Dancing in Red (a Wear Black novella) (5 page)

She rolled her eyes. Staying in comfort
for the last few hours was not worth the risk. “Enough. I’ll be going now, you
English whoremongering snake. And if I never see you again, may you get the
destiny you deserve.” With that, though she was tired and hungry, she wrapped
herself in her cloak once more and left.

It was a cold, icy night, but it was
better than agreeing to be Ecton’s mistress. Ecton’s whore, as he no doubt
would remind her over and over again.

Nellie paused on the steps of the pretty
little house of flats she had been permitted to live in and looked up at the
sky. It was a cloudy night, threatening snow. Around her the other residents of
London were scurrying around, headed for their homes, getting ready for the New
Year, or leaving for parties where she would not be welcome.

She had to find a room. She’d gotten
soft in the short time she’d been in London. No wren no more.

She shivered.

It wasn’t easy finding a room to let
this close to New Year’s Eve, but she did, and the inn wasn’t in such a
terrible area. The drinkers in the pub were boisterous and convivial, but they
were polite enough, confused by her Irish accent and her rich clothes. The
innkeeper gave her a bed far away from the dining area and brought her a bowl
of tasty stew left from over from supper and a chunk of bread. And after the
door closed, Nellie had the first meal she’d had in months that she bought on
her own.

She was on her own.

Sleep was hard to come by that night,
arriving only in fits and starts. The good life was too easy to acclimate to.
The room was clean enough, but nothing in comparison to the soft, luxurious
linens that had surrounded her when Bertie had loved her. On occasion she’d
hear a roar from the drunks out in the dining area, and she would wake up,
startled.

She stayed there for two days, no more.
She couldn’t afford more than that. The day after New Year’s Day, she stepped
out into the icy streets of London and walked around. It was early yet, and few
were out and about, but she knew she had work to look for. She needed to work
until the baby came and made her completely unrespectable.

February 1, 1861 London, England

The English didn’t like the Irish. You’d
have thought she was carrying a fresh case of the Irish flu the way respectable
housewives turned Nellie away when she asked for work. Eventually, after weeks
of searching, she found work as a temporary barmaid, taking the place of the
owner’s daughter, who was recovering from having given birth. They would only
give Nellie a bed in the stables, but it was warm and comfortable enough,
though it smelled terrible. At night, she rubbed her stomach and wondered if
the child inside would be a boy or a girl. She had felt the first flutterings
of the baby a week before and the sensations had grown to be a daily occurrence
since, until today. She worked for the babe, she ate for the babe. Right now,
everything she did was for the babe.

“You are so silent, wee one,” she whispered.
“Sleeping, are you? Shall I sing you a lullaby?”

She crooned quietly to the babe inside
her, shifting on the straw to find a comfortable place to sleep. Her back had
been hurting all day, the pain increasing by the hour.

“Nellie, girl, where are you?”

The rough voice of the pub owner woke
her from a tired doze some time later. She blinked and sat up, rubbing her
back.

“Mr. Pelham?” she asked, pulling a
candle toward her and lighting it.

“If you want to earn a few shillings,
girl, there’s a man here asking for a companion for the evening. I won’t judge
if you need the money. He’s in the room above the kitchen.” Pelham stepped
toward her, until she could see his kind old face in the small circle of light.

Nellie blinked, her thoughts warring
between a need for money and the desire to not be any more of a whore than she
already had been. She stood to ask some questions about the man, but as she did
so, she felt a wave of intense pain grip her belly, then she saw the dark stain
in the straw, felt the thick dampness of her petticoats, smelled the coppery
death of blood.

His face went pale as she swayed. “I’d
best send my wife to you,” he said, turning around and hurrying away.

She sat down on the dirty straw, knowing
that there was no point in pretending she could do anything but wait for the
pains to go away.

It took a day, but by the time she had
recovered from the worst of the bleeding, she knew she’d never feel her baby’s
movements again. She’d seen similar things growing up in Dublin, and knew that
the body of the babe, such as it was, would be expelled from her in due time.

She cried for a few minutes. That was
all she permitted herself.

Two weeks passed, and she remained dizzy
and muzzy-brained through it all. The Pelhams’ daughter returned to work and
while they allowed Nellie to remain in the stables on her straw bed, they no
longer had any work for her.

“I found you a position,” Mrs. Pelham
said one day soon after that, coming up behind Nellie as she attempted to wash
old bloodstains out of her red shawl.

The Pelhams’ daughter had admired the
fine work and Nellie was contemplating giving it to her in thanks for all the
family had done if she could only soak out the stains.

