Mother and son exchanged a glance. For a moment, Charles wondered what it would be like to have such a close relationship with his own mother that they could communicate with a quick look.
“Who is this Tufts really?” he asked.
Edward looked down at the table. His mother took a deep breath and sighed. “He went into the workhouse last year for unpaid bills. Separated us as if we were cattle, they did.” Then she sat up straighter. “Cholera took my husband, or so they told me. Mr. Tufts was there, too, in the same ward as my Richard. When Mr. Tufts got out, he found me and the little ones beyond hope, living in a single room with another family, up the Whitechapel Road. He said my husband had asked him to take care of us, and he moved us in here.”
“They were friends?” Charles asked.
The woman shrugged, looking weary. It was Edward who spoke next.
“Mr. Tufts told me to tell everyone he was my uncle. I’m sorry, miss.”
“Was it his idea for you to keep some of the confectionery meant to be delivered?” Charlotte asked the boy.
“Yes, miss,” Edward said, his voice hardly above a whisper.
“He was right about selling it at Covent Garden. Easy as falling off a log,” Mrs. Percy said.
“Is he really a builder?” Charles asked, wondering at the audacity of the woman crowing about how she’d sold stolen sweets so easily.
Mother and son again exchanged a look. “We don’t know what he did before,” Mrs. Percy said. “He wanted whatever I still had of my husband’s. Said my Richard had promised it all to him.”
“But he’snota builder,” Edward added. “He stole the tools from somewhere after I came home and told my mum about the shop expanding. He was listening and said I had to introduce him.”
Charles looked at Charlotte’s face. She was calm and accepting, not hysterical or angry at the deception perpetrated upon her.
Then she asked, “Did you know he would make a hash of it?”
Edward’s cheeks grew pink. “I wasn’t sure, miss. I hoped he knew what he was doing.”
Charles looked at the pale face of Mrs. Percy and the embarrassed one of her son. “Why are you both helping him?”
“He lets us live here,” Mrs. Percy said. “If he didn’t, we’d be in the street or the poorhouse, and my children would end up God-knows-where.”
“And he has a temper,” Edward said quietly, making Charles stomach flip. The idea of a grown man committing violence upon a family — and it was another man’s family at that — sickened him.
“He’s not all that bad,” Mrs. Percy said. “We’re not living in constant fear as some I know, and he’s not keeping us here. We could leave if we wanted to.”
“If you had somewhere to go, but he knows you don’t,” Charlotte pointed out.
“I have no way to make money excepting the piecework,” she said nodding toward the stack of fabric. “Shirt finishing,” she added, looking at Charles as if it were his fault she needed to sew. “It’s the beast to do and pays worse than hop-picking, but Edward’s money and mine pays for the food and some of the rent.”
“And how does Mr. Tufts make his living when he’s not pretending to be a builder?” Charlotte asked.
“He’s no shirkster,” Edward said. “He never sits idle. Sometimes he does a scaldrum dodge down by—”
“A what?” Charlotte asked.
“He pretends to be injured so he can beg,” Charles told her.
“Right, my lord,” Edward said, looking impressed.
“A lord!” Mrs. Percy exclaimed, pushing her chair back. “Why, I never!”
“He’s a viscount, mum,” Edward said, looking more like his old self, now that he knew neither he nor his mother was going to be charged.
Charles didn’t want to become the topic of conversation. “So Tufts begs to help support you?”
“He’s also a smatter, a sneeze-lurker, and a snidesman,” Edward continued, “not to mention a wipe-hauler, a dragsman, and a speeler using weighted tatts.”
