Moonfire Page 5

  Lady Cosgrove, of course, had arrived first, not in a wagon but in a costly black curricle, and she greeted each emigrant with a warm handshake and a smile as they passed through the gate.

  Tansy entered just before Maggie did, giving a little curtsy and muttering, “Your ladyship.”

  Maggie’s knee would not bend; she’d never curtsied in her life, except at the end of a performance, of course. “Pleased to meet you,” she said somewhat woodenly, and made to move on up the walk.

  But Lady Cosgrove held her hand fast. “An American,” she said in a tone that made certain allowances. “Pray, what was your name again?”

  Maggie swallowed. “Maggie Chamberlin, ma’am,” she answered.

  “You’re very far from home, my dear.”

  With anyone else, Maggie might have made a flippant reply of some sort, the fact of distance being such an obvious one, but she liked Lady Cosgrove, sensed that she was a gentle and compassionate person. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. If there’d been more time, she might have told her ladyship the whole long story of how she’d come to be in Australia. She felt that warm toward the woman, but there were others, pressing in behind her. “I don’t suppose it’s any farther than England, though.”

  Lady Cosgrove smiled at this and released Maggie’s hand. “We’ll speak again, my dear, after you’ve had your bath and something to eat.”

  Maggie nodded, already wondering how she was going to explain to this kindly woman about her appointment in George Street with one Reeve McKenna, and hurried after Tansy.

  Over the great double doors, the words GIRLS’ FRIENDLY SOCIETY had been carefully scripted, and since Tansy stepped over the threshold without bothering to knock, Maggie followed after her.

  Austere-looking maids awaited in the sprawling entryway, their arms stacked with towels and bars of cheap yellow soap.

  Still following Tansy’s lead, Maggie took two towels and a bar of soap and then mounted the sweeping stairway to the second floor. There, in the first chamber on the right, which looked big enough to serve as a ballroom, hip baths awaited, each tub curtained on three sides for a semblance of privacy.

  “Be sure you wash your ’air, now,” one of the maids announced to everyone in general, her chapped red hands clasped in front of her in an authoritive fashion. “And if you got bugs, you’re to say so. Her ladyship don’t want you givin’ lice to the fine families of Sydney.”

  Bugs. Maggie was roundly insulted, but she held her tongue and stepped into one of the cloth cubicles in the second row. There, she set down her carpetbag, towel, and soap, and began to undress. The prospect of a bath was so appealing that she could think of nothing else, not even her appointment in George Street or the fact that Philip Briggs had surely played her false.

  By the time she’d thoroughly scrubbed herself, climbed out of the tub, and toweled her hair, Maggie’s stomach was rumbling with hunger. Last night’s supper, taken aboard the ship, seemed as far in the past as Noah’s flood.

  To her annoyance as well as her relief, Maggie soon found that her sturdy woolen dress had been taken away, as had her underthings, and replaced by a servant’s gown of black bombazine. Drawers, petticoats, and a camisole of unbleached muslin replaced her own unmentionables, and there were prim black stockings as well.

  Resigned, Maggie began to dress herself in the clothing provided by the Girls’ Friendly Society. Perhaps it wasn’t the appropriate garb for an interview at Mr. McKenna’s theater, but it was clean and neatly pressed and it felt good against Maggie’s freshly bathed skin. Mr. McKenna would simply have to make allowances.

  Once she was fully dressed, Maggie took her brush from her carpetbag—at least that and her spare dress and nightgown remained—and did what she could to tame her too-thick, too-curly hair. It was the bane of her existence, that wild and heavy mane; how she’d love to crop it off, short as a boy’s, and leave off the fuss of braiding and brushing and pinning forever.

  Breakfast was served in the kitchen, a building quite separate from the main house, at long trestle tables with benches for seats. Maggie, like the others, tucked into the steaming hotcakes, salted pork, and fried eggs with an industry born of great hunger. There was plenty of tea, too, and milk for those who wanted it.

  “Now comes the speech,” said Tansy with a sigh of resignation, when one of the maids took up a position in front of the fireplace and held high an ornate sheet of paper decorated with flowers and vines and stars and moons.

