Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [176]
Now, a month after her release, she could probably fool some people into believing she’d always lived this way. She saw poor people every day, sweeping streets, selling flowers and begging on street corners, and she was very aware that this comfortable life she’d landed in more by luck than her own initiative wasn’t secure. She knew she had to find some way of making it so.
She was far too astute to think that a few pretty clothes would land her in a good position. People wanted their housemaids young. They wanted real cooks, capable of coping with large dinner parties, not someone who had gained their experience throwing anything vaguely edible into one pot over an open fire. Housekeepers had to know everything, from how to care for linen and silver to keeping accounts. Mary knew none of that, and she had no references either. The more she looked around, the more she saw there were few work opportunities for any woman.
Even Mrs Wilkes, whom Mary had thought of as gentry, had no choice but to run a boarding-house. She had been widowed ten years earlier, and when the little money she was left with ran out, she’d got a position as a companion housekeeper for an old gentleman at that same house in Little Titchfield Street. When he died, leaving his money to his nephew, Mrs Wilkes inherited the contents of the rented house. Taking in lodgers was the only way she could manage to stay in the home she’d come to love.
Mrs Wilkes’s answer to Mary’s problems was marriage. She had hinted that Boswell might make the ideal husband. He was after all a widower, very fond of her, and a man of means.
There had been brief moments when Mary toyed with the idea. She liked Boswell very much, he was kind, entertaining and generous. Sadly, however, she knew she could never go willingly to his bed. He was getting old and fat and his teeth were rotten. He was also a very clever man, with children he thought the world of, so he certainly wasn’t going to risk their disapproval for an ex-convict who hadn’t already proved her love and passion for him.
‘I think I would like to live by the sea again,’ Mary said as they walked over the little bridge across the lake. London was exciting, but she often found herself longing for the serenity of the moors, the fresh wind from the sea and a calmer life.
‘Then perhaps we should make contact with your family,’ Boswell said. ‘You will remember I met the Reverend John Baron of Lostwithiel while I was in Cornwall. A good man!’
Mary nodded. Boswell had mentioned this man, but as she had only been to Lostwithiel twice in her life, she didn’t know him.
‘He would call on your mother and father if I asked him to,’ Boswell said. ‘Shall I write to him? He was very sympathetic to you.’
‘I’m afraid they would show him the door,’ Mary said dolefully. She remembered only too well her mother’s loudly held views on those who broke the law. Mary thought she must be thoroughly shamed by her daughter’s notoriety. She wasn’t going to like a man of the cloth pleading with her to forgive and forget. In fact it would probably set her even further against Mary.
‘It’s worth a try,’ Boswell said.
‘No,’ Mary said firmly. ‘It’s up to me to throw myself on their mercy, it’s cowardly to get someone else to act on my behalf. I’ll go when the men are pardoned.’
Visiting the men in Newgate was one thing Boswell had refused to let her do. He said it was because of the danger of infectious diseases, but she guessed it had more to do with keeping her away from any harmful influences. As he had been so good to her, she felt she couldn’t disobey him, so she had to make do with passing messages through him.
‘That might not be for some time yet, Mary,’ Boswell