CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Charles came to Grosvenor Street that afternoon in response to Verity’s note, fully prepared to be extremely cross with her if the message she had been entrusted with could have been confided to paper.
“At last,” she said, smiling up at him. “I began to think I would never see you again.”
She was shameless. Two days away from her and he was as undone as ever. He might as well have spared himself the pain of imagining where she was and who she was with.
“I believe I mentioned that I work for a living?” he said, striving for an elder-brotherly tone.
She patted the seat next to her. “So you did, on which head you must make a note that I have dutifully accompanied my mother and your senior partner on an inspection of what she hopes will be her new abode, and enquired most diligently into the state of the attics and the drains. Your sister and I have also made a thorough investigation of a charitable endeavour that aims to relieve ladies in distress by lifting them out of poverty.”
“House hunting and shopping. I see. Now tell me this mysterious message that has come your way.”
“It was given to me by Mr Grimes the hackney driver, and it comes from Molly Turner. It is to advise you to talk to Susan Norris in the Bridewell with all dispatch. Oh, and if you are asked, the information did not come from Molly.”
“And why would your canny friend think this might be to my advantage?”
“I do not know. May I come with you, Charles? Mr Grimes said ladies do sometimes go there for charitable purposes. If nothing else, it will convince my Harrington relations of my serious intent.”
“Rather more so than the Soho Bazaar,” said Charles. “I cannot like it, Verity. Bridewell is a house of correction. Many of the inmates have been brought there by desperate straits.”
“Were you listening to nothing I said two nights ago? If I have not seen these straits for myself, how can I judge how to help?”
He looked at her determined expression with reluctant admiration. “You do not consider me an able reporter?”
Before he could move away, she touched his cheek gently. “No, for you are foolish and chivalrous and would try to protect my sensibilities.”
He covered her hand and returned it to her lap. “Very well, but you will behave please.”
“I shall be a model of decorum.”
“That I wish I may live to see,” replied Charles. “I will call for you in the morning.”
“Will you not stay to dine today?”
“I have work to do.” He hesitated. “And besides, I dare not.”
“But Mama will be returning soon, and Julia will recover from her sulks and be down shortly. She is cross with me for not lending her the money to buy a reticule.”
“That I do not believe.”
“It would have been wasteful, Charles. She has two blue reticules already.”
“Oh, I believe that. What I cannot credit is that she is cross with you. Julia is never cross. Does she imagine she is being discreet?”
“Your sister sees most things, Charles, even if she is not always sound in her conclusions.”
“I am your attorney, Verity. Do stop making things difficult.”
“Papa used to say his attorney was worth more than he was.”
“After one has been practising two-score years, perhaps. I understand Mr Tweedie is far from impecunious. I, however, do not command anything like his salary. I cannot support anyone bar myself.”
“And your valet and his mother and his simpleton sister. I am not asking you to support me.”
“I will not be accused of marrying for money either.”
For answer, Verity lifted her face and kissed him, feather-light on the lips. Her action set off a storm of emotions in his chest. His arms came around her of their own volition before he forced them back to his sides.
“I asked you to behave,” he managed in a hoarse voice.
“That was in thanks for tomorrow. Please do not pretend, Charles. Do you not wish to kiss me?”
“I wish it very much, which is why I am leaving now while I can yet walk.” But still he didn’t move, knowing exactly how she would feel in his arms, how she would taste, how she would gasp and give herself to him willingly, confident in his ability to teach her. Walk away, he told himself. Stand up and walk away.
She kissed him again, less feather light this time, and rose. “You are being perfectly ridiculous,” she said, a shake in her voice, and left the room.
“You can stop being discreet,” said Verity, sinking dispiritedly on to the window seat in her friend’s room. “You might just as well have been sitting in the salon with us.” Although if Julia had been, Verity might not have found the courage to kiss Charles like that. A furious blush came to her cheeks to even think of herself being that forward. Oh, but it had been lovely. And that one moment, when he nearly responded... Verity had almost forgotten to breathe.
Julia sighed in sympathy. “It will be the money. Charles always has been the most principled of my brothers. Fortunately, he is also the one most likely to ride to the rescue if one is in trouble. Could you pretend to be abducted?”
Verity gave her a dry look. “Having first had the presence of mind to write him a helpful letter telling him where I have been confined? It is of no matter. I am to accompany him tomorrow. I shall see if I can contrive to throw myself into his lap in the carriage.” And he will put me aside like a particularly irritating harlot and tell me to behave myself.
A knock on the door heralded a footman with a parcel. “This was delivered for you, Miss Julia.”
Julia brightened up at once. “I adore surprises. I hope it is not from Lieutenant Neville or I will be obliged to return it.”
