Ever His Bride (30 page)

“You won’t succeed in my school if you take
that tone, Miss Mayfield. The welfare of my students is paramount
with me.”

But she couldn’t hold back the question.
“Have they been fed today?”

He fixed her with glower. “Yes. Of course
they have.”

They both knew he was lying.

“Then I beg your pardon, Mr. Rundull, for my
impertinence. Let me start dinner. If you don’t approve of my
cooking, you can fire me without having ever hired me. Although . .
.” She turned liquid eyes on him, tears that came quite easily
given the horror of the last half-hour. “I do need this job. More
than you could possibly imagine.”

The man’s face broke into the benevolent
smile of the philanthropic victor. “Well, then. A half-cup each of
porridge is the dinner fare. Nothing more. Now, if you’ll excuse
me, my tea is getting cold.” He left her.

She listened to the blackguard’s footsteps
receding down the hall. Not a single child had eaten that day, and
yet the man was concerned that his own tea might become cold. She
ought to snatch it from under his chin and distribute it among his
victims.

But what to do now? She didn’t want to waste
precious moments cooking, but she needed time to find Giles and
escape with him. And if she stayed to cook, seventy-two other
children would go to bed without hunger gnawing at their
innards.

She’d known hunger herself, the inconvenient
kind that might come from a long train ride, or an unreasonable
schedule. And she had always had friends like Mrs. Paget to put her
up indefinitely. These children had no one but Felicity
Claybourne.

She built a fire in the stove and took a
quick inventory of the kitchen. Besides the grains, she found
salted herring and a good measure of pepper. She sent Arthur out
with a few precious coins to find a bushel each of carrots and
onions. He returned with her order just as she was putting the
scrubbed-out cauldron to boil.

“Rundull’s not going to like this, Miss
Mayfield.”

“Don’t worry; he’ll never know you aided me.
Does he supervise the meals himself?”

“Nah. The guards bring the kids to the door
and they eat standing in the hallway.”

“I should have guessed.”

So that’s when she would see Giles, and they
could plan his rescue.

She added the carrots and onions to the water
and soon had a hardy brew boiling. Sweat and tears salted her face
as she worked.

She tried not to think of her husband, his
ill-humor and his bloody secrets. The warmth of the blighter’s
embrace.

An hour later, a line of children snaked past
the kitchen door. They lifted up their grimy little bowls and their
weary-eyed thank-yous to her. They were supervised by a
bandy-legged man whose hands were as tanned as the leather he
worked, and streaked with white scars. He barked his orders, and
the children obeyed in silence.

Then she found Giles. She knew him even with
his head bowed. He wore workhouse gray, and his hair had been mowed
nearly to his scalp, but his back was still straight.

He looked up from his bowl and Felicity heard
the small cry in his throat; saw relief in the start of his smile.
Then the joy and hope in his eyes faded into a surly, red-faced
anger.

She touched his hand, but he yanked it away,
sloshing the soup across his wrist as he left her.

She swallowed the insult, tried to
understand, but felt a great stabbing in her heart. She’d come to
help.

What if he wouldn’t let her?

She was just recovering her wits when she saw
Betts and her heart nearly stopped.

What a bloody, blind idiot she’d been! Betts
and Andy were workhouse children. They’d been on their way to the
Blenwick School, not into the arms of their parents! She had them
safe in her care, and she’d let them go!

Betts’s face brightened and she opened her
mouth to speak, but Felicity shook her head, gave a warning not to,
and Betts saved her whisper for her brother’s ear. Andy grinned as
Felicity filled his bowl, and kept grinning back at her even as
Betts led him past the kitchen door.

Dear God, she’d come for one, and now there
were three.

More than three—there was an entire workhouse
full of children who needed rescuing.

She bit her tongue until they had all been
fed then leaned against the wall and wept.

Hunter’s neck ached and his back had
stiffened. The inspection had dragged on far longer than he had
expected, and it was early evening before he returned to the
Brightwater. To a man, the inspectors had concluded, as his own
wife had, that Hudson’s contractors were at fault, that the
original safety inspection report had either been faulty or
fraudulent. What that meant for the rail line itself was anybody’s
guess. If the Board of Directors for the line was interested in a
pennies on the pound resurrection, he might be interested in making
a purchase and financing the refurbishing, if the profits were high
enough.

