by Merry Farmer
“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand what’s going on,” Phoebe said, finishing with the box of toy soldiers she’d wrapped and reaching for another one.
“My dearest friends are laughing at me,” Diana said in a flat voice, though she was amused enough by Bea and Bianca’s carrying on to smirk.
“Do you love him or hate him?” Bianca asked with an impatient sigh.
“I hate him,” Diana insisted, her back snapping straight.
“Then why do you care that he didn’t come over here to greet us?” Bianca shook her head as though Diana were impossible. “Never mind,” she went on. “It looks as though we’re about to finish wrapping all of these gifts. Phoebe can finish up with the last of them. I’m certain more will come in today and tomorrow, but in the meantime, I have a different sort of errand I was hoping the two of you would run.” She glanced to Bea and Diana.
Bea tied the last bow on the gift she’d finished wrapping as her thoughts wandered. “I’m at your disposal,” she said with a shrug.
Bianca gestured for her and Diana to follow her around the table and over to the side of the room where several large baskets of freshly-baked bread, rolls, and cakes were waiting on a table. “We’ve had so many generous donations, but if we let things like this sit around until Christmas Eve, they’ll be pitifully stale by the time we hand them out. I need you to take this lot down to Limehouse, to Stephen Siddel’s orphanage.”
“Limehouse?” Diana’s expression lit with adventure. “That’s not the sort of place one finds oneself every day.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Limehouse,” Bianca sighed. “And there’s nothing wrong with the working class.” She picked up one of the baskets, thrusting it into Diana’s arms. “I’m certain John wouldn’t like it if he thought you were too proud to venture into a working-class neighborhood.”
“I am not—” Diana sputtered, juggling the basket to get a better hold on it. “I would never—” She gave up her protests with a sigh. “Bea and I would be more than happy to take these things to Limehouse.”
Bea watched the whole interchange with an amused grin. Diana was one of the least snobbish ladies she knew, but her feud with John had her in high spirits. They were likely to have quite the adventure in Limehouse.
She lifted one of the baskets and looped it over her arm, then accepted a few coins from Bianca to pay for their cab fare. She and Diana made their way out to the street, laden with baked goods, and managed to hail one of the carriages that was lurking near the end of the street. The driver likely knew that a passel of aristocrats were hard at work on the orphan event and that they would need transportation.
“I, for one, will be overjoyed to have this entire thing over with,” Diana sighed as the carriage made its way into Limehouse, to the address for Stephen Siddel’s orphanage.
Bea couldn’t contain her smile. They’d chattered about this and that for the entire trip, but it was only a matter of time before her friend said something that opened the gates for more teasing.
“Yes, I think we’ll all be overjoyed when the feud finally stops and you and John fall into each other’s arms, like we all know you’re going to,” she said as the driver held the door open for them to disembark.
“That’s not what I meant,” Diana said with a sharp stare. She stepped down from the carriage, then turned to fetch the baskets. “I meant that I’ll be grateful after the party, after we’ve made innumerable orphans happy and given them a delightful Christmas. I simply cannot wait to put my feet up for days on end after Christmas is over.”
Bea’s humor took a solemn turn and she sighed. “I was so hoping that I would be spending this Christmas celebrating more than our Lord’s birth.”
The door to the orphanage stood open, so she and Diana walked right in with their baskets after paying the cab driver.
“You may still have something to celebrate,” Diana said with surprising compassion.
Stephen Siddel’s orphanage was everything Bea would have expected from an overcrowded, underfunded orphanage in Limehouse. The building itself was sound and the hall they entered was clean, but the entire place was decidedly shabby. Pegs lined the wall in the front hall that were hung with mismatched, threadbare wool coats and the simplest hats imaginable. Just off of the hallways was a vast room that looked to be a dining room and activity hall rolled into one. Several long rows of tables with benches ran the length of the room with a shorter table placed perpendicularly to the rest at the front of the room. The wallpaper was faded to the point where Bea wasn’t certain what color it was supposed to be, but the walls were decorated with paper snowflakes and other decorations that must have been made by the girls who called the orphanage home. Several of them sat at the tables, working on schoolwork or needlework or making more Christmas decorations. Bea found the whole thing charming, but slightly sad.
