She had sat with him as long as she could in the guest bedchamber before Mama and the doctor kicked her out, fearing she’d faint from fretting. Bex wasn’t a pale man. His skin was swarthy and tanned from the sun, but now he was so gray. He must’ve breathed in so much smoke, too much smoke.
Ester lay her head back and let the warmth of the metal work on the knots in her shoulders. Mrs. Fitterwall had made the water extra hot. That was good. The steam could hide the path of her tears.
The door to the room opened. Ester ducked for a moment before remembering she was home at Nineteen Fournier, not in some shared public place.
Mama came inside. Her perfect mobcap topped her perfect curls and a sweeping pale pink robe. But Mama’s lips held an imperfect half smile, and her eyes were red like rubies.
The muscles in Ester’s stomach tightened. “Is Papa better?”
Mama shook her head. “The doctors are still with him. Seems your husband lifted a beam off him before carrying your father to safety. The beam did damage to Josiah’s hip.” Mama’s voice sounded wet with tears. “He may never walk again.”
Ester dropped her gaze to the sudsy water, for if she kept glancing at her mother she’d cry. Holding her knees, she tried to breathe evenly. “Thank you for letting me and Bex stay the night. I couldn’t handle things alone at his flat in Cheapside. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“My, my, Cheapside.” Mama sat near and began unpinning Ester’s hair. “There’s soot in your hair. I’m sure you could handle anything. You’re strong.”
“No, I’m not. I’m a horrible failure. My marriage is a horrible failure.”
Stoic Mama snapped a tendril, and it hurt. “What? That man, Bex, may have saved your father and some of his workers, but if he’s been mean to you, I’ll fix him good while he sleeps. I’ll show you—”
“No, Bex is very sweet to me, but he takes unnecessary risks, and he refuses to tell me things he knows will upset me.”
Mama unwound the chignon but left the braid intact. “You married a man, Ester. Not a little boy to shape his mind, or a puppy to tell him what to do. That willingness to take risks saved your father.”
Ester knew that, but it still didn’t make the knots in her stomach go away. She hit at the water. Suds, sweet lilac smelling suds, landed on her nose. “Yes. For that I am grateful, but he could’ve died there or at the abolition rally.”
“It’s been in the papers for two years, the great actor’s fight for abolition. How did you miss it? Your father says you two have been sneaking about for two years. You should’ve known.” Mama put fluffy white towels from a shelf closer to the tub. “Surely, you talked of it. Or did you do other things to pass the time.”
There was tension in her mother’s voice that sounded of hurt. Ester and her mother had problems, but she needed to know the truth. Truth was everything. “Mama, the two years I told Papa was an exaggeration, to make him feel cheated as I had felt when I found those letters.”
Mama took a whole breath, maybe her first deep one since entering the room. She lifted the edge of the towel and wiped Ester’s nose. “The sneaking was a lie to punish your father more. We’ve been through this. That’s my business.”
“I know, Mama. I know that now. I’ve been watching Bex on stage for two years and loved him from afar. We didn’t meet until Theodosia’s wedding, but I was too shy to say anything to him then. We met again the day of your party. The elopement was planned then.”
Mrs. Fitterwall sailed into the room. She brought a comb and the jar of coconut oil. “Your chignon is horrid, Mrs. Bex. That won’t do. Mrs. Croome, I burned that burgundy carriage dress of hers like you asked. It was threadbare and smelled of burned tar.”
Covering up, Ester ducked further into the tub. She was tender-headed, and she dreaded the heavy-handed woman combing through her knotted tresses. Though, that would be a fitting punishment.
“I’ll do my daughter’s hair, Mrs. Fitterwall.”
Ester’s eyes went wide. She blew air out her mouth and relaxed again. Though her hair was thicker and curlier than Mama’s straight locks, Mama knew how to handle it without whipping through it as if it were a horse’s mane. “Mrs. Fitterwall, has Mr. Bex awakened? I left him with Clancy when the physicians came.”
“That’s a brave one, there. But no, no change. Just snoring away, even as we scrubbed the soot from him. That made the snores worse.” The woman offered a smile, maybe of sympathy, but those happy noises were the only reason Ester had left his side. It meant he was safe, and alive, and she could still get to him.
Mrs. Fitterwall went to the door. “The doctors gave Mr. Croome more laudanum. He’s resting more comfortably.”
Mama nodded as the housekeeper left them alone. She started undoing the braid Frederica had whipped together. “You met and convinced him to run off. Did you throw him hopes of a dowry? He’s an actor. I doubt he has much.”
“He lives comfortably, but he was in want of a wife. I came up with an idea from your papers, reading advertisements for husbands. I thought that might be a way to help my friends. They were both in need of marriages of convenience.”
“Advertisements in the paper?” Mama sighed heavily. “What of their connections, their families, their races? Was none of that a consideration? Anyone who can read could respond? And if someone figured out that Blackamoor women of means were using the papers, they could be nasty. It could be very unsafe. For one talking about avoiding risks, you certainly have allowed your friends to take them.
Ester hadn’t thought about that.
She was lucky that Bex hadn’t been vicious. He was far from it. “Frederica Burghley had been corresponding with him. They were to meet for the first time the day of your party, the day Papa announced he’d arranged for me to marry Jordan. When Frederica saw it was Bex she had been corresponding with, she gave him to me. Bex and I, more so I, cooked up the elopement.” She grabbed her Mama’s hand. “It was never meant to hurt you.”
“Meaning and doing are two different things.” Mama pushed Ester’s hand back into the water and kept working through her hair, holding the tendrils at the root to keep from tugging too hard. Mama knew how to get things done without hurting.
Ester realized that now. Her heart sank to the bottom of the wide tub, soaking up more sorrow like a sponge. “Mama, I’m so sorry.”
