‘I understand what you are offering me,’ she said and her voice was cool and her expression unmoving.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Will you give me your answer?’
‘I need time to think,’ she said stiffly. ‘Time to fully consider your offer.’
‘What else can you have to consider?’ He smiled a cynical smile. ‘Have I not covered it all already?’
Her pause was so slight that he barely noticed. A heartbeat of time in which their eyes met across the divide. And there was something in her gaze that was contrary in every way to the strong cold woman standing before him. A flash of misery and hurt and … fear. But as quickly as it had arrived, the moment was gone.
‘Nevertheless, your Grace, I will not give you an answer until I have had some time to think about it.’
Her sullen resolution irked him, as did her whole attitude of contempt. Any other woman in her position would have been eager for such an offer.
‘You may play your games, Arabella, but we both know that whores do as rich men bid, and I am now a very rich man. It is a new day. You have until my return tonight to make your decision. And in the meantime Mrs Silver will be paid so that you are not touched by another. What I have, I hold, Arabella. And what is mine, is mine alone. Be sure you understand that fully.’
Her lips pressed firmer as if she sought to suppress some sharp retort. She slipped his coat from her shoulders and handed it to him.
Dominic donned the rest of his clothing, gave a small bow and left.
And as dawn broke over the city he walked away from Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures, leaving behind its black-clad bedchamber with its dark drawn curtains. But his mind was still on the woman that he had left standing there, with the black silk dress clutched to her breasts.
Chapter Three
It was only a few hours later that Arabella made her way up the stairwell of the shabby lodging house in Flower and Dean Street. The early morning spring sunlight was so bright that it filtered through the windows, that the months of winter rain and wind had rendered opaque, and glinted on the newly replaced lock of the door that led from the first landing into her rented room.
The damp chill of the room hit her as soon as she opened the door and stepped over the threshold.
‘Mama!’ The small dark-haired boy glanced up from where he was sitting next to an elderly woman on the solitary piece of furniture that remained within the room, a mattress in the middle of the floor. He wriggled free of the thin grey woollen blanket that was wrapped around his shoulders and ran to greet her.
‘Archie.’ She smiled and felt her heart shift at the sight of his face. ‘Have you been a good boy for your grandmama?’
‘Yes, Mama,’ he answered dutifully. But Arabella could see the toll that hunger and poverty had taken in her son’s face. Already there were shadows beneath his eyes and a sharpness about his features that had not been there just a few days ago.
She hugged him to her, the weight of guilt heavy upon her.
‘I have brought a little bread and cake.’ She emptied the contents of her pocket on to the mattress. Everything was stale as she had pilfered it last night from the trays intended for Mrs Silver’s drawing room. ‘Wages are not paid until the end of the week.’
Arabella split the food into two piles. One pile she sat upon the window ledge to sate their hunger later, and the other she shared between her mother and son.
It broke her heart the way Archie looked at her for permission to eat those few stale slices, his brown eyes filled with a look which no mother should ever have to see in her child.
There was silence while they ate the first slice of bread as if it were a sumptuous feast.
Arabella slipped off her cloak and wrapped it around her mother’s hunched shoulders before sitting down beside her on the edge of the mattress.
‘You are not eating, Arabella.’ Her mother noticed and paused, her hand frozen en route to her mouth, the small chunk of bread still gripped within her fingers.
Arabella shook her head and smiled. ‘I have already breakfasted on the way home.’ It was a lie. But there was little enough as it was and she could not bear to see them so hungry.
The sun would not reach to shine in here until later in the day and there was no money for coal or logs. The room was cold and bare save for the mattress upon which they were now sitting. Empty, just as they had arrived home to find it four days ago.
‘How was the workshop?’ Mrs Tatton carefully picked the crumbs from her lap and ate them. ‘They were satisfied with your work?’
‘I believe so,’ Arabella answered and could not bring herself to meet her mother’s eyes in case something of the shame showed in them.
‘You look too pale, Arabella, and your eyes are as red as if you have been weeping.’ She could feel her mother’s gaze upon her.
‘I am merely tired and my eyes a little strained from stitching by candlelight.’ Arabella lied and wondered what her mother would say if she knew the truth of how her daughter had spent the night. ‘A few hours rest and I shall be fine.’ She glanced up at Mrs Tatton with a reassuring smile.
Mrs Tatton’s expression was worried. ‘I wish I could do more to help.’ She shook her head, and glanced away in misery. ‘I know that I am little more than a burden to you.’
‘Such foolish talk, Mama. How on earth would I manage without you to care for Archie?’
Her mother nodded and forced a smile, but her eyes were dull and sad. Arabella’s gaze did not miss the tremor in the swollen knuckled hands or the wheeze that rasped in the hollow chest as Mrs Tatton reached to stroke a lock of her grandson’s hair away from his eye.
Archie, having finished his bread and cake, wandered over to the other side of the room where there was a small wooden pail borrowed from one of the neighbours. He scooped up some water from the pail using the small wooden cup that sat beside it and gulped it down.
Mrs Tatton lowered her voice so that Archie would not hear. ‘He cried himself to sleep through hunger last night, Arabella. Poor little mite. It broke my heart to hear him.’
Arabella pressed a fist to her mouth and glanced away so her mother would not see her struggle against breaking down.
‘But this new job you have found is a miracle indeed, the answer to all our prayers. Without it, it would be the workhouse for us all.’
Arabella closed her eyes against that thought. They would be better off dead.
Archie brought the cup of water over and offered it to her. Arabella took a few sips and then gave it to her mother.
And when the food was all eaten and the water drunk, Archie and Mrs Tatton lay down beneath the blanket.
‘It was noisy last night,’ Mrs Tatton said by way of explanation. And Arabella understood, the men’s drunken shouts and women’s bawdy laughter echoing up from the street outside would have allowed her son and mother little sleep.
Arabella spread her cloak with her mother’s shawl on top of the lone blanket and then climbed beneath the covers. Archie’s little body snuggled into hers and she kissed that dark tangled tousle of hair and told him that everything would be well.
Soon the only sounds were of sleep: the wheeze of her mother’s lungs and Archie’s soft shallow rhythmic breathing. Arabella had not slept for one minute last night, not after all that had happened. And she knew that she would not sleep now. Her mind was a whirl of thoughts, all of them centred round Dominic Furneaux.
When she thought of their coupling of last night she felt like weeping, both from anger and from shame, and from a heart that ached