“Though I knew the horrible chaos of war in
my army years and even sought out the pleasures of confusion later
in my unpredictable, unprincipled rogue’s life, I had never truly
understood the painful joy of turmoil until I fell in love with
you.” They halted in the darkness. “No one could have described it
to me. No matter what my past experiences were with women, I was
unprepared for the ups and downs of what we have gone through this
past week.”
“I am sorry, Nick,” she whispered guiltily.
“I know I’ve done a great deal that needs explaining, but nothing
about me has ever been simple. I should have done a better job of
protecting you…”
“No.” Nicholas’s hand pressed hers on his
arm. “Perhaps it sounds foolish, but I am trying to become a better
man—a more worthy human being—because of you. And finally, I find I
am able to feel, to love, to plan, to want a future for us. And all
because of you. I have no regret for any of this. My only problem
is I am impatient to begin having you beside me for the rest of my
life.”
She turned her head away abruptly to hide
the sudden tears. A carriage rolled by them on the street, the
driver eyeing them suspiciously as he passed. They continued along
the sidewalk in measured steps, but Jane was too numb to feel the
ground.
“I had promised myself that I would not rush
you again. And here we are, our first moments alone together in
days, and I am doing just that.” He pulled her closer to his side
until their arms and hips brushed and their bodies moved in unison.
They turned onto Leicester Square. “I shall try to be better. Can
you forgive me?”
She laughed through the tears and brushed
away the wetness with her free hand. “Yes, I think so.”
“Then it is settled,” he said more
cheerfully. “Being the paragon of courtesy that I am and knowing
that you must be quite tired from the day of traveling, I shall
allow you to get a good night’s sleep tonight.”
“That is
very
generous of you,
sir.”
“But tomorrow is a different matter,” he
warned.
“And how is that?”
His voice dropped, his tone low and
confidential. “Because tomorrow I need you to arise early. I plan
to take you around London and show you some of the unsavory
elements of Sir Nicholas Spencer’s life.”
“Are you telling me you are not
perfect
?”
“Far from it, my love.” He walked her up the
stairs to the front door of his townhouse. After a rather weary
looking doorman opened the door and greeted them, Nicholas walked
her as far as the bottom of the stairs. “Now you go up and latch
your door before another unsavory part of me comes out.”
Jane smiled, but before she could turn away
he brushed his lips across hers. It was a chaste kiss. Curiously
enough, it was entirely different from everything they had
previously shared. But it was a also a reminder of the passion that
flared between them whenever they touched, and of the love that
lurked just beyond the mist.
Jane stood over the trunk, staring at the
layers of clothing separated by delicate papers. How Fey had
managed it, Jane wasn’t quite sure, but there was not a single
black dress in the thing.
She smiled. How could she be angry? Fey had
just known intuitively that Jane’s few days in London should be
unrelated of anything in her past. This was a time for color and
silk and lace.
Frances had not yet stirred when Jane came
down around seven, but to her delight Nicholas was already up and
ready to start the day. His weariness had disappeared, and he
looked refreshed and buoyant.
“I am very happy that you awakened so early.
I have much to show you.”
“How about your sister?”
“I would suppose she shall be sleeping for
most of the morning. After that, she will want to visit some of the
slew of friends that Charles tells me have been beating a daily
path to my door since we left for Ireland.”
She couldn’t think of any reason to object,
considering she was so looking forward to spending this day in his
company.
Once they had breakfasted, her host escorted
her to his waiting phaeton, and helped her in.
“For two night owls like us,” he remarked
with a smile as he took up his whip, “to set out so early in the
day is rather an accomplishment,”
“Where are you taking me this morning?”
“You ask too many questions. Patience, my
love.” He touched her affectionately on the knee. “You shall find
out soon enough.”
With a groom mounted behind them, Jane found
herself rolling through narrow side streets. Skirting Covent
Garden, they were very soon cutting into the heavy traffic of the
Strand and heading for the Temple Bar and the City of London.