  Hunger appeased, Maggie pushed away her plate and sipped her tea as she listened. The maid announced importantly that a year’s faithful and industrious service in a suitable household would bring a girl just such a certificate, inscribed with Lady Cosgrove’s own signature. With the certificate, respectable work could be had anywhere in Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, or Tasmania. Without the certificate, one could expect only disgrace of the worst sort.

  Neither Maggie nor any other woman in the room had any doubt whatsoever as to what constituted “disgrace of the worst sort,” and the prospect was a sobering one. Suppose Mr. McKenna turned out to be as insincere as Philip Briggs had been, Maggie reflected. She’d be out in the cold, without a certificate to prove herself fit for honest employment. Then what would she do?

  Tansy preened beside Maggie. She, of course, had three such certificates already—signed by Lady Cosgrove’s various counterparts in Victoria, Queenland, and New South Wales. An idea blossomed in Maggie’s mind, but she shoved it aside to listen attentively to The Speech.

  Only women of exemplary moral character could expect to earn a certificate, the maid was careful to say. So much for hard and fast rules, Maggie thought, remembering the scandalous stories Tansy had told her about “her Rory at Government House.” A wry grin twisted her mouth as she gave Tansy a sidelong glance.

  Tansy saw the look and promptly put out her tongue.

  The maid’s discourse went on endlessly, covering rules of dress, deportment, language, and personal industry. Just when Maggie was beginning to feel sleepy, Lady Cosgrove swept imperiously into the room and took over.

  She announced that she would personally interview each girl in turn, beginning with Miss Maggie Chamberlin.

  Maggie was at once relieved and alarmed. An expedient conclusion to the required interview might allow her to make her way to Mr. McKenna’s offices before he forgot that she existed, but there was a certain distress in being singled out as the first too. Perhaps Lady Cosgrove saw through her pretense. No doubt, the worldly-wise woman had already guessed that Maggie Chamberlin was a fraud, having no intention of serving as a domestic if she could possibly avoid it.

  Maggie rose from her seat at the trestle table with an air of confidence that was almost wholly feigned and followed Lady Cosgrove from the crowded, cozy kitchen, across the rear garden, and into the once-grand house.

  Her ladyship kept an office in a cubicle adjoining the drawing room, a place cluttered with books and papers and old-fashioned quill pens. The only neatness in evidence came from the lady herself; she was immaculately groomed in every detail.

  Lady Cosgrove invited Maggie to take a chair facing the messy French Provincial desk, and she had to shoo an enormous tabby cat off the seat in order to comply.

  “Have you ever worked as a domestic servant, my dear girl?” Lady Cosgrove asked forthrightly. So forthrightly, in fact, that Maggie was caught completely off guard.

  “Well, no,” she confessed lamely, without thinking first.

  The next question was as gently candid as the first one had been. “How, then, did you support yourself?”

  Maggie swallowed hard. “I was an actress, ma’am. In London.”

  “And how did an American lass find herself in London?”

  Quietly, honestly, Maggie explained how she had come to Europe with her parents because they’d been performing with a circus there, and how they’d died so tragically in a train crash.

  “Dear me,” Lady Cosgrove said with sympathy, “it must ha
ve been a frightening situation to find oneself alone in a strange country, without friends.”

  Not unlike the straits I’m in now, Maggie thought to herself, but she only nodded, conscious of a slight flush in her cheeks.

  “You strike me as a most intelligent and well-mannered young woman,” observed the elderly lady. “Tell me, can you read and write and figure?”

  “Yes,” Maggie responded somewhat briskly, surprised by the question.

  Lady Cosgrove smiled as the giant tabby cat leapt unceremoniously into her lap and she idly petted the creature. “Don’t be so shocked, Miss Chamberlin. Most of those girls out there in our kitchen cannot so much as write their own names. They, of course, will have to resign themselves to domestic service of the most menial nature, but there might be another sort of position entirely for you.

