Page 62 of Lady Daring
“Not the Dials,” snorted a third. “Not a pox scar on ’er. That’s a fine and fancy gown the Bartholomew doll ’as. I think me wants it.” In the dim light, Henrietta saw the wicked gleam of the other woman’s eyes through layers of heavy makeup. She took a step backward. In a moment, she saw, she was about to be swarmed by a horde of women, and if she didn’t think quickly, she was going to end up naked and bleeding, with her eyes clawed out.
“I was…at the London Tavern,” Henrietta said, trying to sound authoritative. As she edged backward, the stone seat hit the back of her knees, and she fell onto it. “IthoughtI was leading a debate on the rights of women. The recourse of dependents and why women should be educated.” She surveyed the faces of the women around her, which ranged from scornful to disbelieving, and covered her mouth with her hand. “I had a very fine argument prepared as to why women should be allowed to govern themselves so they don’t end up?—”
“’Ere,” said an older woman, the most well-dressed of the bunch. “’At’s wot happens to those as shift for themselves.” Shekicked at the thin straw pallet lying on the floor, one bed to serve the entire group. “We end up ’ere, we do.”
“Evidently,” Henrietta said in a tiny voice.
These were the women she was arguing for. She oughtn’t be terrified of them. They were merely women bereft of protectors, left to live by their own wits and skills. Women who didn’t give a fig for the Society she had tried so hard to enter because they had seen that society level its punishing hand against them, as it did to all women who would not keep to their place.
She had never felt so small or quite so helpless, not even when she was at Miss Gregoire’s, waiting for her father to recall her. Who was going to help her now? Jasper was away, her uncle might not know for hours or days what had happened, and Charley—Charley might very well wash his hands of her. This debacle could sink her with her family for once and all.
She would have to get herself out. She rubbed her eyes, straightened her shoulders, and set aside the hand that was fingering the lace at her sleeve. Henrietta Wardley-Hines, bluestocking, reformer, and advocate of rights for women, did not slump in a filthy cell in the watchhouse and cry about her woes.
“Very well, then. Here we are, and here we cannot stay. What gets us out of here?”
“You do.” The older woman bent at the waist and looked Henrietta in the eye. “You get us out of here, spooney, an’ you’ll get to keep your fancy frock, and your pretty little neck along with it.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Henrietta was tired, she was hungry, and she had to relieve herself, but she was not yet in the extremes of agony that could compel her to use the chamber pot in the corner. A crowd of six women sat around her, suspicious, interested, or watching her with a veiled, quiet hope. The seventh, the older woman, lay on the pallet of dirty straw, snoring as ashen light poked its way through the window.
Shortly after Henrietta introduced herself, told in detail the enthralling story of how she landed in the watch house, and from there went on to answer their several questions about the life of a nob’s daughter, Mame gave a snort, scratched beneath her stays, and lay down with a grumbling comment that Henrietta was no better than the rest of them, mark her words.
“And they let you learn anything ye want,” one of the girls said. “At this Magdalen ’ouse o’ yours. It ain’t a pushin’ school?”
“No, we set our girls to study proper subjects, if a tutor can be found,” Henrietta said. “Miss Gregoire believes a young woman’s interests ought to be cultivated, and her model is followed by the Sisters of Benevolence.”
“School o’ Venus,” another snorted. “Alls we need is short heels and great diddeys.” She jiggled her bosoms as a third girl giggled.
“Don’t you have a skill you would like to develop?” Henrietta asked. Despite the pressure on her bladder, her fear of these women had eased some hours ago, and she instead found herself interested in their stories. “Isn’t there something you are quite good at?”
The woman laughed, but the sound was not one of mirth. “Aye, there’s a thing or two I’m far good at, an’ it’s why the scouts snapped me, ain’t it? While me randy swell bolts in t’ other direction, cod piece aflap.”
Henrietta refused to blush. Her companions had been making sport of her all night for her ignorance of their work. They were town women, to use the polite term, taken up by the watch for being loose and idle, or in Mame’s case, disorderly, as she’d been hauled in for drunkenness and attacking her husband with a broom.
Later this morning, the justice of the peace would levy a fine, read them a sermon, and turn them back into the street. They were, to a girl, suspicious of Henrietta’s claims. They considered London’s Magdalen House the recourse for prostitutes who had grown too old or ill to work. The Sisters of Benevolence must be a trap, if not a brothel then the sort of establishment that catered to women who served the streets. They could not conceive of an institution interested in improving the health of their bodies and minds.
“I’m ’andy with a needle,” said Alice, quiet and thin, who had watched Henrietta all evening without comment. She was new to street life and its punishments. She looked about the same age as Mary Ann.
If she were an aristocrat’s sheltered daughter, with every comfort of life available to her, she would be dreaming ofher debut and kisses on the hand from suitors eager to claim her dowry. Instead, she wore lines on her face from poverty, hard weather, and harder use. She could charge a higher price because she was young and comely and did not have the pox, though in her line of work, disease was a certainty.
“We have heaps of girls we’ve trained in stitchery,” Henrietta said. “And we help them find employment. Many hire out as maids.”
“Not in the gentry kens,” scoffed the girl at her side. “No one as is decent wants a girl like us. Or if they gets us,” she added with a curl of her lip, “you can bet there’s a cove about thinks our past ain’t all be’ind us, eh?”
Henrietta frowned. “We make every effort to ensure that our young women from the Benevolence Hospital go to respectable employers. Roslyn became a dresser to a countess, and Aylwen set up a shop of her own, taking many of the girls with her.”
“I want to dance,” said Belinda. “And no’ in the chorus. I want to be a prima ballerina.”
“Then I see no reason, with determination and good fortune, you should not be so.” Henrietta gave her a warm smile.
“I want to sing,” Lena announced.
Raucous laughter attended this remark, but when it quieted, Henrietta looked closely at the speaker. She had tight, frizzy curls, sloe-dark eyes, and warm brown skin unmarked yet by age or the scars of hardship. “Sing for us,” Henrietta urged the girl.
Lena stood, folded her hands, put back her shoulders, and drew in a deep breath. She launched into “The Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill,” and the room fell silent save for Mame’s resonant snores. The girl’s voice, though untrained, was piercingly beautiful.
“Lena,” Henrietta said with tears in her eyes, “if you come to the Sisters of Benevolence, I will make sure there is money to pay for voice lessons.”
