The girl weighed no more than a kitten, and
Nicholas frowned fiercely at the smell of alcohol that her body
reeked of, as well. The excessive drinking of both rich and poor
was still one of the curses of England. While the rich could afford
to take care of themselves and their families, though, the misery
of the poor passed early on to their children.
A face appeared at the window when Nicholas
knocked at the house on Angel Court. At the sound of his voice, the
door quickly opened. The old woman’s face, bright with recognition,
immediately darkened when she saw the bundle in Nicholas’s
arms.
“I found her in the park.” He brushed past
her. “I think she is unconscious with drink…though the cold surely
hasn’t helped her any.”
The old woman hurriedly opened up a door to
the right, leading him into a large room where a small fire spread
a warm glow over a dozen beds lining the walls. A few children
peeked from beneath their blankets, wide-eyed with curiosity.
“Which one, Sadie?”
The old woman pushed a basket of mending off
an empty bed, and Nicholas laid the child gently on the clean
blanket.
“Go fetch Martha for me, dear,” Sadie said
to a boy on the nearest cot.
As the child hurried out of the room,
Nicholas stood back, watching the older woman’s wrinkled hands at
they moved over the girl’s face and neck.
He was no expert on children’s ages, but he
guessed this young one couldn’t have been more than five. Small
curled hands lay on the blanket. Dirty feet stuck out from beneath
her rag of a dress. Nicholas’s gaze was drawn to the dark hair
framing the innocent features of the face. Long eyelashes lay
peacefully against cheeks pale beneath the dirt.
Looking at her, Nicholas found his mind
racing, planning. The city was a difficult place for a child on her
own. Perhaps he could bring this helpless waif to Solgrave when she
was a little better. He was certain Stanmore wouldn’t mind it, and
Rebecca would embrace the idea. After all, they had given shelter
to Israel, and he was a new lad entirely after only six months. She
would thrive in the country. She could go to the village school in
Knebworth. She could become a child again.
Sadie’s sharp glance in his direction
stopped him. He went nearer, and the woman stood up.
“The poor thing has already gone to her
Maker, sir.”
He stared at the woman’s mouth as she
quietly spoke. A sudden need to deny her words welled up in him,
but he restrained the utterance.
He took a step back. With a slight nod, he
turned and in a moment was on the street.
Oblivious to the harshness of the winter
night or the time, Nicholas Spencer walked the streets. The
injustice of such a death was so wrong. And more innocents—helpless
and dying—surrounded him. And what he had been doing about it was
clearly not enough.
A shelter here and there. A house to offer
meals and a safe bed off the street. All well and good, but where
did these children go from here? How had his insignificant acts of
charity in any way changed their lives? What had he done to keep
them from ending up drunk or abused or dead on the streets?
There had to be something more that he could
do. A house in the country where they could grow up healthy. A
school where they could learn to fend for themselves. They needed
something like a permanent home.
Suddenly, he found himself back at Berkeley
Square, staring up at the darkened windows of his friends. Even the
night and winter could not hamper the glow of warmth radiating from
inside.
Nicholas was getting old and he was
terrified of it. The admission hurt less than he’d imagined. But
for so long, he’d been battling the emptiness and coldness of his
life, that now coming to terms with his ailment was an incredible
relief.
An image of the innocent face of the dead
child came before his eyes. His life had become a waste and there
was
so much more that he could do. He would need to make a
few changes, though. A new life for himself. A real home where he
could truly influence the fate of these lost souls.
But such a thing required a wife, and where
on earth would he find her?
Waterford, Ireland
August 1771
Through the stony fields the roaring fire
moved, leaping ahead and coiling before jumping forward again, a
monstrous living creature greedily devouring all before it. Smoke
and ash swirled above, blotting out stars that had filled the night
sky not an hour before and replacing them with sparks and cinders
that climbed and glowed and quickly died away.