Carriages and carts vied for space and pedestrians risked their
lives on the crowded thoroughfare, and very shortly Nicholas turned
off onto a lane so narrow she wondered how he even saw it. It was
soon obvious that he knew it well, as he drove on with confidence
through a rabbit warren of twisting alleys and lanes.
As her host maneuvered around carts and an
overturned sedan chair that had been stripped of its essentials,
Jane realized that this was not the fashionable London that she
remembered. The neighborhoods quickly grew poorer. The light and
air here became dark and heavy with dampness and the smells of
poverty. Many of the houses—mere skeletons lacking windows and
doors—seemed to lean upon one another for support. Some had simply
collapsed into themselves from neglect.
And everywhere she looked, it seemed, Jane
saw people who equaled the houses in obvious need.
“You are still not telling me where we are
headed!”
“You shall see in just a few moments.”
True to his word, at the shadowy twist in
the alley, they came upon a squalid river or canal. Jane was unsure
what is was, for it was filled with slow moving liquid of some
unnatural color, and Nicholas reined in his team. The waterway,
lined with dilapidated houses that hung out over it at rakish
angles, contained the moss-covered remains of indeterminate objects
and reeked of sewage. A rickety bridge led across, and dozens of
the neighborhood’s inhabitants stopped to look with surprise at the
carriage…until they recognized the driver.
Cries of “Halloo, Sir Nicholas!” or “If it
ain’t our own Sir Nicholas!” or “Oy, Nick, we’ve not seen ye much
o’ late,” rang out, and he waved back as he carefully urged his
team across the bridge.
“These people know you,” she whispered with
amazement. More people waved at them as he arrived on the other
end.
“I have a bad habit of getting around.” He
brought the phaeton to a stop beside a deserted warehouse of
crumbling brick, and climbed down. Ragged folk passed going in
either direction, but only the legions of street urchins stopped to
cast more than a curious glance at them. Along the buildings lining
the thoroughfare, men and women stood and crouched in the idleness
that poverty breeds.
Even as he turned to smile encouragingly at
her, it occurred to Jane that she didn’t know of anyone in his
class who would dare to step foot in better neighborhoods than
this, but Nicholas showed no hint of either fear or disgust. When
he reached for Jane and motioned for her to climb down, she didn’t
hesitate.
“Despite its rather unpleasant appearance,”
he said, seeming to read her thoughts, “so long as you are in my
company, you can walk in this quarter in complete safety.”
“I am not worried.” She gave him a confident
smile.
“I know…I know. Nothing is too threatening
for celebrated Egan. Nonetheless, hold on tightly to your
handkerchief and purse.” He grinned, clutching her hand in his all
the same as he turned her down the narrow lane. “Now I can get to
the purpose of why I brought you here.”
They may as well have been strolling in the
St. James’s Park. He seemed as much part of this world as that
one.
“You probably already know this, but in
England—in the view of most of my well-to-do contemporaries—poverty
is a regrettable but necessary state of affairs. The poor must
labor to fuel the machinery of society.”
“It is no different anywhere.”
“Indeed. And while the working poor are
essential to a country, their work and their lives are not
considered honorable. Even from the pulpits we hear it declaimed
that there is some flaw in their characters that has made and kept
them poor. Their sins drive them to poverty and poverty requires
them to perform the drudgery that supports the rest of us.”
Jane held back her own opinion, for she
doubted these were Nicholas’s views.
“There are many distinguished members of our
society who still believe that the classes into which we are born
were established by God. It is a system established for the purpose
of order. To have superiors, then, you must have inferiors. Some
exist to serve and obey, while others who are borne to
command.”
“This is the thinking that allows such
brutal repression in Ireland.”
“And other places, as well.” His blue eyes
met hers. “And that is why I brought you here. I wanted you to see
that the suffering is not limited just to Ireland. Right here in
London,” he made a sweeping motion of the people around him, “one
finds the poor and hungry. There is suffering right beneath our
almighty noses, but our response is the same.”
“Society
chooses
to not see them.”
Jane offered. “Those above consider these people only good for
cleaning their houses and sweeping their streets, for plowing their
lands, for digging out their quarries, and serving in their armies
and in their ships.”
