8. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Such a strange coincidence.

Mina leaned against the same wall and was protected by the same shadow that had hidden her and Enzo a few days before. The marble fa?ade of the Grosvenor Square townhouse shone bright with mid-morning sunshine, and her vision struggled with the distortion from dark to light.

When Matron had handed her the paperwork for her first placement, Mina had stared at the scrawled address for an age. What luck. What tremendous luck. In the neat dorm with its two rows of stiffly made beds, it had struck her as a sign that her life was moving into a new stage, and the most singular opportunity had been presented to her. A chance to create something. To fill a position. To be useful . And surely, this address was the portent of a better life to come.

She laboured so hard, in the cold and without light, almost invisible as a maid of all work—at least until something went wrong, and they needed someone to blame. No matter how hard she worked, she never did enough, and the list of chores had no end. Those rare days when she moved about in the daylight, or through the ground floor, were a treasured respite from the endless scrubbing. Things would be different in the country, she had told herself. She'd pick berries for the table and walk through paddocks on Sundays. It wasn't much, but she had faith that things would get better.

Across the road, the housemistress Clara emerged from the stairs to the lower levels. She shook out her skirts then scanned the street. Mina pulled her chin back, as if she could flatten herself enough to align with the mortar. Had Clara known? She had been the one to send her to bed that fateful night, letting her retire after fourteen hours of work, instead of the usual sixteen. With weary limbs and hands aching with chilblains, it had seemed the most tremendous kindness. Mina had collapsed into bed, and was almost asleep when the master of the house had come to see her, under the pretence of enquiring how she was settling in.

When she had upended her breakfast into her cleaning bucket, it had been Clara who had hauled her to the entrance and demanded to know why.

And Mina, always honest Mina, had confessed her condition.

And been dismissed.

And no one had helped her.

Mina peered along the street. It was harder to see from this position, but that didn't matter. Mina had held a visage of the old house close for as long as she'd needed a memory. With its red brick walls, white sash windows, doric columns and stone steps that dipped in the middle because so many feet had walked them, the house had filled her dreams, both sleeping and waking, for all her life since she had left it. From her position, she could make out the staircase and the tall black lampposts that stood at either side. As a child, she had swung in wide circles from those posts as her mother, like Clara, stood on the pavement and scanned the street as she waited for deliveries.

Such a strange coincidence that the house where she had her first placement was directly across the way from what had been the German diplomat's London residence. The house where she had first lived when she and her mother had come to London as part of the staff. Mina had almost no memories of the time before London, only snatches of grey life from another city that might have been Berlin or Munich or another place altogether. Before, the only calibration she had needed was her mother, and her mother held the memory of her father, and thus she had been complete. When her mother had died from miasma caught from the Thames, it was like she'd lost them both.

Back then, she'd had another name, and it had been lost to her too.

Schatz .

My treasure.

The diplomat had not been one for children, especially ones who cried as much as she had. There was no one in Germany for her to go home to, and one orphanage was much like another, so he had sponsored a month at Duke Street. Breaking with tradition, Mina had been allowed to keep her own name, although another foundling who arrived the same month had been saddled with the very Bavarian Rosenbusch. And at the gates, she'd been met by a boy about her height with dark eyes and hair that refused to lie flat.

The door across the way opened. Not the door to the basement, where Clara scurried, but at the top of the stairs. He paused to adjust his gloves.

Mina steeled herself, then launched across the street. The carriage jingled as it came down the side lane. In a few minutes, it would turn the corner and pull up before the house. He would climb in, and she would lose her nerve, and her chance.

Mina inhaled a breath of confidence, the sort Enzo would demand she take in a street like this where she did not belong.

‘Your Grace. Might I have a word?'

Annoyance flickered, before realisation settled. Any thoughts that he might help her fled at the sharp disdain in his eyes. He descended the stairs at a quick step. ‘You cannot be on the street before my house.'

‘I just want my wages,' she pleaded, more desperate than she wished she sounded. ‘I worked for them, and I worked hard.'

‘You'll only spend it on gin, then come back for more. The only way for people like you to learn is to pull yourself up. Otherwise, it's charity, all the time.'

‘I cannot get work without a recommendation, and your wife refuses to give me one. I want to leave. Just my wages…' Her voice went thin. ‘I need them.'

The carriage wheels crunched as they rounded the corner, and the harness jingled like a ticking clock as her opportunity dashed away. Without her pay, she'd never be able to start over. She'd be shackled to poverty, dependent on workhouses and collection plates.

You're a Londoner. Your boots have more right to these stones than theirs.

Mina stomped her heel, and the sharp clap made the duke turn. ‘Pay me what I'm owed, or I'll… I'll go to The Tattler .'

‘And tell them what? That you yield easily? It's probably not even mine. Everyone knows what you women are like.' He sneered. ‘An unwed mother is not news.'

‘Perhaps not, but a duke who deals in counterfeit chips is.'

She would never have Enzo's delicate flick, but as Mina flipped the wooden chip that Enzo had snatched from the safe, the duke looked at her like she had performed some magical feat. She rolled it between her fingers so that he could see each side, and the stamped crest that was not his.

‘How did you get that—'

‘Just because you don't see the maids doesn't mean they don't see you. It's a counterfeit chip, isn't it? A copy from somewhere, for secretly topping up your bet once all the cards have been dealt and you know you have a good hand? Is this from a club, or a friend? You are right, a woman like myself in a city full of sorry tales may not be news, but I imagine this is.'

He lunged but Mina, with her hands trained for work and an eye for spotting the discomfort of her masters, moved faster, and tucked the chip safely into her skirt.

The carriage rolled to a stop, and the footman leapt down. He looked between the two of them. ‘Get out of here, you wastrel,' he snapped.

Mina held her ground. These walls had heard her shout, and they had not crumbled. A little more courage would not bring the world undone.

With a shrug, everything about the duke shifted. He rolled his shoulders, as if shrugging off his condescension. His expression, his stance, even his exhalation softened, and Mina remembered the gentle man who had come to her room and complimented his way into her bed. And she felt a little kinder towards the na?ve girl she had been.

‘You really are very pretty.' He stroked her cheek with a gloved finger. ‘I wouldn't be against an arrangement. I have rooms by the park. You can see the horses from the window.'

‘Upstairs?' she asked. ‘A room out of the basement?'

‘I could sponsor another month at Duke Street. Then the baby would be properly looked after, given a chance. They would have my name.'

‘I'd have to give them up?' Mina pressed her fingers to her stomach, which even now, rolled and churned.

‘I can't have you parading about with a child. People might talk. And you would need to learn to avoid that, in the future.'

Mina's fingers curled in on themselves. The baby would have regular meals, and lessons, clean linen and friendship. Things she would struggle to provide once she was on her own. But what of her own dream, the dream that held them both? What of that thing that had always grounded her—her mother's love? ‘I cannot agree to such a condition. Death took my mother from me, and nothing less will part me from my child. And if you think your name and a few pounds is enough, then he or she is mine, and only mine.' Habit made her bob. ‘My wages for your chip. Please.'

His scowl was that of a man who hated to lose, rather than a man who had lost something of value. With a grumble he reached into his coat and took out a small leather purse. He held out a gold sovereign.

Mina shook her head. ‘It's too much. It will rouse suspicion. Just small coins. Coppers and shillings, if you have enough. Please.'

Mina left Grosvenor Square with her pocket jingling with the coins that would give her a future.

Pennies for her silence. Pennies for her penance.