by Lynne Barron
“Ah, so he was pulling your braids simply to assure himself he’d garnered adequate attention from every woman in the ballroom?”
“Precisely,” Harry answered succinctly. “There was nothing personal in it.”
“Do you truly believe that is what Lord Knighton was about?” Kate asked with a laugh. “For a worldly woman, you are frightfully innocent at times.”
“Innocent I may be. Ignorant of the ways of men, I am not.”
“Still, I’m not entirely certain it was temper either man was interested in arousing when they tweaked your braids.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Harry scoffed. “Lord Knighton is interested only in lining his pockets and addling the wits of every woman he meets. And I assure you, Sturgis has no interest in me beyond annoying me for the sheer pleasure of it, but only when Withy’s back is turned. You needn’t worry he’ll spread tales.”
“I suppose a good butler knows which side of his bread is buttered.”
“Need I remind you it is too early for trite idioms?” Harry asked.
“Hmm, what difference do you suppose it makes which side of the bread is buttered when one takes a bite?”
“Perhaps it has to do with not dripping butter on the table linens.”
“Speaking of table linens, why are we stopping off at Mr. King’s place of business when he has run off to Middleborough?”
“I thought it was Manchester or Middlesex,” Harry replied as the carriage turned down a narrow road leading to the river. “Or Morocco even.”
“Morocco, Middleborough, Madagascar. What difference does it make? The man has left town.”
Harry didn’t believe it for one moment, any more than she believed she would solve the mystery of his whereabouts with Kate tagging along at her side. “What will it take to get you to wait in the carriage?”
“Goodness, when did you come to the conclusion anything could be had for the right sum?”
Harry answered without pausing to consider either the question or the answer. “The day Jimmy O’Connell and Bathsheba settled on seventy-three pounds as the going rate for a troublesome girl.”
“Seventy-three pounds seems an odd sum.”
“Oh, dearest Kate. Only you would comment upon the sum rather than the fact a father would sell his daughter to a veritable stranger.”
“Mr. O’Connell is not your father, no matter you like to pretend otherwise.”
“As like as, considering I share his name and his talent for finding a coin where none exists.” It was as close to an acknowledgment of the truth as Harry was prepared to make, and far more than she would have offered to anyone else, save perhaps Lilith. “Now, name your price, Katie of the same name.”
“Your presence at Lilith’s table for dinner tomorrow.”
“On Friday evening?” Kate’s unexpected visit was liable to muddle her schedule for the entire week. “Couldn’t I just pop in for cordials en route to the theatre?”
“I wonder if I might impose upon one of the laborers to give me a tour while you go off in search of the elusive Mr. King.”
“I’ll stop off for a nightcap after the performance.”
“All or nothing. I’ll not dicker over the terms.”
“Fine, but you do not poke so much as your head out of this hack.”
“I’ll hide myself in the shadowy corner, and no one will even know I am here.”
Kate was as good as her word when Harry alighted from the conveyance before the squat, whitewashed brick building on the site of the ship works in Blackfriars.
Harry had first visited the offices with her grandmother on the day the ninth Duke of Montclaire had been laid to rest in the family crypt in Scotland. Not having been invited to attend the funeral for reasons that were all too obvious, Bathsheba had been searching out a means to discreetly invest the small sum His Grace had managed to skim from the estate in order to see to his mistress’s future and that of their only grandchild.
For a girl who’d been plucked from a farm in the farthest reaches of Shropshire only to spend months on a secluded estate in Runnymede, the ship works had been a wondrous place, all hustle and bustle, every man with a job to do and every job with a man to see it done.
The noise of all those men hammering and sawing and shouting to one another, of the machinery clanking and whirling, combined with the smell of fresh lumber and tar wafting on a breeze heavy with the pungent stench of dead fish, refuse and things a girl of barely thirteen could not identify, had drawn Harry away from the tiny office. It had been simple enough to slip away while Bathsheba spoke with the clerk, simple enough to hike up her skirts and traipse through the mud and sawdust and metal shavings in the yard and simple enough to wander to the docks behind the ship works.
