A Matter of Grave Concern (34 page)

“Yes. You were fourteen when you broke his jaw and left the Abbott farm for good . . . to join the navy.” She sipped her tea, watching him over the rim. “Then there’s me, of course. You already alluded to the fact that you think me less than a credit to womankind.”

“Evidently you feel you had good reason for doing what you did. Whether or not I agree makes little difference now.” He tucked the strand of hair that had fallen from the cord holding the rest back behind his ear. “Why not tell me about my father and be done with it?”

Her movements calm and fluid, she took another sip of tea. “Would you like something else?” She motioned to the tray that held scones, clotted cream and gooseberry preserves.

“No. I believe it’s time to go.” Coming to his feet, Treynor sketched a formal bow. “Keep your secret, Mother. The possession of it seems to agree with you.”

He was nearly clear of the portal when her voice rose behind him. “If you must know, he was the stable master. William was in America for nearly two years, and I enjoyed the attentions of our stable master. He had a fine physique, he was kind and he was loyal to a fault, even if he wasn’t always right in the head.”

He whipped around to face her. “You’re lying.”

“Am I? William didn’t return when he said he would, not soon enough to claim you were legitimate. I had no choice but to give you up. Certainly even you can see that. Are you happy now, my dear?”

Treynor felt as though someone had opened a trapdoor beneath him. He’d waited his whole life to learn that he was the spawn of a man who’d started having fits and eventually lost his mind?

Once again, his mother had drawn blood. Whether she spoke the truth or a lie didn’t matter. Her mocking words proved how little she cared about him.

His hands curled into fists as he fought to tamp down the pain he couldn’t believe he still felt. “Good night,” he managed through clenched teeth.

A shrill laugh answered him, one that echoed off the walls as he closed the door.

Chapter 1

Manchester, England

March 5, 1854

“Let me out! Please, Willy, let me out!”

Alexandra’s voice rose to an unnatural, high-pitched scream. The walls and lid of the trunk pressed in upon her like a coffin, the heavy darkness crushing her chest like a thousand pounds of sand. Stifling. Suffocating. Terror gripped her as she struggled for breath, pounding her fists on the locked lid of the old steamer trunk.

In her panic, she almost failed to notice the sliver of light that penetrated the blackness. When she did see it, her gaze clung to it as tightly as a drowning man might clasp a life preserver to his breast. Age and use had left the dome-shaped lid slightly warped. Surely air could pass as well as light. Still, Alexandra had to force herself to breathe slowly, to resist the hysteria that threatened to overwhelm her.

She ceased her pounding.

“Papa?” she wept. She hadn’t called Willy “Papa” for years, but she felt like a child again, like the little girl who used to love him, trust him. “Are you still there?”

Silence. Alexandra concentrated on the beam of light. The tiny slit didn’t provide much air. She could hardly breathe. Where was he? There had been no sound for several minutes. Had he left her?

“Oh no, please,” she whispered. Certainly even Willy wouldn’t abandon her this way. Her stepfather never hurt her when sober, rarely spoke to her, in fact, but his love of gin exposed another side of his nature. The beatings that had begun shortly after her mother’s death five years ago had become increasingly common and more violent as Willy’s dependence upon alcohol grew. Now drunkenness was his way of life.

Alexandra tried to shift her weight, but the trunk was too small to hold a nineteen-year-old. She was crammed into it with her long legs tucked under her chin, her arms squeezed tightly against her sides. Her right hip supported the whole of her weight, causing pain to shoot down her leg until, mercifully, the restricted blood flow made it go numb. Still, her head throbbed; whether from the punishing blow Willy had landed when he had first set upon her, or from the fit of weeping that had overtaken her when he had forced her inside her mother’s steamer trunk, she did not know.

A shuffling sound alerted her to the fact that she was not alone after all. She tried to hold her breath so she could hear from whence the movement came, but her involuntary gasps continued.

“Willy? Please, open the lock.” Alexandra hoped a calm appeal would evoke some response, but she received no answer. She felt as though she were walking a tightrope of sanity. One wrong word could turn her stepfather away and send her plummeting into panic once again.

“Are you still there? Don’t leave. Please. If you don’t let me out, how will I work? You know we have a half-dozen shirts to finish today.” She paused. “Don’t you want to get paid?”

“Shut your trap, wench,” Willy growled. “I can’t stand the sight of you.”

“But I’ll go directly upstairs. I promise. You won’t so much as see me.” Her body ran with sweat, but Alexandra fought to control her fear. At least Willy was there. At least he was talking to her. So far, she was managing to keep her precarious balance.

