Page 83 of Dark Tides
“Time served!” he congratulated her. “Senior milliner.”
“A few pennies more a week,” she pointed out. “Maybe a customer of my own if she’s lowly and poor. A higher seat up the table at dinner and served after the older girls instead of at the very last. Nothing else. It’s not much.”
“Steady work,” Johnnie advised. “A wage paid on time once a quarter, and your mistress makes no deductions, now that you don’t have to live in. What would you rather do? Run the wharf?”
The girl put her hand on his arm. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, but it’s a secret,” she said.
“What?” He glanced up the lane to where their mother, Livia, Carlotta, and Tabs were entering the church. “What? We can’t be late for church.”
She dropped her hand. “All right then. But don’t complain later that I didn’t tell you.”
“You’re planning something stupid,” he predicted as she walked on. “You’re never leaving the millinery shop? You’re never leaving withoutanother post to go to and some mad idea, like sewing herb tea bags with Grandma? Or the statues… oh God, Sarah… not the statues…”
She turned back to him, and he crowed with laughter. “I always know what you’re thinking. You’re going to go in with Aunt Livia and trade in statues!”
She snatched at his hands to silence him, though there was no one near them down the narrow street that led to the church. “Don’t you say a word! Don’t you dare say one word, Johnnie!”
“Tell me what you’re going to do.”
“This is a secret,” she told him.
He made the little hangman gesture of their childhood oath which said that either would be hanged on the gibbet at Savoury Dock before betraying the other. She leaned so close that the feather on her bonnet tickled his face. He listened intently till she finished.
“You can’t go,” he said flatly.
“Grandma herself is sending me.”
“It’s not safe.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not safe for a girl,” he amended.
“I’ll be with Captain Shore,” she pointed out. “And then I’ll go straight to Livia’s steward. She says he loved Uncle Rob like a grandson. He speaks English and I know a little Italian. He was her family steward. She says he has ten children. He’ll probably take me in to stay with them. Why not?”
He made a face, took off his hat, and scratched his head. “I should go with you,” he said.
“Really, Johnnie, you know you can’t. You’ve got to finish your time and your master would rip up your indentures if you upped and left.”
“I can’t let you go on your own.”
“Yes, you can. You know I’m no fool. I can look after myself. And if Grandma’s happy, you can’t object.”
He nodded. “You can run faster than any girl I know. And fight like an alley cat. But Venice! All that way?”
She took his arm and they walked together towards the church. Over their heads, the first-story windows leaning towards each other made the street like a tunnel. Their footsteps echoed and Sarahlowered her voice. “If something were ever to go wrong for me, d’you think you’d know?” she asked. “Would you know without being told?”
“Oh yes,” he said at once. “But that’s being a twin, isn’t it?”
“Grandma says she’d know if her son was dead. I believe her. I think she would.”
That made him pause. “Grandma does not believe Livia that he drowned?”
She nodded.
“That’s a terrible accusation,” he said slowly. “That Aunt Livia is a fraud? Not Rob’s widow? Perhaps not even our aunt?”
“I know,” the girl said. “It’s that important. That’s why I’m going.”
