Marrying Winterborne (26 page)

A
FTER THE FOOTMAN AND
driver were sent back to Ravenel house with the message that the appointment would take longer than expected, Helen and Dr. Gibson went on foot to Pancras Road. As they walked briskly, Dr. Gibson cautioned Helen about how to conduct herself in the East End, especially near the docklands area. “Stay aware of the environment. Take note of people in doorways, between buildings, or beside parked carriages. If anyone approaches you with a question, ignore them, even if it's a woman or child. Always walk with purpose. Don't ever look indecisive or lost, especially if you are, and never smile for any reason. If two people are walking toward you, don't go between them.”

They reached a wide street, and stopped near a corner. “One can always find a hansom on the main thoroughfares,” Dr. Gibson continued. “Here's one now.” She thrust her hand into the air. “They're always running express, so take care not to be mown down as they approach the curbstone. Once he stops, we'll have to seat ourselves and be quick about it. Hansom horses tend to start and jerk, so mind you don't fall from the footboard while climbing in.”

Helen nodded tensely, her heart thumping as the two-wheeled vehicle came to a violent halt in front of
them. Dr. Gibson ascended first after the folding door opened, ducking beneath the trailing reins.

Grimly determined, Helen climbed up after her, gripping the oval splashguard over the wheel for leverage. The narrow footboard was slippery with mud. To make matters worse, the weight and bulk of her bustle threatened to drag her backward. Somehow she managed to keep her balance, and lunged awkwardly into the cab.

“Well done,” Dr. Gibson said. She stopped Helen from reaching for the door. “The driver will close it with a lever.” She called out their destination to the driver through a trapdoor in the roof, after using her cane to poke at a newspaper that had fallen across the opening. The door swung shut, the vehicle jerked forward, and they proceeded along the street with rapidly increasing velocity.

Whereas ordinary people rode in hansoms all the time, young women of Helen's rank never did. The ride itself was terrifying but exhilarating. She could hardly believe it was happening. The hansom cab hurtled along at a breakneck pace, threading the mass of carriages, carts, omnibuses, and animals that crowded the thoroughfare, lurching and jolting, missing lampposts and parked vehicles and slow-footed pedestrians by inches.

“When it's time to hop out,” Dr. Gibson said to Helen, “I'll pay the driver through the hole in the roof, and he'll open the door with the lever. Take care not to let the overhanging reins knock off your hat as you jump to the ground.”

The hansom jolted to a rough stop. Dr. Gibson handed up the payment and nudged Helen's side with her elbow as the door opened. Galvanized into action,
Helen clambered out and stepped on the footboard. She had to wrench her hips to pull her bustle free of the carriage. With more luck than skill, she leapt to the street without falling on her face or losing her hat. The bustle gave an extra bounce as she landed, causing her to totter forward. Immediately afterward, Dr. Gibson descended to the ground with athletic grace.

“You make it look so easy,” Helen said.

“Practice,” Dr. Gibson replied, adjusting the angle of her hat. “Also, no bustle. Now, remember the rules.” They began to walk.

Their surroundings were vastly different from any part of London Helen had seen before. Even the sky looked different, the color and texture of old kitchen rags. There were only a handful of shops, all of them with blackened windows and dilapidated signs. Rows of common lodging-houses, intended to provide shelter for the destitute, appeared unfit for habitation. People crowded the street, arguing, cursing, drinking, fighting. Others sat on steps or curbstones, or occupied doorways with ghostlike lassitude, their faces sunken-eyed and unnaturally pale.

As polluted as the main road was, layered with filth and wheel-flattened objects, it didn't compare with the alleys that branched from it, where the ground glimmered with dark streams and standing pools of putrid liquid. Catching a glimpse of a dead animal carcass, and a doorless privy, Helen stiffened against a shudder that ran down her spine. People lived in this place. Ate, drank, work, slept here. How did they survive? She stayed close to Dr. Gibson, who appeared coolly unaffected by the squalor around them.

A remarkable stench hung everywhere, impossible to avoid. Every few yards the floating miasma, dark,
organic, and rotting, reshaped into a new, even more revolting version of itself. As they passed a particularly foul alley, a pervasive reek seemed to go directly from her nose to her stomach. Her insides roiled.

