Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Through a fog of drowsiness, Genevieve heard Kendrick order, “Back in bed.”
“I already spent more time abed than a body can, guv,” Fletcher protested. “I’m going barmy!”
Genevieve pried open her eyes in time to see Kendrick pick the boy up bodily and place him back in the bed. “You’ll go nowhere until the doctor gives you a clean bill of health, my lad. This is the third time you’ve tried to slip out today.”
“Fletcher!” Genevieve straightened in her chair, surprised and injured at this turn of events. “You’d leave without a word? And what of Wulfric—you’d leave him behind?” She cast a glance at the puppy in his blanket-lined basket beside the fire.
The boy rubbed his eyes and protested, “Ain’t no reason to stay abed. I been sicker than this before! I need to check on the nippers! I promised I’d look in on them…”
Genevieve reached out and stroked the hair back from his forehead. “You may be feeling better, but I know you’re not at full strength, dear. Whom do you look in on? Peter and Hannah? August and June?”
“Yes,” Fletcher said, looking very small in the middle of the vast bed. Sometimes, she forgot he was only around ten; he acted so much older than his age. “I keep an eye on them when their mum can’t.”
“Very noble of you,” Kendrick said. “But we can do that easily, if you’ll deputize us in your stead.”
“Eh?” Fletcher blinked.
Genevieve looked over at him in surprise and gratitude. “What a good idea. I had meant to speak to Sally this evening as well. I can go—”
“We,” Kendrick said.
It was Genevieve’s turn to blink.
“A queen should have an escort, should she not?”
“That was clever of you, to distract Fletcher with notions of queen and kingship and describe what that meant,” Genevieve remarked as she and Kendrick made their way into the East End.
She’d donned her old dress, and Kendrick had put on his yeoman garb so they did not stick out like sore thumbs in the street.
“He’s clever. He could learn his letters in no time.”
“If he makes the effort.”
“I think your father’s books have sunk their teeth into him. They won’t let him go so easily.” Kendrick smiled down at her.
Genevieve warmed. “It is something, isn’t it? That his words endure, even now.”
“Men in my time believed great deeds and lauded reputations were the only hope for lasting glory, and even now, I believe it to be so. Many things pass away—monuments, monarchs, even mountains—but stories remain.”
On a street corner, a small girl sang in a high, piping voice, “Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat,” while a boy crouched by the ragged cap on the pavement.
Kendrick flicked a coin in a perfect arc into the hat, which made the boy stare open-mouthed.
Genevieve’s smile trembled. She was leaving Hannah and Peter before Christmas. But perhaps she could think of something, a gift that wouldn’t be too much, to give them, one that Sally would not be too proud to accept.
As they approached Sally’s house, a clamor of noise broke over her—one that no one else on the street could hear. “What is that?”
Kendrick’s brows drew down over his eyes. “It’s coming from your friend’s house.”
Genevieve seized hold of her skirts and hurried as fast as was humanly possible.
On the main stair of the house, she found Sally and several other lodgers lobbing complaints and insults at a florid-faced man in an overly flashy waistcoat and jacket. “They haven’t paid the rent, so they’ll be out on the morrow!” he bellowed back at the crowd.
“Shame on you!” a woman called.
“If they can’t pay, they must be out!” he demanded.
Sally glared at him, her large arms crossed over her chest, then caught sight of Genevieve and Kendrick. “Glory be, Miss Dryden,” she burst out.
Genevieve could not place the reason for such an exclamation. “Sally? Whatever is the matter?”
“He thinks he’s gonna turf out the Hartshornes in the morn,” Sally said, her eyes still wide.
“What? You, sir—explain yourself!” Genevieve demanded, advancing on the man. “What is the meaning of this? To put a family out on the street because they are in arrears—how badly?”
The florid-faced man cast a dismissive glance at her—and then recoiled, his gaze lifting as Kendrick’s solid presence made itself known at her back.
Oh, Genevieve thought. That’s what had Sally so discombobulated.
“Two days late on the rent,” the man said. “Won’t open the door. Tried my key, but they’ve got something in front of the door. In the morning, I’ll come back with a locksmith and take the door off its hinges if we have to.”
Through the name-calling and muttering of the people on the landings spectating at the confrontation, Genevieve heard crying. “Then take yourself away, sir, and stop disturbing these good people’s evenings. I am sure you have many other tasks that demand your attention. Like kicking puppies.”
