A Mother's Legacy : A Victorian Romance: Westminster Orphans, #1

By Ellie Jacobs

An influenza epidemic in 1840s London.
Six orphaned children.
And a girl who is determined to live out her mother's dream…

At the age of 12, a grieving Rosey Shaw is devastated to find that she cannot carry out a promise made to her dying mother: to take care of her brothers and sisters.

Her father's business partner tells her that her father left huge debts, and says he cannot afford to look after them. Rosey and her little family are sent to live with her father's brother in the slums of Westminster, and before she has been there even a day things go from bad to worse.  

Their uncle is cruel, greedy and impatient; their cousins are vindictive, and their aunt a cranky slattern. Their lives are a complete misery as they struggle to survive on the unforgiving streets.

Rosey and her brother George, starving and browbeaten, vow that no matter how long it takes, they will fight their way out from under their uncle's control and find their missing brother and sisters. But fate is unkind, and Rosey has to struggle with doubts and setbacks at every turn…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Gem Publishing
• Release date: Apr 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780645215168

Book preview

Prologue

Silk drifted through 11-year-old Rosey Shaw’s hands in a decadent river, pooling at her feet in a drift of pale blue. It was finer by far than any cloth she’d worn in her few years on this earth, yet she was as familiar with its texture and drape as she was with her own, much coarser, skirts. 

She’d grown up watching her mother, Charlotte Shaw, manipulate great swaths of fabric into the voluminous skirts and gathered waists worn by the highest tiers of society. The moneyed classes were currently walking the streets of 1842 London with Lottie Shaw’s designs sweeping the cobbles. For two years now, Rosey had been let into the inner sanctum at Madame Aurelia’s dressmaking shop on Barbican Street to watch her mother bending over the needle with painstaking care. Madame Aurelia let the girl come, not just to keep her most profitable dressmaker, but because Rosey showed a similar skill for design and precision. She often hinted to the girl that Lottie’s tutelage could land Rosey in her own respected seamstress position when she came of age. 

Today, Lottie was showing her daughter the finer points of embroidery around the neck of a pale blue ball gown being fitted for one of the Coutts family in Piccadilly. Lottie stitched delicate blue flowers along the edge of brilliant silk, her needle moving in and out of the fabric with lightning speed. 

Mama, these flowers are so small! Rosey bent forward to squint at the stitches in the half-light of a nearby window. Surely they wouldn’t be noticed in a great ballroom.

Lottie looked up with a bright smile, and the sight sent a thrill of delight through her little daughter. Lottie was a beautiful woman, and when she smiled, her beauty doubled. She’d passed along her luxurious dark hair and warm grey eyes to her eldest daughter, along with her talent for fashion and precise workmanship, and Rosey felt again a yearning to grow up just like her mother, with all her life and creativity. 

The gown is only ever as good as the details. Mistress Coutts will see the finery herself as she’s dressed for the occasion, and there’s no money can buy the confidence such extravagance gives a lady.

Have you ever been to a ball, Mama?

Lottie looked up with a mischievous smile.

You know I have not, Rosey Shaw. Why should you ask such a thing?

Lottie had, on occasion, accompanied Madame Aurelia into the most fashionable circles of London to conduct fittings and see to final details. After such visits, Rosey always demanded an account, and Lottie recounted the whole of the visit—from the textured stone staircase to the white curve of a lady’s arm—and on tedious days like today, Rosey loved to have the tales drawn up again; worn familiar by the telling. 

You did go to a ball, though, didn’t you, Mama? Rosey prompted. At the Grand Villa?

Oh, that ball? Lottie tied off her thread with a deft twist of her wrist and reached for another spool to begin the pale green leaves. Her eyes were downcast, but Rosey caught the glimmer of humour in her tone. If you’ve time to spare, I suppose I can tell that tale.

Once again, she told of the night years ago when Lady Geraldine’s ornately accented under-sleeve had ripped violently midway through the first dance movement of the evening. The lady, chagrined, managed to slip away from prying eyes before too much social damage was done, and she’d sent word for Madame Aurelia and that Charlotte Shaw woman to come and mend the damage. The two working women slipped into the great manse through the servant’s entrance, walking through a kitchen thick with the smell of sweetmeats and halls swarming with uniformed servants. Through a swinging door, Lottie had glimpsed finery unlike she’d ever seen.

The women turned like flowers in the centre of the room, she said now to Rosey, and the men, so tall and stately, were the trellis.

Lottie described a chandelier as big as their living room, dripping with diamonds, and great stone pillars rising smooth and marbled to the lofty ceiling. She’d had only a moment to see it all, and then Madame Aurelia was pulling her along through corridor after corridor and up so many flights of stairs she felt like a mouse trapped in an endless water pipe. Finally, the servant leading them opened a pair of doors into a satiny room hung with dark red curtains. A fire burned in the corner, and before it on a settee sat the saddest flower of all, a wilted lady with her sleeve all awry.

At this point in the story, Lottie always lingered on the details, and Rosey loved her for it.

She was a small woman, with chocolate hair pinned up in two coils on each side of her head, she explained. Her gown hung off her shoulders just as I’d designed it, and it was a lovely thing to behold. You couldn’t even notice the tear if you didn’t know it was there, but she insisted we mend it at once. As we worked, she talked to one of the maids about the whole affair. It seems Lady had had one too many petit fours before the evening’s festivities, and her corset popped free of its buttons. You know how sharp the whalebone can be.

Rosey nodded. She’d often helped her mother work around the corsets and crinoline undergarments that took almost more time and attention than the gown itself. 

Did you say anything to her, mama?

No, but Madame Aurelia did. She reassured her that she was beautiful and spoke about how easy it was to mend. Lottie dropped her sewing into her lap for a moment and stretched her fingers before saying softly, I will do that one day.

You will be as Madame Aurelia?

I will be better. The light was back in her eyes. Your father and I have been saving for years. One day I will have my own shop, and when they call for help, it will be me, and not Madame Aurelia, coaxing pale ladies and suggesting designs.

And I?

You are my talented little Rosey. Lottie playfully tweaked her daughter’s nose. You have skill with a needle and a bright mind. One day, the streets will be full of people looking for Rosey Shaw’s designs.

Rosey dropped her head.

It seems a long way off, Mama.

Lottie and Henry had worked hard for their living, she as a dressmaker and he as a merchant, but they were still living as simply as possible in Southwark while their savings slowly grew. Henry always said that what they lacked in money, they made up for in love, for their seven surviving children were happy and well-adjusted. They had food on the table every night and extra treats on special occasions. The children knew they were loved, and Lottie taught each to read and write as soon as they were old enough to hold a pencil and form letters. Rosey was the oldest, and though she saw the joy in her home, she knew better than the others how much her parents sacrificed to give them the life they had. 

Now, Lottie looked at her grave little daughter with tenderness. 

This is why I insist you read and write, Rosey. This is why you must wash behind your ears, dress neatly, and curtsy when you meet someone above your rank. You can make of yourself what you will, my daughter, no matter how humble your life is at the start.

Rosey got up and gave her mother a hug, her veins humming with anticipation. Yes, she thought, she would have a good life, and she would be the most famous dressmaker in London and be rich enough to have beautiful gowns of her own. 

She couldn’t wait.

Orphaned

Rosey dashed her fist against the ice forming atop the water basin on the bedside table and moistened the scrap of