His wife wasn’t in the common room, though it
was time for dinner, and he’d hoped to smooth over some of the
rough edges.

But, damnation, the woman was a cascade of
questions, sticking them between his ribs and twisting them. He’d
have to learn to answer them with more aplomb.

Perhaps she had retired early, and was
sprawled out on his bed. He had ached for her all morning, watched
for her to come waltzing along the track, listened for her
footfalls in the gravel. But she hadn’t come.

And their chamber was empty.

“Mrs. Claybourne?” Stupidly, he looked around
the back of the door. She wasn’t there either.

A sourceless panic set in, a spooling out of
his connection to something he hadn’t known he’d been lacking. His
business yielded him hard, hollow comfort; an existence he’d grown
use to. But his wife . . . Felicity—yes, he ought to start thinking
of her as Felicity. Felicity had softened the edges, filled in the
hollowness, quite without his permission.

He had come to anticipate the remainder of
the year with not a little joy.

“Blasted woman!”

Then he remembered telling her in a voice she
might interpret as angry that he didn’t know when he’d return.

To which his wife had replied,
“It doesn’t
matter, Mr. Claybourne. I may be gone by then. To
Northumberland.”

Not good. Worse, because he very definitely
recalled his parting words to be, “Go wherever the hell you want,”
before slamming the door behind him.

Northumberland. But she couldn’t very well
have left by train, the tracks between Blenwick and Durham would
take months to repair.

Damnation! Her portmanteau; she’d never leave
without it! He searched the room, every corner and shadow, but the
blasted thing was gone!

And so was Felicity! She could be hours ahead
of him by now! Or still waiting for a coach at the station! The
train wreck had made a shambles of schedules and routes. And hadn’t
Sawyer commented that every coach and wagon for miles around would
be commandeered into service to clear the wreckage. Of course, his
wife was still in Blenwick. It might be days until she could get
away.

She’d no choice but to return to the
Brightwater tonight. He’d be waiting for her in the dining room. He
settled at a table facing the front door of the inn, and ordered
Yorkshire Pudding, savored the wine and read the copy of the
Times
he’d brought down from their room. But as the evening
wore on and the woman didn’t come Hunter began to imagine
Felicity’s reaction to being told that she couldn’t leave Blenwick
any time soon.

Hell and damnation, she would walk to the
next station! Or hire a horse or beg a seat in a bloody dray.

He threw the
Times
into his chair and
headed for the kitchen. The cook looked at him in honest innocence
when he demanded to know where his wife was.

“I haven’t seen her since breakfast, sir. She
left right after.”

Hunter checked his temper. “Did she say she
was going to Northumberland?”

“Don’t know about that, sir. Asked about the
Blenwick School.”

“A school?” Good, then she was still in town!
“What sort of a school?”

“As I told her myself, sir, it isn’t really a
school—”

“What is it then?”

The cook shook her head. “It’s a workhouse.
And she seemed to get mighty agitated when I mentioned it wasn’t a
school for apprentices like she’d thought. Nearly swooned, she
did.”

A workhouse! Damn the woman and her meddling!
She’d gone after those two kids who’d followed her around after the
accident. They were orphans, or had been abandoned—he had known it
from the moment he’d seen them with her. Even in the dimness and
the disorder, he’d seen the emptiness in their eyes, had smelled
the taint of the slums. He had kept it from her, because he feared
the very thing she had gone and done.

Well, then, let her go. Let her chase after
her conscience. It would do her no good. Pull one wretch out of the
sewer, and you’d find two more hanging on to his ragged trouser
legs.

She’d soon learn that a hand held out in
charity was an admission of guilt, a firebrand in the gut. He
refused to bear the guilt of someone else’s misfortune. Allow them
to set their own course; that was the guiltless thing to do. Every
man, every child for himself.

Let her discover the uncharitable truth
herself.