Simplicity had ended on a rickety wooden pier at the bend of a river teeming with vessels of all sizes, from single-manned skiffs and rafts to massive frigates and sleek clippers, sails unfurled and billowing in the wind.
Both banks of the river were lined with factories and mills, grand mansions and dilapidated dwellings, fisheries and tanneries. Blackfriars Bridge was crowded with conveyances, carts and wagons hauling all manner of merchandise, carriages ferrying people from one side to the other.
Harry had never seen anything, before or after that cold November day, more awe-inspiring than that first glimpse of the River Thames.
It had seemed as if she were standing at the very center of civilization, the medial point at which each and every person on earth must depart from or arrive to sooner or later, the crossroads from which every foreign land was somehow equidistant and therefore irrelevant in the grand scheme of life.
It was in that moment, as she’d stood there surrounded by industry and commerce as far as the eye could see, that Miss Hesperia O’Connell had first imagined the life she would carve out for herself in the mecca of all things manufacturable, marketable and transportable.
Little had changed from that day nearly a decade past to this, but for the fact Bathsheba was no longer at her side, carefully guiding her through the perils and pitfalls of her chosen path.
Harry drew in a deep breath, the scents of fresh cut wood, tar and the distinct malodor of the river filling her with the same wonder, the same sense that the world began and ended just here, with all of London at her back and the Thames stretched out before her
“G’day, miss.” A burly laborer flicked the brim of his hat when they met up on the warped boardwalk traversing the muddy yard from the street to the office door. “If’n I might be so bold, ‘tis a surprise to see you here.”
“A lady likes to think she can surprise a handsome man from time to time,” Harry replied, smiling when he flushed a pretty shade of magenta. “Do you know if Mr. King is in his office today?”
“Can’t say as I’ve seen ‘im, but Mr. Peebles’ll know.”
“Mr. Peebles?”
“Himself’s got a new clerk working the front office. Starchy little fellow, Peebles.”
Starchy did not begin to describe Mr. Peebles. Stuffy, haughty and condescending were the words that came to Harry when she stepped into the decidedly shabby cubbyhole that served as a reception area, file room and gatehouse to the office where Mr. King presumably toiled away over his fat account books.
“Good morning, madame.” The handsome young man behind the tidy desk took in Harry’s frilly, feathered bonnet, her spencer with its shiny brass buttons, the striped skirts of her day dress and the tips of her muddy half boots. He rose to stand, his back as straight as a board, his face as carefully blank as that of a footman confronted with a soused chorus girl on the front steps of his master’s house. “How might I be of service?”
“Good morning, Mr. Peebles, is it?” Harry greeted him, fully prepared to use her meager measure of charm to get past the pretty boy who couldn’t have been a day over twenty, never mind his fair hair was beginning to thin. “Is Mr. King in?”
He lifted an open book but kept his expectant gaze on Harry, o
r more precisely upon the feathers and bows adorning her bonnet. “Have you an appointment, Mrs…?”
“Miss O’Connell.”
“Hmm, I don’t see your name in Mr. King’s appointment book.” Of course he didn’t, and wouldn’t have even had he deigned to actually look at the book.
“I was in the neighborhood, and thought I’d pop in to say good morning to the dear man.”
“In the neighborhood?” Mr. Peebles repeated with an entirely uncalled for skepticism, never mind the neighborhood consisted of factories and mills and ship yards no lady of quality ought to be visiting.
Ill-mannered was ill-mannered, even when offered in response to an obvious falsehood.
“I’m quite certain Mr. King will see me if you would but alert him to my arrival.” Harry met his ill manners with the same, making a little shooing motion with her hand, a gesture designed to irritate. “Run along now, there’s a good fellow.”
“Mr. King does not see anyone without an appointment.”
“I am not anyone, Mr. Peebles,” Harry replied. “I am a shareholder in this company.”
