Chapter Twenty-One
A t about the same time as Jack was being led upstairs by Benjamin Sharpe to meet the husband of the woman he’d once thought the love of his life, Robert, Aunt Penelope’s footman, was returning home with sluggardly steps. He was not looking forward to having to break it to her that the tender shoot she was in charge of, her only brother’s eldest daughter, had been whirled off into what sounded like the darkest corners of the underworld by the well-known rake who was her betrothed. He, like all of Lady Dandridge’s servants, had already formed the opinion that Miss Wetherby had made a mistake by getting herself entangled with a man of such deep and disreputable infamy. And now they’d been proven right.
His only comfort was that he was returning in the company of Miss Wetherby’s maid, Agatha, who was more terrified than he was. She’d committed the unforgiveable crime of allowing her young mistress to slip between her fingers in the most uncaring way, and Robert could only see dismissal looming before her. From her slumped shoulders and trailing feet, she shared his opinion. Hopefully, once she’d been given her marching orders, Lady Dandridge would be too upset to sack him too. Which in any case would have been unfair. Although Robert was familiar with the phrase “don’t shoot the messenger,” in his experience the messenger was always a good one to blame.
They let themselves in through the mews at the back of the house into the servants’ hall, where they found an agitated Hemmings waiting for them. To Robert’s horror, the butler insisted on taking both of them upstairs immediately, without even the opportunity for a fortifying snifter, to where Lady Dandridge, attended by her own maid with plentiful smelling salts, was waiting in the drawing room.
As Agatha appeared to have been struck dumb, it fell to Robert to relay the situation. Out came the smelling salts.
“Oh, good heavens above. Where on earth has he taken her?” Lady Dandridge finally managed to gasp, her voice barely above a horrified whisper, as she waved her maid away. Discovering that her niece’s betrothed, despite her prior knowledge of his less than perfect reputation, had been nurturing an illegitimate child in his household, like a cuckoo in his nest, had proved the worst shock of all, and Hemmings was immediately asked to pour her a generous glass of brandy.
Robert could not answer this, for no one in Lord Broxbourne’s house had known where his lordship had headed off to so precipitously, in the company of Miss Wetherby. He shuffled his feet in embarrassment, praying silently for a deliverance that took its time coming.
Hemmings, once her ladyship was sipping her brandy, dismissed Robert and the trembling Agatha, still both in a state of employment, and turned his attentions to his distraught mistress. “Please don’t upset yourself, my lady.” He kept his voice level and emotionless, something he’d learned to do long ago with the volatile Lady Dandridge. “Miss Wetherby seems to me the sort of girl who can look after herself.”
Her ladyship shot him an anguished glance. “That is what I am afraid of.”
Elenora was right at that moment becoming more than a little restless in Martha Sharpe’s parlor. Having fortified herself by eating several more slices of the excellent pound cake and washing this rather unsuitable dinner down with a good half-dozen cups of strong sweet tea, she was feeling ready to face all eventualities. The thought that Jack had gone off without her into the depths of the slums had begun, with her rising spirits, to trouble her more and more. She should never have allowed herself to be so easily dissuaded from accompanying him.
“I think, Martha,” she said to her hostess, with some asperity, “that you need to tell me the whole story behind this, for I suspect there’s more to it than either you or Jack has divulged.”
Martha glanced at young Ruth, whose ears must have been on high alert. “Time for you girls to get ready for bed, I’d say. You go and tell my Betsy and Lucy to get the little ones in their beds for me. And you big girls can have some hot cocoa in the kitchen. I’ll be up later to tuck you all in and hear your prayers.”
Ruth’s rather thin mouth set in a discontented line, but she set her sewing down and with an abrupt curtsy, took herself off. No doubt all these other girls Martha had mentioned would be waiting agog to hear what was afoot from their spy in the camp.
Elenora set down her empty teacup. Where to start, now they were alone? At the beginning. “What sort of an establishment, exactly, do you run here?” Best to be upfront and clear from the start, and the fact that it appeared to be full of more girls than one mother could possibly be responsible for bringing into the world seemed something that needed delving into, despite Jack’s brief explanation.
Martha shifted uneasily. “I’m not sure his lordship’d want me being free with what he does here.”
As if that wasn’t suspicious in itself.
Elenora shook her head, determined not to be put off. “Nonsense. I am his betrothed, and the fact that he brought me to you in his search for his son must prove to you that he holds me in his confidence. So therefore I should be in yours.” She bestowed a beaming, and falsely positive, smile upon her hostess and leaned forwards in her seat. “So, pray tell me all about it.”
Martha bridled a bit more. “It’s a long story, Miss Elenora, and goes back years.”
“Start at the beginning then. You will find I am all ears. And it seems, at this moment, that we have time for you to tell me everything.”
