Page 26 of Rules for Ruin (The Crinoline Academy #1)

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The small village of Trowley Green lay in a valley five miles from the railway station in Sawbridgeworth. Effie sat silently beside Gabriel in the hired carriage, an ever-increasing swell of anxiety constricting her breast.

It wasn’t only because of the revelations that may await her at Mrs.Young’s cottage. It was because of him .

The firm length of his body was pressed against her side, from the curve of her shoulder all the way to her knee. Beneath her layers of clothing, Effie was vibrating as keenly as a tuning fork.

This was what came of unrequited intimacies. They made one feel too much— want too much.

And she wasn’t the only one.

Since leaving Sawbridgeworth Station, Effie had been acutely conscious of the new edge of gruffness in Gabriel’s deep voice and the tender regard that lingered at the back of his eyes.

His every word and every look had worked on her heart as potently as a caress, reminding her of all they’d shared that night at Cremorne Gardens. Just the two of them, alone in the lamplit woods, in those scorching moments before things had fallen so terribly apart between them.

For heaven’s sake, how was she to pretend that she hadn’t kissed this man? That she hadn’t been clinging to him in the moonlight and whispering ridiculous things in his ear?

“She’s a widow,” he said.

She jerked to attention. “I beg your pardon?”

“The old woman in Trowley Green.” Gabriel’s gaze swept Effie’s veiled face. “A real one.”

Effie had kept her veil lowered the whole of her journey. A necessary precaution to protect her reputation. And not only that. Along with her crinoline, it provided a layer of armor between her and the greater world around her. Today, she found, she needed her armor more than ever.

“You mentioned she lived with her sister,” she said.

“That’s what one of my men told me. The sister’s a widow as well.”

Effie’s palms dampened beneath her gloves. She didn’t know how she was going to manage to adequately interrogate Mrs.Young without Gabriel learning anything compromising. What if the woman should reveal something untoward? What if—

But the time for what-ifs had passed miles ago.

“I know this Grace woman is important to you,” Gabriel said as their carriage entered the village high street. “But you’ve never mentioned why.”

“I told you. She was someone my family knew long ago.”

“A servant, I presumed. Your old nursemaid, or your childhood governess?”

Effie was in no frame of mind to spin him a yarn of half-truths. “I don’t remember the particulars of her position, only that her fate has always troubled me.”

“Your parents dismissed her?”

This time Effie didn’t reply. She looked out the window at the rolling green hills that surrounded the village, her hands clasped tight in her lap.

Gabriel’s frowning gaze lingered on her veiled face.

She moistened her lips. “When we arrive, you will allow me to ask the questions, I trust.”

“Of course,” he said.

It was some consolation.

By the time the carriage came to a halt at the end of the narrow lane in front of Mrs.Young’s isolated cottage, Effie had her nerves under some semblance of control.

Gabriel disembarked from the carriage ahead of her. He turned to offer his hand.

Normally, Effie would have ignored the courtesy. She was perfectly capable of climbing in and out of carriages on her own. This time, however, she was glad of the assistance. She’d faced too many difficult moments on her own. It was a relief to know this didn’t have to be one of them.

She silently set her hand in his.

His face remained impassive, but his fingers immediately closed around hers, both gentle and firm, as though he was cradling something infinitely precious in his grasp.

He stayed by the steps, holding her hand as she descended. He didn’t release her, only waited until her booted feet were firmly on the ground before tucking her hand in his arm.

“I believe I saw the curtains twitch,” he said dryly.

Effie mustered a faint smile. “They’re expecting us.”

The small cottage was respectable enough, with its thatched roof and low stone wall. A pebble path led to a slatted front door with ivy growing over the lintel.

Arriving on the front step, they had no need to apply the knocker. The door was opened before either of them could raise a hand. A large, gray-haired woman in a matron’s cap filled the doorframe. She looked them up and down.

“Mr.Royce, is it?” she queried. “That man of yours said you’d be here today. My sister and I have been waiting since half past ten.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “I am Mrs.Sturges.”

“Ma’am,” Gabriel said. “May I present Mrs.Flite.”

Effie took her elevation from miss to Mrs.in stride. She was, after all, a widow, and one who—judging by her unrelieved black—was still in her first year of mourning.

Drawing back her veil, she inclined her head to the woman. “How do you do?”