“A position?” she asked, brightening.

“Yes. I know you have to work. You will
grow weak from the lack of food. We cannot keep you here on charity any
longer.”

“You’ve done enough, for which I thank
you,” Nellie agreed. If only she’d had family nearby, or Ecton had been less
slimy. At least her connection to the prince had been severed forever. When she
had her looks back she’d rise again and one day he would see her name on a
billboard on The Strand at some fancy theater. She could do it.

“Do you want to know about the
position?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nellie said, trying to
concentrate. Her mind had been wandering of late.

“It’s basically the work of a tweeny. I
know you are too old for that, but at least it is work, which is saying
something for an Irish girl. It’s at a new hotel by Victoria Station. You’ll
light the fires in the rooms and help with the cleaning. It’s respectable
work.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Pelham,” Nellie said
dutifully. She wondered what kind of people stayed at the hotel. If they were
theatrical types it might be of use to her.

“It’s perfect for you because there is a
uniform. You simply don’t have the kind of clothes a working girl needs.”

She had virtually no clothing at all,
and the lavender wool dress she’d worn all this time was dark with wear by now.
“I’ve come down in the world.”

Mrs. Pelham shook her head, her tightly
wound gray hair looking like a lamb’s curls. “I never saw any Irish dressed
like you. Those slippers and that shawl. I’ve wondered who you stole them
from.”

At that, Nellie grit her teeth. She
wouldn’t be offering her shawl in thanks. This sanctimonious woman didn’t
deserve something so pretty, even if the family had kept her barely alive these
past two weeks. At least she found out before she had made the gesture.

“When do I start work?” she asked,
putting it aside from her mind.

“Day after tomorrow. Go over there in
the morning and you’ll be given your uniform and bed.”

Nellie nodded. The next act of her life
had begun.

A week later she had learned her new
position, much to her sorrow. She wasn’t sure how long she would last in a
position that allowed so little sleep. While she was supposed to have five
hours’ rest each night, the selfish cook often asked Nellie to bring her
morning tea even earlier than duty required, robbing Nellie of precious time.
And one of the girls who slept with her behind the basement kitchen snored as
much as any fat old man. As a result, she found herself growing more wan, more
tired, instead of recovering from losing the baby. She ate when she could,
closed her eyes when she could, but she could tell it wasn’t enough.

She stumbled on the steps as she lifted
the first coal bucket of the morning, severely bruising her knee. By the third
bucket, she had to brace herself against the corridor walls with her hand for
balance as she stepped quietly from room to room, filling the scuttles and
lighting morning fires.

When she entered room 204, she smelled
the most marvelous perfume. Like springtime, with an underlying layer of some
heavenly, thick scent that was almost musical in its complexity. After a week
of breathing dusty coal and longer of smelling horse dung in the Pelhams’
stable, the scent was as clean as driven snow.

Startled, she more dropped her bucket
than set it down, the clank of the bucket ringing louder than she meant to.
Luckily, this was a suite and the hotel guest was in the bedroom. Shaking her
head—she had to wake up, she had to sharpen up—she arranged the kindling from
the basket and laid the fire, but didn’t light it yet. Then curiosity got the
better of her and she crept into the bedroom.

The curtains were still drawn around the
bed, but the scent was stronger still. She wanted to move closer, see the kind
of person who smelled like that. Even better, she wanted to find the source of
the scent. Was it a commercial perfume? Of course, she couldn’t afford such a
thing right now, but someday she might have a distinguished protector again, or
even better, be able to buy it for herself when she was a prominent actress.

Her eye began to itch as she knelt in
front of the grate. She put a hand to her temple and her coal-darkened fingers
came away with several limp strands of hair. She’d been losing it lately, ever
since the baby had died. What she wouldn’t do for sunlight and good food, the
kinds of things promised by that heavenly scent. The smell seemed so much
heavier now. Her eyes closed on their own and she forced them open again. The
coal seemed to undulate in her bucket as she reached her hand in. She felt so
tired, so light, so far away from her cares. Her eyes closed again without her
knowing it, her senses overcome by the comforting, heavenly perfume.

Nellie came to slowly. The scent seemed
to surround her. She forced her eyes open and saw a sweet-faced, dark-haired
woman above her, dressed in a lovely nightgown and looking concerned as she
bathed her face in a moist handkerchief. “Are you all right, my dear?” the lady
said, the Irish lilt in her voice the most beautiful thing Nellie had heard in
months.

