to do some good.”
His kitchen conversation with Chelsea came back to him. She draped herself in black crepe and bombazine for a full year as though she were your widow in truth. There were times we feared she might take her own life.
“How does your mother feel about your manual laboring?”
She lanced him a look. “You mean my eccentricity, or so Mama calls it. She’s pinning her hopes on marriage proving the cure. To be fair, I should admit that she is hardly alone in her censure. Barring Chelsea and Anthony, most members of the ton think I’m daft to spend my days fraternizing with orphaned children, whom they’re convinced will amount to nothing more than cutpurses and prostitutes.”
Watching her closely, he ventured, “And Bouchart, what does he say?”
She hesitated, the pause telling or so it seemed to Robert. “Aristide tolerates my employment for the time being, though he too assumes I’ll give it up of my own accord once we’re wed.” She paused, her quicksilver gaze honing onto his. “He’s mistaken.”
“I admire you for following your passion.”
She looked at him askance.
A renegade curl clung to the side of her cheek, which was neither pale nor waxen as it had been after her faint but a healthy, becoming pink. Resisting the urge to reach out and brush it back, he shook his head. “No, really I do.”
Admire her though he did, he was in no way inured to how enticing she not only looked but smelled—vanilla from the milled soap she’d always favored, lavender from the eau de cologne she preferred to perfume and some spicy citrusy scent he didn’t recall from before but badly wanted to lick.
A baby’s bawling drew their attention outside. Robert joined her at the window overlooking the front lawn. Fifty-odd women and children, the latter of various ages from infancy to adolescence, stood in queue extending from the arcaded entrance gate to the circular drive. The group had multiplied since Robert had arrived. Passing them by, he’d seen more than one cheek tracked with tears, but aside from the occasional wailing infant, they’d waited in stoic silence. It seemed they waited still.
“Good God, there are so many of them.”
Letting the curtain drop, Phoebe sighed. “I know. Every Monday brings the same sad sight. I’d thought by now to be accustomed to it, but after five years it still breaks my heart.”
“Have the London parish houses grown so lax in dispensing relief?”
Her arch look told him he’d said the wrong thing—again. “They’ve not come for alms but to petition that their children be taken in.”
“All babes, I see.”
Expression somber, she nodded. “Only infants of twelve months or younger are accepted, and the mother must stipulate that the child is both born out of wedlock as well as the fruit of her first fall.”
“I gather if those conditions are unmet, mother and child are turned away?”
Eyes suspiciously bright, she sighed again. “It sounds heartless, I know, and in a way it is, but we haven’t beds for them all. Truth be told, we haven’t room for the ones we do take. Presently we’re at four hundred and ten and that’s with several of the younger boys and girls sleeping two to a cot.”
He’d thought himself inured to sad, suffering sights, but apparently he wasn’t as hardened as he’d hoped. “What will happen to them?”
“Once they pass the medical examination, they’re sent to the country for fostering. At four or five years of age, they’re brought back here as Lulu recently was, the boys to learn a trade, the girls to train for domestic employment. When the boys reach fourteen, the governors arrange indentures for them; many end up enlisting in the army. Settling the girls is more difficult, but every effort is made to find them suitable situations.”
Like a surgeon probing a wound, he had to know. “And what of those who are turned away?”
She shrugged, but once again her eyes confirmed how very
His kitchen conversation with Chelsea came back to him. She draped herself in black crepe and bombazine for a full year as though she were your widow in truth. There were times we feared she might take her own life.
“How does your mother feel about your manual laboring?”
She lanced him a look. “You mean my eccentricity, or so Mama calls it. She’s pinning her hopes on marriage proving the cure. To be fair, I should admit that she is hardly alone in her censure. Barring Chelsea and Anthony, most members of the ton think I’m daft to spend my days fraternizing with orphaned children, whom they’re convinced will amount to nothing more than cutpurses and prostitutes.”
Watching her closely, he ventured, “And Bouchart, what does he say?”
She hesitated, the pause telling or so it seemed to Robert. “Aristide tolerates my employment for the time being, though he too assumes I’ll give it up of my own accord once we’re wed.” She paused, her quicksilver gaze honing onto his. “He’s mistaken.”
“I admire you for following your passion.”
She looked at him askance.
A renegade curl clung to the side of her cheek, which was neither pale nor waxen as it had been after her faint but a healthy, becoming pink. Resisting the urge to reach out and brush it back, he shook his head. “No, really I do.”
Admire her though he did, he was in no way inured to how enticing she not only looked but smelled—vanilla from the milled soap she’d always favored, lavender from the eau de cologne she preferred to perfume and some spicy citrusy scent he didn’t recall from before but badly wanted to lick.
A baby’s bawling drew their attention outside. Robert joined her at the window overlooking the front lawn. Fifty-odd women and children, the latter of various ages from infancy to adolescence, stood in queue extending from the arcaded entrance gate to the circular drive. The group had multiplied since Robert had arrived. Passing them by, he’d seen more than one cheek tracked with tears, but aside from the occasional wailing infant, they’d waited in stoic silence. It seemed they waited still.
“Good God, there are so many of them.”
Letting the curtain drop, Phoebe sighed. “I know. Every Monday brings the same sad sight. I’d thought by now to be accustomed to it, but after five years it still breaks my heart.”
“Have the London parish houses grown so lax in dispensing relief?”
Her arch look told him he’d said the wrong thing—again. “They’ve not come for alms but to petition that their children be taken in.”
“All babes, I see.”
Expression somber, she nodded. “Only infants of twelve months or younger are accepted, and the mother must stipulate that the child is both born out of wedlock as well as the fruit of her first fall.”
“I gather if those conditions are unmet, mother and child are turned away?”
Eyes suspiciously bright, she sighed again. “It sounds heartless, I know, and in a way it is, but we haven’t beds for them all. Truth be told, we haven’t room for the ones we do take. Presently we’re at four hundred and ten and that’s with several of the younger boys and girls sleeping two to a cot.”
He’d thought himself inured to sad, suffering sights, but apparently he wasn’t as hardened as he’d hoped. “What will happen to them?”
“Once they pass the medical examination, they’re sent to the country for fostering. At four or five years of age, they’re brought back here as Lulu recently was, the boys to learn a trade, the girls to train for domestic employment. When the boys reach fourteen, the governors arrange indentures for them; many end up enlisting in the army. Settling the girls is more difficult, but every effort is made to find them suitable situations.”
Like a surgeon probing a wound, he had to know. “And what of those who are turned away?”
She shrugged, but once again her eyes confirmed how very
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