“Is that so, Miss O’Connell?” Dropping the open book onto the desk, he stared down the long length of his nose, his blue eyes out and out calling her a liar. “I don’t recall seeing your name on the list of major shareholders.”
Again he had the right of it without having to actually look at any such list, which aggravated Harry no end. She was tempted to trot out her own list, specifically the various titled relations littering her lineage, regardless how dubious the connection.
Instead, she took a deep breath and shoved the temptation back into the Pandora ’s Box that was her cluttered and cobweb-strewn heart. Changing tactics, she began to unbutton her spencer.
“What are you doing?” Mr. Peebles demanded.
“I’ll just wait until Mr. King has a moment to spare for a middling shareholder,” she answered. “Though, I suppose the portion of my pin money I’ve invested doesn’t even qualify as middling. Is there a list of piddling shareholders?”
“Would you like a cup of tea, or perhaps an entire pot, while you wait?” the man asked, blatantly calling her bluff.
There was nothing for it. Her puny allotment of charm had been depleted, ill manners had gotten her precisely nowhere and waiting for Mr. King to emerge from his office would only wreak further havoc with her schedule for the day. Havoc she knew from experience would bleed into the following day.
As Lilith was fond of saying, any lesson worth learning was learned through trial and error. Surely lapses in judgement and moments of madness constituted trial and error.
Harry rounded the desk, coming to a stop close enough she could see a patch of whiskers on Mr. Peebles’s otherwise clean-shaven chin. Peeking up at him from beneath her lashes, she fumbled with a bronze button between her breasts. “Hmm, this one seems to be stuck. Would you mind terribly helping me with it?”
“Help you?” he all but screeched, his face bleaching of all color. Not quite the same result she’d garnered the previous day, but satisfying, all the same. “I cannot…you cannot…it simply isn’t done.”
“It’s only an outer garment,” Harry protested, beginning to enjoy herself. “It isn’t as if I’m asking you to unbutton my gown.”
“Unbutton…Miss O’Connell!” Mr. Peebles scrambled around the desk, putting the smooth surface, bare but for the appointment book, between them.
It took but a quick glance down to ascertain there wasn’t a single name written on the page, major, middling or piddling. “Mr. King isn’t in his office, is he?”
“Miss O’Connell, I am afraid I must ask you to leave.” Mr. Peebles looked to be on the verge of losing his composure entirely.
“Why did you not save us both the aggravation and the time by telling me your employer was out?” Harry demanded with an exasperated laugh. “Honestly, why is it men must bungle every encounter with unnecessary displays of arrogance?”
“Please, Miss O’Connell.”
“Where might I find Mr. King?” Harry slowly circled the desk.
“I couldn’t say.” The poor man nearly tripped over a stack of files sitting on the floor in his haste to evade her.
“Unless he’s gone off on a mission to Morocco, I’ll wait for his return,” Harry threatened, only half jesting. “I’ve nothing better to do, and no coin with which to do it, seeing as I’ve spent my piddling pin money on this frivolous bonnet.”
Mr. Peebles stared at said bonnet with something like longing.
Men were such odd creatures, what with their queer peccadillos and penchants.
“It’s a pretty little bit of fluff, isn’t it?” she asked, reaching up to remove the jeweled pin holding the hat precariously perched atop the looping, twining braids she’d spent nearly twenty minutes arranging. “And quite dear. Three quid it cost me.”
Chapter Six
“How is it I never knew the Pickled Prince was the place to be on Thursday night?”
“It does seem as if all of London is here,” Gideon Remington agreed, parting the crowd with the aid of his walking stick. “The Countess of Weston will be disappointed by the lackluster turnout for her soiree, should the championship bout run long.”
As Phineas had not received one of the coveted invitations to her ladyship’s annual ball, he couldn’t drum up much sympathy for her predicament. “Come, let’s find a pint and a spot from which to watch the fights.”
“Damn,” Remington muttered with a subtle nod to the far side of the smoky tavern.
