am not ashamed,’ Merry said firmly. ‘It is for your protection. I don’t know this gentleman very well and I do not want any misunderstanding.’
Jane curled her lips. ‘She wants to keep him all to herself, that’s what it is.’
‘Enough, Jane,’ Caro said.
Jane sniffed. ‘I don’t care about no fancy man. What I wants to know is when do we get a proper job, instead of cleaning your grates?’
In other words, was her meeting successful? The townspeople had called the house in town Draycott’s whorehouse and had thrown bricks and stones through the windows. Finally a torch had been thrown, starting a fire and forcing them to flee. The meeting yesterday had been supposed to bring the other mill owners over to her side.
The two women looked at her hopefully. ‘It’s bloody awful here,’ Jane said. ‘No shops. Nought to do ‘cept readin'.’
‘I like it,’ Beth said stoutly. She’d grown up in the country. Most of the other girls they’d rescued were town girls, daughters of shopkeepers and millworkers who had taken a wrong turn and been cast out on to the streets to make their way as best they could. All had turned to the oldest profession known to women.
When Caro, who had narrowly missed turning to the same calling out of desperation, had proposed Merry use her money and her influence to help some of these women, Merry had readily agreed. She hadn’t expected the resentment of the community. They seemed to believe the presence of these women would taint them and their families.
They’d driven the girls off.
She glanced over at Caro, who looked sad, but offered a supporting smile. ‘I wasn’t able to meet with them yesterday.’
Jane’s mouth turned sullen. ‘Too busy enjoying yerself with yer fancy man.’
‘He is a gentleman,’ Merry said. ‘He provided me assistance on the road and he will be leaving as soon as the snow is passable.’
‘Gentlemen are the best,’ Beth said, as if repeating a lesson by rote. ‘They’s polite and don’t have no pox.’
‘'Course they do,’ Jane said.
Caroline rapped on her desk with her ruler. ‘Ladies, please. This kind of talk is not helpful.’ She glanced at Thomas, who had stopped writing and was listening with a furrow between his fair brows. ‘Miss Draycott will find you work and a place to live as soon as she is able. In the meantime, you are being paid to learn to read and write.’
A groan from Beth made Merry smile.
None of the girls had found the concept of reading and writing particularly relevant. Only by offering them a wage had she been able to convince them to try when they’d moved into the house in Skepton. They’d been making great strides until forced to run for their lives. Caro insisted these two continue while they stayed with Merry. If nothing else, they would be able to read a newspaper and their employment contract before they signed it.
If they could find jobs.
‘What about the grocer’s in the High Street?’ Beth asked. Her father had owned a shop, but when he found out she was pregnant, he’d turned her out. The boy had run away to sea and left her to fend for herself. If she couldn’t support herself respectably, she would never get her child back from the orphanage. ‘He’s got a sign in the winder for a shop assistant.’
No one in Skepton seemed willing to risk employing Draycott’s whores, no matter how clean they were or how well behaved. The townspeople claimed they would be a bad influence on the men as well as the women.
Merry pressed her lips together. ‘I told him of your experience, but he said he’d changed his mind.’ She’d even threatened to stop purchasing from him, but then he told her his fear of the mob tearing his shop apart. What could she say?
Jane’s lip curled. ‘See. I told you it was all a farradiddle.’
‘They think we’ll steal them blind,’ Beth said.
It was an outbreak of burglaries that had turned the townspeople violent, even after Caro told the constable she could account for all her girls at the time of the crimes.
‘I’m leaving at the end of t’month,’ Jane said. ‘There’s good money to be made in London. Abbesses always looking for new blood. Once the weather breaks, I can walk there in a fortnight.’
‘How much does a girl make in Lunnon?’ Beth asked.
‘A fortune if you finds the right man,’ Jane said. ‘Dripping with jewels and furs, some of the girls are.’
Beth’s eyes grew round.
‘It is not quite like that,’ Caro said. ‘Very few girls meet that kind of man. And often they cast them off, the way they throw out old clothes.’
‘What would you know about it?’ Jane sneered.
Caroline coloured. ‘I have eyes.’
Merry didn’t care much for Jane. Gribble had found her slipping a silver teaspoon in her pocket. Caro had reminded her that she might have done the same, if she had been in Jane’s situation.
Damn it. If Merry didn’t do something soon, these two women would slip back into their old ways.
A feeling of inadequacy swamped her. Grandfather would have been able to deal with the mill owners and the shopkeepers. He wouldn’t have been locked out of the meeting.
Because he was a man.
If only Prentice would stand up to them.
As a manager, Prentice had very little clout. He could speak on her behalf, but even though he was the manager of the largest mill in Yorkshire, he wasn’t the owner.
The only way she would ever have a voice in those meetings was if she was married. And then that voice would go to her husband.
Which brought her right back to the mad idea she’d had this morning—and rejected before it was fully formed. How she could have let such an idea creep into her mind, she didn’t know.
‘I’ll find a way to bring them around,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry.’ But how?
Merry squeezed her eyes shut, then looked at the document, forcing herself to read the figures again. The mill was in trouble.
How had it happened so quickly?
The door opened and Caro glided in as if she walked on air. Even on a good day, Merry galumphed around, as Grandfather always said.
But then Caro was as small and delicate as Merry was tall and big boned.
She smiled at her friend. ‘Lessons over?’
‘Yes. I’ve left them with some needlework. There are sheets in need of turning.’
‘They really don’t have to work for their board, you know.’
‘I know.’ Caro clasped her hands together. ‘But