“Oh, ma’am, I am so sorry,” she cried.
“I didn’t mean to. The perfume was so beautiful, and I wanted to see what it
was, and—”

Unbidden, the tears started to fall, the
way she hadn’t allowed them to since she’d left Dublin, because she had to be
strong, and she couldn’t afford to lollygag. “I’m sorry,” she repeated,
sobbing.

“That’s quite all right, my dear,” the
woman said. She sounded like home. Now though, while she recognized the Irish
in her voice, there was a hint of something else, too. “Poor thing, have you
been ill? You’re as thin as an oak twig.”

At that Nellie cried harder. “I lost my
babe, and my home, and everything,” she sobbed. “Oh, ma’am, I shouldn’t be
telling you all this. I should get back to work.”

“Oh no, my dear,” the woman said,
dismayed. “It sounds as though you’ve had your world turned upside down.”

At that, Nellie told her the whole sad
story, starting from her days with her parents and brothers and sisters in
Dublin, down to Kildare to the prince though she didn’t name names, across the
water to England. The lady—“Call me Mrs. O’Connor, my dear,” she said—patted
Nellie’s hand after the tale was told. “You’ve had quite an adventure. Yet here
you are, starting on your next. Did you by chance attend a certain party before
Christmas, during which you met an Irishman? A Dr. O’Connor?”

“I—yes,” Nellie said, staring at the
lady. “I did.” She shook her head. “How did you know, ma’am?”

Mrs. O’Connor smiled. “He is my husband,
my dear. And he came home telling me about a certain young Irishwoman he met
that night, so far from home.”

Nellie took a deep breath, recalling
that night, mere days before her world went topsy-turvy again. “It seems like a
long time ago,” she said wistfully. She felt something on her neck, and
discovered it was Mrs. O’Connor’s handkerchief, bathed in the scent that had
drawn her so powerfully. She took another deep breath before folding it
carefully and handing it to the other woman. “Thank you for your concern,” she
said.

But Mrs. O’Connor didn’t take it,
instead looking at her with a shrewd expression. “Are you happy here, child?”
she asked.

Nellie’s breath caught and she blinked.
She wasn’t sure what she should say. Would the lady, as kind as she seemed,
report back to the owners of the hotel? How happy could she be? She was
constantly starving and she was constantly tired, and she wasn’t sure from day
to day if she was going to be thrown out on her ear, she was so tired and
accident-prone. “I’m grateful for the job,” she said after a moment’s pause. “I
had nothing, and now, I have a chance to start over.”

Mrs. O’Connor laughed. “What careful
words, child. You’ve learned well. If you are not, you see, I have a proposal
to make. Come with me,” she suggested. “My husband has many plans in the
making, and I know he saw something in you. He would be happy to see you again,
I think.”

Nellie stared at her, blinking hard.
“Ma’am?”

Her eyes were growing wet again, curse
it. Did she have any pride left? Then she felt a single tear coursing down her
cheek, and she had to admit that she did not.

“Oh, child. You’ll have enough to eat
and enough sleep, and you can put this part of your life behind you. I need a
companion as Dr. O’Connor and I travel around the Continent, and it sounds like
you’ve enough savvy to adjust to the situation.”

“The Continent? Europe, ma’am? But
Bertie—” she stopped.

The nickname for the prince had Mrs.
O’Connor staring at her. “As in the Queen’s eldest son? Is that who your
protector was? The father of your babe?”

Pink-faced, Nellie nodded, unable to
meet the woman in the eye. For the first time in a very long time, she felt
embarrassed.

“Oh, child, what a turmoil your life has
been! Poor thing,” Mrs. O’Connor said. Her expression hardened. “The English
cannot be trusted. Come with me and leave that dullard behind.”

Nellie nodded, unable to trust herself
to speak.

Mrs. O’Connor smiled and patted her
cheek. “We’re going to be great friends, you and I, Nellie,” she said. “You are
going to be the pride of Paris without selling yourself.”

The next few hours melted away in a
haze. The housekeeper refused to believe Nellie when she came down with her
duties unfinished and told her that she was leaving her position that day. It
was only after some shouting and Mrs. O’Connor confirming the news that Nellie
was allowed to gather her few belongings.

There wasn’t much. In fact, after she
changed out of her uniform in favor of her worn lavender gown that she realized
that she had nothing except—

The shawl, once warm and rich and bright
red with the detailed embroidery, was a step away from being in tatters. But
for this short period in time, it had been her talisman of a better life, the prettiest,
most luxurious thing she had ever had. No more.