Sweet Rogue of Mine (The Survivors #9) - Shana Galen Page 0,17

of showing too much interest in dangerous men. But Mr. Pope wasn’t a crime lord or a stolen antiquities dealer. He was a former soldier trying to adjust to a new life without his sight. He was scared and uncertain, though he tried valiantly to hide it.

Pru leaned on her broom and sighed. Perhaps this time it was the man’s vulnerabilities that drew her more than the danger he posed. He wouldn’t really hurt her. Not intentionally, at any rate. She could be mistaken, but she thought he enjoyed their conversations as much as she. Mr. Pope could certainly use more of her visits. The poor man was all alone in that tragic, moldering house. But the vicar was unlikely to countenance her spending any time with Mr. Pope, and so she needed to find a more acceptable pastime.

She enjoyed visiting the tenant farmers in the area. The vicar visited on a monthly rotation. He had consented to take Pru with him when she’d first arrived, but lately he said her incessant chatter made it hard for him to think and insisted she stay at the vicarage.

Her parents had given the vicar a bit of money for Pru’s upkeep, and she had asked him for enough to buy material for a new dress. He had initially refused, saying it was vanity, but after a week, he had seen all of her dresses and handed over the money without her even having to ask again.

Pru looked down at the dress she currently wore. It was the color of smashed peas after they had stewed in the pot for a few days and had to be scraped off the sides. Pru would have never chosen it for herself, but her parents rarely ever bought their children or themselves anything new, and this had been in the donation box at the church. Pru would have left it there, but her mother had taken it home, made Pru try it on, and since it fit, she had been made to wear it.

Having swept the floor, Pru put the broom away and went to a chair in the corner where she sometimes liked to sit and read sermons after supper. Which meant, she tucked a novel between the pages of a book of sermons and pretended to read sermons.

But she also had a book of patterns Mrs. Dawson had lent her, and she took it up now to see if she might be able to choose one and begin making herself a new dress. The problem was that though she liked many of the patterns, she had never made a dress by herself. She had helped her mother, especially after her sister, Anne, had become sick with fever, but completing tasks another assigned was quite different than beginning the project oneself. Not to mention, she had bought only as much fabric as necessary. There was no room for mistakes.

She studied the book, lifted the material, examined her current dress, and then set it all down again.

“You look like you just received news the church’s autumn festival was canceled,” Mrs. Blimkin said from the doorway. Pru jumped, not knowing how long the housekeeper had been standing there.

“It’s not that.” Then she brightened. “Has the festival been canceled?”

“No.”

Pru deflated again. Mrs. Blimkin gestured to the pattern book. “Looking to start on your new dress, are you?”

“I’ve been wanting to start on it for a week.”

“I know.” Mrs. Blimkin entered, passing a cloth over tabletops and lamps. “But all you do is pick it up and put it down again.”

Pru had thought of asking Mrs. Blimkin to help, but she was aware the other woman was a servant and Pru was, while not exactly her employer, a pseudo-employer. She couldn’t pay Mrs. Blimkin, and surely dressmaking was not one of the tasks Mr. Higginbotham expected of her.

“Why don’t you ask Mrs. Northgate to help you?”

Pru made a face. She had met the Northgate girls and their mother. All three of them had turned their noses up at her. She heard them whispering at church each Sunday, and she just knew they were whispering about her.

“Not the wife,” Mrs. Blimkin said. “Mr. Northgate’s mother.”

Pru tried to think back to the Northgate pew at church. There were only the five of them—the husband and wife, the son, and the two girls. “I don’t think I know her.”

“Probably not.” Mrs. Blimkin was close enough to whisper now. “She’s a heathen.”

“A heathen?”

“That’s right. She never attends church, and when the vicar called