“Good memory, Miss Stewart. Correct, I inherited later, after Jacob’s death.”
“So why would Jacob send a servant boy to the most exclusive preparatory school in Britain? That’s quite an expense. And not even a servant boy, but the brother of a servant girl …” Genevieve paused, coloring a bit. Daniel watched her expression change as the obvious explanation dawned on her. “Oh,” she said uncomfortably. “Oh. Daniel, were they … together?” she asked delicately.
Daniel sighed. “As much as a man in his seventies can be with a teenage girl,” he said wryly. “Jacob despised me. But he adored my sister from the second he laid eyes on her. At seventy-five, he was unwell, and somewhat frail, and wasn’t in any shape to force himself on her, as he might have done twenty-five years prior.”
Daniel recalled the day he began to suspect the pair’s arrangement vividly: he had been halfheartedly shining a pair of Jacob’s shoes in the townhouse’s big, warm kitchen, under the watchful eye of Mr. Fallow, the butler, and thinking about how he would sneak out later to meet his friends, when a footman sent him into Jacob’s study. It was an imposing, masculine room, with a giant mahogany desk and bookshelves that ran the length of the fifteen-foot walls, crammed with thick leather-bound tomes. Daniel was normally strictly forbidden from entering, as were the bulk of the staff. Jacob was sitting behind his desk, fingers steepled and looking like he’d just swallowed a lemon. To Daniel’s surprise, his sister was standing nearby, primly dressed in her gray-and-white uniform, not a hair out of place.
“You are a very lucky boy,” Jacob announced sourly. “I have decided I see potential in you,” he continued, mouth twisting as he sneered down at Daniel, “and, after some tutoring to get you up to scratch, will be sending you to one of the most exclusive boys’ schools in the world. I expect you to comport yourself with dignity.”
Daniel stared wildly at his sister, who nodded to him. “It’s a great opportunity, Danny,” she said softly. “Mr. Van Joost is being very generous and kind.” She turned to the old man. “He’s really very grateful, sir, and I know will do you proud.”
Jacob peered at Daniel doubtfully. “I will remain an anonymous benefactor for the time being, of course, until we see if he is as capable as you claim. Perhaps you will surprise me, boy.” He turned dismissively back to the papers on his desk. “That is all,” he muttered, not looking up.
Maggie ushered Daniel out of the room. He didn’t see the inside of that study for another six years, returning only when Jacob had died to hear the shocking contents of his will read aloud. By then, of course, Maggie was gone.
Daniel had wanted to protest vehemently at being forced to go to some prissy school, but Maggie quelled that instinct with a look. “It really is a wonderful opportunity.” Her jaw clenched as she added, “I’ll not lose you too. You’ll go to school, and you’ll do well. You know you’re smart enough.” He had made good marks at the Lower East Side school he had briefly attended until Mam became ill, when he’d stopped to help Maggie care for her and the little ones, and to earn a little money working with the Toughs.
The next year was torturous. A tutor arrived, and it was immediately, painfully clear that Daniel was woefully behind in his studies. It was determined that he should work with the tutor ten hours a day, six days a week, learning Latin, math, literature, history, and French in preparation to attend Eton.
It also became clear that Maggie had entered into an arrangement of sorts with Jacob. The house was so large that Maggie and Daniel each had their own bedroom in the servants’ area, a vast, unthinkable amount of space when their seven-person family had once lived in two and a half rooms. The empty bed unnerved Daniel, who had always slept with at least one other sibling. He and Maggie had kept up the practice once the little ones were gone, even though they had more room then, simply to stave off their lonely awareness of their once large, happy family reduced to two. Once they arrived uptown, Daniel would creep into Maggie’s room late at night, after he’d returned from his nocturnal wanderings with the Toughs, to sleep on the floor of her room. One night soon after he’d started working with the tutor, she wasn’t there. Daniel tried to wait up for her but instead awoke when she crept back into the room just before dawn and began to dress for the day’s work.
“Where were you?” he demanded, though in his heart he knew the answer. Maggie refused to look at him as she buttoned up her uniform, her jaw set once again.
“Never you mind. You just attend to your studies.” She struggled with the last button, high at her neck, then glanced briefly at Daniel, still curled under a blanket on the floor near her bed. Her jaw softened. “I’ll not lose you too,” she repeated softly, and slipped from the room.
Life on the Lower East Side was lived largely out of doors, as nobody had much room. Lovers’ spats, quarrels, flirtations, and courtships were conducted mostly in public, for the world to see. Daniel knew what went on between grown men and women. The thought of the creepy, decrepit older man putting his hands on his young, once-vibrant but still-beautiful sister made his skin crawl. But Maggie would not be dissuaded. The two or three times he tried to protest, tried to broach the subject, she turned mulish and stubborn. “I’ll not lose you too,” was all she would say. And what could a twelve-year-old boy, especially one who had lost almost his entire family,
