Paternoster by Kim Fleet Page B

they forgot, or maybe it was the dangerous glint in her eye that urged caution. Whatever the reason, it meant she had bangles on each wrist, her brooches, her clothes and her rings. Luckily she wore a ring on each finger, so with one pawned she could afford cheap lodgings in Covent Garden and work out what to do next.
    Going back to Mrs Dukes was impossible. She’d rather starve. She’d rather rent her petticoats and hump in alleys than turn up there.
    Fortunately she had her education to fall back on, and before the day was out she’d thieved and fenced two pocket watches and a walking cane. Sidling along the street on the lookout for another mark, she heard her name called.
    ‘Rachel! It is you!’
    She turned. A girl swayed towards her, dressed in the voluptuous costume of a Haymarket courtesan: bosom pushed so high it was abed with her nostrils; rouge, paint and patches all over her face; and vibrant silk skirts.
    ‘Jenny,’ Rachel said. She had known her at Mrs Dukes’s. Jenny must be what, at least twenty-six now. Old. Raddled. ‘What are you doing here?’
    ‘This is my patch,’ Jenny leered. She looked Rachel up and down. ‘More to the point, what are you doing here? I heard you’d got a rich cully and was above it all.’
    She pressed so close that Rachel could smell spirits on Jenny’s breath and the sweet rot of the pox.
    ‘You heard right,’ Rachel said, smoothing the line of her dress so that Jenny could see her calfskin gloves.
    ‘And there was I thinking you was in a rented dress and stealing my trade.’
    ‘Oh no, I couldn’t work round here,’ Rachel said, glancing about at the riff-raff. ‘I’m used to the quality. And you?’
    Jenny stamped her foot in vexation. Giving it away for a guinea a time. And getting more than she bargained for from the look of that sore on her cheek.
    ‘Can’t stand here talking all day,’ Jenny said. She snatched her skirts about her and swayed down the street. A barrow boy pitched an orange at her, and she bit into it, skin and all.
    Pissed old whore. That’s what happens when you get old and your looks have faded, thought Rachel. Not that Jenny had much in the way of manners and arts, despite Mrs Dukes’s best efforts to teach her. No wonder she was tossed out. But the same wasn’t going to happen to her. She had youth and good looks, and she valued herself too highly to stalk the inns at the Haymarket prowling for a gin-pickled prick. No, Westminster was where she belonged, and to Westminster she would go.

    The money lasted until the end of the week, then Rachel took herself to Westminster, hawking for a likely keeper. An MP or a lawyer would be a fat catch. They had money even if they didn’t have lineage. As she’d found, lineage came at a cost. No one who was behoven to papa, that’s what she wanted.
    The shops in Westminster were smart; the haberdashers’ windows hung with the most tantalising bonnets and shawls. She stood before a fanned display of gloves in a shop window for a long moment, her breath fogging the pane, before she ventured inside. The shopkeeper sized her up immediately.
    ‘I’ve been asked to choose a present,’ she said. ‘My brother will come and pay for it, if it can be set aside.’
    ‘Of course, miss. Your brother is?’
    ‘Mr Harvey Humbold.’ She’d almost said ‘the Honourable’ and pulled herself back in time. Evidently she guessed right, that the shopkeeper knew every honourable and peer in town, and assumed Mr Harvey Humbold was new money, for he simply turned the name round on his tongue a few times and asked what she would like.
    She asked to see the gloves, and he set about arranging them on the counter. She slipped her fingers into a pair of very tight, elbow-length saffron kid gloves. Divinely soft, and how delicate her hands appeared. The colour was exquisite: the latest thing.
    ‘Hm,’ she said, turning her hand to and fro and squinting at it. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe something not quite so