  “There is an American gentleman residing in Sydney just now—a widower with two young sons. He’s applied to me several times for a governess to look after his children while he attends to his rather extensive interests. I should think he’d be pleased to engage a woman from his own country.” Lady Cosgrove left off petting the cat to shuffle through a stack of cards, finally settling upon one with a muttered exclamation. “Yes, here it is. Mr. Duncan Kirk. He keeps offices at Number Twenty George Street; I could telephone him and request an interview if you’d like.”

  Though Maggie’s impulse had been to blurt out her intentions to accept Mr. McKenna’s offer of an engagement at one of his theaters, she thought better of it. It was almost providential that Mr. Kirk’s offices should be within walking distance of Mr. McKenna’s; here was a way she could keep her appointment with that disturbing gentleman without throwing away all chance of obtaining a certificate. No one knew better than she did that fate had a way of slamming doors in a person’s face.

  “I would like very much to meet with Mr. Kirk, thank you,” Maggie said quietly. And if her words weren’t entirely true, her gratitude was genuine. Lady Cosgrove obviously took the most thorough care to see that her charges were well placed, and Maggie had seen enough of the world to know how easily a woman in such a position could abuse her authority.

  Pleased, Lady Cosgrove unearthed a telephone from the papers that littered her desk and shouted into the receiver, “Give me Mr. Duncan Kirk, if you please.”

  Maggie suppressed a smile. The telephone was still a new contrivance to people of Lady Cosgrove’s generation and they invariably felt the need to compensate for wire-strung distances by speaking loudly. Nonetheless, the interview was arranged and Maggie was dismissed to put up her hair, which had fallen free about her shoulders since her bath.

  Back in the upstairs dressing room, Maggie found her bag and got out her brush and pins, making haste to arrange her hair in a fashion that would impress Mr. McKenna and, if need be, Mr. Kirk as well.

  There was, a maid came to impart, a carriage waiting to take her to George Street, and would she please hurry. Maggie was already making every effort to hurry, and, minutes later, she bounded out the front gates and through the door the driver was holding open for her.

  During the ride to George Street, which lay in the heart of Sydney’s business district, Maggie tried to compose her thoughts. As much as Reeve McKenna unnerved her—he was indeed, as Tansy had said, a man from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head—Maggie longed to play the part of Kate in his production of The Taming of the Shrew. She wanted it so much, in fact, that the pit of her stomach was jumping and her knees had all the substance of strawberry jelly.

  But suppose he was a scoundrel, as men of his obviously lusty nature were wont to be.

  Maggie sat up very straight in the cushioned leather carriage seat, taking herself firmly in hand. If Mr. McKenna turned out to be a rascal, the disappointment would be keen, of course, but Maggie had endured worse things, hadn’t she? If he had merely been toying with her that day in his cabin, when he’d promised her not only a part she’d coveted all her life but freedom from her work agreement as well, she would, please God, discern the fact immediately and hasten herself to Mr. Duncan Kirk’s offices, where she could be fairly certain of obtaining employment.

  She settled back in the seat, her hands folded in her lap, her reticule at her feet. It wouldn’t be so bad, working as a governess; if there was one thing Maggie Chamberlin loved more than the stage, it was the company of children.

  Maggie sighed and smoothed her skirts. Why had she troubled herself? One way or the other, everything would be fine.

  Loretta could not concentrate on her lines, even though the role of Lady Macbeth was her favorite, even though she knew the role forward, backward, and inside out. She had to do something about that odd little baggage that had caught Reeve’s attention on board ship, and she had to do it fast.

  When Philip Briggs came down the theater’s main aisle, she marveled at the possibilities she’d overlooked. “Philip!” she trilled, ignoring his surprise at the familiarity of her greeting. In reality, her opinion of the boy was hardly higher than Reeve’s, though she tolerated him because he was pretty and because he possessed an endearing talent for flattery.

  Small of stature, with lustrous, curly brown-gold hair and ingenuous amber eyes, Philip had a cherubic look about him that the young ladies found irresistible. Loretta smiled to herself. If only it were young ladies that Philip found so attractive.

  Today he looked agitated and even despondent, and, as Loretta descended the stage steps to greet him, she caught the scent of good English rum. “What is it, Miss Craig?” he asked, his tone bordering on impatience.