“Hello, ladies. Can I help you?”
Bea and Diana turned to the attractive young man with spectacles who walked into the room behind them. He had an air of kindness about him that immediately put Bea at ease, even though he was dressed in clothes that didn’t look much finer than the things the girls wore. To Bea, that was a good sign. It meant the man put his charges ahead of his own needs. For there was no mistaking that the man was the proprietor of the orphanage, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t much older than Bea.
“Are you Mr. Siddel?” Diana asked with a gracious smile.
“I am.” Mr. Siddel immediately reached for the basket in her arms, as if his first and only concern was to take the heavy burden from her. “You must be with the May Flowers.”
“We are,” Bea said, instantly adoring the man as much as the girls who glanced up from their work to smile at him obviously did. One of the smaller girls even left her table to walk up to Mr. Siddel’s side and take hold of the hem of his jacket. “I am Lady Beatrice Lichfield, and this is Lady Diana Pickwick.”
Mr. Siddel’s smile brightened. “Forgive me for not greeting you more formally, my ladies,” he said with a slight bow.
“We don’t stand on ceremony,” Diana said. “We were sent to bring you these things for immediate consumption.”
“Lady Clerkenwell doesn’t want them to go stale before they’re eaten,” Bea added.
The girls in the hall had all perked up and were looking on with interest. Mr. Siddel seemed to be fully aware of the fact.
“Let’s all take a look at what we’ve been given, shall we?” he asked, taking the basket he carried to the nearest table.
A commotion erupted as the girls leapt up from their tasks to crowd around the table where Mr. Siddel and Bea set the baskets and started emptying the contents.
“Mmm. This bread smells good,” one of the girls said.
“Are those hot cross buns?” another asked.
“Not at Christmas,” an older girl answered. “Hot cross buns are for Easter.”
“Is there any plum pudding?” another older girl asked.
“No, but look at how pretty this cake is,” another answered her.
Bea grinned from ear to ear, touched by how a simple basket of treats could bring so much joy to so many girls. It made her reconsider the things she thought were so important in her life.
“Let’s have some things now, but save most of it for later,” Mr. Siddel said, distributing small scones with sultanas to the girls crowding around him. “Annie, would you mind taking these two baskets to your mother in the kitchen?”
A young woman who was just slightly older than the oldest orphans stepped forward. She gazed at Mr. Siddel with absolute adoration as she reached for one of the baskets. “Yes, Mr. Siddel,” she said in a smitten voice.
Bea glanced to Diana. Annie was as obvious as Diana was in her regard for a man. “We can help you,” she said, taking up the basket she’d just put on the table. “It’s too much of a load for one person to manage on their own.”
“Oh, but the kitchens,” Annie said, her eyes wide. “And you being
ladies.”
“Kitchens never did any harm to ladies,” Diana said, lifting one of the other baskets into her arms.
They left the third basket and its contents on the table for Mr. Siddel to sort out and marched out of the room and down the hallway, following Annie.
“Mama will be so pleased to receive this bounty,” Annie chattered as they passed a few rooms that appeared to be schoolrooms. “She’s always at her wit’s end when it comes to—”
The rumble of male voices wafting down the stairs at the end of the hall caught Bea completely by surprise. She would recognize Harrison’s voice anywhere, and John with him.
“He can’t be,” Diana gasped, her brow knitting into a scowl.
As Harrison and John came into view at the top of the stairs, Diana grabbed Bea’s arm and dove into the nearest classroom. Before Bea knew what was going on, Diana had both of them with their backs pressed to the wall on the other side of the open door. Annie had leapt into the room with them and looked completely baffled by Diana’s behavior.
