Page 2 of The Duke Decides

But malnourishment had kept Alice small and bearing the form of a girl, not a woman, and she had only in the last weeks lost the gaunt, haunted look of near starvation. She still ate as if the food might be snatched from her very mouth, and she trembled in Louisa’s presence as if in the audience chamber of the Queen.

Unexpectedly, the girl’s eyes welled with tears, and she clasped Louisa’s hand in her own thin, roughened ones.

“Doan send me away, mum. I’ll do better. I promise.”

“Alice, child!” Louisa laid her other palm on their clasped hands. “You will not be sent anywhere you do not wish to go. I vow it. We have taken you in, and this is your home now. When you leave, it will be of your own free will, and on to better circumstances. I promise,” she added, which was a reckless thing to do. Right now she could promise nothing—not even that she could keep the roof over the girl’s head.

“But ye doan demand anything, mum. I’m fed, an I’ve a cot all my own that ain’t straw on the floor, and I’ve this nice gown and apron and cap.” Alice touched the starched white cap with her free hand, her expression of wonderment as strong as the day she’d first been handed the small pile of fabric that would comprise her belongings.

“An shoes, mum. I ain’t never ’ad such shoes in me life.” The girl extended a foot, and both Louisa and Alice regarded, for a long moment, the sturdy, well-sewn leather.

“An you doan make me do anything but fetch and carry now an agin, and ’elp in the kitchen, and sure there must be more I be doin? As I doan bring in any money, far as I kin see.”

“We don’t require you to earn money for us, Alice. Our benefactors provide the coin that pays for your clothing and keep. All we ask is that you follow our rules, do your best to learn your letters, and train at the skills that will help you find a post and a home of your own away from here.”

“Eno’ food, me own bed, and a new frock when I need it?” Alice screwed up her mouth, thinking. “Doan see as’ow I’d ever want to leave here, mum.” Her brows drew together. “Unless these here’re jes th’honey days, and soon enough there’ll be the whip drivin’ me out to work in the street.”

Louisa gave a shaky laugh despite herself. “If these are honey days, Alice, I hope they last for all of us, as long as they may.”

The hall which contained the Matron’s private set of rooms led in one direction to the back courtyard that served the kitchen, laundry, and bath house. Louisa took the other direction toward the large, shared dining parlor where luncheon was underway. The lofty oak beams of the high ceiling gave the room the feel of the hall of a medieval castle, though Louisa’s exposure to medieval castles and their halls had been limited to her young girlhood, a time she only dimly remembered.

Large oak tables ran in orderly lines with the benches bearing the occupants of the Hospital, ordered by age: the elders at their own table, single women at another, girls arranged in descending sizes, and the young boys lords of their own domain, supervised at their own table by one of the sterner Sisters.

Mothers with young children sat apart, some with babes on their laps, all of them striving in the way of mothers the world over to instill in their young one some manners. Many of the single women and older girls adopted an orphan at mealtimes, while the wet nurses sat before the hearth, warm from the kitchen fires on the opposite side.

The air rang with the customary clatter of pewter utensils scraping bowls and plates, along with the usual low chatter and gossip, as the Hospital, not being a workhouse and having no charge to shame its residents into silence or submission, did not discourage talk at meals nor any other times.

The table reserved for indigents was full again, the practice being to allow men and women from the streets to come eat at the Benevolence table if they had a need. Several Sisters kept a strict eye on this section, ready to evict anyone who showed signs of disorderliness, drunkenness, or a too-keen interest in the furnishings. This table was served with the wooden bowls and spoons.

“Will ye join us, mum?” asked one of the older girls, shifting on her bench to open a space and thus obliging her companions to resettle themselves.

“I thank you, Margaret, but no.” Louisa softened her answer with a smile. “I am making a call on our neighbors, though I shall return in time for embroidery lessons this afternoon.”

While all the girls learned needlework, and most of the Sisters could teach it, Louisa had the finest stitches and the neatest hand. She ought to, after the way she’d been drilled as a girl, since ordinary women did the ordinary stitchery and noblewomen contributed the beautiful ornamenting.

If her aunts who had criticized every dropped stitch, crooked design, or bloodstain on her linen could see her now.

“Are ye callin on a fine lady, mum?” asked Eleanor, eying Louisa’s Norwich shawl with envy.

“Yes, I am stepping next door to Rutland House to see if the Duchess is at home.” And to throw herself, once again, on the mercy of her old friend.

Several eyes rounded with appreciation. Lady Mary Manners, the Dowager Duchess of Rutland, was a great favorite among the older girls, who often measured their own conduct and one another in terms of what the Duchess might or might not approve. That Matron ran tame in the grand halls of Rutland House, which they could see next door over the hedges, added a good deal to Louisa’s allure and power.

Alice brought her plain cottage bonnet and settled it over Louisa’s head. By necessity, Louisa left off the elaborate hairstyles of the current fashion and wore her thick, cinnamon brown hair in a smooth chignon at the back of her neck.

“Ye might ask if the Duchess has need of any maids,” Alice said in tone of hushed awe. “I’d work in her scullery, I would.”

“I could be a chambermaid,” Eleanor said eagerly. “I beat the rugs proper, don’t I, mum?”

“I could be a seamstress and help with the wedding things for Lady Katherine,” Margaret said, her daring winning gasps of appreciation down the table.

“I shall put in a good word for all of you,” Louisa promised.

Her heart pinched, and her throat tightened as she tied the ribbon beneath her chin. Her chief duty was the care and protection of these girls, to keep the Hospital financially sound and efficiently run, to find apprenticeships for the boys and respectable places for the girls and women who could work, and to ensure that the impeccable reputation of their institution remained intact.

No one asked that they love her, but they did. And she loved them back.

Louisa trotted the short distance from the grounds of the Hospital to Rutland House feeling the letter weight her pocket like a stone. The Benevolence Hospital had stood for a hundred and fifty years, one of the oldest surviving charities in London. Not as famous at the Foundling Hospital, and not nearing the prestige of neighboring St. George’s Hospital, it was nevertheless one of the better-run and most successful institutions of its kind.