Embrace the Day Read Free

then, Mr. Brimsby, how do gentlefolk behave? I wonder if you know just why Prudence is so ill."
    Prudence gasped. "Genevieve,
no—"
    But Genevieve was too angry to stop. " 'Tis because you've gotten her with child, you bleedin' sod, and if that's your idea of gentlemanly behavior, then I believe you could use a lesson or two from a 'commoner' like me!"
    The silence that followed her tirade hung in the air, a tangible, throbbing tension. At last, pale and tight-lipped, Angela spoke.
    "Those are filthy insinuations."
    Genevieve thrust her chin up. "Mrs. Brimsby, I'm sure your husband will deny every word of it, but that won't alter the truth. Prudence is ruined, and the bugger should bloody well face up to his responsibilities."
    Prudence began sobbing softly, hands covering her face.
    "Get out," Angela Brimsby ordered. "Get out, or I'll have you thrown out onto the street." She opened her mouth to summon a footman.
    Genevieve ignored her. Her arms went firmly around her shuddering friend.
    "Will you be all right?"
    Prudence nodded weakly.
    "Pru, I know it wasn't my place to speak out for you, but I couldn't stand to see the way they treat you. There now, go up to your room and rest a bit. I'll be back soon."
    She gave the Brimsbys a glower that promised certain trouble should something ill befall her friend.

    She left the quiet avenues behind and wended her way back to the seedy East End, a maze of muddied, rank-smelling streets and alleys, shadowed by top-heavy buildings that nearly met in crooked arches over the roads. A few blocks east rose the grimy edifice of Hawksmoor's church, empty of worshipers. No one made the mistake of identifying the poor as Christians.
    Creaking carts lumbered by, and hawkers called out, offering the last of the day's spoiling fish or limp vegetables. With a stab of premonition, Genevieve studied the women who came out to barter with the vendors. They wore ragged dresses and dirty aprons and had pale, thin faces creased by worry and want. Invariably, three or four hungry-eyed, bare-legged children clung to their skirts. The women were hardly older than Genevieve's own seventeen years.
    She walked on, fighting a now-familiar feeling of restlessness. She didn't want to end up like these creatures, hopelessly trapped in the slums, destined to eke out her life and die before her time, as much from loss of spirit as from disease and want.
    As she turned down Farthing Lane, an alley of singular tawdriness, she tried not to see the poverty around her. At the head of the lane were a few crumbling, rat-infested residences inhabited by an unending procession of the transient poor. A moneylender's office, halfway down the street, operated on the very fringes of the law. Across from it a brothel was thinly veiled as a boardinghouse. Worst of all, the butcher's shop at the end of the lane strewed offal out into the gutters for all to see and smell. Some said London had sanitary wagons to take care of the leavings, but Gene had never seen one anywhere near the vicinity.
    Sighing heavily, she approached her father's tavern. The alehouse was marked by a peeling sign that bore a crude picture of a sheaf of barley. Elliot's was frequented by a regular scruffy crowd of workmen and idlers, sailors and traders from the wharves. Though unappealing, the place was packed to the walls every night because the ale was cheap and plentiful and no one objected to the illicit gaming that took place in the back room.
    Genevieve walked around back to the cramped upper quarters she shared with her parents and two brothers. She deposited her empty basket and made ready to shoulder the even more unwelcome burden of the night's work in the tavern. Hours would pass before she could return to the loft where she made her bed.
    "Well, miss," said her mother. "You took your time getting back."
    "It's a long walk."
    "Aye, well, you've missed supper and they're bangin' their tankards downstairs."
    Genevieve sighed. The meat pasties she