Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane #1)(3)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“God willing she’ll actually teach the child something so we won’t see Mary Found again.”

Temperance poured the hot water into their small teapot and brought it to the table. “You sound cynical, brother.”

Winter passed a hand over his brow. “Forgive me. Cynicism is a terrible vice. I shall try to correct my humor.”

Temperance sat and silently served her brother, waiting. Something more than her late-night adventure was bothering him.

At last he said, “Mr. Wedge visited whilst I ate my luncheon.”

Mr. Wedge was their landlord. Temperance paused, her hand on the teapot. “What did he say?”

“He’ll give us only another two weeks, and then he’ll have the foundling home forcibly vacated.”

“Dear God.”

Temperance stared at the little piece of beef on her plate. It was stringy and hard and from an obscure part of the cow, but she’d been looking forward to it. Now her appetite was suddenly gone. The foundling home’s rent was in arrears—they hadn’t been able to pay the full rent last month and nothing at all this month. Perhaps she shouldn’t have bought the radishes, Temperance reflected morosely. But the children hadn’t had anything but broth and bread for the last week.

“If only Sir Gilpin had remembered us in his will,” she murmured.

Sir Stanley Gilpin had been Papa’s good friend and the patron of the foundling home. A retired theater owner, he’d managed to make a fortune on the South Sea Company and had been wily enough to withdraw his funds before the notorious bubble burst. Sir Gilpin had been a generous patron while alive, but on his unexpected death six months before, the home had been left floundering. They’d limped along, using what money had been saved, but now they were in desperate straits.

“Sir Gilpin was an unusually generous man, it would seem,” Winter replied. “I have not been able to find another gentleman so willing to fund a home for the infant poor.”

Temperance poked at her beef. “What shall we do?”

“The Lord shall provide,” Winter said, pushing aside his half-eaten meal and rising. “And if he does not, well, then perhaps I can take on private students in the evenings.”

“You already work too many hours,” Temperance protested. “You hardly have time to sleep as it is.”

Winter shrugged. “How can I live with myself if the innocents we protect are thrown into the street?”

Temperance looked down at her plate. She had no answer to that.

“Come.” Her brother held out his hand and smiled.

Winter’s smiles were so rare, so precious. When he smiled, his entire face lit as if from a flame within, and a dimple appeared on one cheek, making him look boyish, more his true age.

One couldn’t help smiling back when Winter smiled, and Temperance did so as she laid her hand in his. “Where will we go?”

“Let us visit our charges,” he said as he took a candle and led her to the stairs. “Have you ever noticed that they look quite angelic when asleep?”

Temperance laughed as they climbed the narrow wooden staircase to the next floor. There was a small hall here with three doors leading off it. They peered in the first as Winter held his candle high. Six tiny cots lined the walls of the room. The youngest of the foundlings slept here, two or three to a cot. Nell lay in an adult-sized bed by the door, already asleep.

Winter walked to the cot nearest Nell. Two babes lay there. The first was a boy, red-haired and pink-cheeked, sucking on his fist as he slept. The second child was half the size of the first, her cheeks pale and her eyes hollowed, even in sleep. Tiny whorls of fine black hair decorated her crown.

“This is the baby you rescued tonight?” Winter asked softly.

Temperance nodded. The little girl looked even more frail next to the thriving baby boy.

But Winter merely touched the baby’s hand with a gentle finger. “How do you like the name Mary Hope?”

Temperance swallowed past the thickness in her throat. “’Tis very apt.”

Winter nodded and, with a last caress for the tiny babe, left the room. The next door led to the boys’ dormitory. Four beds held thirteen boys, all under the age of nine—the age when they were apprenticed out. The boys lay with limbs sprawled, faces flushed in sleep. Winter smiled and pulled a blanket over the three boys nearest the door, tucking in a leg that had escaped the bed.

Temperance sighed. “One would never think that they spent an hour at luncheon hunting for rats in the alley.”

“Mmm,” Winter answered as he closed the door softly behind them. “Small boys grow so swiftly to men.”

“They do indeed.” Temperance opened the last door—the one to the girls’ dormitory—and a small face immediately popped off a pillow.

“Did you get ’er, ma’am?” Mary Whitsun whispered hoarsely.

She was the eldest of the girls in the foundling home, named for the Whitsunday morning nine years before when she’d been brought to the home as a child of three. Young though Mary Whitsun was, Temperance had to sometimes leave her in charge of the other children—as she’d had to tonight.

“Yes, Mary,” Temperance whispered back. “Nell and I brought the babe home safely.”

“I’m glad.” Mary Whitsun yawned widely.

“You did well watching the children,” Temperance whispered. “Now sleep. A new day will be here soon.”

Mary Whitsun nodded sleepily and closed her eyes.

Winter picked up a candlestick from a little table by the door and led the way out of the girls’ dormitory. “I shall take your kind advice, sister, and bid you good night.”

He lit the candlestick from his own and gave it to Temperance.

“Sleep well,” she replied. “I think I’ll have one more cup of tea before retiring.”

“Don’t stay up too late,” Winter said. He touched her cheek with a finger—much as he had the babe—and turned to mount the stairs.

Temperance watched him go, frowning at how slowly he moved up the stairs. It was past midnight, and he would rise again before five of the clock to read, write letters to prospective patrons, and prepare his school lessons for the day. He would lead the morning prayers at breakfast, hurry to his job as schoolmaster, work all morning before taking one hour for a meager luncheon, and then work again until after dark. In the evening, he heard the girls’ lessons and read from the Bible to the older children. Yet, when she voiced her worries, Winter would merely raise an eyebrow and inquire who would do the work if not he?