“Chadbourn,” he answered cautiously.
She nodded, brow furrowed.
Doug wondered if she knew the earl. Her accent, her manners—this woman came from the upper gentry. She grew lovelier—and farther above his touch—with everything she told him. She didn’t belong in a shabby room living on handouts.
“But what does any of this have to do with me?” she asked.
“Lost track, didn’t I? Aunt Edna thinks we can find a job for you at the candle works. Our pay is fair, but the work isn’t—well, not what you are unaccustomed to.”
“Honest pay for honest work. I would like that, but you just said you had hired all the starving soldiers you can manage. You don’t have room for me, do you?”
We don’t, but I could find something. I’d suggest another house servant if I could bear the sight of this woman as a servant every day.“I had one other idea,” he said, drawing her alert attention.
“The Assembly Room committee—or their underling—hires a woman to manage the subscription book and tickets. I had to push the little weasel who runs the place, but he admitted they were without someone he can rely on. She has to have—” He ticked off the requirements on his fingers. “—cultured speech, a fine hand for writing, a pleasant manner, and…”
“What?”
“Know Society well enough to decide who should get in and who should be discreetly banned.” He grimaced.
She blinked and withdrew into herself. “I can do that,” she murmured, still staring at the center of the table. Something bothered her.
“Are you worried someone—some titled sprig of Society—will recognize you?”There. I said it.
Her head bobbed up, and she met his gaze directly, her eyes open and frank. “No. People see what they want to see. My own sister would walk right by me and assume me to be a servant and therefore beneath her notice.” Their gazes held for a very long time. “I could do that, Douglas. I suspect it would pay more than stitching raggedly jackets back together, too.”
It wasn’t lost on him that she used his given name. He returned the favor. “There’s one other thing, Esther. They’ll want a reference. Do you know anyone?”
“No one I can ask,” she said flatly, chin up and back straight. “But I know you. Will they take the word of one of Bath’s successful tradesmen?”
“They might.”If I am willing to risk the contract by recommending a mother with no husband in sight, whose family would cut up nasty when they found out she worked where their friends might see her. He still hadn’t heard from Chadbourn about this mysterious Lt. Linder. “Let me think on it. I’ll let you know what I find out. For now, you take care of this baby.”
They reached the street, he chucked the little one under his chin, and he glanced up at her as if he remembered something. “Did you find a name for this little fellow?”
She gave him that direct look again, steady and confidant. “His name is Douglas,” she said, leaving him stunned.
Doug left her then, whistling as he went.
* * *
“No such lieutenant exists. The only serving Linder, a major, died in Canada in 1812.” The earl shook his head sadly. He sat with his crossed feet propped in front of the tiny hearth in Doug’s office. “It is an old story I fear. From what you say, I gather her family has abandoned her.”
“She couldn’t be more destitute. Whoever left her with child left her with little else. As to family…” Doug knew he could be honest with this man, but still struggled to get the words out. “The word ‘earl’ caused her to go paler than a sheet. Whoever they are, they are above my pay grade.”
“‘Earl?’” The one in front of Doug jerked upright, both feet on the floor, and raised an aristocratic eyebrow.
The sergeant described his tea with Esther, the words tumbling out once he started. “She said ‘I can do it’, but I could see fear in her eyes,” He shook his head. “She has backbone, that one, and the little fellow has given her even more. She’ll do whatever she must to care for him.” He grimaced at the thought of what a woman might be forced to do to feed her child.
The earl nodded, absorbed in thought. “No idea who the family is?”
Doug shook his head. “Wouldn’t matter.”
Chadbourn subsided, propping his feet up again. “Probably not. She’s dead to them, and they’ve most likely told the world so. She’s right; no one would recognize the long ‘dead’ daughter of a peer working for her living. I am sometimes tempted to lose hope in humanity.” Long silent moments passed, both men lost in their own memories of inhumanity.
“She’s fighting her own battle, as much as any soldier,” Doug murmured at last.
“She is that. She’s one of the wounded. You’ve no place for her here?”
Doug sucked in a breath. The candle works couldn’t afford another worker, especially if he didn’t win the Assembly Rooms contract. That wasn’t his real reason for preferring not to hire her; thoughts of Esther kept him up nights as it was, longing for things he shouldn’t. “She doesn’t belong here,” he told the earl. “She wouldn’t fit.” It sounded hollow to his own ears. Esther Linder—or whoever she was—would make any place she worked a better place.
