Page 26 of Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms (Tales from Honeysuckle Street #4)
Florence ran her thumb along the worn edge of the table, then took a mouthful of ale.
Since her discovery of the Hempel family wealth, her mother had regaled her with gossip gleaned from tea with old friends and conversations after church.
The hotels had grown slowly, the children had been properly educated, they had fine manners learnt from service, and the eldest had turned down a lord in preference to a bank clerk.
Even that snub was a tick in their favour because it was a sure sign that, despite their wealth, they still understood their place in society.
Gossip and stories explained how a boy from the streets and a maid of all work had built a small empire—but none of it explained Johannes.
‘How did you go from this to you?’
He squirmed in his seat, frowning into his ale.
‘Not the family. Not the money. You .’ She jabbed a finger into the space between them, not quite reaching his chest. ‘My mother has told me stories. Gossip. I don’t really listen, but some days she just prattles on, and it’s easier to let her keep going than to try and rein her in.’
A smirk. His manners were too polished to agree out loud, but he’d been in earshot of enough conversations with Mrs Holt to know what she was like. The barricade was crumbling.
‘How did you become… you?’ she pressed. ‘Yes, new money, but what about you? Not the eldest son of the hotel empire—you. Designing water fountains and a devotee of Ruskin. Making cradles and drawing and spending Saturdays with Soane. You.’
At the mention of his beloved inspiration, he unfurled. Like she had indeed discovered the wound, but instead of agitating his softness, she had managed to soothe it and make it safe.
‘It started with the duke’s house. Number 10.
I loved that place. I still do.’ His lazy grin, a little wistful, turned up one corner of his mouth.
He caught a stray drop of water on the table and dragged it into a scattered square.
‘I loved the sandstone walls, how it was both ostentatious and elegant, imposing and quiet. It was a different type of building to any I’d seen before.
Every part of it sat so well together. I was always going down there to peek between the fence rails, or drawing what I thought it might look like inside.
That’s when I started creating my own ideas for houses.
Ridiculous things with enormous playrooms and indoor carousels and an entire wing just for me.
’ He chuckled, and she joined in. As a child, she’d also drawn castles.
‘The townhouses we live in now hadn’t been built then.
We rented an old workers’ cottage that was still part of the duke’s estate.
I was enamoured with that world. Lords, nobles, art, all of it.
One day—I must have been about thirteen—my mother said she wanted to take me for a walk to look at another type of house.
I thought she was going to take me to see a manor. But she took me to Wild Court.’
Florence shook her head. She hadn’t heard of it.
‘It’s a rookery. Slums. The cottage we lived in was small, but always warm, and if anything went wrong, the duke’s manager had it fixed the same day.
He was a good landlord, and even when he sold the block, he made sure we could buy one of the houses from the builder so we didn’t have to leave the street.
I could only see what we lacked in our little cottage, compared to the duke’s house.
But Wild Court… you couldn’t imagine it.
’ He spun his tankard, took a swig, then grimaced as he swallowed.
‘She didn’t say a thing about her life before.
Mother never does. But I think she wanted me to understand that for every manor built by men like Arley’s grandfather, there was row upon row of tenements for everyone else.
And that those big houses were kept in order by servants like her who worked long, long days.
Ruskin, Morris, they understand that. The idea of beautiful yet humble buildings seemed a compromise.
And as life improved for us, it became a way to reconcile being new money.
A few different decisions from my parents, and we could have grown up in a workhouse or been out on the street.
I want to become part of bigger things. But I also can’t forget where I came from. ’
There he was. There was the piece that hadn’t made sense, the notch that fit into the groove. It was the most mundane of revelations. I like handmade houses because they are better for people. What beautiful, beautiful simplicity.
‘My turn to ask a prying question.’ A different type of seriousness settled in his voice and his look. Forget barricades. He was on the attack. ‘Why don’t you want the surgery?’
Florence wrapped both hands around her pitcher.
‘I overheard you with the doctor,’ he confessed. ‘If I’ve overstepped, I apologise. I can’t blame you. I’d be terrified of going to sleep, not knowing if I’d wake up.’
‘I scarce know what I want.’ Releasing the words, just those few words, loosened a knot in her chest, and with a single inhalation, every fret, every worry, every thought tumbled over the sticky table.
‘Each day, my mind changes. On days like today when I only hurt a little—even before I started drinking this terrible ale—I feel like I could manage by myself if I had just a bit of money to live off. I could live my life with a widow’s freedom.
But these days are a trick because tomorrow, or the day after, I could be bedridden in agony.
It’s not death I fear, although surgery could lead to that.
But if things go wrong? What if some parts are better afterwards, but others are worse?
It was like that when they pinned my shoulder.
Good days like today make the others bearable. I couldn’t survive if I lost them.’
She picked up her ale and took three long gulps, enough to soothe the race in her chest and muddle the room a little more.
‘My parents are not young. They will not be able to support me forever. I have no savings, no investments. I cannot take in laundry or sew or do any of the work that a widow might usually do.’
‘You could teach as a governess. I could ask my neighbours if they know of a good family.’
‘And where does the governess sleep?’ she asked.
‘Most have their own room. Nanny Abagail’s is on the top floor…’ His enthusiasm petered out.
‘The day would be over before I had reached the bottom of the stairs. And most families who live on a single level do not generally employ a governess. Mother is right, I should set my sights on marriage. But I cannot bring myself to find a man and accept that he will wander when I cannot warm his bed. My heart could not bear it again.’
‘Maybe you will find a man who adores you. Maybe he’ll be prepared to wait out the bad days.’ He wiped a drop of condensation along the side of his glass, then flicked it away with his thumb.
‘Maybe I will,’ she said, trying to claw back some of her defences, but the ale had dissolved them all.
‘But I won’t know until I’m in the midst of it, will I?
And if I am wrong, it will be too late. There are no good choices, only gambles.
And I cannot decide which horse to place my bet on, and if I take too long, the race will already be run, and I will end up with nothing.
Some days I want to rage at Father for refusing to teach me properly, because of all the things I could do to make a little money, it’s drawing I’m best at.
Houses, offices, water fountains… anything .
I would relish it. But if he lost the respect of the public, or if other architects railed against him for working with a woman, we’d all be in the poorhouse.
He’s paranoid about his career for a reason. I want to be angry, but I can’t.’
He did not look up from his glass, only let the silence of her predicament stretch, disjointed and awkward in the rough noise of the tavern. Undoubtedly, he would have moved on by now. He probably brought a new woman to the favourite bed in his favourite room every other night.
And really, it was for the best he’d extinguished his flame.
She dragged a deep breath through her tight chest. It was not anger, or even jealousy that made her ache, but a different feeling. One far more fragile, yet beautifully, pathetically, all her own.
Oh yes. It was easy to admit now hope was gone. She was very, very much in love with Johannes.