They reached the door. The one she was always reluctant to knock on and even less eager to step through.
Today, Mr. Kensley did the knocking. The wooden door creaked with the pressure, as if ready to split in half, then swung open to a little face.
A dirty face.
The child stood in rags that drooped to her ankles, where dirty toes peeked out. Big, round, darkened eyes stared up at them.
“Who is dere, Anna?” rasped a voice within.
“It is Miss Gresham, Mrs. Shaw,” Isabella said, “come with a basket of bakeries and preserves.”
A wheeze was the only answer, then faintly, “Come … in.”
Just what Isabella had imagined the woman would say—and hoped she wouldn’t.
The three shuffled inside the dank room. No hearth, no furniture, no windows. Just a sallow, shriveled woman lying prostrate in a bed of rags, a couple of wooden buckets that reeked of waste, and three small children pressed together in the corner.
Their frames were skeletal. Hungry eyes cleaved to the baskets, with expressions that cut pity through her chest.
She offered them both baskets and tried not to watch as the children devoured the bread and cakes. When had the situation become so dire?
She had not been to visit the Shaws since last season, but although they had occupied this same filthy room, their clothes had been intact, their Irish spirits had been good, and a few humble beds, chairs, and tables had occupied the space. What had they done? Sold everything they owned for food? Where was Mr. Shaw?
Mr. Kensley bent next to the woman, his knees sinking to the dirt floor. He grasped her wrist, his hand large and tanned next to her bony white one. “She needs a doctor.”
“No … please. Don’t take us now … to de workhouse. So close. Daniel … coming back.” She raised her head, a cough choking through her, sweat dripping down her temples. “Daniel?”
“Lie still and a doctor shall see to you.”
“Just ten … shouldn’t have to go to de sweatshops … working, my boy. Where is he?” Another cough. “Daniel. Daniel.”
“She burns with fever.” Mr. Kensley stood, jaw clenching. “You and Bridget stay with her while I—”
“No.” She sucked in air and took a step back for the door. “No, you stay. Bridget and I shall fetch the carriage driver to bring back a doctor.” Without giving him time to protest, Isabella seized Bridget’s hand and hurried them outside, her heart rattling with emotions she was too unfamiliar with to know how to bear.
She only knew one thing.
She could not stay in that room a moment more.
“How long have you been this way?”
Mrs. Shaw was everything pitiful. Her face bore no color, bones protruded from her skin, and her feverish eyes were ringed with brown, sagging circles. Tiny bugs leaped in and out of her matted hair. “Husband … left us.”
“I am sorry.”
“Emma died.”
The words reeked throughout the room. They smelled of death.
They lodged themselves into the center of William, burrowed deep, and acquainted him with all her grief.
Grief that resonated with his own.
Emma.He pictured a pretty little girl, much like the one who had answered the door to them, who had suffered the lack of too much.
While others dined and splurged and danced, they were dying.
He didn’t mean to hold her hand. He wouldn’t have. But ever since he’d felt the weak pulse of her wrist, the thin fingers had grasped him. She mumbled things half incoherent. Worries over Daniel, ten years old, working in the sweatshops. Pleas not to be dragged to the workhouse. Cries for Emma. Little Emma.