Martha nodded, although with a show of reluctance. “I first met his lordship when he came to the tavern me and my husband, Reuben, were running in Limehouse. A lot of young bucks liked to come there and drink, down with the rough trade. To see the other side of life to what they’re used to in their big houses to the west. After, when I was safely out of it, he told me it was something called a ‘rite of passage.’ I thought he was no different to the others, doing it for a dare, I’d say. But that night…” She hesitated as though she might be reaching a bit of the story she didn’t want to divulge.
“Warts and all,” Elenora said, a phrase she’d long wanted to use. “Tell me everything. Leave nothing out. Nothing at all.”
Martha nodded, a resigned expression settling on her face. “That night we had a singer in the tavern. Young girl fresh arrived from Wales. Her name was Mary Warren.”
Edward’s mother, of course.
Curiosity consumed Elenora. She had to know this story now. She had to find out about the as yet mysterious young woman who’d found her way into Jack’s life and out of it so abruptly. “Go on.”
Martha sighed. “She was lovely to look at. Like one of those china dolls you see in shop windows up west. I always wanted one of them when I was a littl’un. Never got one, but that didn’t stop me wanting one. Black hair down to her waist, skin like…” She searched for a word. “Like a pearl, all glowing and fresh. Eyes that sparkled and a figure any man would want to call his own.”
“And did Jack call her his own?” Although she already knew the answer to this. Was that a nub of jealousy forming in her heart? Mary Warren had been the love of Jack’s life and given him his adored little son. He’d made it clear how much he’d loved her. Or had he?
Martha nodded. “She lit onto him soon as she saw him. Recognized him for what he was and saw how smitten he was, too. Her ticket out of the rookeries. A girl as lovely as her could go a long way with a rich benefactor, and she knew it. Either that, or she’d have ended up on the street, selling her body to the highest bidder. And she could sing too. Like a lark, I’d’ve said. Later on, folks called her the Welsh Nightingale, when she was famous and singing in those big theaters up west.”
“But what does she have to do with you running this house?”
“It’s how I got to know his lordship. Through Mary. And how he got to find out how unhappy I was with Reuben.”
“Why were you so unhappy?”
Martha dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron as though the recounting of her story cut her to the quick. “Oh, when we first were wed, and he were young and handsome, he was kinder to me than any man I’d ever met. He could be a charmer when he wanted to be, could Reuben. My ma and pa said I was marrying beneath me, but, like a fool, I wouldn’t listen to them. We were both young and in love, but love doesn’t last, Miss Elenora, take it from me. If it ever exists, which I’ve had cause to doubt in my life.”
She sniffed. “And I didn’t know, back then, that he was getting himself involved with the Limehouse gang.” She shook her head. “The money was nice, of course, and he wasn’t backward in buying me pretty things when I was young, and pretty things made me prettier, but then I found out where it was comin’ from. Well, we had words, and more, because I thought I knew him and had found I didn’t… That was the first time he beat me senseless.” Her matter of fact words dropped into the cozy sitting room with a thud that echoed.
Elenora swallowed. A man, Martha’s husband, who must once have promised to stand by her and care for her, had beaten her unconscious for daring to raise an objection to his criminal ways. She wasn’t such a numbskull to think that sort of thing didn’t go on between husbands and wives. She’d seen a few wives of Papa’s tenants sporting bruised faces before now. But this was closer to home, somehow. “And did Jack find out what your husband was doing to you?”
“He saw. Not the beating, which wasn’t the first I’d had from Reuben by a long chalk. No, Reuben was always careful to lay into me somewhere no one’d see. He didn’t like having no witnesses. Not even in front of our younguns. No, Jack saw me after, behind the bar, with my face all swoll up and sore, my ribs broke, only no one to take no notice of the bruises. No one save Jack. The folk in The Angel, that was our tavern’s name, they saw, but they knew Reuben and they said nothing. Turned a blind eye. Turned two blind eyes. If any of ’em had said something, they knew they’d’ve received the same. Or worse. Reuben was getting himself a reputation, by then. He was well in with the Limehouse gang and no one goes against them. Not then and not now.”
Her matter of factness shocked Elenora. What could she say to Martha’s tale of suffering? And this courageous woman had allowed her precious son to take Jack to meet this man, whom she’d escaped from. To walk into the danger of the rookeries to save Jack’s child. Bravery could lurk in the most unexpected places.
Martha wiped eyes which had grown watery and moist. “I didn’t think a swell cove like your Jack would’ve cared, but he did. He got me away from Reuben, with my children, and set me up in a little house. Safe away from him. I don’t know what he said or did, but Reuben didn’t come after me. Jack’d got Mary well away by then in a nice little house up west, but he’d kept coming back to The Angel—I think to keep an eye on me. I think Mary asked him to. She knew, you see.”
She paused. “That’s why Reuben bares him such a grudge. He thought Lord Jack stole me away to be his doxy.” She chuckled. “Stupid idea when the lad had already got Mary, fresh young thing that she was, but Reuben’s a jealous man, and he don’t forget if someone’s bested him. No, he’s happy to bide his time, that one. His favorite saying’s that revenge is a dish best served cold.” She shivered.