Legions of men armed with clubs swept down
into the vale, torching the fields as they approached. The thatched
roofs of the first of the clustered hovels flared up, and dozens of
panicking men, women, and children ran in confusion into the night.
There was no way of fighting such an onslaught. There seemed to be
no escape.
From beneath a hide that served as a doorway
of one of the hovels, a squalling baby crawled out into the
madness.
In the rocky fields around them, crops that
had been painstakingly sown and nurtured with toil and sweat flared
up as the inferno spread. Barley, potato, cabbage, wheat—gone in
moments while the consuming flames licked the smoke blackened
sky.
A screaming mother, dragged away by others,
looked back in desperation at the fiery mass that was once her
cottage. Carried along by the swarm of cottagers, she was led
toward the only place that was not ablaze, the marshy bog to the
north of the huts. Beyond the fetid muck and swamp grass lay the
safety of higher ground.
A solitary rider tore through the night and
joined the group as they emerged, their dark shapes silhouetted by
the inferno.
The ride overland had been hard, and there
had not been time to raise help. The attack here had come without
warning, without legal proceedings, without justice. The same was
happening all over Ireland, and the rider looked out at the burning
village. Tomorrow, these same brutes would be pulling down the
walls. In a week, they would be digging ditches to enclose the
fields. Next spring, there would be sheep and cattle grazing here,
and these tenants would be wandering the byways of a dying
countryside.
The desperate cries of a mother rang out
across the hills as she ran to the mounted newcomer.
A moment later, the rider was skirting the
edges of the marsh, spurring the steed toward the burning hovels.
At the center of the cottages, the infant sat in the dirt with her
hands raised to the sky, oblivious to the cinders raining around
her.
Seeing the child, the rider drove the horse
through the hellhole like one possessed. A hut collapsed with a
loud crash, silencing the infant’s cries for only a moment. The
rider dismounted as the marauders approached through the smoke and
flames. Gathering the child up, the rescuer climbed back on the
restless steed and raced away into the darkness.
On the hill, the mother ran forward to meet
them, her face stained with tears and soot, her throat choked with
emotion as she received her screaming babe into her arms.
“Bless ye, Egan!”
Cork, Ireland
One month later
The patchwork of tidy, newly harvested
fields north of Cork City had long since given way to a wilder,
rockier countryside, and the woman looked out the carriage window
with an artist’s eye. This land was so different from the
relentlessly flat plains around her own native Brussels.
It was certainly no less green than the
lowlands to the south. Indeed, the darker hues of the pines so
prevalent here served to set off the more silvery greens of the
birch trees. Now tinged with autumn yellows, the birches huddled in
groves on the rugged hillsides rising abruptly from the valley
floor. Looking at the azure sky above, marred by long scrapes of
gray, she thought with satisfaction that they had suffered hardly
any rain at all since crossing over from the bustling English port
of Bristol.
The carriage, wending its way along a
surprisingly good road, had been following the bends of the river
at a leisurely pace. Occasionally passing a small cluster of
cottages—some more rustic than others—the woman had also seen a
number of handsome manor houses with fields of pastureland
spreading out around them. The scattered forests were beginning to
grow thicker now, and Alexandra Spencer turned her attention back
to her two traveling companions with a content smile.
Her daughter was speaking with all the
exuberance one might expect of a girl of sixteen years, and Lady
Spencer broke in when she paused to take a breath.
“Really, Frances! Hanging from a castle
wall…upside down…and kissing a stone just to win some dubious gift
of eloquence? What nonsense you spout, young woman!”
“But it is true, Mother. They believe the
stone is part of the Stone of Scone at Westminster. Not just one,
but three of the sailors on the ship were telling me about the
magic in kissing Blarney Castle’s stone.”
“Well, I for one have no desire to kiss
anything that might have been sat upon by any king…English or
otherwise.”
“Mother!” Frances replied with shocked
delight.
