Page 4 of The Banished Bride
“Damnation,” muttered Aurora under her breath. “We’ll have to move faster than I had planned.”
A thin young woman sat at the kitchen table, a piece of beefsteak being pressed up to her right eye by the cook. The purpling bruises on her nose were nearly as dark as the slab of meat and the split lip as raw.
“A tooth is knocked out, too, Mrs. Sprague,” said Alice the cook in a low voice. “I’d like to take a cleaver to the beast what done this. Chop off his hands, I would. And quite likely some other part of his anatomy as well. Then dice it all up, along with his lily liver, for mincemeat and?—”
“I think we get your drift, Alice,” murmured Aurora. “But I imagine Mary would rather not hear any further talk of spilling blood, even if it is her brute of a husband’s.” She stepped forward and put her own shawl around the woman’s bony shoulders.
“I didn’t do nuffink,” sniffed Mary, brushed away a tear. “I swear, not even a w-word. But he came at me agin, jes the same.”
“Of course you didn’t do anything wrong. None of this is your fault. Not one bit.” Aurora smoothed back a bit of the young woman’s tangled hair from her wan brow, then pulled up a chair. “Is your aunt still willing for you to come to her in Scotland.”
Mary choked back a sob. “Yes, Mam wrote to her as ye suggested, Mrs. Sprague, but what good is it? Will’s drunk up every farthing we have, an’ Mam can’t spare a ha’peny, what with the mill cutting back on hours.” Another tear trickled into the hollow of her cheek. “I wuz hoping I might sleep on yer sculleryfloor ternight, and then borrow a shilling or two from ye te make me way te Lunnon.”
“And what do you imagine will happen to you in London, Mary, without money or a place to stay?” asked Aurora gently.
The young woman hung her head. “Dunno, But it can’t be worse than wot Will does ta me.”
“Well, it won’t come to that. I told you that I meant to see you safely over the border as soon as I could afford it. And now I can, thanks to the fact that the Duke of Putney likes to tumble milkmaids in the Greek folly erected by his grandfather.”
Mary blinked her one good eye in some confusion.
“Never mind.” Aurora turned. “Alice, please fix Mary some tea and see she has something hot to eat. Then take her up to the attic room. She should be safe enough there for a night or two. Naturally, if Mr. Tillson comes round to make any inquiries, we haven’t seen his wife in weeks.”
“What if he demands to come in and have a look around?”
Aurora smiled sweetly. “Why, then take a cleaver to him.” She rose and gave one last hug to Mary’s frail form. “Don’t worry, I’ll soon have you in Scotland where your husband will never touch you again.”
“What would us wimmen do without ye, Mrs. Sprague ? Yer a real angel sent down from Heaven.”
“Well, I suppose that depends on your perspective,” said Aurora with a wry grin. “I imagine most men think I’m a devil sent up from the bowels of Hell.”
Miss Robertson smiled before another sneeze shook her ample frame.
“Oh, and Alice, while you’re at it, better brew up one of your herbal tissanes for Robbie. She appears to be coming down with a nasty cold.” There was a clatter of metal. “That is,” added Aurora with a low chuckle, “if we might tear you away from your sharpening stone.”
“No need for that. I’m really feeling quite fine,” protested Miss Robertson, though her assertion was blunted somewhat by a flurry of hacking coughs.
“Go to bed, Robbie.” With those parting words, Aurora turned and headed back to her study, already starting a mental checklist of all the things she must put in order if she was to be setting off on a long journey first thing in the morning.
Instead of following her former charge’s orders, Miss Robertson waited several minutes then marched after her.
“I thought I told you to get some rest,” said Aurora, not looking up from her papers.
“Hmmph. I must be going deaf as well as blind.” The former governess affixed a pair of steel rimmed spectacles on the bridge of her nose and picked up a dog-eared ledger from the corner of the desk, along with the Duchess’s bulging purse.
Taking a seat on the faded chintz sofa, she set to work counting the coins and toting up the neatly penciled columns. “Hmmph,” she repeated, this time with a positive inflection. “The Sprague Agency for Distressed Females has done rather well over the last two months.” There was a brief pause while she reviewed the figures one last time, just to make sure everything added up correctly.
The Sprague Agency for Distressed Females.
Aurora’s mouth gave a mischievous twitch. She loved the utterly innocuous sound of the title. Most men, on hearing such a name, would assume she did nothing more than dole out vinaigrettes for flighty nerves or more exotic potions designed to stimulate procreation. Ha! Little did they know that her little hobby involved such things as assembling detailed dossiers on philandering husbands and analyzing financial information to see if a lady was being cheated out of her rightful money. And, perhaps most importantly, giving free advice, along with financial aid if needed, to poor women who had no one else toturn to in order to help them escape from under the thumb of tyrannical men.
The whole thing had started rather innocently enough several years ago. She had helped a neighbor—a very rich widow—avoid the clutches of a smarmy fortune hunter by informing her of several rather indiscreet comments the gentleman had let fall during a night of drinking with his cronies at a local tavern. Her smile broadened. It was truly amazing the sorts of things gentlemen would say in front of people they considered their inferiors or the incriminating evidence they would leave lying about to be collected as trash.
Just the sorts of things that barmaids, tweenies, charwomen and the like were happy to pass on to a person who could put them to good use.
Naturally her neighbor had been enormously grateful and demanded to express such sentiments in a material way. Since Aurora and Miss Robertson relied on the former governess’s modest inheritance as their main means of support, the additional funds were quite welcome. Some months later, the Dutchess asked if they might be of some help to a bosom friend from school. The reclusive Countess wished to know whether the suitor for her daughter’s hand was indeed the paragon of perfection he seemed to be.
Soon, what the two of them still jokingly referred to as The Sprague Agency for Distressed Females was nothing to laugh at. Word of mouth had slowly spread throughout the area that if a female had a problem, Mrs. Sprague and her companion could be counted on for both sage advice and savvy solutions, all dispensed with the utmost discretion.