“Does Jack know this?”
“He does.”
And yet he’d gone with Benjamin into the lion’s den. Or the wolf’s den, for Reuben Sharpe did not sound like a proud and brave lion. What was that strange and ugly animal, looking as though it had been made from the bits left over when God had created all the rest, that she’d seen on display at Astleys? A hyena. Reuben Sharpe sounded like an ugly hyena.
“And Jack has let you have this house ever since?”
Martha nodded. “I work for it, you mark my words. Don’t you go thinking I’m a sponger. I’m not. He saw my girls, and Benjamin too, and he realized there’s children out there, in those back streets, all over London, in need of the sort of care a good woman can give a child. Littl’uns with no mothers, no blankets to keep them warm of a night. No food to fill their bellies. When he finds one, most often little girls as they’re the most at risk, he brings them back here for me to mother. I’ve twenty girls here right now, the newest from just a few days ago. They get an education, enough to see them employed as something other than street sellers or whores. No girl leaves here without having a job of work to go to as a maid or a shopgirl.”
Elenora felt tears stinging her own eyes, a most unusual experience as she normally found crying an impossible achievement. She would have taken out her handkerchief, had she not already given it to Miss Douglas. As it was, she had to be content with her sleeve.
Martha reached out and patted her hand. “Excuse me being familiar, Miss Elenora, but you seem such a nice young lady, and interested in what Lord Jack gets up to. I believe he started this house, this home for the little orphans he finds, partly because of helping me, but also because of little Edward. Let me tell you the lad’s story too, to make the square. Then you’ll know everything.”
Elenora bit her lip. “I keep thinking I shouldn’t have let Jack go on his own. That he’s going into danger with this man who was, is still I suppose, your husband, and the more you tell me, the more I think I’m right. We should go after him.”
Martha shook her head. “We can’t. I can’t go back there. Not ever again. I swore it to myself eight years ago. And I can’t let you go there. It’d be more than my life was worth. Lord Jack’d never forgive me. Let me tell you about Edward.”
Elenora fought to control the urge to leap up and run out of the tiny room that had suddenly become claustrophobic. “Go on.”
“Lord Jack, he fell hook, line and sinker for young Mary the moment he clapped eyes on her. Fell hard and fell strong. And she saw he was what she needed. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, and she’s long dead now, but she used him all right. I’m sure she had feelings of some kind for him, I could see that, but he, well, like I said, he was smitten. He’d have done anything for her. Under his patronage, she was soon singing and dancing across the finest stages in town, singing to the Prince himself, even. They called her the Welsh Nightingale. Did I tell you that already? She was Welsh, you see, and they say all the Welsh can sing. Music’s in their blood.”
This was a different side to the story from anything Elenora had heard before.
“Then she found she was with child. You’d have heard her screaming and carrying on if you’d been out at sea in a ship on your way to France, I can tell you. Loud enough to scare every raven in the Tower. Loud enough to wake the dead. She didn’t want that bairn getting in the way of ‘her career’.”
Not wanted Edward? Elenora thought of the bright and lively little boy with his love for history… and cows. Of how he stretched himself along the rug with his soldiers and how his small, booted feet kicked in the air with delight. Of how Jack watched him, eyes full of love. A father’s love.
“But she died when he was born, like God had heard her and been spiteful. She didn’t want the babe, so he took her away from him.”
“I knew that bit. That she died.”
“Jack was in a rare taking. We thought he’d go mad with grief. I don’t think he ever has got over it. That’s why he saves what orphans he can find. Thinking that each of them could have been little Edward, or perhaps, Mary herself. He couldn’t save her, so now he saves other children.”
“And that’s why he doesn’t want to marry anyone.” The words were out before Elenora could stop herself.
Martha’s honest brown eyes widened. “Doesn’t want to marry? Why, he’s got himself engaged to you. You’ll be marrying and giving Edward the mother he’s never had before long. And brothers and sisters too, if you’re blessed.”
Somehow, it felt wrong to lie to this woman who’d just unburdened her chest to her so fully. Elenora licked suddenly dry lips. “I can’t lie to you Martha. Jack and I are not really engaged.” The whole story came tumbling out.
Martha listened, and when Elenora finished, she took both her hands in hers. “My dear, you don’t shock me. Nothing can after you’ve lived with a man like Reuben. But I’ll tell you this—Lord Jack has it in his eyes that he cares for you. I saw it tonight, and I’m never wrong. And you—well, I see love in your eyes when you’re thinking of him like you are right now. I’m not sure this engagement is the sham you think it is.”
Elenora gazed into Martha’s kind brown eyes, something strange kindling in her heart. It might have been hope. “You really think so?”
Martha nodded. “That’s a man in love I’ve seen tonight, but a man who doesn’t yet know it.”
“And me?”
“And you’re the same.”