“Breathe through your mouth,” Dr. Gibson said, quickening her stride. “It will pass.”

Thankfully the nausea retreated, although Helen's head swam faintly as if she'd been poisoned, and her mouth tasted like pencil lead. They turned a corner and confronted a large brick building with tall iron gates and spiked fencing all around.

“That's the orphanage,” Dr. Gibson said.

“It looks like a prison.”

“I've seen worse. At least the grounds are reasonably clean.”

They walked down the street to a set of tall iron gates that had been left ajar, and passed through to the entrance. Dr. Gibson reached up to tug firmly at a bell pull. They heard it ring from somewhere inside.

After a full minute had passed, Dr. Gibson began to reach for the pull again, when the door opened.

A broad, heavy rectangle of a woman faced them. She looked incredibly weary, as if she hadn't slept in years, the skin of her face drooping in swags.

“Are you the matron?” Dr. Gibson asked.

“I am. Who might you be?”

“I am Dr. Gibson. My companion is Miss Smith.”

“Mrs. Leech,” the matron mumbled.

“We would like to ask a few questions of you, if we may.”

The matron's face didn't change, but it was clear the idea held little appeal. “What would I get out of it?”

“I'm willing to donate my medical services to the children in the infirmary.”

“We don't need a doctor. The Sisters of Mercy come three times a week to minister and do nursing.” The door began to close.

“For your time,” Helen said, discreetly extending a coin to her.

The matron's hand closed over it, her eyelids flicking briefly as she realized it was a half-crown. Standing back, she opened the door wider and let them inside.

They entered an L-shaped main room flanked by offices on one side and a nursery on the other. A squalling infant could be heard from the nursery. A woman walked back and forth past the doorway with the infant, trying to soothe it.

Straight ahead, through a pair of open double doors, Helen could see rows of children seated at long tables. A multitude of busy spoons scraped against bowls.

“They'll eat for ten more minutes,” Mrs. Leech said, consulting a pocket watch. “That's all the time I have.” A few curious children had hopped off their benches and had wandered to the doorway to stare at the visitors. The matron glared at them. “Go back to the table, if you know what's good for you!” The children scuttled back into the dining hall. Turning back to Dr. Gibson, Mrs. Leech shook her head wearily. “Some of them insist their mothers will come back for them. Every bloody time there's a visitor, they make a fuss.”

“How many children do you have at the orphanage?” Dr. Gibson asked.

“One hundred twenty boys, ninety-seven girls, and eighteen infants.”

Helen noticed that one girl had stayed half-hidden behind the door. Slowly the child looked around the jamb. Her hair, a very light shade of blonde, had been
chopped into short, uneven locks that stuck out in all directions. It had matted down in some places, giving her the appearance of a half-molted chick. She stared fixedly at Helen.

“Have any of the mothers come back in the past?” Dr. Gibson asked.

“Some used to.” Mrs. Leech looked surly. “Troublesome bitches treated this place like free lodging. Brought their children here, left them to live off charity, and came back to fetch them whenever they pleased. The in-'n-outs, we called them. So the Board of Governors made admission and discharge procedures as complicated as could be, to stop the in-'n-outs. But it's made more work for me and my staff, and we already—” She stopped with a wrathful glare as she noticed the little girl, who had taken a few uncertain steps toward Helen. “
What did I tell you?
”
the matron exploded. “Go back to the table!”

The child hadn't taken her eyes—wide, frightened, awed—from Helen. “Mamma?” Her voice was small, a mere quaver in the large room.

She darted forward, her spindly legs a determined blur. Ducking beneath the matron's arm, she threw herself at Helen, clutching her skirts. “Mamma,” she repeated over and over, in little prayerful breaths.

Frail and small though the child was, the impact had nearly knocked Helen off-balance. She was distressed to see the child yanking frantically at her chopped-off hair, as if trying to find a lock that was long enough to look at. Helen reached down to stop the desperate pulling. Their fingers brushed, and the tiny hand fastened to hers in a grip that hurt.

