“He told me you’re alone in this world and your man is off with the army. Cares about the army folk, Dougie Marsh does. Gives work to as many as he can and sends others off to toffs he knows from the army.” She lowered her voice, “Mind you, don’t tell folks I called him Dougie. Knew him as a lad when he visited old Mr. Marsh, afore the army got ’im.”
Mrs. Potter bustled over to the table and brought back one of the crocks to set it on the chair next to the cot. The smell of porridge made Esther’s mouth water. She pushed herself up to lean against the wall at the head of her cot.
The woman had already turned back to the table. She brought a bundle of bits of rag and towel. “For the little fellow. Marsh shoulda thought of it, but a man wouldna.” The room had lightened to the point Esther could see the woman’s blush. “These are from my own rag pile. Nothing you need to fuss over. Just bits.”
This whirlwind of energy filled Esther’s little room with warmth and sound. And then it was gone, leaving Esther to savor the kindness of strangers—something she’d had little enough of for months—and to face a miserably uncomfortable truth. The sergeant didn’t help her because he coveted her body in return. He helped her because he thought her an army wife or widow, part of the noble defense of England. The depths of her deception almost killed her newly restored appetite. Almost.
It feeds you; you feed him. She would take what they gave her for the baby’s sake. She ate the porridge with the remains of the milk Mrs. Potter had found and lay back down.
She slept off and on, watching the beams through her lone window move sunlit squares across the opposite wall. Sometime in the afternoon another knock sounded. This time, the person didn’t come in.
Esther almost said, “Enter,” but common sense got the better of her. “Who is it?” Her heart raced with fear that danger stood behind the door. It raced with hope that Mrs. Potter’s Dougie stood there instead. Her caller was neither.
“Name’s Joey,” a voice said. “Sergeant Marsh sent me.”
Of course he did.“Come in then.” She pulled her cover up to her shoulders, tenderly pushing it away from the baby’s face.
A boy bounded into the room, his arms full of sheets and towels, and God knew what else. “I brung yer laundry. Where do you want this?” he chirped.
“There in the corner.” She pointed to the wall at the end of her cot.
“You don’t have much furniture,” Joey exclaimed when he rose to face her. “I heard you have a baby. My mam always rests a day or two when a new one comes. Can I fetch you something?”
After a few words, the boy exchanged the empty porridge crock for the one Mrs. Potter left on the table. The broth had cooled, but it would do. He followed her directions and brought a hunk of bread from the box where she stored it.
“Bit stale, but the broth’ll take care of that,” he grinned.
Another knock sounded, and Joey went to answer it. “Don’t you worry. I’ll check it out.”
The dairyman’s lad pushed into the room under Joey’s glower. “Brought more milk ’n cheese. You got another week coming,” he said, peering over at Esther.
“You leave the lady be. She has us watching over her,” Joey told him pointedly, glaring until the delivery boy shrugged and left.
He arranged the bread, crock, and jug of milk carefully next to the bed. “Anything else I can do?”
At Esther’s request he brought her mending.I may as well work as much as I can.
“He’s lookin’ at me, missus,” Joey grinned. “What’s his name?”
Esther started to say, “I haven’t named him yet.” What came out was “Douglas, his name is Douglas.”
CHAPTER6
Doug stared at massive confections of glass and prisms hanging in a row along the ceiling of the Assembly Room and clamped his jaw shut to keep from gaping like a country rustic. He tried to force his mind back to business but was distracted by visions of Esther Linder—dressed in silk, her hair up and crowned with lace and jewels, her body swaying to music beneath a hundred candles, her body—
“—the committee meets on Monday.” Fowler. The prissy little assistant’s voice brought him back to reality.
“Committee?” Doug cursed himself for not listening and for letting an unexpected and unsought attraction to Esther Linder distract him.Pay attention, you damned fool.
“We can’t possibly make a decision of this magnitude without the governing committee’s agreement,” Fowler went on.
It takes an entire committee to command this place? How do they get anything done—other than deciding who gets in and who doesn’t? And the right sort of candles to purchase…
Fowler went on without noticing Doug’s abstraction. “We’ll need a larger sample. Two dozen should do it.”
Two dozen? How big is this damned committee?Doug swallowed the objection. The sample candles, he had no doubt, would light Fowler’s private parlor this winter. “Of course,” he said, knowing full well they couldn’t afford to walk away from this opportunity. “I’ll have a boy deliver them.”
Doug followed the little man to the door. “How many would you need, should you wish to order?”
