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Deborah snatched it from him but couldn’t read, handing it to Sarah.

“Runaway slave. Aged thirty-one. Highly skilled in culinary arts. Distinguishing features, light eyes, short of stature. Name: Mignon. A one hundred dollar reward if found. Notify Jeffrey Holloway at Big Rawly, Albemarle County.” Sarah glared at Binky. “You can’t turn her in.”

“It will give us our start.” He nearly spat at Sarah.

“Binky, I can make one hundred dollars on a slow night.” Deborah laughed.

“We can make a life. You will never have to open your legs for one of these men again.” His voice rose.

“Binky, shut up.” Deborah’s heavily made-up eyes fluttered. “What kind of work can you do?”

“Anything. I love you. I want to marry you.” Tears filled his eyes. “I can’t stand other men touching you, shoving themselves inside you.”

“You’ve stood it this long. What’s the matter with you?” She put her hands on her small waist, a smallness enhanced by a whalebone corset, which Sarah cinched to perfection.

“I can’t stand it anymore.” He stepped toward her as Sarah stepped between them.

“Binky, if you don’t go downstairs now, Georgina will wonder where you are and where Deborah is, since Mr. Udall has left. Save this for another day, or better yet, forget it,” Sarah said.

“Go on, Binky, we can talk about this later.” Deborah paused. “You can’t turn in one of our people. Mignon isn’t the only runaway here.”

“But she’s the one I can prove and she’s the one with the big reward.” He walked to the door. “I’m a free black. What do I care?”

Sarah, herself a woman of color, snapped. “You’d better care if you want to live, boy.” She folded the paper sheet, tucking it into her more modestly clad bosom.

Breathing deeply, Deborah held Sarah’s hand for a moment. “I’d better get down.”

“Kevin Murray is waiting. I overheard him ask Georgina where you are. He had a bulge in his breeches.”

“Let’s hope it’s money.” Deborah laughed in relief. “God, that man smells like a goat. I should be paid double for tending to him.”

With that, she quietly closed the door to her room, walked past the others, some quiet, some not, to descend the stairs like a queen. Georgina glanced up from her cards and smiled as Kevin nearly tripped over his own feet to reach Deborah. Grabbing her hand, he pulled her up the stairs, a big grin on his face.

Georgina smiled as she studied her cards.

Horace Greene also looked up. “A beauty that one but cold, Georgina, cold.”

“Well, you will have to warm her up.” Georgina snapped her cards together in front of her lips.

Lionel Thomas, another player, raised an eyebrow. “Horace, you do know how to warm up a woman, do you not?”

“Shut up, Lionel.”

The players laughed, including Horace, whose wife never indicated she enjoyed his attentions. At least Georgina’s girls acted as though they did, except for Deborah. Good at what she did, he never felt she was truly there. He might as well have been on top of Mrs. Greene, except that Deborah was much younger and prettier.

The last customer left at midnight, an early night for the girls. They retired to their rooms along with the ladies’ maids who needed to untie their corsets, bring them fresh pitchers of water to wash up, gossip.

In the kitchen, Mignon and Eudes tidied dishes, glasses, scrubbed the work tables.

“Do you have a view from your room, Mignon?” Eudes asked.

“Yes. I can see the backyard.”

“Good. One should always have a bit of something to look at.” He checked the large wall clock just as the wind rattled the large window over the deep sink. “That one will bite.”

“How far must you walk to get home?” she inquired.

“Only two blocks. Brick and tight, my little house. Granted, the wind finds a way in even with the windows shut, but it’s pleasing with a front porch.” He smiled at her. “When spring truly arrives, I will escort you to my porch and we can watch the world go by like two civilized people.”

“That would be…wonderful.” She smiled, then curtseyed to him, laughed leaving the kitchen.

As Mignon made her way down the long front hall to the back of the building, which was not as tight as she or anyone else would have wished, she passed Georgina’s office door, closed, although she faintly heard her boss’s voice. She continued on, hurrying to escape the chilly hallway. Her small room would have a fire in the grate. Georgina took care of her people.

Sarah had handed the canny woman the sheet announcing Mignon’s escape.

Georgina studied the reward paper. “Where did you get this? I’d throw it away. Sarah, I don’t want to know how many of my girls are runaways.”

“Yes, Ma’am, but Binky wants to turn her in for the reward.”

“He what!”

Sarah leaned toward her boss, who had been fair to her and all the girls. “He wants the money so he can marry Deborah.”

“She can’t be serious.” Her light eyebrows rose almost to her coiffed hair.

“No, Ma’am. She told him that she can make that on a slow night but he’s crazy, crazy about her.”

Georgina sat down, pointed to a chair for Sarah. “I see. So he doesn’t know that Deborah, too, is a runaway?”

“No, Ma’am. She doesn’t tell any man the truth and she may not tell us either, but we know more than they do.”

“Yes,” Georgina drawled, “not having a turgid member is a great advantage in life. Women can think. Sarah, say nothing. There is no need for anyone here to know who is slave and who is free. All are free here.”

“Yes, Ma’am, I know that.” Sarah, herself, was a runaway.

“He would turn in one of his own people? My God.”

“He doesn’t see it that way. He’s a freeman and better than we are, not meaning you, Miss Georgina.”

Georgina was white.

“Sarah, I am grateful to you for this. Tell no one, no one.” Georgina rose, as did Sarah.

The proprietor pulled open a desk drawer, drawing out twenty dollars, handing it to Sarah.

“Oh, thank you.” Sarah folded the bills, a good sum, slipping them down her bosom.

As she left, Georgina also left, closing and locking the door. She walked up the stairs with a brisk step, knocked on Deborah’s door.

Once there she relayed the problem, as one of her best girls faced her wearing only a thin nightgown, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

“He’s crazy. This has nothing to do with me.”

“Deborah, it has everything to do with you, although I do not hold you responsible.” She took a deep breath. “We must act in concert. You keep him occupied, don’t give him the chance to report Mignon. I know you can’t do it forever but try to keep him occupied for a few days while I consider how to handle this. He will jeopardize other girls, hurt the business.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Deborah, marry him if you have to. Not that I hope it comes to that but divert his mind. I will take care of you.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Breathe a word to no one.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

With that Georgina left, closing the door behind her. Deborah considered what could be worse, marrying Binky, if it did come to that, or crossing Georgina. The thought of marriage made her ill. The thought of crossing Georgina scared the Devil out of her. She would do as asked. Also, she liked the little woman, Mignon. She liked most all the girls at the house and she knew she was not the only one who had fled for something better.

And no matter what, it was better and she had the bank account to prove it.

November 11, 2016 Friday

Her black coat shone as she slowly walked toward Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, Tucker.