  Loretta hid the offense she’d taken at his manner. “Reeve and I were expecting you to present us with a bride today,” she said warmly, taking a certain satisfaction in the way the color drained from Philip’s angelic face. “Reeve struck lucky, you know, and encountered the lass aboard the Victoria. Her name is—” Loretta pretended to search her memory, though in reality Reeve had refused to share that bit of information.

  “Maggie,” Philip sighed disconsolately. “Maggie Chamberlin. So she did arrive, then?”

  “Yes, she did, Philip,” Loretta said in stern tones, “and pity that it was, there was no one to greet her. Reeve was quite worried, I don’t mind telling you.” She paused, drew a deep breath that lifted her fine breasts and flashed in her eyes. “Too worried, my dear Philip, as far as you and I are concerned.”

  The pale amber eyes, surrounded by lashes thick enough to be envied even by Loretta, widened. “I didn’t think she’d actually travel all this way—it was all a game, a flirtation. I thought she knew that!”

  “She believed you, evidently, and she’s here. In Sydney. I have reason to believe that she’ll be meeting with Reeve at his offices this morning—if she hasn’t done so already. What do you intend to do about this situation, Philip?”

  Philip retreated a step, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down along his neck. “Do? What on earth can I do, Miss Craig?”

  “You can keep your word, insofar as marrying the little twit is concerned. The part about her having a role in a play you can tuck neatly into your—”

  “She told Mr. McKenna about that?” Philip choked out, aghast. “The role in The Taming of the Shrew, I mean?”

  Loretta bridled, smoothing her dark hair with one hand, her skirts with the other. “I merely guessed that,” she said haughtily. “So you promised her a part in my play, did you? My play? You have some considerable gall, Philip Briggs!”

  “It was only—I never dreamed—”

  “You will marry Miss Chamberlin, Mr. Briggs, or I’ll have your head!”

  Philip reached out and grasped a seatback for support. “You know I can’t marry her. Mother would be impossible, and besides, I couldn’t—I couldn’t be a proper husband—”

  “That, Mr. Briggs, is your problem. And Miss Chamberlin’s. It happens that Reeve is quite taken with this girl and I’ll be damned if I’ll have her taking over my man as well as my favorite roles! Is that clear, Mr. Brigg
s? You either marry Maggie Chamberlin or you’re out of work, and that, believe me, will just be the start of your woes!”

  Philip was walking backward up the aisle, loosening and then tightening his string tie as he moved, and though his throat was working, no sound was coming from his mouth.

  “You’ll find her at Reeve’s office, I would imagine,” Loretta said in a cool voice, turning back to the stage and the company of players who stood watching and, at the same time, pretending to be unaware of the scalding ultimatum that had just been given the unfortunate Mr. Briggs. “Make haste,” she tossed back over one shoulder, “and my heartiest congratulations on your marriage.”

  Reeve was just beginning to despair of Maggie Chamberlin when he heard her presenting herself to his secretary, Mr. Coates, in the outer office. Grinning to himself, he made a dash for his chair, behind his august desk, and pretended to be enthralled by the dull list of stock reports lying before him. He even went so far as to frown pensively over numbers he could have recited from memory.

  “Mr. McKenna?”

  Reeve looked up with feigned distraction and frowned again, as though he didn’t quite recall the face or figure that had been burned into his mind like a cattleman’s brand. Bombazine. Damnation and spit, they’d dressed her in black bombazine, like a common servant!

  “Yes?”

  She bit her lower lip and carefully set her disreputable reticule in a chair, approaching the desk as a French aristocrat might have approached the guillotine. “I do hope you remember me—my name is Maggie Chamberlin.”

  Amused as he was, Reeve was not without sympathy for the lass; it was time to stop teasing her. He rose to his feet in a gentlemanly fashion and gave a slight nod. “Oh, yes—the actress. Won’t you sit down?”

  Maggie removed her reticule from the chair and dragged the seat forward, practically falling into it. Of course, she rallied instantly; her insolent little chin rose a degree and her cheeks glowed a tropical pink. “I’m here about the role you promised me,” she said. “Were you sincere, Mr. McKenna?”