“As my wife said,” Kendrick rumbled in a voice that silenced the jeers and made the man pale. “Get you gone.”
“Coo,” one woman muttered. “Ain’t that voice blooming marvelous?”
The man attempted to tug at his waistcoat and cuffs, but Kendrick’s gaze on him made sweat bead at his hairline. “Tomorrow morning. Eight sharp!” he repeated in a voice no doubt intended to be firm, but it came out querulous. Then he quit the premises with haste.
“When did you get a leg shackle, Miss Dryden?” Sally asked in the wake of the man’s departure. “Or have you always had him?”
“No, it’s a fairly recent acquirement, Sally,” Genevieve said, distracted. “What on earth did he mean? Has Mrs. Hartshorne barricaded her family in their rooms?”
Sally looked grave. “She ain’t there, missus.”
Genevieve gasped. “What?”
“If we told old Morehouse, he’d pack them both off to the poor house or an orphan asylum. We kept hoping she’d come home, but no one knows what’s happened to her.”
Her words struck Genevieve to the heart. “You mean August and June are in there alone?”
Sally nodded. “And when Morehouse started making a fuss about the rent, I think the boy blocked the door.”
Genevieve looked up at Kendrick, biting her lip.
He met her gaze steadily. “Which door is theirs?”
Genevieve led the way to the second floor. She could hear them better now. The baby was crying, and though he made little sound, she thought she could hear the boy sniffle.
“August?” she said, pressing her forehead to the door. “Sweetheart, it’s Miss Dryden. We’ve sent the bad man away. Please don’t be afraid. We’re here to help. Can you open the door?”
A long silence, before a voice thick with tears said, “The chair’s stuck.”
Kendrick set his hand on the door and gave her a nod.
Genevieve called, “That’s all right. We’re going to open the door. Make sure you and June are standing far back.”
Kendrick tilted his head, listening, and then nodded again. With one shove, he pushed the door inward, and a wooden chair cracked and tumbled over.
Genevieve stepped over the chair and into the cold room that smelled of unwashed napkins overflowing the rubbish pail and burnt food.
August held the weakly crying child wrapped in a quilt.
Genevieve crouched down in front of him and wrapped her arms around them both.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “Tell me what’s happened. ”
“Mama left,” August whispered, and her heart seized.
But he immediately continued. “She said she’d be home soon.
She always comes home soon. But she didn’t.
I waited and waited. June got hungry, and I burned the food, and June didn’t want any more sugar water, and the coal ran low—” He hiccupped, valiantly trying to hold back tears.
“It’s been two days. Has something happened to Mama? ”
“I don’t know,” Genevieve said, even as her stomach sank. Evangeline Hartshorne had not struck her as a woman to abandon her children. “I certainly hope not, August.”
“Then where is she?” the little boy whispered.
Kendrick crouched down next to them. The boy recoiled as he realized there was someone besides Genevieve in the room.
“It’s all right,” she hurriedly said. “This is my husband, Kendrick. Kendrick, this is August and June Hartshorne.”
Kendrick stretched out his hand and touched August’s head. “You are safe. I promise you.” August’s shoulders slumped.
Eyeing them, Genevieve would swear to the fact that Kendrick was not doing anything to influence the boy. But there was just something about Kendrick that you couldn’t help but believe. The sincerity, more than anything, was what persuaded you.
Genevieve held out her hands. “May I hold June? Does she need changing?”
“She’s hungry,” August whispered.
“She still nurses?”
He nodded. “She eats a little food, but I couldn’t make it right. She didn’t like it,” he said, shamefaced. He swiped away the tear tracks on his cheeks with the back of his hand.
“Then the first thing we need to do is get some food for June,” Genevieve said, lifting the baby into her arms. But where would they find a wet nurse?
And what would the children do after that?
Sally couldn’t take them, not if June still needed milk, and she couldn’t afford to support two more children.
Is this my fault? Genevieve wondered. Should I have done more for Mrs. Hartshorne? Checked in on her more? She hadn’t realized how responsible she had felt for those her life touched until now. First Fletcher, now the children…
“We can’t leave them here,” she breathed, glancing desperately at her husband.
“I know where we can find someone nursing,” Kendrick said suddenly.
Genevieve stared at him in astonishment. “You do?”
“Yes.” He offered August his hand. “Help me gather your things, and we’ll go. And then we will search for your mother.”