It was not from the lieutenant. Julia carefully undid the sheets of tissue paper to reveal...
“It is the reticule,” she gasped. “Did you go back for it after all, Verity?”
“When would I have had the time? Besides, you do not need it. Is there a note?”
Julia poked amongst the wrappings and unfolded a crisp sheet of paper. “Here,” she said, passing it to Verity.
“To Miss Congreve,” Verity read aloud. “Sir Philip Munro begs Miss Congreve to accept this trifle as the inadvertent cause of her tumble on his steps and trusting she is none the worse for it. Julia, it is from Sir Philip Munro!”
The two friends stared at each other in consternation. “I cannot return it,” said Julia. “That would be the height of bad manners. But I do not see how I can accept it either. What can he mean by it?”
“Perhaps he feels bad about taking us for pickpockets. But Julia, if he heard what we were arguing about then he must have been very much more aware of us than he gave any sign of. Sharp ears too.” Verity looked at the reticule uneasily. “I do not think I like such control.”
“Nor I, though it is flattering that he has gone to the trouble of searching out the reticule and discovering my direction. I am glad it was not as expensive as the work deserves. I do not need to feel guilty about his laying out too great a sum of money.” Julia stroked the blue embroidered satin. “The best solution is a note, I think, thanking him for his gift and saying it was not in the least necessary. Oh, how annoying gentlemen are. Not only has he robbed us of the excuse to go back there again, I dare not even use the reticule now, in case he sees me at the next party where we coincide and reads more into my carrying it than that it goes with my costume.”
“You will have to forswear blue for a twelvemonth. Shall we send the letter straight away? We can couch it in a formal style to match his. I have paper and a good pen in my writing case.”
“You are the best of friends.”
Verity made a rueful face. “If I had been a better one, I would have lent you the money, and then we would not have had to deal with this at all.”
She told Charles about the incident the next morning in an effort to banish embarrassment and keep the atmosphere in the carriage on a friendly basis.
“Odd,” said Charles, a frown on his face. “I hope he is not getting a tendre for Julia. I do not trust a man who turns thieves in, apparently for sport. It bespeaks a lack of emotion.”
“She does not return the regard. I thought you should know in case he referred to either the gift or Julia’s tripping on his step in conversation. It did not strike me that he looked at you in the gallery with any degree of goodwill.”
“Nor I him. He is a difficult gentleman to like. Too remote, though I may be wronging him. My thanks for the information. How do you get on with the furnishings for Furze House? The lease is now signed. There seems no reason why you and Kitty should not remove there as soon as we can get her safely away.”
He was clearly desperate to evict her from his orbit. Verity answered in the same composed tone, but having regarded Charles as a friend her whole life, her heart was breaking to think he might never be anything more. Men, as Julia said, were unfathomable.
Once they reached the Bridewell, he became more like himself. “Stay close to me, Verity, and strive for an open mind. Many of the wretches in here have had very little choice in life. Much can be forgiven the poor.”
“You are a good man,” she said. “Lead on.”
They went through an archway and across a walled yard. It was large and open to the sky, but the high walls gave Verity a similar oppressed feeling to when she had been caught in the fog. Then down a passage, where a small window set in a door gave her a glimpse of a large bare room with straw piled in wooden frames for beds, and then they were shown into a small room, where presently two young women and a child were brought in. One woman settled herself on a chair with the babe on her knee and looked Charles boldly in the eye. The other huddled in a corner, head bent, wrapping her arms around her body as if she would never be warm.
“Susan Norris,” said the warder, “and the woman brought in with her. She’ll not leave her, though you’ll not get any sense from her.”
“Her name is Hannah,” said Susan Norris pointedly. “She’ll do no one any harm. And what can I do for you, my fine fellow? Can you get me out of here?”
The warder made to strike her, but Charles spread his hand.
“My name is Congreve, Miss Norris,” he said. “And I know nothing except I am to talk to you. Perhaps you could start by relating how you came to be in this place.”
“One moment.” Verity could not bear the other woman’s silent shivering any longer. She crossed to Hannah’s chair and wrapped her own shawl around her. “Please, take this if it will help.”
Hannah looked up, fearful and startled. Verity was shocked at how young she was, younger even than herself. “Thank you, miss,” she whispered.
Susan Norris looked across with good-humoured impatience. “And now I’ll have to stop them robbing her of it, no doubt. Never fret, you meant well, miss. Plenty don’t.”
“Your story, Miss Norris?” asked Charles again. “Why are you here?”
“Vagrants, they are.” The warder spat on the floor.
“Vagrants nothing. Temporarily without a situation is what we are, on account of a fire at old Mother McCarthy’s last week and us losing all our worldly goods.”
