I smiled, not taking her response personally. Everyone had an opinion, and it was quickly and easily given. But I’d always made up my own mind. I dropped a couple coins in her lap. What did it matter? I didn’t have enough for our lodgings anyway. “Enjoy a warm meal.”
The woman lifted her surprised gray eyes to me, a face lined with the cracks and creases of age. What had she seen? What had she gone through in such a long, long life? I swallowed hard. Before I knew it, I would be her. No family. No money. No home. Too old to do anything but beg. It was a bleak, bleak future.
“I won’t thank ye. Didn’t ask fer it.”
I had to bite back my laugh. “I don’t mind.”
Dismissing her from my thoughts, I reached for the door. The scent of unwashed bodies and washed clothing hung in the air of the building. I glanced up. Four floors, and we were at the top. The view was best up in our garret room, and in the summer when we opened the windows a cool breeze swept inside. I’d hate giving it up. But on days like today, when my legs ached from exhaustion, I wished I didn’t have to climb so many stairs.
Gripping the battered railing, I moved up the steps, dreading each floor closer to the room I shared with Violet. The wooden boards creaked and groaned, threatening to give under my weight. Dirty, infested, smelly, but this was home. Had been for five years now.
“You fucked her, you bleedin bastard!”
Mr. and Mrs. Miller were fighting again. The walls were paper thin. At times I thought if I pressed my hand too hard to the plaster it would break through. Their argument was a familiar sound, almost like a lullaby for a babe. A hacking cough pierced the walls of the next room. Mrs. Welling had been feverish for a week. When one person in the building was sick, we all got ill.
I ducked under the clothes that were half-frozen, hanging on a rope to dry in the hall, and made it to the room I shared with Violet. I could hear her humming inside. She’d come from the country over a year ago, a sweet and dreamy lass. I’d found her being pickpocketed in Covent Garden. She’d lost her entire, meager savings.
Normally, I would have continued on my way, but something about her purity pulled, reminding me of a time when I’d been almost as innocent. I’d taken her in and gotten her a job in the factory. She was optimistic despite our circumstances. She kept me laughing, sane and full of hope when it should have been dashed away years ago. But even Violet had her limits, and being tossed onto the streets would no doubt break her heart.
A rat darted across the step. They didn’t make me jump anymore, although Vi still screeched like a stuck pig when she saw them. Taking in a deep breath, I opened the door. She stood by the windows, gazing out at the moon attempting to make its appearance through the fog. “Vi, I have something…”
She spun to face me, her curly red hair twirling around her like ribbons on a maypole. “I got us a new position.”
Delighted, she skipped to the middle of the room, her hands clasped tightly together, her face full of happiness and anticipation. Lord, she was the very definition of an innocent country lass. What would she do without me? I closed the door and rubbed the back of my neck. Damnation, the room was cold, and it would only get worse the closer to Christmas.
“What do you mean?” I asked, unbraiding my hair and heading toward the window. “I didn’t know we were looking.”
She danced around me. “In a fancy house, Ginny.”
I stiffened as I stuffed my handkerchief into the hole under the window, trying to keep out the piercing breeze. She’d always been so sure we would escape this place, but up until now I hadn’t bothered to believe in her impossible dreams. “As servants?”
She flushed, emboldening the few freckles across the bridge of her nose, and I felt the utter brat for letting my pride dampen her joy. “Well, yes, but better than getting our fingers torn off from the machines! Or developing bad lungs!”
“Vi, I won’t…” I hesitated, my arrogance warring with my practicality. The wind whistled through the cracks, a high-pitched,