“Mr. Morgan?” Prudence guessed.
Mrs. Moon smiled. “Yes, but he styled himself Lord Lovelace at the time. He played on the strained connection to Lord Byron, thinking it made him seem more romantic. Not that he needed it. The man was beyond handsome. All the ladies of the county were taken with him. And all the maids, too. I had to issue a special warning to each of them to not be caught alone in a room with him, or else they’d get sacked.”
“You wouldn’t be so draconian!” Prudence said, shocked at the rule.
“I had to be,” Mrs. Moon said. “A pregnant woman cannot be a maid. The work is back-breaking, and the hours long. I couldn’t be constantly searching for replacement maids because of one pretty face.”
Georgie cracked a wide grin. “But you did, didn’t you?”
Mrs. Moon shook her head with fond exasperation. “I confess I was a hypocrite. There was little seduction involved. He’d been there for a week or so, always polite, the very image of a gentleman.” She sighed. “Which is how I should have known. Real gentlemen don’t notice the staff. Real gentlemen are class conscious. Looking back, I think he’d realized that none of the young ladies of the county had enough of a dowry, or had fathers too smart to be duped by the likes of him for the length of time it took to get to the altar. But a romantic housekeeper like myself? I was such a fool.”
“You were in love,” Prudence felt as if she were shriveling up as they spoke, a plucked flower crisped in the hot afternoon sun. Love only worked if both parties felt the same. The shame of learning you were the only one who cared was world shattering. “You weren’t a fool.”
“Same thing, in the end, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Moon said, still smiling. “We were caught by his valet, who I came to realize was his partner in crime. He told the butler, and I was sacked that afternoon. I had to go to the bank to retrieve some funds to pay for a boarding house. I think he saw the bank slip, for I’d asked for my account balance. And there it was. He asked me to marry him.”
“Just like that?” Georgie asked.
“Oh, he was a beautiful man. But yes, just so. We applied for special license, given the circumstances, and were married a fortnight later. Leo came nine months later.” Mrs. Moon smiled. “And he became my light.”
Prudence cocked her head. “Your light?”
Mrs. Moon set her teacup down on the table. “My time with Mr. Morgan—who turned out not to be Lord Lovelace, as you know—grew very dark. He was not exactly an unkind man, but he did so hate to be bored. And poverty is so very boring. Hedrank up every cent we had, and when we ran out, he would threaten to leave me penniless in the streets with my child.”
“Why didn’t he?” Prudence asked.
Mrs. Moon smiled. “It’s a bit silly.”
“I would desperately like to know.” Prudence wanted to know how any woman navigated a world set up for a man. Crucial bits of information were needed, could be shared, could be used for greater good.
“When you live in a small village, everyone knows everyone. My father had once saved the bank manager from drowning. It was when they were boys, but my father had jumped into the lake, where the boy’s ankle was trapped or something of the sort, and pulled him out. When Mr. Morgan would go into the bank run by the bank manager who knew me and was indebted to my deceased father, there would always be some problem. As a married woman, he was entitled to my funds, but only if they could ever be verified to exist. Mr. Morgan could never manage to get all of my savings all in one go.”
“So they knew?” Prudence asked. “The people of the village knew that Mr. Morgan was... bad?” Using Leo’s word felt strange.
“‘Bad’ seems to me an overstatement. Giving Reggie more forethought than he possessed,” Mrs. Moon said. “But the villagers didn’t trust him. They saw him sleeping off a bender in the public square. They knew about the extended credit with the grocer, noticed how threadbare our clothes were. One can only mend a child’s shirt so many times.”
Mrs. Moon’s brow furrowed, the memories catching up to her speech. “When Leo got older, Mr. Morgan took him along to help with his schemes. I hated it, but what could I do? Leo idolized his father, and then feared him. And then began to believe it was his duty to go.”
“Oh,” Prudence whispered. She thought of the scars she’d traced on his torso. The circular burn. All the other smaller nicks and pale marks that lived on his skin. The experiences that could never be forgotten.
“One day, amid a long stretch of Reggie’s prolonged absence, I forged his signature on the bank card. Miraculously, the bank manager was able to find all the remaining money in the account that day and gave it to me. I whisked my son to London. I worked, sent him to the best school, because he was a smart boy, oh, he was smart. Chip on his shoulder as wide as Britain itself, but smart.”
“When did you change your name?” Prudence asked.
“As soon as we arrived.” Mrs. Moon looked down. “It’s not that I was ashamed. It was that I was scared. I kept the same initials, since I’d monogrammed everything over the years. But I altered a certificate of marriage to show I was married to a Mr. Moon, not Morgan, and changed our names. It wasn’t hard, really, if you had enough ready money.”
“And you had enough?” Prudence asked. Leo acted as if they had been starving, so which was it? The moment the specter of his father loomed, Leo had become a different man.
Mrs. Moon winced. “Yes and no. I was in debt, but Leo was so good with numbers. So very good. And once I finally told him of our predicament, he solved it straightaway.”
“His schoolmates. They had money. And he did their work for them.” Prudence started fitting the pieces together.
“I’m not proud of myself for leaning on a young boy for financial help. But the world was not made for a woman to work and support herself and a child. It was difficult. And that was with both of us having a decent education.”
“You should be proud of yourself,” Georgie said again. “You’ve done well.”
“Only because of Leo,” she smiled.
And then there was a knock at the front door.