Mrs.Sturges examined Effie’s face with interest. “Mrs.Flite.” She bobbed a curtsy. “I wasn’t aware Mr.Royce was bringing a lady.” She stepped back. “Come in, if you will. I’ve made tea.”

Effie entered ahead of Gabriel. Mrs.Sturges led them from a cramped front hall through to a small parlor. An aged woman in a poorly fitting drab dress was seated inside on a faded chintz sofa. Her back was hunched, her calloused hands and careworn face indicating a life hard lived. She rose on creaking legs as they came in, fixing her rheumy eyes in their general direction. It wasn’t immediately evident if she was blind or merely approaching that state.

“My older sister, Mrs.Young,” Mrs.Sturges said. Raising her voice, she addressed the woman: “Vera? This is Mr.Royce and Mrs.Flite come to see you.” She waved Effie and Gabriel in. “She can’t see so well anymore, but her mind’s still quick as a trap. Sit down, the pair of you. I’ll fetch the tea tray.”

“I never knew you in St. Giles, sir,” Mrs.Young said, resuming her seat. Her accent was coarser than her sister’s, and the wisps of hair escaping her plain cotton cap were white instead of gray. “But I knew of you well enough. And so I told your man, Mr.Walsh.”

Effie sat down in one of the pair of threadbare armchairs facing Mrs.Young. Gabriel took the chair next to her. The printed curtains on the small window were open, letting the sun shine into the room.

“He claims you knew of someone else as well,” Gabriel said. “A servant woman who used to work for Mrs.Flite’s family some years ago.”

Mrs.Young’s wizened face took on an acquisitive air. “Mr.Walsh indicated as how there might be some small reward involved.”

“There might be,” Gabriel said, “if the information you provide is useful to Mrs.Flite.”

Mrs.Young turned her bleary gaze toward Effie. “This servant of yours, she end up in the Rookery, did she?”

“I believe she did,” Effie said. “It was a very long time ago. I’m anxious to learn what became of her.”

“I don’t recollect Mrs.Grace having been anyone’s servant,” Mrs.Young said. “She could never have stuck it.”

Effie’s brows elevated. “ Mrs. Grace?” she repeated. “I thought…That is, wasn’t Grace her given name?”

“Oh no. Called herself Amelie or Celine or summat. A lot of them girls had similar-like French names what came out of Madam Marie’s. Though she weren’t there long. Couldn’t stick that, either. The madam threw her out, if I remember.”

Effie felt Gabriel cast her a frowning look.

At the moment, his curiosity was the least of her problems.

She leaned forward in her seat. “You mean to say she was a—”

“Oh, she were, right enough. A pretty lass. Never knew her real name. None of us respectable folk did. Wouldn’t want to know it. She were that unpleasant.”

Effie flattened her palms in her lap.

She refused to quail at discovering that Mrs.Grace—a woman who might very well be Effie’s mother—had been a prostitute. Many poor females had been similarly reduced to selling themselves. What choice had they? It was often either that or starvation and death. One couldn’t attach a moral valuation to survival. Even so…

Effie was suddenly cold. “Yes, I see.”

“That wouldn’t have been the woman,” Gabriel said.

“T’were the only woman named Grace I remember from that time,” Mrs.Young replied.

“Did you tell them, Vera?” Mrs.Sturges entered with the tea tray. “I warned that man he hadn’t got the right woman.” She set the tray down with a clatter on a low walnut table by the sofa. “Tea, Mrs.Flite? Mr.Royce?”

Effie managed a thin thank-you as Mrs.Sturges poured out her tea. She took the cup, grateful for something to warm her.

“I don’t encourage my sister to dwell on her former circumstances,” Mrs.Sturges said, serving tea to the others. “She married unwisely as a girl, and that husband of hers put her in the way of bad company.”

“God rest his soul,” Mrs.Young murmured.

“But she retained her honor and dignity, even at the worst,” Mrs.Sturges went on. “She never fell into vice like some I could mention.”

Mrs.Young nodded in eager agreement. “I did only what I must. No one could accuse me of—”

“That’s all behind you now,” Mrs.Sturges interrupted firmly. “We live a quiet life in Trowley Green, Mr.Royce. I’ve given my sister a place of respect in this village.” She sat down beside Mrs.Young. “There’s no good raking up the past and sullying her good name at this stage of her life.”

“We have no desire to rake up the past,” Gabriel said. “Only to learn what happened to Mrs.Grace.”

“Dead,” Mrs.Young said bluntly.

