His mother had likely already lain down with numerous devils, half of them diseased. “I’m showing you where the Coventry is. No child who comes to the back door is turned away hungry, but you must also be willing to take on any errands assigned. Check the water buckets of the horses in the mews, for example.”
“I know how to fill a bucket.”
“You know how to deliver messages. You know how to find a coachman and tell him to bring his team around to the front door. You know how to watch a pot to see when it comes to a boil and then count off five minutes on the clock, or you can learn.”
Michael cut down an alley, not the safest choice in the growing darkness, but Mickey came along without a qualm.
“I can sing all the pub songs,” Mickey said. “I get paid in beer for singing.”
“That is clever of you, but a fellow needs the occasional meat pie or baked potato, unless he’s to sing himself into a stupor.”
“What’s a stupor?”
“When you drink so much you fall asleep.”
“Ma’s like that with the gin.” Said with a complete lack of rancor.
Half of St. Giles was like that with the gin. Half of Mayfair’s gentlemen’s clubs were like that with the brandy. Only the denizens of St. Giles were regularly instructed on the evils of inebriation.
“Come along,” Michael said as they neared the well-lit back entrance to the Coventry. He did not send children here often—Sir Orion and his lady had enough mouths to feed—but this was the best Michael could do on short notice.
Mickey stopped at the garden gate and peered over. “Smells good.”
The tantalizing aroma of a beef roast wafted on the evening air. “If you haven’t eaten for a time, don’t bolt your tucker, lest it make a reappearance.”
Mickey pulled the latchstring and slipped into the garden. “I’ll cast up me accounts?”
“Precisely. Nibble, take your time, get warm, and pay attention to the surrounds. Whatever the potboy or scullery maids are doing, you might soon be asked to do.” If he was lucky. Ann Goddard did not suffer fools, and a busy kitchen could be a dangerous place for neophytes.
Not as dangerous as the stews.
Michael rapped on the door, Mickey shivering beside him. Ann Goddard herself opened the door, perhaps expecting a delivery of some sort.
“Mr. Delancey. Do come in.” Ann stepped back and eyed the boy. “Who is your friend?”
“Mickey, of very recent acquaintance. He was looking for dropped coins on increasingly dark and dangerous streets.”
“He’ll be looking for a shroud if somebody doesn’t feed him.” Ann dropped to her haunches. “Listen to me, my good fellow. If you nick so much as a potato, I will skin you alive and boil you up in a fricassee. We feed a horde of fussy nobs here every night, and I have no time to deal with thievery or foolishness. I am happy to see you fed and, if you are willing, to give you the occasional job, but one missing potato, and you’ve worn out your welcome. Understand?”
Mickey nodded solemnly. He clearly understood about gift horses even if he had no idea what a fricassee was.
“Fine.” Ann rose. “Wash your hands and face at that sink there.” She pointed across the kitchen to a large copper wet sink. “Never touch food without washing your hands if you can help it. Nan! Mr. Delancey has brought us a new taster. Start Mickey out with portions of mashed potatoes, pesto beef, and apple custard. Cider to drink—new cider, not that lightning in a glass my husband is fond of.”
Orion Goddard chose that moment to enter the kitchen from the direction of the public rooms. He was kitted out in evening attire, and yet, something of the soldier still imbued his posture. His gaze lit on Ann at the back door, and he cut a swath across undercooks, maids, apprentices, loitering dealers, and liveried waiters.
“Delancey, we don’t often see you at our humble den of vice.”
Ann slipped an arm around her husband’s waist. “I opened the back door expecting to find that Fournier’s clarets had finally arrived, and instead I see a stray rascal on my doorstep.”
“Two stray rascals,” Goddard said. “One of whom looks as if he could use a tot to ward off the chill.”
“Please do indulge my husband,” Ann said. “The tables won’t be busy for hours, and left to his own devices, he’ll lurk in the kitchen, snitching sweets and making the undercooks nervous.” She kissed Goddard’s cheek and swanned off, bellowing for somebody to open the clerestory windows because a kitchen was not meant to be an inferno.
“I really cannot stay,” Michael said, thinking of his promise to Bea. Her bedtime was still a good two hours off, but he needed to spend much of that time walking and thinking.
“You really can. A quarter hour of polite conversation over a glass of brandy should take precedence over whatever virtuous mischief you have planned for the night.”
“Can mischief be virtuous?”
“There speaks an unmarried man, else you’d know that bit about being fruitful and multiplying is the sine qua non of mischief. Ann wants me out from underfoot, so let’s away to my office.”
Goddard was family of a sort—his cousin was married to Michael’s sister—and he’d made a valid point: Michael could make his farewell to Bea and then do his walking and thinking as he hiked across the river.
“One glass,” Michael said. “And yes, before you ask, I did ask Jeanette Dorning to put in a word with her step-son on behalf of an artist friend.” Goddard was Jeanette’s brother, and he’d doubtless have heard that bit of family gossip by now.
“Mrs. Psyche Fremont.” Goddard led the way out of the kitchen, down a narrow, paneled corridor, up some steps, and into a large, elegantly furnished office. The walls were hung with dark green silk, the sofa and reading chair upholstered in complementary velvet accented with burgundy pillows. The carpet picked up the same colors, and a bouquet of pink camellias on an oak sideboard added a lighter touch.
Everything about the place was tidy, from the pens in the brass tray, to the correspondence stacked neatly, to the slippers tucked by the hearth bricks. One element of disorder—a plain shawl woven of cream merino wool—was draped over the arm of the reading chair.
Husband and wife likely cuddled in that chair, a thought that left Michael unbearably sad.
He hung up his cloak on the hooks behind the door and sat at one end of the sofa while Goddard poured two brandies.
“To your health,” he said, passing Michael a glass, “and an early spring.”
“Your health and Mrs. Goddard’s.” Ann was technically Lady Goddard, though she disdained to use the honorific.
Goddard took a sip, settled into the wing chair, and let his hand rest on the soft wool of the shawl.
“Jeanette is hopeful that you and Mrs. Fremont might suit.”
The family intelligence network had apparently been quite busy. “The lady and I might suit,” Michael said, savoring the mellow fire the brandy lit in his gut, “but circumstances conspire against us. This is very fine libation, and my thanks for providing young Mickey with a meal.”
“Tell me of these circumstances,” Goddard said. “We might be able to help.”
Michael’s instinct was to keep the whole business with Arbuckle to himself, to keep Psyche out of it, to tell no one. To wander alone in the stews his life had become and find a way to bow to the inevitable heartaches the reckoning with Arbuckle would precipitate.