“We’ve got only until noon to finish the shirts. The skirts for Madame Fobart’s are due right after. You said so yourself,” Alexandra pleaded. “I’m the quickest seamstress you’ve got, aren’t I? I’ll work hard, you’ll see.”

Willy cursed, but Alexandra could tell his anger had lost its edge. Her approach was working, it seemed. “Madame Fobart gives us the bulk of our work. We certainly don’t want to lose her.”

“To hell with bloody Madame Fobart!”

Willy kicked the trunk, causing Alexandra to yelp in surprise as he bellowed in pain. “To hell with it all!” he croaked.

“You don’t mean that.” Alexandra forced the words out above the heavy thumping of her heart. “We’ve got a lot of business now, and soon we’ll be making good money. But I can’t finish our orders if you don’t let me go.”

For the briefest moment, she wondered if they could finish their work on time in any event. The order Willy had brought from Madame Fobart’s was double the usual, and with the work came the demand that the skirts be made up and delivered in less than two days. Though Alexandra and the other needlewomen had sewn well into the night, they still had much to do. But how would Willy know that? He had left for the tavern while the candles yet burned in the garret above, and she and the other women worked tenaciously on. Could he even begin to comprehend the mounting pressure of each new deadline when his time was spent sleeping off the effects of the previous night’s bottle? Willy never appeared until late in the day, and then only to criticize, grumble and complain. That he procured any clients at all was indeed a great wonder.

Silence again.

“Willy?” Rational thought bled slowly from Alexandra’s mind as her head began to spin. There was so little air. Work. She had been talking about work. But why? She no longer remembered, except that her life was one monotonous round of stitch, stitch, stitch. Even now her mind called her fingers to sew—but it was so dark.

The lamp is out
, she thought.
I must relight it.

“Someday,” Willy said, his voice grating low and cutting through her fuzzy thoughts, “someday I’ll snuff out the light in those eyes that are so much like your mother’s.”

Alexandra had long since given up trying to understand the unrelenting anger that poured out of Willy when he was in his cups. What had she done to deserve such punishment? And Willy had loved Elizabeth. More than loved her. He had worshipped her. On her deathbed, her mother had asked Alexandra to look after him.

A roaring, like the sound of the sea, filled Alexandra’s head, and she felt as though her body were being gently buffeted by the water’s currents.

I don’t care what he says . . . I only want to sleep.

Then another thought surfaced.
The others will be here soon.
Of course! That’s what she had been trying to remember: the six women who climbed the rickety stairs to the workroom garret each day before dawn.

They would soon arrive to begin the long day’s work of sewing trousers, linen shirts and skirts. The pittance they received for their labor, along with the demands placed upon them by Willy and his impatient buyers, required that they work sometimes eighteen or more hours in a day. Alexandra knew she could depend on them to help her if she could only last a few minutes more. But a peaceful, black abyss beckoned, and she began to move toward it.

The lock clicked. Alexandra heard it above the crashing of the waves in her ears, though the sound had no meaning until the battered lid was thrown open. Then the cool morning air rushed upon her like a good strong slap in the face.

Her chest heaving as she sucked air into her lungs, Alexandra glanced wildly about until she saw Willy.

He stood not three feet away, the imprint of a hat still matting his gray hair above a heavily lined face. Bloodshot eyes, yellowed with age and bad living, peered at her with loathing. He seemed to stare into her very soul, then he staggered away toward his own room, a string of epithets spewing from his alcohol-numbed tongue.

It was over, for now. Alexandra closed her eyes and breathed deeply, her nails curling into her palms.
No,
she promised herself.
Not for now. For always.

By the time Miss Harper arrived, Alexandra had composed herself. Though the others knew about the beatings, she did her best to conceal what she could for fear her fellow seamstresses would jeopardize themselves on her behalf. After all, they were powerless to offer any real help. They needed every penny they earned for the most basic wants—food, clothing, shelter. And it was a fortunate needlewoman indeed whose income provided enough for all three.

As the aging spinster entered the small attic with its peaked ceiling, sloping walls and single window, Alexandra was already hard at work on a full-dress shirt with a pleated front. Shirts required some of the most exacting needlework, forcing her to bend toward the tallow candle to better see each intricate stitch.

“Good day.” Alexandra glanced up to smile at the woman with a cheer she did not feel. She was in charge of the small shop, and felt obligated to greet each needlewoman in a welcoming manner, though today that simple duty contended with a strong desire for comforting. Those with whom she worked were her only friends. Had anyone but Myrtle Harper been the first to arrive, Alexandra might have blurted out the whole terrifying experience. But the sight of her feeble comrade, whose steady decline she witnessed day by day, stemmed the tide of her self-pity.