“And that is only the honest work.”
“And they wonder why those in slums like
this riot. And they wonder why people like those in Ireland and in
the colonies in America chafe under the heavy yoke.”
“Yes.” Nicholas’s grasp tightened. “But not
everyone is so ruthless. Not all of us are blind.”
He returned the greeting of a crippled old
man leaning against the bare planks of a house before turning his
attention back to her. “I brought you here because I wanted to show
you my cause, Jane. Doing something for these people, especially
those who are young and homeless, has been my own way of
alleviating my personal guilt. And though this is not as heroic as
anything you have done in Ireland, it is a starting point for
me.”
She shook her head. “You can make a
difference here. The mere immenseness of the poverty of cities
makes any contribution much more heroic than anything I have
done.”
“But there is so much to do.”
He looked into an alley so tangled that no
light reached the ground. Jane could see movement at the end of the
alley, but whether it was human or animal, she could not tell.
“I brought you here so you would know that
no matter where you go or live or decide to spend the rest of your
life, there are people who will need you. Everyone in this country
is not a Musgrave. There is bad and good. There are those who want
to dominate, and some who want to share the bounty. And then there
is one who wants you at his side in life and love…for
eternity.”
She was so affected by his last words that
the noise and people around them had become a blur. All she could
see was Nicholas. A tug on her skirt, though, drew her attention to
a little girl who was looking up with huge brown eyes at the two of
them.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Sir Nicholas, sir.”
She dropped her hand from Jane’s skirt when
their attention turned to her. She was dressed in a filthy and torn
print frock and a broken black chip bonnet. Jane saw the child was
wearing no shoes. “Ye doan know me, sir, but I’m Bessie’s
sister.”
“Bessie, you say?”
“Oy, sir. A whiles back I used to share a
room—‘twas jist a hole, sir, really. But Bessie an’ me was livin’
with my brother…off Drury Lane. And then the Irishman and his slut
come an’ tossed us, sir.”
“This is quite a history for one so little,
Miss…Miss…” Nicholas crouched down until he was more on at eye
level with the child. “Since you know me, then perhaps we should be
properly introduced.”
A soft blush crept up the dirty cheeks. “My
name is Sally, sir.” She gave a shy curtsy and pushed her long
rusty hair under the bonnet as she looked up at Jane.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Sally. And this is
Miss Purefoy.”
“Good to meet you, Sally.” At Jane’s smile,
the girl blushed deeper and rubbed the palm of her hand on her thin
dress.
“Do I know your brother?” Nicholas
asked.
She shook her head. “But ye might be knowing
Bessie…or maybe not. She’s two years older than I, an’ last
winter—after we got tossed by the mick, ye found ‘er an’ took ‘er
to one o’ yer houses…the one by the market.”
“Why did you not come with her.”
She blushed again. “I was afraid, sir…I ran
an’ hid. But I ain’t afraid now. D’ye remember her?”
“I am sure I will remember her as soon as I
see her.”
“Last summer, Bessie an’ me used to go about
the streets sellin’ watercreases.”
“Did you?” Jane asked encouragingly.
“Aye, miss. We’d go, ‘Four bunches a
penny…watercreases!’ Our mum learned us to needlework and knit when
we was little. I used to go to school, too. But I wasn’t there
long. I’ve forgot all about it now. ‘Twas such a time ago.” The
girl’s fingers twisted nervously before her. “But my mother died a
few winters back, an’ my brother took off last month, an’ I had to
move out o’ the place here…” She pointed vaguely toward a nearby
alley.
“Where do you live now, Sally?” Nicholas
asked gently.
“She looked down at her bare feet. “I’ve
been on the streets for a whiles, sir. But I’ve not been goin’
hungry. I work…I goes to a woman’s house till eleven o’clock on
Saturday nights. All I have to do is to snuff the candles and poke
the fire. They is Jews, sir, and have their Sunday on Saturday, an’
they won’t touch anything; so they gives me my vittals an’ a penny
besides.” The child’s feet shuffled on the dirt. “But winter’s
coming, I know…an’ I miss Bessie.”