Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [66]
The girl's lips were pursed as she stared up at the sign.
'Can you read, then?' he asked, with a spurt of fellow-feeling.
'Can't you?'
The snobbish vixen! 'I'll have you know, I own nineteen books fully bound,' growled Daffy, 'as well as parts of many others.'
'So that's how you get those sunken eyes,' observed Mary Saunders.
He decided not to resent that remark, because it was true. He reached one numb finger under his wig for a scratch. 'So have you any books in this weighty bag of yours?' he asked as he mounted the stairs before her.
'Reading's for children who've nothing better to do.'
Daffy decided to pretend he hadn't heard that. In the attic, he dropped her bag with an almighty thump at the foot of the narrow bedstead. 'You'll share with the maid-of-all-work, Abi.'
The girl nodded.
'I should warn you, she's a blackie,' he remarked, moving towards the door. 'No harm in her, though.'
The girl looked down her pointed nose at him. 'You forget I'm from London, fellow. We have all shades there.'
Again, she made the temper flare up in his chest like a pain. 'So what brings you to Monmouth, then?' he asked pointedly. He was sorely tempted to suggest that Niblett's coach could take her straight back tomorrow, and he'd even throw in a shilling of his own to speed her on her way.
'My mother came from these parts.'
'Who's that, then?'
'Susan Saunders,' she said unwillingly.
'Born Rhys?'
A wary nod. 'You knew her?'
'I'm only twenty,' Daffy protested.
She gave a little shrug, as if to say it mattered little to her whether he were nine or ninety.
'No, your mother must have gone off to the City years before I was born,' he added, 'but I've heard my father mention her. There are no more left of the Rhys line now, I think? Nor the Saunderses?'
'No,' she said decisively. 'None living.' And then the girl sat down on the very edge of the bed, and her eyes were so hard, like a gull's, that he realised she was trying not to cry.
That was a tactless thing he'd said, reminding the girl that she was alone in the world, with not a soul to acknowledge her as kin. He tried to think of a civil way to change the subject. 'Was it a bad journey you had from London?' he asked.
Mary Saunders blinked once, twice, then sat up straighter. 'Vastly uncomfortable,' she said. 'Your roads don't deserve the name.'
Daffy gave up. He wiped his hands on his loose nankeen jacket and turned to go.
He'd reached the door by the time she went on—as if she couldn't bear to be alone—'We almost drove into a hole that was ten feet deep. There was a horse and rider drowned in it. The man was all green, still sitting in the saddle.'
Daffy nodded briefly before he turned away. He wouldn't call her a liar, not on her first day.
Mrs. Jones had always known she wasn't a lady. Her patrons—as her better-born customers preferred to be called—would probably have described her as a very good sort of woman. Most genteel for her station, all things considered. Today she was a little breathless. She showed her friend's daughter round the narrow house, trying to remember all the things a mistress should say to a new maid.
Winter light pried into the girl's dark irises, and her breath made a little cloud on the air. She must have got those eyes from her father, thought Mrs. Jones, and her height too. She had her mother's neat ear lobes, though, as well as the seamstress's thumbs. Her dusty blue gown and broad neckerchief suggested she didn't expect to be looked at, but she drew a person's gaze all the same.
Mrs. Jones tugged her apron straight, and in a moment of weakness wished she'd worn the one with the lace edging. Just to make an impression on the girl. To make her authority felt from the start. If she and her husband were ever to rise in the world, she had to learn how to be a good mistress, kindly