Miss Harper tilted her head in acknowledgment, but did not speak.

Noticing how drawn she looked, Alexandra halted her work despite the pressing deadlines. “You’re ailing again?”

The spinster nodded as she crossed the room to hang her bonnet and shawl on a hook before settling down at the large deal table that stood in the center of the floor, surrounded by seven chairs. The only other furnishings were an old clock, a coal stove and two tallow candles.

“What we got?” Miss Harper flexed her fingers before taking up her thimble and needle.

“Skirts.” Alexandra pointed to a pile of burgundy velvet in the corner. Skirts were comparatively quick and easy, so Alexandra had set aside her share for the ill woman.

“Morning,” several soft female voices called as the other seamstresses entered the room in a knot, and the room shrank instantly to the stuffy quarters to which they were all well accustomed. It was barely large enough for its scant furnishings, let alone the women who had to work in it. But they jostled about and managed to slip into their seats and position their few belongings in a relatively short time.

Alexandra worked quietly as the other women chatted and laughed, her own thoughts returning to the morning’s episode with Willy. He was getting worse, she realized as anger and humiliation flooded her senses. Through her early years, she could have accused her stepfather of nothing beyond indifference. But he was becoming truly vindictive. She had hoped that his antipathy would go away. She’d blamed his behavior on the bottle, his bad knee, his unhappiness since her mother had died. After this morning, however, she knew such hopes were childish fantasy. He hated her.

“Another beatin’, Alexandra?”

Alexandra glanced up to see Libby, a frail-looking widow with five children, focus her all-knowing eyes her way.

She shook her head.

“Then what?”

The others paused in their stitching to gaze expectantly at them both.

“Come on, dear, spit it out,” Libby prodded. “Ye can’t ’ide it from us. There might not be any telltale scrapes or bruises this time, but that devil of a man’s done somethin’.”

Alexandra swallowed against the lump that swelled in her throat. “I have to get away from him, that’s all.”

“An’ we’ve been tellin’ ye that for months. ’E’s not goin’ to get any better, livin’ on the bottle the way ’e is,” Libby agreed.

Miss Harper made a
tsking sound. “I knew Elizabeth. Yer mother would never ’old ye to a promise to care for ’im if ’e wasn’t returnin’ the favor. ’E uses ye to earn ’is bread, that’s all. An’ abuses ye in the bargain.”

Any mention of her mother evoked a poignant longing in Alexandra. Everything had been so different when Elizabeth was alive. Alexandra’s mother had been kind and beautiful. She’d taught her only child to read and write and speak like a lady. And when Willy had finally intervened, insisting Alexandra leave books to the lads, Elizabeth had taught her to sew. Though they stitched endless hours together, those times had been nothing like the drudgery of the present. Her mother only picked up piecework when Willy fell from a ladder at work, badly injuring his right knee. When he couldn’t stand for any length of time, the mill let him go, and finding new employment was difficult. But the worst was yet to come. On the heels of his accident, Elizabeth succumbed to scarlet fever and died, turning Alexandra’s life upside down. Without her mother, the pillar of strength who had kept the family together and reasonably happy, her stepfather was not the same man.

“He thinks he earns our living by lining up our accounts,” Alexandra said.

“Any God-fearin’ man wouldn’t be able to justify takin’ the lion’s share of our meager profits for an ’our’s work ’ere an’ there,” Miss Harper replied.

The others nodded as Libby jammed her needle into the shirt she was sewing.
“
’E ’eld back ’alf my pay last week because Mary Jane got sick an’ I came in a few minutes late, remember? Someday, I’d like to—”

“We’d all like to take a stick to Willy,” interrupted Sarah, a young woman trying to earn enough with her needle to provide for three younger siblings. “But we can ’andle ’is miserly ways because ’e keeps ’is distance from everythin’ but our money. That’s not true for Alexandra.”

“Don’t ye ’ave any relatives who can ’elp?” asked Merna, a new hire.

Alexandra bowed closer to her work. “Not many I know,” she said, not wanting to announce that her mother had been banished from her wealthy family when she’d found herself pregnant, at fifteen, by the village baker’s son. Elizabeth had gone to her young lover, hoping he’d run away with her, but her father had gotten to him first. For a few pounds and the promise of his own bakeshop someday, the boy turned his back on Elizabeth. So she left on her own, made her way to Liverpool and went to work in a cloth mill, where she met Willy.