High Society novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Washing Court
Lord Marchbank's agent evicts forty families from Mill Court, Effie Tapper tips a copper of boiling lye at his boots, and a duke's coach stops; in it he offers her a deal, a sister by Friday.
The Earl's agent came to Mill Court at six in the morning with two constables and a cart.
I was already up, because wash day starts in the dark.
I had my sleeves rolled and my arms in the first copper when I heard the boots on the cobbles.
Then I heard the first door go in.
"Out," the agent said, in the voice of a man reading a bill.
"By order of Lord Marchbank, this court is condemned and all tenants have until seven."
I came out of the wash shed with my hands dripping and found a neighbour's furniture already on the stones.
Her bed frame lay on its side beside her three children, who stood in their nightshirts and stared.
Forty families lived round my drying green, and every one of them was being emptied into the street.
"You've served no notice," I said.
The agent turned, a thin man in a good brown coat who had never washed a sheet in his life.
"Notice was posted on the pump on Tuesday."
"Nobody posted anything on the pump."
He smiled, and the constable beside him laughed.
I looked at the great copper behind me, where the lye water had been rolling for an hour.
I picked up the ladle.
"Agent," I said, "my family has paid rent on these sheds every quarter since 1801."
"I have the receipts upstairs, and you may show them to the magistrate."
"The magistrate is Lord Marchbank's cousin."
The agent stopped smiling.
"Move aside, Miss Tapper."
"No."
He nodded to the constables, and they came across the green toward me.
I dipped the ladle into the copper, drew it out full of steaming grey water, and flung it at the cobbles between us.
It struck three feet short of the leading constable's boots and hissed against the stone.
"The next one is not short," I said.
The court had gone silent.
Behind me Tilly Baines, who is nineteen and afraid of nothing, picked up a flat iron.
"Me too," she said.
"Seize her," the agent said.
The constables hesitated, because nobody paid them enough to be burned.
So the agent lost his temper and walked past them and grabbed my wrist.
The ladle rang on the cobbles, and his grip hurt.
"You'll be in Newgate by noon," he said into my face.
"For what?"
"Assault, resisting, whatever the justice finds convenient."
I would have answered him, and it would have been worse than the boiling water.
But a carriage came into the lane.
It was a dark green coach with grey horses and a crest on the door.
It was far too wide for Mill Court.
It stopped anyway, with its near wheel on the edge of the drying green, and the horses blew steam.
The door opened and a man stepped down into the muck.
He was very tall and very lean, in a plain dark coat with no ornament.
His hair was cropped short and the color of straw, and a white scar ran through his left eyebrow.
He looked at the furniture in the street, at the children, and at the agent's hand on my wrist.
"Let go of her," he said.
He said it quietly, and the agent let go.
"Your Grace," the agent said.
I did not know who he meant.
"Your Grace, this is a matter of Lord Marchbank's property."
"I know whose property it is."
The stranger stepped past the agent without looking at him and stopped in front of me.
His eyes were grey and tired and a great deal sharper than the rest of him.
"You threw boiling water at the Earl's men," he said.
"At the cobbles near the Earl's men."
"You have paid on time since 1801," he said, "and you fought for a roof you only lease."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I'd rather lose a hand than that roof."
He looked at my hands.
They were red to the elbow, with old lye burns on the knuckles.
Something moved in his face that I did not understand.
"What is your name?"
"Effie Tapper."
"Miss Tapper, I am Hugh Wrenfield."
He turned to the agent, and his voice did not rise at all.
"Agent, you will take your constables and your cart out of this lane."
"Tell your master that the Duke of Denholm has stopped his eviction until Monday."
"Your Grace, he'll be furious."
"I expect so."
The agent went, and he took the constables with him, and nobody in Mill Court breathed until the cart turned the corner.
Then the widow began to cry, and her children ran to her.
I stood on my own drying green with my heart going like the copper.
"Thank you," I said.
It came out stiff.
"Don't thank me yet," the Duke said.
"Get in the coach, Miss Tapper."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I have a proposal, and I would rather make it where Marchbank's men can't hear."
I did not move.
"I'm not a lady," I said.
"No," said the Duke.
"I'm a laundress."
"Yes."
"If this is the sort of proposal I think it is, you may go back to Mayfair."
He did not smile or blush, and I liked him for it a little.
"It isn't that," he said.
"Then what is it?"
He held the carriage door open.
"I need a sister by Friday," said the Duke of Denholm.
"You are thirty-three and you are not afraid of a title."
"You have the wrong hands for a lady and the right face for a liar."
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