Page 4 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Mr. Stanley could take up a collection for us.” Dovey twisted Gwen’s hair into one of their precious silk ribbons. The sandybrown curls went free of powder, since they couldn’t afford the tax. “Remind his faithful that we keep the poor rates low, since those we take in would otherwise look to the parish for outdoor relief.”
“I do not think Mr. Stanley could raise enough even with his flowery words. He did offer to write a letter on our behalf. Perhaps an English lord might heed an English vicar.”
Might.An unsteady word to hold such a weight of hope. Barlow had already delivered the order to vacate. Every hour they stayed was a trespass.
Dovey rearranged the lace at her throat, and Gwen knew they shared the same memory. The handmade lace, not as fine as that of Flanders or France, had come tucked inside the wool blanket of an infant deposited on the porch of St. Sefin’s six years ago. Desperate mothers often left a badge with their foundling, hoping they might identify the child later when their circumstances improved.
But the babe had died of the bloody flux when they sent it to a wet nurse, and Gwen wore the lace on her evenings out as a reminder. Whatever humiliations or scorn might be dealt her, she would bear it for the sake of the fragile lives that depended on her.
“What shall we tell them?” Worry lurked in the deep brown of Dovey’s eyes.
Gwen squeezed her friend’s hand. “That I will find a way. We’ll not be sent to the workhouse.”
Side by side they descended the broad day stair to the refectory. Lancet windows high in the walls let the glimmer of early evening into the wide, smoothened chamber where the nuns had once taken their meals. So solid St. Sefin’s was. So safe Gwen had felt in these walls of golden stone, built with prayer and firmness.
An illusion. But wasn’t safety always such? One fancied themselves protected by walls, by love, by a name or full coffers or a mother who bent like a guardian angel over a child’s bed. And the next moment the love or the name or the angel could be gone, robbed and not returned no matter the tears one shed.
Normally the residents of St. Sefin’s laughed and chattered at their meal, wooden spoons clattering in wooden bowls. Tonight every eye turned to the women on the stairs, faces drawn with fear, mouths worried.
Gwen’s stomach pinched, and not from hunger or the too-tight gown.
“Miss Gwenllian!” A young girl peered through the servery window that divided the dining area from the kitchen. In the next instant, she barreled through the connecting door, a bowl of soup curled in each arm, and skidded to a stop before them.
“The bad Englishman didnottell us we can’t stay at St. Sefin’s any longer. Ifor is telling tales,” Cerys said.
“Am not.” Ifor sat at a wooden table, scooping mouthfuls ofcawlinto his mouth as if his bowl might disappear if left on its own for a moment. The thick native stew was a staple of their menu and Widow Jones put anything she could find in it, thickening the broth with oats and the dumplings she called trollies. Gwen smelled cabbage, leeks, wild garlic, and a trace of beef. The butcher often sent meat he couldn’t sell before it went bad.
So many people in Newport supported the mission of St. Sefin’s as best they could. If only their voices held some weight with the Viscount Penrydd, but Gwen knew how the gentry thought. They cared only for the opinion of their class, which left her to plead her case with the Vaughns, a family she could never respect and did not much like.
“Are too,” Cerys said, pressing her point.
Dovey took the bowls from her daughter. “Only you, little chick, will be turned out in the street, because you cannot remember you are a young lady and not a goat.”
“Right. Spoons.” Cerys charged back to the kitchen and returned with her bowl and a trio of utensils. “Budge over, Ifor, I want to sit next to Miss Gwen.”
“You smell like wild violet and bluebells, Miss Gwen. Hey, now, Tomos, mind my soup!” Ifor, complaining, slid down the bench as the larger young man pushed in to stroke the silk of Gwen’s gown.
“Pert,” Tomos cooed, pawing Gwen’s hair. “Pretty.”
“Thank you, Tomos, that is very kind.” Gwen gently removed his hand. “Now eat. Tomorrow we find another trade we might apprentice you to.”
“Unless the bad man turns us all out into the street, as Mam said,” Cerys added around slurps of stew.
“I won’t allow it,” Gwen said. “I am going to Greenfield to harp for Lady Vaughn, who was bored by the London season and now is bored here. I am sure she will help us.”
Lies upon lies, all of them weights upon her soul at the final reckoning. The soup burned her mouth, and Gwen put down her spoon. Her belly refused food.
Cerys sighed. “And there will be lovely ladies with their gowns of silks and satins, and their kerchiefs of lace, and their tiny silk slippers. Will there be dancing?”
Gwen forced a smile. Little Cerys would never see any of the fine things she dreamed about, living as they did. But she saw a way to lift the gloom from their dinner.
“Saesondon’t know how to dance to a Welsh harp,pwt,” Gwen said. “Nor whistle, nor fiddle, nor pipe. They only dance to their own English instruments, and quite stiff they are at it. They never bend nor clap, but only promenade and bob up and down, like this.”
She climbed over the bench and, one palm in the air, solemnly processed between the line of tables. She curtseyed to Mother Morris and, when this earned a giggle from Cerys, made a deeper curtsey to Evans, who hobbled toward them with his crutch tucked under his good arm and a bowl in his hand.
“Good eve, Mister Evans,” she intoned. “We bedancing.”
Cerys howled. “That’sterrible!”