“What are you doing?” Bea whispered as Harrison’s and John’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, growing nearer.
“The true question is what are they doing here?” Diana whispered in return.
“Do you know Lord Lichfield and Lord Whitlock?” Annie crowded against the wall with them, her eyes sparkling with the mischief she must have thought she was getting up to.
“Yes, we know them, all right,” Diana said ominously. “We know them better than they know themselves.”
Bea sent her friend a wary look. Her vendetta was getting a bit out of hand if it meant the two of them were crouched in hiding in a schoolroom. Although her ears did prick up at the conversation Harrison and John were engaged in as they passed the room.
“…don’t know what I’m going to do,” Harrison was in the middle of saying. He was clearly distressed. “Grandmama is going to have my hide for this.”
“Grandmothers seldom approve of anything their grandsons do,” John said as they passed right in front of the door.
Diana sank deeper into the room, dragging Bea with her, so that there was no chance the two of them would be spotted. Bea had just enough of a view to catch Harrison bending over to pick up a roll that had spilled out of one of their baskets.
“That’s odd,” she thought she heard him say before going on with, “I’ll likely be disowned once she finds out what I’ve done. She’s always guarded the family honor and the trappings of that honor religiously. I’ll be drummed right out of the family for losing something so precious.”
“I doubt it’ll be as bad as all that,” John said, his voice fading as the two of them walked on toward the orphanage’s main room. “You can always find another one. Pretty jewels like that are available all over the city.”
They stepped out of earshot, and Diana snapped straight so fast a loaf of bread spilled out of her basket. “That villain,” she growled, her face like a thundercloud. “To suggest that women are jewels that can be bought and sold and replaced on a whim. Ugh!”
Bea’s heart was too bruised by what she’d heard to shush her friend into silence. Did Harrison’s grandmother not approve of their match? Is that why he’d taken so long to declare himself? He hadn’t really declared himself in the end, he’d only kissed her. If his family didn’t approve of her, no wonder Harrison was so reticent about speaking to her father.
“We aren’t going to let them get away with this,” Diana said, sneaking carefully out of her concealment.
“Get away with what?” Annie asked in an awed whisper.
Diana hesitated before saying, “Whatever it is they’re plotting.”
“I’m not certain they’re plotting anything,” Bea said, rubbing a hand over her sore heart.
“I’m certain they are,” Diana insisted. “We’ll take these things to the kitchen, then follow them to see what they’re up to.”
Bea sent her friend a wary, sideways look, but followed her out of the classroom and down to the kitchen, as careful as Diana was not to be seen by Harrison or John, who had disappeared, likely into the main hall. They delivered the baskets to Mrs. Ross, Annie’s mother, then left the two women to sort through them as they headed to the main hall.
“We should just make ourselves known and ask why they’re here,” Bea said with the strong feeling that she needed to be the voice of reason where her friend was concerned.
“I’m sure they—”
Diana was cut off by a blood-curdling scream from the floor above them. A moment later, that first scream was joined by a few more. Within seconds, a stampede of girls poured down the stairs, pursued by half a dozen ferrets.
“Get away from me, get away from me,” one of the girls shouted as they all spilled into the downstairs hall, dodging around Bea and Diana in their rush to the orphanage’s main room.
“I think they’re cute,” a lone girl at the top of the stairs, who held ferrets in each hand, said.
“They are not cute, they are rodents,” an older girl shouted at her.
Several more ferrets dashed down the stairs, as if chasing the girls.
Mr. Siddel darted into the hall, adjusting his glasses. “What in heaven’s name is going on out here?” he asked.
“Ferrets,” one of the girls moaned. “A whole, big box of them. Somebody left it in the dormitory, and when we opened it, there were dozens of ferrets everywhere.”
Bea didn’t know whether to laugh or scream along with the girls. She’d never been overly fond of the creatures herself, though she knew people kept them as pets. All the same, she leapt into action, helping Mr. Siddel when he gave the order to catch the animals and gather them in one spot.
