Lady in Rags

Chapter Five: Broken China

In truth, Verity Baker had returned from her grandmother's house with nothing but a cup of hot tea and some biscuits in her stomach. Her grandmother, unwilling as ever to have a relationship with her grand-daughter by elopement, had made Verity wait for several hours before sending her maid down with the message that Lady Duvalle was indisposed.

And now Verity made her way home, still hungry, still poor, and now cold and unsure of where her next meal was coming from. Her father had proved more unreliable than ever, and debts were coming up from all corners. He'd sold off whatever he didn't need from the house already, and was even considering selling some of the things he did need, like the tired old mare. Verity was tempted, every night, to flee the village, and seek her fortune without her father's mismanagement hanging like a lead weight around her neck. Of fortune, she had modest expectations: she would not turn down any honest work, no matter how low or unpleasant, as long as it paid enough to keep her in bread and under a roof. She even conceded that the bread could be stale, and the roof leaky. And every night, she found herself prevented by the sure knowledge that if she left her father alone, he would face an immediate and catastrophic ruin.

When she arrived home, it was snowing properly, and a closed coach resting out the front of her cottage was becoming banked in white. Her heart sunk upon recognizing its shabby design and the shivering horse still harnessed to it. Mr Harlan was here. It was he who had run into her outside the gate several months ago, and of all her father's creditors, he was the most demanding and poisonous. To Verity, he paid an obsequious attention, until her coldness broke his mask, and he would raise his voice against her in curses. To her father, he never bothered with the obsequious manner, and was only ever violent.

Verity stabled her own mare, and threw a blanket over his horse, miserable in the snow. She crept through the back door into the kitchen, hung up her cloak noiselessly, and listened carefully to the conversation taking place on the other side of the dining room door.

"Please, Mr Harlan," her father begged. "Please don't."

"Listen to me, Baker," Harlan shouted greasily, "You can't delay any longer. I need some payment."

"I don't have anything." Her father was almost whimpering.

"You don't have anything? What's this, then?" A pause, and then the crash of china. "What's this?" Another pause, and then the same.

Verity could listen no longer. She opened the door to find Mr Harlan holding a china plate hostage, high above his head, shattered triangles of other dishes at his feet. She recognized the broken spout of their only teapot. Mr Baker was reaching up for the plate that Mr Harlan held, but Mr Baker had never been tall, and Harlan was a decade younger, and athletic besides. He held her father away from him with one contemptuous hand twisting the collar of his dirty shirt.

When Harlan saw her, he put the china casually down on the sideboard, and pushed her father down into a chair.

"Good evening, my dear Miss Verity."

She did not return his courtesy. Instead, she looked tellingly at the broken china on the floor. "If you continue to break our property, it is you who shall owe us, Sir."

Harlan raised one amused eyebrow. "If I broke everything your father owned, I would not have damages to half what he owes. Not a quarter."

A quarter, thought Verity, was a very generous estimate of their condition. She had some knowledge of the level of her father's debt to Harlan. For months, Harlan had let that debt lie unpaid. He had even been most generous in allowing her father to wage more money at further games, given him so many honest chances to make it all back, sympathised so sincerely with his so many honest losses. And then, just as Mr Baker himself recognized the trap he had fallen into, Harlan had closed it, and demanded at once everything he had owed.