Effie started. “Oh.” She lowered her cup back to its saucer. She had known it was a possibility. She had prepared herself. The tersely delivered information nevertheless gave her a jolt. “When—?”

“She were always ill with summat or other. That brat of hers, too. Screaming the place down all hours of the night and day.”

Effie’s fingers tightened spasmodically on the handle of her teacup. Any doubts she had that Mrs.Grace was, indeed, her mother vanished in a puff of smoke.

“Folk knew the mite were hungry,” Mrs.Young continued unaware. “Still…it weren’t any more likable than its mother. A strange brown little thing with unnatural blue eyes. Mrs.Grace had no fondness for it.”

No fondness for her own baby?

Effie didn’t believe it. She couldn’t. The harsh fact was too far removed from the dreams she’d been constructing all her life. Dreams built upon a gossamer-thin understanding of a mother’s self-sacrificing love.

“How do you mean?” she managed to ask.

“Didn’t want it, o’course. Couldn’t hardly keep it or feed it.” Mrs.Young took a noisy gulp of her tea. “Mrs.Grace rented a bed in the attic room of an old rag-and-bone shop at the time. Used to put the child on the roof when its cries became too troublesome.”

Effie’s breath stopped in her chest. Again, she felt Gabriel’s gaze on her. This time it was no brief glance. It was a long, steady look. There was an oddly arrested expression in his pale eyes.

She scarcely noticed it.

Her attention was wholly fixed on Mrs.Young. “She…She put the child on the roof?”

“It were the only thing to stop her crying, Mrs.Grace claimed. Been doing it since the child could toddle. The mite used to get real quiet and still up there for fear of falling. Not even her hunger could inspire a peep out of her.”

A sickening numbness spread through Effie’s limbs. She no longer cared about the possibility of Gabriel learning her secrets. Her thoughts were consumed by that long-ago child. A strange brown little thing. A mere toddler, placed on the roof, her cries of hunger silenced by her terror of falling.

And Effie had been that child.

Her mind couldn’t recall it, but something in her did. The memory was imprinted deep, in her blood and in her bones. A scar gouged upon her soul. Never fading. Never healing. Always there to torment her whenever she ventured too high.

“What became of her?” she asked softly. “Of the child?”

“Can’t rightly say, ma’am,” Mrs.Young replied, drinking her tea. “She disappeared not long afore Mrs.Grace died. Some said she were sent to the workhouse. Others, that the father come and took her away. A lascar, I heard.”

Effie was vaguely familiar with the term. A lascar was a sailor from India. Which meant she must be half Indian.

People had remarked on her singular looks all her life. Had asked if she was part Spanish or Italian or any number of things. Effie had never known the answer.

“But t’were only a rumor,” Mrs.Young continued. “I didn’t see the man meself. I did ask Mrs.Grace where the child went, but she only laughed. Said she never wanted the tyke and good riddance. She were ill at the time, coughing blood and all sorts.”

“Consumption,” Mrs.Sturges supplied. “Isn’t that what you said, Vera?”

“Aye.” Mrs.Young nodded. “She had the consumption. Died a few months after the child disappeared.”

“There, you see, Mrs.Flite?” Mrs.Sturges said. “This Mrs.Grace woman couldn’t have been anyone’s servant. Not unless she’d fallen far since leaving your family’s employ.”

“No indeed,” Effie replied mechanically. “This isn’t the woman I was looking for.” Returning her teacup to the tray, she stood abruptly from her chair. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

Gabriel was at once on his feet beside her. Effie didn’t wait for him to speak, or for the others to protest her departing so hastily. She turned and strode out the door, left with only the fleeting impression of the two old women rising from the sofa, and of Mrs.Young extending her gnarled hand for recompense.

Lowering the veil of her bonnet, Effie exited the cottage.

Miss Corvus had warned her not to look backward.

But Effie had insisted on doing so, on learning the truth, like Pandora or Lot’s wife or any other of the countless examples of women who had coveted knowledge at the expense of self-preservation. And the result had been the same. Chaos. Misery. Obliteration.

There had been no kind, self-sacrificing mother. No place where Effie had ever belonged. She was the bastard child of a prostitute and a lascar sailor. Abused. Unwanted. Unloved.

Her dreams had been illusions. Her long-held anger misdirected.

Miss Corvus hadn’t stolen her away from anything worth having all those years ago—if she’d stolen her away at all. Indeed, it transpired, she had very probably saved Effie’s life.