interested in more than talk of opening celebrations.
“I might say the same about a woman like you,” he said. “You’re very beautiful and yet you haven’t married or found a man to take care of you.”
“I don’t need either. I can do just fine on my own.”
“I believe it.” He considered her for a moment and then finally asked what he’d wanted to since he’d first seen her. “What is your Christian name, Miss Sawyer? Do you mind telling me?” He could have asked Alfred, but he wanted her to tell him herself.
“Raeni,” she said. “That’s the name I was given.”
He cocked his head. “Rainy? Like the weather today?”
“No, R-A-E-N-I. Where I come from, it means ‘like a queen.’”
“Like a queen,” he mused. “That’s fitting. And where is it you come from?”
Her gaze met his directly now. “Where is it you come from, Mr. Gaines?”
He blew out a breath. “I suppose we all have our secrets, Raeni. And call me Thomas. At least when we’re working together up here.”
“Thomas? That’s nice. Why did your parents give you that name?” Obviously, she did not intend to press him for his secrets. No doubt she did not wish to share her own.
“I don’t know. I never knew my father and my mother died from a fever when I was still young. I remember her, but if she ever told me why she gave me my name, I don’t recall.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize your parents had passed.”
“Yours are still alive?” He said it casually, hoping to lure her into telling him more.
But she was not so easily misled. “I think it would be better if we discussed the opening celebration further. I had some ideas for the food.”
THAT NIGHT AT HIS TOWN house in Cheapside, Thomas finally closed his ledgers when the clock chimed midnight. He should have been exhausted. He’d been working long hours, but there was something invigorating about a new business venture. The endless possibilities and the unforeseen struggles engaged him like nothing else.
He reached for the stack of mail that had been sitting at his elbow, neglected, and thumbed through it. One envelope stopped him, and he opened it and smiled. It was an engraved invitation on vellum, as fine as any one of the houses in Grosvenor Square would send out. The event was no less exclusive—an invitation to the Dark Ball.
The Dark Ball was held every year by the more prosperous Negroes in London—merchants, bankers, business owners. When Thomas had come to London he had joined several Negro societies and had heard of the coveted invitations to the Dark Ball. The date and location changed yearly as did the invitation list. The stated goal was merriment, but the underlying goal was for the parents of young women to find suitable husbands for their daughters.
Of course, the races could and did intermarry, but these marriages were easier for the lower classes. A black woman or man of some means who wanted to marry someone of a similar station risked a lifetime of disapproval from narrow-minded white families. The Dark Ball brought wealthy Negroes together.
Thomas was pleased to be invited, but he had no illusions as to how the night would progress. He would be flooded with attention from mothers who wanted him as a husband for their daughter, and though he might dance with a few women who were interesting and whose conversation he enjoyed, there would also be many spoiled and pampered young ladies he would have to endure.
Unless...
Thomas smiled. Unless he arrived with a woman on his arm. Then he might ward off the worst of the husband-hunting mothers and have a chance to dance with someone whose company he enjoyed.
He knew just the lady.
Four
The next few days were a blur for Raeni. Now that she was fed regularly and the pounding in her head and the gnawing in her belly had dissipated, she was able to focus on organizing Mr. Gaines’s office. He had only dined with her once or twice, and they had limited their conversation to the plans for the opening celebration, but he still made sure she was fed at least two meals every day. She always brought food back to the church for George and Alice.
Raeni had received her wages for her first week and she might have left the church and found a room to rent, but she’d chosen to buy food and other necessities for herself and George and Alice. Alice had found some work ironing.