Free Seasons of Love by Anna Jacobs Page A

this accusation that she couldn’t speak for a moment.
    ‘After all, you used your body to trap me, didn't you? I shouldn't be surprised if you didn't fool me about being a virgin, too!’
    Tears filled her eyes. ‘You know better than that.’
    After a long silence, he said, ‘Well, you must just mind your own business at the theatre and let others mind theirs. Unless you want to earn a bit of real money for yourself the same way?’
    She turned white and drew herself up. ‘I'd kill myself first.’
    ‘Pity. There's more money to be earned on your back than by plying your needle.’
    She knew then that if she’d agreed to do it, he’d have let her.
    Later, as she tried to understand her changing feelings towards him, she decided it was this conversation which wiped away the last traces of her love for him. But she was still tied to him, however much her morals were offended. For better, for worse, she’d promised.
    Anyway, she knew too little about London, and she and Harry would be vulnerable without a male to protect them.
    Helen had to work long hours at the theatre and when the landlady was busy, she took Harry with her because she didn’t trust Robert to look after his son. In fact, he only came home nowadays for the occasional meal and she began to worry that he was on the verge of leaving them for good.
    He slept at the lodgings two or three nights a week, made love to his wife if he had been lucky at the gaming tables and had nothing better to do, and changed his linen there regularly, getting angry if there wasn’t a clean shirt always waiting for him.
    He was out gambling nearly every night, and wasn’t even trying to find a job in the theatre, but luckily for her, he seemed to be doing quite well. Every now and then he would toss her a coin, even a whole guinea sometimes, and say mockingly, ‘Here you are, wife, for you and the boy.’
    A few weeks passed, then he began to do less well and the coins became few and far between.
    Some weeks he didn't even give her enough to pay the rent. She came home from the theatre with a tired, grizzling Harry one day to find her belongings scattered all over the room and her workbox lining slashed to ribbons.
    Robert had taken the coins which she’d deliberately left in there and a couple more she’d sewn into her spare petticoat, but that was all he’d found.
    She smiled grimly as she began to tidy up. You'll never take my last penny again, Robert Perriman, she thought grimly. If you won't think of your son, then I must.
    She said nothing to him about the incident when he came home again two days later, and he didn't mention it either.
    When she felt she could face her friend again, Helen wrote to Roxanne through the lawyer, delivering the letter to his rooms herself one afternoon when they had no work for her at the theatre. She enjoyed the walk across the city.
    Harry tottered along beside her on unsteady legs and from time to time she picked him up and carried him on her hip. She talked to him and he tried to form sounds in reply. They both enjoyed themselves very much indeed. He’d learned to be quiet inside the theatre, and to play with the toy dog she’d sewn for him, but out of doors she encouraged him to talk and run about as much as he liked.
    On the way back she bought them both a hot potato from a street vendor and then, on a sudden impulse, called in at a little church near their lodgings to pray for a few moments. She hadn’t been to church for a long time and was feeling guilty about it.
    A lady was arranging a very small bunch of flowers on the altar, and when Harry went over to watch her, thumb in his mouth, she began to talk to him and then to Helen. She was a plump woman, plainly dressed, with kind eyes and a ready smile.
    ‘Are you new to the area, my dear?’
    ‘We've been here for three months now. We have lodgings nearby. I - I haven't been to church for a while.’
    ‘That’s a pity. I think you’d enjoy my husband’s sermons.