“But more at issue…what were you doing
talking to sailors? How many times do I have to tell you that a
young woman should never engage in…?”
“But Nicholas was with me.” The younger
woman moved to the seat across in the carriage and looped a hand
through her brother’s arm. “There was a prize fight in the hold. I
simply followed Nick down to watch the sport.”
“Nicholas Edward…!” she started to scold,
but changed her mind as her son’s sharp gaze moved from the passing
countryside to her face.
Running a hand over the fabric on her
skirts, Alexandra Spencer searched for the most appropriate way of
expressing her disapproval. A difference of eighteen years in the
ages of her two children had certainly been harmless when they were
younger, but as Frances was now a blossoming young woman, she
needed to find a way of instructing Nicholas on his brotherly
responsibilities.
She gazed at her son as his attention
drifted back to the window. When Frances had been an infant,
Nicholas had been studying in Oxford. A few years later, when Fanny
had started attending school, Nicholas had been fighting his way
across the Plains of Abraham during the taking of Quebec. And
shortly after that, when her husband had passed away, Nicholas had
inherited his father’s title and estate. It was then that Alexandra
had decided it was time to return to her own ancestral home across
the channel where she could stay clear of her son’s affairs. Of
course, she’d hoped he would use the time to start a life…and a
family…of his own.
Well, that hadn’t happened yet, and
Alexandra was afraid that she had spent too many years away from
Nicholas to be able to exert any kind of control over him now—any
overt control anyway.
Frances started again, not sounding deterred
in the least. “They tell me that one can also lie on one’s back now
and lean out to do it with a pair of strong arms gripping one’s
legs.” She paused with a frown. “I don’t think I should care to
rely on anyone else doing that for me but you, Nick.”
“I don’t believe the world can stand any
more eloquence in you, Fanny,” Nicholas replied passively. “You are
far too perfect just as you are.”
The young woman giggled with delight. “You
really should save these pretty words for your darling Clara, you
know, and not waste them on your sister.”
“
Darling
Clara?” Nicholas Spencer
asked with emphasis.
Frances darted a hesitant glance at her
mother. After receiving an encouraging nod, she turned to her
brother again.
“Well, we
are
headed to Woodfield
House, are we not? You
have
accepted the invitation of Sir
Thomas Purefoy, Clara’s father, to stay a fortnight on their estate
in this ravishing country, have you not?”
“Frances, I
do
wish you wouldn’t use
the word ‘ravishing’.” Lady Spencer put in.
“And you
did
escort that extremely
attractive young woman to no less than
three
social
functions this past spring in London, did you not? Shall I go
on?”
“Don’t pressure me, Fanny. I can feel the
noose tightening without any help from you or our esteemed mother.”
He ran a finger inside the high collar of his crisp white shirt. He
looked meaningfully from the younger to the older woman. “We are
making this trip for the benefit of the two of you, not for me. In
spite of some contrary opinion, it is important in a young woman’s
education that she be introduced to members of society outside of
the circle of spoiled brats you’ve been associating with so
exclusively at school.”
“Liar!” Frances slapped him on his arm.
Nicholas shrugged. “Very well. Have it your
way, then. We’re here for me…because of my love of horses. Sir
Thomas is reputed to have one of the finest stables…”
“That is so incredibly unmannerly, Nick,”
Frances scolded, a practiced pout breaking across her young and
beautiful face. She withdrew her hand and slid to the farthest end
of the seat. “I must tell you that in lying the way you do, you are
ruining the very fine image I cherish of my only brother. There is
no help for it…I shall not speak with you for the rest of this
holiday.”
Seeing Nicholas’s obvious satisfaction with
the state of affairs, Alexandra reached out and touched her son’s
knee. “Pray resolve this right now. If she is not talking to you,
then it means she will be complaining endlessly to me. So if you
cannot make up with the little vixen, I would just as soon have you
let me out at the next coach stop, where I shall find my way back
to London without the two of you.”