Anthony Culpepper, the Earl of Dryden, a pompous pup only just down from university, and his chums were gathered at the end of the bar running the length of the pub. Remington had been calling upon Lady Elizabeth Culpepper for weeks, and as Phin was discovering, courting a lady often entailed courting her family.
Just that afternoon Phin had sat through tea with Miss Jillian Smythe, her father, three brothers, four aunts and both sets of grandparents. He had followed up that boisterous visit with a ride through Hyde Park with Miss Laura Portman whose sisters had argued the entire time while their mother nattered on endlessly about absolutely nothing.
It was a daunting task, choosing a bride when propriety demanded a gentleman not spend so much as a single moment alone with an unmarried lady. How in blazes was he to know they would suit if he wasn’t permitted to discover a woman’s true nature, her hopes and dreams, and more importantly her annoying little habits? Phin didn’t expect to fall in love with his future bride, but he held out hope he might genuinely like the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his days. Or at the very least tolerate her faults and foibles.
That the lucky lady would adore him went without saying.
Women did, as a rule, adore him, after all.
“Pretend you don’t see the boy,” Remington said. “Else we’ll have no choice but to greet him.”
“You’ll have no choice,” Phin replied. “I’ll be in the back room watching the first bout.”
“Why did you suggest I put my ten pounds on Tyson?” Remington asked. “Odds are five to one he won’t last three rounds.”
“A little birdie told me Dooley is under the weather.”
“That little birdie wouldn’t be Dooley’s sister, would it?”
“Maeve was up all night nursing the ugly brute.”
“And in your bed at the crack of dawn, I’ll wager,” Remington said with a shake of his perfectly coiffed head. “Have you considered that it might be unwise, bedding the only parlor maid remaining in your household?”
“If I leave off taking Maeve to my bed, I might be forced to actually pay her for her services below stairs.”
“You do realize your words paint you a whore, do you not?”
“In broader strokes than marrying a woman solely for her fortune?” Phin was in no mood to be nettled by his upright, and of late, sanctimonious friend. “Or her familial connections, for that matter?”
“Touché.” Remington of
fered up a salute and plowed his way through the throng.
Phin followed, nodding to acquaintances, stopping to chat with friends from time to time before moving on again. It was little different than the previous night, than every night since he’d returned to Town at the start of the Season, except for the fact that the room’s inhabitants were mostly gentlemen. Not to say there weren’t a few women sprinkled about here and there, though none of the marriageable variety.
Still, variety was the spice of life, and contrary to his earlier words, he’d ceased welcoming Maeve Dooley to his bed when he’d realized he hadn’t the funds to pay her wages. Whether that painted him honorable or thoroughly debauched, he hadn’t the time or inclination to ruminate upon, what with all of his faculties devoted to saving his estate and his family from ruin.
The back room was packed with bodies, most of them dressed to the nines and shouting out wagers to a tall, dark-haired fellow in a garish green waistcoat wending his way through the crowd.
Presumably the nattily dressed, overly-pomaded man was the infamous Mr. Solomon Prince, owner of the pub and, if rumors were to be believed, nearly all of the shops up and down St. Sebastian Place. It was said that Mr. Prince had a hand in every enterprise in Wellclose Square, dabbling in money lending, commerce, and transportation. He appeared far too dandified to run such a rough establishment, let alone an entire working-class neighborhood. Then again, he had two giant bullyboys positioned at either end of the square chalked off on the floor, presumably to roust anyone foolish enough to cause trouble.
In the middle of the square, two men circled and weaved, feinted and jabbed, neither making any real effort to inflict injury, but simply taking each other’s measure at the start of the bout. Phin had never seen either man before, but it was apparent which man was Dooley by the way he swayed from side to side and very nearly went down without benefit of a blow from his opponent.
“Is that Marchant across the way?” Remington asked. “It is Marchant. Who is the lovely creature with him?”
The lovely creature was none other than the wickedly sharp-tongued Miss O’Connell. Even as he recognized her, Phin realized he had journeyed beyond the environs of Mayfair solely in hopes of seeing her again.
