women like the one I was.”
That brought his eyes back to her.
Selina rested her hands upon the table.
“Not a charity in the usual sense. I do not want women standing in a queue to be judged sufficiently deserving of rescue. I want an establishment that helps gentlewomen who must earn their own living to find respectable positions, and that does rather more than write their names into a register and hope the gentleman employing them is honourable.”
Nathaniel said nothing.
Encouraged, or perhaps merely committed, she continued.
“It would verify positions before sending women into them. It would stand behind their characters when they have no family willing to do so. There should be temporary rooms for those between situations, because a woman with three pounds left cannot afford to wait six weeks for the right employment and is therefore very easily persuaded to accept the wrong one.”
Nathaniel turned to the second page.
Selina had divided the expenses into columns.
House. Salaries. Coal. Candles. Food. Correspondence. Legal expenses. Contingencies.
Every figure had been calculated with almost aggressive restraint.
“You have allowed eight pounds for legal expenses.”
“I expected you to object to something.”
“I object to eight pounds.”
“I thought you might.”
“It is not enough.”
Selina paused.
Nathaniel tapped the line. “Eight pounds will not do. If the establishment is meant to protect women from employers who take advantage of having no family behind them, the solicitor cannot be ornamental.”
“What do you propose?”
“Sixteen.”
“Twelve.”
Nathaniel looked at her. “Fourteen.”
“Thirteen.”
“You are bargaining with your own husband over three pounds.”
“I am bargaining with my principal investor. It is an important distinction.”
“Fourteen.”
Selina considered him. “Fourteen. Any remainder returns to the general account.”
“Agreed.” He went back to the first page. “You have thought about this for some time.”
“Since the placement assembly, though I did not know then that I was thinking about it.”
Nathaniel remembered her against the wall in grey, watching an entire room assess what use might be made of her.
“There were women there better qualified than I was,” Selina said. “Some had been looking longer. Some were young enough to believe that a gentleman offering twice the usual wage must necessarily be generous. Some were old enough to know better and desperate enough not to care.”
Her finger rested upon the edge of the paper.
“I was fortunate. You happened to be there.”
“You did not consider yourself fortunate at the time.”
“I considered you insufferable.”
“You concealed it admirably.”
“I did no such thing.”
“No.”
Her mouth shifted.
“But you were there,” she said. “And you offered me a post in a house where my room locked, my wages were paid when promised, and nobody expected me to purchase security by tolerating liberties. That should not require extraordinary luck.”
“No.”
“I cannot stand beside every pillar at every placement assembly in London.”
Nathaniel looked again at the pages.
“So you intend to build the pillar.”
Selina gave him a suspicious look.
“That was almost poetic.”
“I withdraw it.”
“Too late.”
He read on.