“Oh! Look at that woman! They’re beating her!”
Sally Goodman glanced at her and then away, her face complacently untroubled. “Don’t waste your sympathy, my dear. Wretched creature—she must be the mother of a bastard child. It’s the common punishment, and no more than the wicked creatures deserve.”
Amber continued to watch with reluctant fascination, turning her head to look as the procession passed. There were streaks of blood laced across the woman’s naked shoulders. And then suddenly she turned back again and shut her eyes hard. For a moment she felt so sick that she was sure she would faint, but fear of Mrs. Goodman made her take hold of herself again. But all her gaiety was gone and she was aware as never before that she had committed a terrible crime—a punishable crime.
Oh, Gemini! she thought in frantic despair. That might be me! That will be me!
The next morning Amber was up, wearing her dressing-gown and eating a dishful of gooseberry jelly, which was supposed to cure her nausea, when there was a rap at the door and Mrs. Goodman’s cheerful voice called her name. Quickly she shoved the dish under the bed and ran to let her in.
“I was just putting up my hair.”
Mrs. Goodman followed her back to the dressing-table. “Let me help sweetheart. Has your maid gone abroad?”
Amber felt her fingers working competently, making a thick braid, twisting it into a chignon high on her head, then sticking in gold-headed bodkins to hold the heavy scroll in place. “Why—I had to turn my maid off. She—she got herself with child.” It was the only excuse she could think of.
Mrs. Goodman shook her head, but her mouth was too full of bodkins to cluck her tongue. “It’s a wicked age, I vow and swear. But Lord, sweetheart, how’ll you shift, without a maid?”
Amber frowned. “I don’t know. But my aunt’ll have dozens, when she comes.”
Mrs. Goodman had finished now and Amber began combing out the long thick tresses at the sides of her face, rolling the ends into fat curls that lay on her shoulders.
“Of course, sweetheart. But until then—Heaven, a lady can’t do without a serving-woman.”
“No,” agreed Amber. “I know it. But I don’t know where to get one—I’ve never been in London before. And a woman alone must be mighty careful of strangers,” she added virtuously.
“She must, my dear, and that’s the truth on it. You’re a wise young creature to know it. But perhaps I can help you. A dear friend of mine has just removed to her country-estate and left some of her serving-maids here. There’s one of ’em I have in mind in particular—a neat modest accomplished young creature she is, and if she’s not already found a new place I can get her for you.”
Amber agreed and the girl arrived in less than an hour, a plain-faced plump little thing in neat dark-blue skirt, tucked-up fresh white apron and long-sleeved white blouse with a linen cap that covered her hair and tied in a knot beneath her round chin. She curtsied to Amber, her eyes lowered modestly, and she spoke in a soft voice that suggested she would never try to bully whoever took her into service. Her name was Honour Mills and Amber hired her promptly at two pounds a year, with her room and board and clothing.
It made her feel very fashionable and elegant, having a maid to brush her hair and lay out her clothes, run small errands and walk behind her when she went out of doors. And she was grateful, too, for the girl’s company. Honour was quiet and well-behaved, always neat in her appearance, always good-tempered, and a most satisfactory audience for her mistress whom she seemed to admire greatly.
But nevertheless Amber remembered Lord Carlton’s advice, kept her money well-hidden and did not confide her private affairs to her. She had not, however, taken the five hundred pounds to Shadrac Newbold, as he had suggested, for she had never heard of a goldsmith before and was distrustful of putting her money into the hands of a complete stranger. She thought herself quite competent to manage it. Nor did she intend to go to either of the two women he had suggested until she was forced by her own appearance to do so.
Amber and Mrs. Goodman became constant companions. They ate dinner together, usually in one of their own apartments; they went riding in Hyde Park or the Mall, but did not get out; they shopped in the Royal Exchange or at the East India House. Once Amber suggested that they go to a play, but Mrs. Goodman had some severe things to say about the debauchery of the theatres, and after that she did not dare make any more suggestions.
Mrs. Goodman’s husband was detained longer on the Continent, for his business matters were badly tangled. And Amber said that she had received a letter from her aunt, telling her that it would be two weeks or more before she could leave France. If necessary she did not doubt that she could think of another excuse at the end of that time. She was already convinced that people had a better opinion of you if you pretended to be something more than you were than if you used them honestly.
They had been acquainted for perhaps a fortnight when Sally Goodman told Amber about her nephew. Just returned from church, for it was Sunday, they were in Amber’s room, eating a dishful of hot buttered shrimps with their fingers and washing them down with Rhenish. Honour was busily using a pair of bellows to make the fire go, for the day had suddenly turned chill and heavy fog hung over the city.
“Faith,” said Mrs. Goodman, not looking up, for she ate with an almost impartial attention to her plate, “but I’ll vow it was worth a Jew’s eye to hear my silly young nephew going on about you last night. He swears you’re the most glorious creature he’s ever seen.”
Amber, popping a crisp plump shrimp into her mouth, glanced over at her swiftly. “When did he see me?”
She had not made the acquaintance of a single young man, though she had had opportunities aplenty; she was convinced that she would never fall in love again but nevertheless she longed for masculine company. Being with a woman she thought was flat and unexciting as a glass of water. But she had almost never met the man who did not seem to have at least one redeeming quality.
“Yesterday, when you alighted from your coach out in the yard. I thought the young simpleton would fall out the window and break his noddle. But I told ’im you’re intended for an earl.”
Amber’s smile disappeared. “Oh. You shouldn’t ’ve done that! ”
“Why not?” Mrs. Goodman now turned to a French cake, split and covered with melted butter and rose-water, sprinkled with almonds. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Well—yes. But then, he’s your nephew. Heavens, you’ve been mighty kind to me, Mrs. Goodman, and if your nephew wants to make my acquaintance—why, what harm is there in that?”
Luke Channell was to call on his aunt that evening and Mrs. Goodman said that she would bring him to meet her. He was, she said, just returning from his travels and on his way to his country-seat in Devonshire. Amber, very much excited and hoping that he would be handsome, changed her gown and had Honour dress her hair again. She did not expect a man like Lord Carlton, for she had seen none other in London like him, but the prospect of talking to a young man again, perhaps flirting a little, seeing his eyes light with admiration, was an exhilarating tonic.
Luke Channell, however, was a serious disappointment.
Not very much taller than she, he was stockily built with a broad flat snub-nosed face, and his two front teeth had been broken off diagonally; there was a kind of slippery green moss growing along the edges of his gums. But at least he was quite well-dressed, with a profusion of ribbon-loops at his elbows, hips, and knees, his manner was self-assured, and he seemed tremendously smitten by her. He grinned incessantly, his eyes scarcely left her face, and at times he even seemed so nonplussed as to lose his trend of thought in the middle of a sentence.