Free City of Darkness (City of Mystery) by Kim Wright Page B

cot.  Emma leafed through the money,
unable to blame her sister and too frightened to be angry at this latest
desertion. 
    The note had suggested Emma could
stay on as the household governess -  a final effort, Emma supposed, for Mary
to assuage her conscience.  The thought was not altogether ridiculous, for Emma
was in fact a better student than Mary had ever been and had continued her
studies, in secret, in the evenings.  But she was only a year older than the
tailor’s eldest son and slight for her age.  The tailor had roared in fury and
deposited her posthaste in the hands of his local sexton with instructions to
escort her to the nearest workhouse.  Emma sat quietly, politely, as the two
discussed her fate.  No matter where the sexton took her she had already
determined that she would not stay.  She had a good mind and thirty pounds tied
in a scarf; surely London held something better than a workhouse for her.
    It was then that, after years of
lucklessness, Emma’s life suddenly took a turn for the better. The sexton was a
friend of Geraldine Bainbridge, and he mentioned Emma’s plight to her.  Within
hours Emma was delivered not to the squalor of the Knights Home for Indigent
Youth, but to an elegant house in Mayfair, where it was at times her job to
cook and clean but generally just her job to be sane.  To impose discipline and
order on an undisciplined and disorderedly household.  It was a task for which
she was uniquely well-equipped.
    She had not minded taking care of
Gerry, Emma reflected, as she gave the last plate a cursory flick with a towel,
nor had she balked at the string of misfits and ne’er-do-wells Geraldine
routinely took into her home.  Emma was acutely conscious in every pale face
that there, but for the grace of God, went she, and she ladled out soup and
sympathy with a sure hand.  But this girl, this Leanna, was a different
matter.  She had talked quite freely with Geraldine about the money she’d
inherited and her family’s reaction and Emma had for the first time felt the
sickening thud of jealousy.  Not even the fact that she realized Leanna had
been raised in a venomous household instead of the happy normalcy she’d known for
twelve years, could abate Emma’s envy.  Dear thoughtless Gerry had prattled on
about the many pleasures London afforded an heiress until Emma could stand to
listen no longer and had excused herself.
    Leanna, to her credit, at least had enough
conscience to seem uncomfortable about the magnitude of her wealth.  She had
pleaded with Gerry not to introduce her as an heiress, but simply as her
grandniece, as her ward, and Gerry had reluctantly agreed.
    “It’s too new to me,” Leanna had
said.  “I can’t get used to the money or the power it represents and I’m afraid
people will look at me strangely because of it.”
    “I inherited money and people don’t
look at me strangely,” Gerry had protested.
    Leanna had burst into giggles. “Oh
but Aunt Gerry, they do.”
    Then Geraldine had laughed herself. 
“You’re right, darling, but they don’t look at me strangely because of the
money.  Quite the opposite.  A little wealth gives you the right to be as queer
as you wish yet remain socially acceptable.”
    “Well, at least don’t mention it
around any young men,” Leanna had said firmly. “If I should attract suitors I
don’t want to worry about if they’re only interested in my estate.  Oh, Aunt
Gerry, have I told you?  I met the most attractive man on the train.  He
thought I was destitute and he paid my fare…”
    And so she had launched into the same
story she had told a half-dozen times since her arrival and Emma finally
escaped into the kitchen.  If she should attract any suitors?  The girl was
mad.  With her beauty and breeding she would attract suitors immediately, and
Emma had never so acutely felt what Mary must have endured in that attic years
ago.  She was now the same age Mary had been – almost twenty - and