“Ahmad Malik! Is that you?” She unlatched the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to take you for a walk,” he said. “Fetch your shawl.”
Becky’s brows raised, but she asked no questions. She disappeared back inside for an instant. When she emerged again, she had a knitted wool shawl draped around her shoulders and an old stuff bonnet in her hand. She tugged it on over her dull blond hair and tied it under her chin. “I could do with a breath of fresh air.”
“Not fresh enough for my taste,” Ahmad said as the two of them descended the stairs.
“Oh, it’s not a patch on the air you have in Mayfair. But I’ll take it any hour over what I have to breathe in that room of mine. Some days, seems I never leave it.” Becky shouted to Mrs. McCordle as they passed her: “Going out, Mrs. McCordle!”
“You behave yourself, my girl,” Mrs. McCordle called back. “I don’t rent lodgings to them who gets themselves in trouble.”
Ahmad pushed the door open for Becky. The bell jangled again, announcing their exit. “How are you getting on?”
“With the piecework?” She stepped out into the yard. “Keeps me busy enough. Good thing, too. Every time work picks up, Mrs. McCordle raises the rent.”
Ahmad followed after her, letting the door slam shut behind him. The two of them walked side by side down the lane. “She hasn’t any right to. Not for that rathole.”
Becky’s room was little more than an attic garret. And its location had even less to recommend it. While some impoverished streets in the neighborhood still retained a certain dignity beneath their shabbiness, Lost Hope Yard was as bleak and desperate as its name suggested.
Standing in the shadow of chimney stacks, the street ahead was empty save for a ragged girl shepherding a herd of equally ragged children. Dirty faces peered up at Ahmad as they passed—curiosity warring with suspicion.
“What ho, Becky,” the older girl said.
“What ho, Lizzy.” Becky flashed the girl a smile before returning her attention to Ahmad. “A rathole you call it?”
“On its best day.”
“It’s good enough for some,” she replied, indignant. “We can’t all become lady’s maids and manservants to the gentry.”
“The Finchleys are hardly gentry. And I’m not their manservant any longer.”
She shot him a concerned glance. “Out of a job, are you?”
“No. I’m finally doing what I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Don’t say you’re making ladies’ gowns?”
“I am.”
Her face spread into a grin, revealing a missing tooth. “Lord, look at you! A proper dressmaker.”
“It’s why I’ve come to see you,” he said. “I have a commission. One I can’t hope to complete on time, not even with Mira’s assistance.”
She folded her arms. “Go on.”
“I require another pair of hands. Someone who knows how to sew according to my requirements, and who can work with a variety of trimmings. Glass beads, swansdown, and so forth.”
He’d sketched out a half dozen ideas last night after leaving Russell Square. Designs for ball gowns, and evening and day dresses. Garments that would showcase the wealth of Miss Maltravers’s charms. That would make the fashionable elite stand up and take notice. That would make them see her as he did.
“Where’s this work to take place?” Becky asked. “You haven’t got a shop, have you?”
“Not of my own. Not yet. But I often work out of a tailor’s shop in Conduit Street. If I can convince the proprietor to allow it, I propose that you, Mira, and I use the workroom there. Otherwise—”
“I could do the work in my room,” she offered. “Like my piecework.”
They walked past the drooping door of a lodging house. A blowsy woman with a drink-reddened face leaned out of the second-floor window to shout at one of her neighbors across the way.
“You could,” Ahmad said. “Either that, or at my lodgings. They’re larger than what you have here. And better ventilated.”
“Where are you living at?” she asked.
“In King William Street.”
“And Mira would be there?”
“Most days, yes.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll continue to work at the tailor’s shop. It’s more convenient. And that way, you wouldn’t have to be on your own with me.”
She gave a derisive snort. “You’re the last man in the world I’d worry about trying anything. After what you did for me—”
“It’s your reputation I’m concerned with.”
“My reputation?” She laughed. “Only you would say so. To everyone else, I’m just a whore.”
Ahmad frowned. He briefly took her arm to guide her around a puddle of filth in the road. “You’re not a whore. You’re a seamstress.”
“It doesn’t matter how I earn my living now. Once you’ve earned it on your back, you can’t ever wash the stain away.”
“Rubbish.” He didn’t like to hear her talk that way, as if there was no coming back from a life at Mrs. Pritchard’s. No chance for a happy life once one had been ruined in the eyes of society.
His mother had believed that.
She’d been unable to face the scorn of her community. Had chosen to give up rather than live with the shame. As a result, Ahmad had been left in the care of his aunt. Growing up in their small village, he’d been surrounded by women who had been used and discarded by men. Strong women—survivors. Just like most of the women he’d met at Mrs. Pritchard’s.
“Mark my words,” Becky said. “I’ll be in that room above Mrs. McCordle’s ’til the day I die—and that’s if I’m lucky. There’s nothing else I’m fit for now. And don’t say marriage. I shan’t ever be getting married or having a family. No good man would have me.”
“If they don’t want you because of your past, then they aren’t good men. Not as far as I’m concerned.”
She pushed against him with her shoulder. “Fool. You’ve been among women like me too long. A proper English gent wouldn’t be offering a job to the likes of me.”
“I’ve never aspired to be a proper English gent.” He looked down at her. “What do you say? Do you have the time to spare?”