She’d looked back. Delly knew that for sure. Delly had looked at her and Cynallum had looked right back. Babbled and looked embarrassed, even, which probably meant she liked what she saw.
A prospect.
Delly was used to having a prospect in her life. More than one, usually: she liked having options. None of them had been anything like the Cynallum girl, though. A girl like that was a prospect for more than just fucking. More of a long game. A girl like that—that accent, those expensive-looking clothes—could be a prospect for easy living for a lass’s entire earthly amble, and a prospect like that was due more thoughtful consideration than a quick card game near Bessa’s meat-pie stand.
And maybe Delly was getting a little fucking ahead of herself again, which she supposed might sometimes be the result that came from a day crowded with unusual incidents followed by a particularly invigorating glass or two of gin.
Delly had a few nervous gallops to get out, to put a delicate pin-end upon it, and she knew just the lad to go to when she was in want of a bit of nervous galloping: a usually unemployed actor named Elo, whom she’d been friends with since they were both crusty-kneed West Leiscourt kids together. So, with that thought in mind, she left some money on the bar and went to check for the lanky bastard at the places where he might be doing his part to keep a barstool from floating off into the firmament. She found him at the very first joint, his red curly head bent over his beer like he thought he might spy a better life at the bottom of the glass. He seemed glad enough to have a reason to abandon the fruitless search and head off for a heartless fumble instead.
After their gallop, she stayed in his room so they could have a bit of a chat and another glass of gin together. They got along a treat as old pals, though they both knew that he was always wishing that it was someone else he was galloping with, someone who might be interested in having a few dozen of his curly-headed children. Maybe someone who wasn’t Wester trash like him, too: both of them had ambitions above their stations and were all the more miserable for it. She told him about her new real paying job, and her new plum-pudding prospect. He gave a slow nod.
“I’d go after it, Delly, if I was you. A slim prospect’s a thicker prospect than I’ve gotten in years.”
Delly tipped her glass at him. “To luck a-changing and opportunity arising, then,” she said, and realized a moment later that it was the exact toast her mother had always given when the drink gave her a moment to forget her circumstances.
3
Wherein Dellaria Cozies Up to a Prospect and Is Enormously Alarmed and Inconvenienced by the Work She Chose to Engage In
Delly, as a loose rule of her tenure upon this, the World as Conceived by Mortal Man, did not leave the best of first impressions. She hadn’t as a child, when she was ill-kempt and badly behaved through no fault of her own, and she still didn’t as an adult, when she was ill-kempt and badly behaved through every fault of her own. The most dispiriting aspect of impressions, as she saw it, was that after the first one went bad she was better off avoiding any further impressions entirely, as any attempts on her part to fix the damage would generally end like the time when she’d drunkenly tried to cut her own hair with a pair of nail scissors. It was preferable, in Delly’s view, to only ever meet any given person the one time: that meant that you only ruined one day out of however many they’d in the end be blessed with, rather than a whole packed trunk of someone’s few precious remaining hours. On this occasion, however, she was stuck: only showing up for the interview would defeat the entire purpose of finding gainful employment. So on the day she was meant to start work she scrubbed herself from top to toe, put on a dress that she’d really and truly put through the mangle two days previous, and arrived with her carpetbag at the same room where the first meeting had been held more than an hour before she was meant to be there.
She wasn’t alone, as it turned out. After a servant took her carpetbag from her to bear it off to places unknown, Delly turned her attention to the two other figures from that first meeting who were there as well: the old lady and the victim of frills. Delly rummaged through her brain for their names and came up wanting. Her face froze into the sort of frantic position it usually got into when she saw the constabulary approaching. The old lady looked at her and smiled. “Oh, Miss Wells, how very nice to see you again! I was just commenting to my daughter Ermintrude on what a lovely specimen of Welkly’s Fletchling that is perched just outside of the window. The Welkly is my householder Mr. Totham’s very favorite type of Fletchling. Isn’t it lovely when you can see the bright green on the male’s breast at this time of the early spring! I always fancy that it’s as if he loves the tender buds of the trees he perches on so much that his wife sewed him a waistcoat to match them. Are you very fond of birds, Miss Wells?”
“Ah,” Delly said. At the moment she was only exceeding fond of this old bird, who Delly was sure as anything had just provided Delly with her and her daughter’s names to save her from the awkwardness of having to ask them. She wasn’t used to anyone going out of their way to keep her from being embarrassed. If her mam had ever spared her daughter’s feelings in any way, it had probably been an accident. “Middling fond. I don’t know as much about them as I should, Mrs. Totham. I’m a woefully underinformed creature, ma’am.”
“Oh, no matter, no matter,” Mrs. Totham said. She twittered like Mrs. Medlow, but she was a much pleasanter sort of canary. “I could teach you a few of the things that I know—though of course I don’t know nearly as much as Mr. Totham. Gentlemen are so very clever with remembering all sorts of wonderful facts from books, aren’t they? They’re such lovely little creatures! Birds, I mean, not gentlemen. One never grows tired of birds.”
Delly wondered, briefly, if she ought to take this to mean that Mrs. Totham sometimes grew tired of gentlemen. Delly sure as shit did, especially the type that kept coming around her place to look for her after what she’d meant to be a one-off gallop, but she wasn’t an elderly householded lady who figured her householder for a regular genius of birdology. Then Ermintrude, who’d been steadily sinking more deeply into her frills as her mother spoke, finally made her voice heard. “Really, Mama, she’s just being polite. No one wants to hear about birds.”
Delly spurred herself in pursuit of a change of subject. “How did the two of you come to be in this line of work?” she asked. “You seeming like you come from a very respectable family, if you pardon the assumption, ma’am.”
“Oh, indeed, indeed,” Mrs. Totham said. “It’s been very difficult for poor dear Ermintrude and myself, I’m afraid. Mr. Totham fell ill several years ago, and we found ourselves in some difficulty. I had never worked before, he being my householder, and we had five younger girls at home to think of. Then my eldest daughters suggested that Ermintrude and I might be interested in joining them in their profession. I householded them when they were both adolescents, you see, and I’m afraid that they had both been stagecoach guards for several years by then. I had hoped to find them nice husbands or householders after I brought them in, but they’ve proven very stubborn about their independence. They are very good girls, though, and very dutiful daughters.”