the frame to stop her. “Is she ill? Does she have the cholera?”
“I dunno. She’s been told to stay away like the rest of the students. Why do you care? What do you want?” she repeated, squinting suspiciously at Rachel.
“I need to speak with Mrs. Chapman. I interviewed for a position as a teacher and we had another appointment scheduled. I must talk to her today about the situation.”
“Ain’t no one here going to talk to you about nothing today, miss. The headmistress is gone with the others. Leaving just me and Megs to clean this filthy place.” She kicked at Rachel’s foot. “Now let me shut the door. No one better spy me talkin’ to you. People been comin’ and threatenin’ to burn us out, saying we’re harborin’ the cholera and infecting the neighborhood. If they figure out I’m here, they’ll drag me away to hospital and I know I’ll get sick and die there. So just go away.”
“Can you at least provide me with Mrs. Chapman’s address so I may contact her?”
“She lives with her brother on Clifford Street, but you won’t find her there. She’s skipped town. Lucky her.”
“Here. Wait.” Rachel poked through her reticule and found the piece of paper Claire had included in her last note. It contained the address of a lodging house Claire had recommended to Rachel, and where she would very soon be living. “Tell Mrs. Chapman, when she returns, that she may contact me at this address. I shall be staying at the lodging house beginning day after tomorrow Tell her I am still very interested in the position and will not fail her. I must have this work. I need the money.”
The other woman looked unimpressed. “You and a thousand others,” she said, though she took the paper and stuffed it into an apron pocket. “Now, go away!”
Rachel removed her foot and the woman slammed the door in her face.
The sound of hopeless finality.
“Oh, it’s terrible,” sniffled Mrs. Mainprice into her handkerchief. “Such a pitiful gathering. Poor Molly.”
“It is far better than she might have expected, given her situation,” said Rachel.
“Rightly so, miss. A place in a nice graveyard with a tiny headstone and all. But so far away from Hampshire and her family . . .”
Rachel scanned the assembly, the sun—shining so brightly in defiance of the sorrow—dappling their faces, shifting blocks of light across their shoulders and bowed heads, white against dark. Only a small crowd gathered around Molly’s gravesite, the number a testament to the narrowness of her world. Joe, subdued and grim, shifted on the balls of his feet, his cap crushed in his fingers. Mrs. Mainprice gripped her Bible close to her chest and held out a clean handkerchief for Rachel to use. Molly’s friend, a tattered cipher in a borrowed once-black frock, huddled near the wrought-iron fence, staying clear of the household staff. The sexton and his boy, standing not too far from her, leaned on their shovels while they waited for the brief ritual to end. Peg had remained in Finchingfield, and Mrs. Woodbridge had stayed at the house with Amelia. Though Rachel suspected the woman would not attend a servant’s funeral even if she had no good reason to be absent.
Rachel’s eyes settled on Dr. Edmunds. He stood apart from the rest, the planes of his face set into immovable angles, attention fixed on a spot above the minister’s head, somewhere in a direction beyond the churchyard, out into the streets of London. His wife might be buried in this yard somewhere. Perhaps that was why he stopped his gaze from slipping too low.
“Miss Dunne.” Mrs. Mainprice nudged, her crying under control. “Do you need another handkerchief? I’ve a spare.”
“No. This one is still adequate,” Rachel answered, pressing it, crumpled and damp, to her eyes. Where were the tears coming from? She’d thought she had used them all up last night, soaking her pillowcase with a torrent of salty self-pity.
Dr. Edmunds’s eyes shifted at the sound of Rachel’s voice, but they didn’t meet hers. It was just as well he didn’t look at her, when he was the greatest part of why she had wasted all those tears.
The minister was delivering the final prayer: “O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered, accept our prayers on behalf of the soul of thy servant departed, and grant her an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” Rachel murmured along with everyone.