“Where is the box they came in?” he asked, lunging to catch one of the slippery creatures before it could escape into the schoolroom.
“I’ve got it right here,” a young lad—who Bea remembered seeing at the hall in Clerkenwell—said, charging down the stairs with a large crate in his arms.
Mr. Siddel nodded to the lad and pointed, ferret in his hand, toward the orphanage’s main room. “We’ll take them to the hall and put them all back in the box.”
“Who would do something like this to us?” one of the older girls wailed, shying away from Mr. Siddel as he marched past with a handful of ferrets.
“It was them,” Diana declared, as though personifying vengeance itself. She marched along the hallway and burst into the main room as if expecting to uncover a coup. Sadly for her, neither Harrison nor John were in the main room. “I know it was them,” Diana raged on, searching as though the two men would materialize out of nowhere.
“Diana, I don’t think Harrison and John would do such a thing,” Bea said, resting a hand on her friend’s arm.
“They were just here,” Diana said with a calculating look. “And didn’t you say that Harrison had come from Hope Orphanage before arriving, late, to your house last night? There was a prank at Hope Orphanage as well.”
Bea swallowed uncomfortably. It was true. And the first prank had happened at St. Joseph’s. Were Harrison and John there as well? They wouldn’t possibly attempt something so childish…would they? Perhaps that was why Harrison’s grandmother would disown him.
“We have to go after them,” Diana said, looking like the goddess she’d been named after. “Where did they go?”
“Who, the nobs?” the lad who had brought the crate into the hall asked. When Diana turned to him, he bobbed into a bow and said, “Beggin’ your pardon, my lady.”
“You.” Diana approached the boy. “Your name is Burt, isn’t it?”
“It is, my lady,” Burt said.
“Do you know where Lord Whitlock has gone?”
“I do, my lady. He and Lord Landsbury have gone up the street, to the Sisters of Perpetual Sorrow.”
“Then you will take us there,” Diana insisted.
Burt’s face split into a grin. “Right you are, my lady.”
Diana marched out of the hal
l without so much as a goodbye for Mr. Siddel. Bea waved to him, but that was all she could manage. They headed for the outside door, but before they could reach it, Annie dashed up the hall from the kitchen, something small in her hand.
“If you please, my lady,” she called, catching up to Bea as Diana burst through the door and out into the street, led by Burt. “I have something for Lord Landsbury.”
Bea blinked at the young woman in surprise. “You do?”
“Yes.” Annie nodded and presented Bea with a small, linen sack that had something solid and square inside. “It was with the donations that were brought to us yesterday,” Annie explained. “I heard Lord Landsbury talking to his friend earlier about how he’d misplaced something with the donations. I felt it was my duty to return it, but with so much going on today, I didn’t get a chance. Will you take it to him?”
“Certainly,” Bea said, accepting the parcel with a gracious smile.
“Bea!” Diana called from the doorway. “Time is wasting. We need to catch the bastards in the act.”
Bea gasped at her friend’s harsh language and tucked the linen sack and its contents into the coat of her thick, wool coat. “Oh dear,” she told Annie. “I mustn’t delay.”
Annie grinned and bobbed a curtsy as Bea turned to rush after Diana and whatever new madness awaited them.
Chapter 6
“The boxes from yesterday have been taken to the sanctuary for sorting,” Sister Constance informed Harrison almost as soon as he and John arrived at the orphanage run by the Sisters of Perpetual Sorrow. “You are welcome to search there, but I’m not sure you’ll have any luck,” the stony-faced sister informed them.
“We have to try,” Harrison said, doing his best to be as deferential to the middle-aged nun as possible. “The ring has great value to my family, not to mention being of vital importance to my own endeavors.”
“Vital importance,” Burt repeated, as though he were the one with all the importance.
Harrison grinned at the lad. He’d been of great help in taking him and John where they needed to go. Harrison suspected the lad had grand ideas about himself and where he might end up in the world.
