Belle - Lesley Pearse [95]
Annie had moved out six weeks earlier. She’d rented a house up in King’s Cross and was intending to take in boarders. While she’d been here she’d been idle, acted superior and walked about like she had a bad smell under her nose, so Garth was glad when she left. Mog might be grieving for Belle still but she kept it to herself and was a superb housekeeper. He really liked her, and he knew Jimmy did too.
Mog came into the bar just as Garth was pouring himself a small whisky.
‘You’re starting early today!’ she said sharply. She glanced round at the fire which hadn’t been cleared from the night before. ‘It’s another cold day, it should be lit before customers come in.’
‘I’m the landlord here,’ Garth pointed out. ‘I do know what needs doing, and that’s Jimmy’s job.’
‘He’s doing his work in the cellar and trying to keep out of your way,’ Mog said, ‘so I’ll do the fire. He does so many jobs for me during the day, it’s the least I can do.’
‘You’re a kind woman,’ he said, his voice husky, for she had dropped to her knees by the hearth to rake out the cinders and for some reason the sight of that made him feel chastened. ‘I really don’t know how we got along before you came. Now we’ve got laundered shirts, good food and a clean house.’
Mog sat up, dropping back to sit on her heels. She wore her grey apron over her dark dress; the apron would be changed to a snowy-white one once she’d finished all the morning’s dirty work. ‘I’m just doing my job,’ she said. ‘But mostly it don’t seem like a job, not as your Jimmy is such a lovely lad. I know you’re vexed because he won’t give up on Belle, and maybe you even think that’s my influence, but I can’t take any credit for his determination, he’s like a young bulldog with a bone.’
Garth couldn’t help but smile for he remembered his mother saying that about him when he was a young lad. ‘I worry he’ll get himself beaten up,’ he admitted.
‘You should smile more,’ Mog said boldly. ‘It makes you handsome.’
Garth laughed then. It occurred to him that he had become inclined to smile and laugh a great deal more since Mog had come to live here – she had a way with her.
‘If I should smile to make me more handsome, I think you should wear something prettier than a black dress day after day,’ he said teasingly.
‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,’ she said, looking right at him with those steady grey eyes. ‘And if I started dressing up, folk would say I’d set my cap at you.’
‘Since when did you care what folk say?’ he asked, amused by her response.
‘I knew exactly who I was when I worked for Annie,’ Mog said thoughtfully. ‘I was her maid, housekeeper, mostly mother to her child too. I might have known all the comings and goings in her place, learned stuff about our gentlemen that would curl your hair, but everyone round here knew I wasn’t a whore. I was proud of that, it gave me dignity.’
‘You still have that dignity,’ Garth said. ‘Nothing’s changed.’
‘Folk are waiting for me to slip up,’ she said. ‘Few people around here really liked Annie, she was too cold and haughty. They thought the same of me too, without ever knowing me. Now Annie’s moved on, they want to gossip about me. Believing I was warming your bed to keep a roof over my head would give them plenty to chew on.’
It was a surprise to find Mog was so astute. Garth already valued her for her homemaking skills, but he had been guilty of assuming she was a simple soul. In a flash of intuition he realized she was sharper than he was, and that she’d only stayed working for Annie because she loved Belle.
‘I would never give anyone the idea you were warming my bed,’ he said, surprised at himself for caring what his customers and neighbours thought about Mog.
‘But I’ll keep wearing the black dresses and aprons to spare you the embarrassment of them thinking you are,’ she retorted, and got back to clearing the fireplace.
Garth busied himself straightening up bottles behind the bar but all the time he was watching her busily