“Charity!” Mrs. Leech snapped. “Take your grubby paws off the lady.” She drew back to cuff the child's
head, but without even thinking, Helen blocked the swipe with her own arm.

“Her name is Charity?” Dr. Gibson asked quickly. “Charity Wednesday?”

“Yes,” the matron said, glaring at the little ragamuffin.

Dr. Gibson shook her head in amazement, turning to Helen. “I wonder what caused the child to—” She stopped, looking down at the girl. “She must have noticed the color of your hair—it's so distinctive that—” Her gaze flickered back and forth between the two of them. “God's feathered choir,” she muttered.

Helen couldn't speak. She had already realized how closely Charity resembled her: the dark brows and lashes, the light grayish eyes, the white-blond hair. She had glimpsed herself too in the lost look of a child who had no place in the world.

The little girl rested her head against Helen's waist. Her grimy face turned upward and her eyes closed, as if she were basking in the feel of sunlight. Exhausted relief had spread over her features.
You're here. You've come for me. I belong to someone.

As a child, Helen might have dreamed of a similar moment—she couldn't remember. All she knew was that it had never happened.

She could hear the matron demanding to know what was going on and what they wanted with Charity, while Dr. Gibson countered with questions of her own. Continuous squalling came from the nursery. The children in the dining hall had become restless. More of them had returned to the doorway, staring and chattering.

Helen reached down to pick up the child. The small body was light and unsubstantial. Charity wrapped her arms and legs around her, clinging like a monkey. The
child desperately needed a bath. Several of them. And the orphanage uniform—a blue serge dress and gray pinafore—would have to be burned. Helen longed to take her somewhere clean and quiet, and wash the filth from her, and feed her something warm and nourishing. For a despairing moment, she wondered what it would take to discharge the child from the orphanage, and what on earth she would say to Lady Berwick when she arrived at Ravenel House with her half-sister in tow.

One thing was certain—she wasn't going to abandon Charity in this place.

“I'm your older sister, darling,” she murmured. “I'm Helen. I didn't know you were here, or I would have come for you before. I'm taking you home with me.”

“Now?” the child quavered.

“Yes, now.”

As she stood there with the little girl in her arms, Helen realized that the course of her life had just been permanently altered, like a train that had crossed a switch-point and moved onto a new track. She would never again be a woman without a child. A confusion of emotion twisted inside her . . . fear, that no one, not even Kathleen, would agree with what she was doing . . . and grief, because she had lost Rhys, and every step she took was leading her farther away from him . . . and a faint, lonely note of joy. There would be compensations in the future. There would be solace.

But there would never again be a man like Rhys Winterborne.

Helen's attention was caught by the other two women as they began to argue in earnest.

“Mrs. Leech,” Helen said sharply.

They both fell silent and looked at her.

Helen continued in a tone of command, which she had borrowed from Lady Berwick. “We will wait in one of your office rooms, while you attend to the children in the dining hall. Be quick about it, if you please, as our time is running short. You and I have business to discuss.”

“Yes, miss,” the matron replied, looking thoroughly harassed.

“You may refer to me as ‘my lady,'” Helen said coolly, and took private satisfaction in the woman's glance of surprise.

“Yes, milady,” came the subdued reply.

After Mrs. Leech had shown them to a shabbily furnished office, Helen sat with Charity in her lap.

Dr. Gibson wandered around the small room, shamelessly glancing through a stack of papers on the desk and opening a few drawers. “If you want to have her discharged tonight,” she said, “I'm sorry to tell you that it probably won't be possible.”

Charity's head lifted from Helen's shoulder, breathing heavily. “Don't leave me here.”

“Shhh.” Helen smoothed a few wild tufts of hair. “You're coming with me. I promise.” Out of the periphery of her vision, she saw Dr. Gibson shake her head.

“I wouldn't promise,” Dr. Gibson said quietly.

“If I have to break the law and simply walk out of here with her,” Helen said, “I'll do it.” Rearranging Charity more comfortably in her lap, she continued to smooth her hair. “Why did they cut it so short, do you think?” she asked.