Embrace the Day Read Free Page A

and Prudence had shared on the wharf would have to suffice.
    "I'll go." She tied on an apron and neatened her cloud of dark-brown curls with a comb. She knew her appearance didn't matter to the revelers below, but Prudence's influence had given her a sense of propriety that made her want to present herself at her best. She kept her corner of the sleeping loft clean, her two sets of clothes well-mended. Each week she trudged to St. Martin's to bring in fresh straw for her pallet.
    Short and slight though she was, Genevieve had to stoop beneath the beams of the stairwell that led down to the taproom. The noise and smells of the room greeted her before she actually emerged. Raucous laughter and bawdy remarks mingled with the clinking of the stoneware and pewter tankards. She stepped into the taproom and was immediately met by the pungent scents of tobacco and malt and strident requests for service.
    "A pint 'ere, girl, and be quick about it."
    "Bring that tray o' rolls, will ye? We're fair t' starvin'!"
    "I'll have gin; the beer 'ere ain't fit for swine!"
    Through years of practice, Genevieve had learned to heft a tray loaded with mugs, carefully snaking her way about the crowded room. For the better part of two hours she waited tables ceaselessly, until at last the drinking slowed. Then she went to the sideboard to wash tankards, arms submerged to the elbows in tepid water.
    Her father, Watney Elliot, came to sift through the handful of coins she had in her apron pocket. He was a man of middle years, small and compact, but possessed of a crude sort of arrogance that gave the impression of a much larger man. His hair was brown and tightly curled, showing no sign of gray. His sharp, small eyes darted, missing nothing. He quickly summed up the take and pocketed it.
    "Should be more," he grumbled. "You could do much better, girl."
    Genevieve ignored him and continued with her washing. She'd endured her father's complaints for a lifetime that suddenly felt much longer than seventeen years.
    "Look at you, girl, stern as a judge, when you know well and good these men would pay extra for a smile, or a glimpse of bosom or leg."
    She whirled on him, green eyes snapping with outrage. "I don't doubt you'd bloody well have me sell my body if it would fill your pockets."
    "There's worse ways of turning a coin, miss. You're a cheeky one, always have been, when you should be thanking me for keeping your belly full and a roof overhead."
    "I owe you nothing. Everything you've given me I've earned, and if your bleedin' customers expect any more than their ale from me, they're sure to be disappointed. If it's a dockside whore you want working here, you'll have to look elsewhere."
    "Listen to you, talking like that high an' mighty governess friend of yours. You wouldn't put on airs if I—"
    Genevieve pushed past him, unwilling to listen to more. "Excuse me," she said coldly. "I've work to do."
    Through the rest of the evening she was plagued by what had transpired earlier in the day. A hundred times she wondered if she'd done the right thing in exposing Edmund Brimsby. Things would undoubtedly go badly for Prudence now, but at least Brimsby would be obliged to look after her. A small pension and a house on some quiet street perhaps. That was all Prudence needed. Genevieve would settle for nothing less for her friend.

    Roarke Adair despised the city of his birth. London was a human anthill, and not a very clean one. He had a dim memory of his mother saying sadly that the soot of the wharves might never be washed off, even as she scrubbed away at his ankles in the tiny, battered tin tub. The noise and the smells and the smoke were inescapable, day and night.
    The street Piggot took him to was among the worst Roarke had ever seen. He looked away from a vacant-eyed beggar crouched in a doorway and gritted his teeth. Now that Angela had denied him a chance to escape poverty, he could well join the beggar one day.
    Stooping beneath a peeling sign,