Felicity had just finished washing out the
bowls when a tiny face peered around the corner.

“Betts! You shouldn’t be here!”

But Andy ran past his sister and wound his
fists into Felicity’s skirts. “Oh, miss, we’re so glad to see
you.”

She bent down and held him tightly; she might
have been holding a ragged sack, packed loosely with spindle
sticks.

“And I’m glad to see you, too. Why didn’t you
tell me you were coming here?”

“Have you come to cook for the school, then,
miss?” Betts put her arm over Felicity’s shoulder. “Be grand to see
you every day.”

She tried to keep her tears at bay as she ran
her fingers through Betts’s chopped-off hair. “I’m not going to be
the cook here. And you’re not staying either. You’re coming with
me.”

Betts dipped her chin and plucked at the
front of her shirt. “Please don’t fun us now, miss. Are you wroth
with us?”

“I’m not angry with you, or funning you.
We’ll be leaving tonight, but you can’t stay here in the kitchen
right now. I don’t want Mr. Rundull to see us together. And surely
the guards will strap you if they find you’ve left the
workroom.”

Andy wasn’t listening at all. He’d taken up
his thumb and a hank of Felicity’s skirt and seemed perfectly happy
snuggled against her breast, rocking gently, his head tucked under
her chin.

“Dear heart, you must go with Betts.” When
she stood up and lifted him away, his eyes puddled and hers did
too. “Don’t cry, sweet. But you must hurry.”

Betts seemed to understand the urgency and
grabbed her brother’s hand. “Come, Andy. Best we do what the miss
says.”

Andy went placidly with his sister, though
tears slid down his gray cheeks and his badly shod feet shuffled
against the dirt. Betts turned back at the door.

“I know you’re not funnin’ us, miss, but, if
you change your mind, and you think it best to leave us— then I
thank you anyway for givin’ us the lovely thought.”

Then the little girl was gone around the
corner.

She jammed her stained skirts against her
eyes, anything to sop up the brittle, hot tears. Taking only three
children, when she ought to take seventy? When she ought to burn
down the loathsome school and the detestable Rundull with it.

“I. Smell. Onions!”

Rundull was standing in the doorway, leaning
against the frame. He looked smug and well fed, a crumb of bread
caught in his mustache.

“I found no onions in the larder, Mr.
Rundull, so I . . . obtained some from the grocer.”

“Inventive, Miss Mayfield, but not in my
budget.” He sauntered into the room like a country squire surveying
his hen house. “You’ll get no money back from me.”

“No, sir.” She busied her hands folding the
flour sack she’d used for a drying cloth, hoping to distract the
anger from her voice. It wouldn’t do to be evicted just yet.

He drew his fingers along the scoured table
and peered into the clean caldron sitting on the dying heat of the
stove. “Have you given up making dinner? Where are these very
expensive onions?”

“The children have been fed and returned to
the evening shift.” She laced her hands behind her back, but
loosened them when Rundull’s gaze slid across the front of her
bodice. The corners of his mouth lifted, and she moved away from
him to close the larder door. “I’ve cleaned and straightened, as
you can see.”

“Yes, I see you very well, Miss Mayfield.” He
rubbed his palms together. “Tell you what—I’ll hire you for a
week’s trial. If your work appears satisfactory, you’ll be paid
your ten shillings, less room and board, of course. If I am not
satisfied with every measure of your work, then I will let you go,
and you will owe me seven shillings for your keep. Do you
understand?” He raised an eyebrow as if he were the most honest and
fair-minded employer in the world.

Her neck stiffened in anger, but she nodded.
“Yes sir.”

“Good. Then bring your bag and I’ll show you
to your room.”

Rundull led Felicity out the door and through
the workshop.

The smell within was worse than she had
imagined. Vinegar and unwashed bodies, and the chemical sting of
boot blacking.

She found Giles when their eyes met across
the room. He was standing over a table, shame drooping his
shoulders. She found hope in that—maybe he wasn’t too angry to
leave with her.

But the boy shook his head and turned back to
his work to lay a ringing hammer to the end of a chisel.