“You were at Mother McCarthy’s? The...” Charles darted a wary look at Verity. “The, er, accommodation house in Hart Street?”
Susan gave a broad grin. “That’s the one. Very accommodating we are. Not that I wouldn’t rather be dressing hair, given half a chance, but there you are. You have to take what’s slopped out to you in this life, don’t you?”
Verity was forcibly reminded of Molly Turner and thus had a suspicion of what might go on behind the doors of an accommodation house, but nothing could have prepared her for the tale Susan told.
“It’s like this. Two years ago, I was a lady’s maid in a country house down in Kent and if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have stayed that way, no matter how much I was sweet-talked by him as was courting my young lady. Mr Weston, his name was, a bit older than you, sir, lovely looking. I don’t think there was a female in the place whose heart didn’t race that bit faster when he smiled at them. He was after my young mistress and her money, of course, but it was me he really wanted. Talked a great deal about when they was married and in a nice house, he’d do his duty by her, then him and me could have an arrangement on the side. It wasn’t wicked, my mistress would never know, and that way I’d have a place for life.” She sighed. “He could charm the cream right out of the milk, could Mr Weston.”
Huddled in Verity’s shawl, Hannah gave a dismal sob.
“Well, the master was aiming much higher for my young lady. He saw which way the land lay and forbid Mr Weston the house. Mr Weston came to me laughing that evening, and says he can bear losing my mistress, but his heart was awful sore at leaving me behind. Would I come with him, he said? We could go to London. He’d show me St Paul’s. He’d take me to Vauxhall and Ranelagh and we’d dance the night away under the stars. We might even get married, what did I say to that? Well, you can imagine what I said. Nobody ever packed a bag faster. I ran away with him that very night. We rented a room at Mother McCarthy’s and were as happy as two partridges in a pie - and then a week later, off he goes to find work and I never saw him again.”
Verity, who had sat up straight at the mention of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, felt her mouth make an ‘ooh’ of surprise.
Susan shrugged. “After another week, Mother McCarthy comes up to my room. Said she needed rent right now or I was out on the street. Alternatively, if I wouldn’t mind obliging a gentleman friend of hers, the same way I’d obliged Mr Weston, she’d take the rent money off him and give me what was left over. I figured I was pretty much ruined by then, so why not. By the time I found out just how many gentleman friends she had, and talked to some of the other girls who rented rooms off her and realised what sort of a house it was, I was swelling with the babe here and it was too late to get a respectable position.”
“That’s dreadful,” said Verity, horrified.
“I had a few harsh words in my head for Mr Weston, that’s for sure. Anywise, come forward to three or four month ago. I’d waved off my latest gent and was just going down to tell Mother McCarthy to give me an hour to feed and change the babe, when the street door opens and who do I see at the bottom of the stairs but Mr Weston, with Hannah here tucked into his arm. I drew back pretty fast, you can be sure of that. ‘Have you got a room free, Mother?’ he asks, and she starts to show them up to the one opposite mine. Well, I shuts my door so as I could think, and gets on with sorting out my little one. Bless me, but it was only two hours later when I heard the door opposite open and close quietly and then there were footsteps on the stairs. I crept to the stairwell and listened to what he was saying to Mother McCarthy. They was talking openly in the hall, but she’s so stingy with the candles, neither of ’em could have seen me up above.”
“And what did they say?” asked Charles.
Hannah wept a fresh volley of sobs into the shawl.
“Give over, do,” Susan told her. “He’s lost to both of us now. Don’t you want him to get what’s coming to him?” She looked back at Charles. “I heard him clear as anything. He tells Mother McCarthy Hannah’s asleep, a soft enough handful but nothing much to recommend her, and he’d take his usual ten guineas, please, and he’d clear off out of her way.”
“The monster!” gasped Verity.
“Old McCarthy started Hannah on the gentlemen the very next night. She didn’t take to it like me, so Mother figured if she was going to weep the whole time, she might as well give her to the vicious ones who like a bit of pain. Not right, it wasn’t. Fair turned my stomach to hear it. She could’ve put Hannah to the scullery or kitchens where she’d have been happy enough skiving, but no. Those gents pay more, see?”
“Despicable,” said Charles, looking grim. “How did you get away?”
Susan shrugged. “There was a fire. Smoke everywhere and all the girls shrieking. I gathered up the babe, grabbed Hannah from her room and we ran out the back way. Got picked up and took to Bow Street where I told ’em everything I’ve told you. That’s when they said they’d never heard of no Mr Weston, nor yet Mr North, which was the name he gave when he was courting Hannah’s young lady. They was right interested in what I had to say about Mother McCarthy, mind.”
“Mr North?” said Verity, looking with wild surmise at Charles.
He looked back at her, sharing the triumph. “Got him,” he said softly.