Chapter Eighteen
“Now, where was I?” Bessie said having administered the laudanum to Gabriel in a kitchen she didn’t seem to have noticed was now bristling with tension. Only the children appeared unaffected and were now using their fingers to scrape the last of the jam off their plates.
The laudanum tasted disgusting. He would have liked to have spat it out but common sense told him how unwise that would be.
A gulp of the sweet tea might take away the bitterness.
It didn’t, but hopefully the laudanum would take the edge off the pain in his forearm.
He needed it to. Taking off the sling might not have been such a good idea.
Bessie continued as though she hadn’t noticed the suddenly charged atmosphere.
“You said your young lady wanted to know how we run this place?” She smiled.
“First I’d best introduce you to some of the children.
As soon as Eliza comes back down she can take them off to the school room for an hour.
The bigger ones are learning their letters.
One or two are getting really good at them. ”
A look of relief flooded Phoebe’s face as she turned her attention to the children while Bessie went round with a wet flannel wiping jammy faces and hands.
Gabriel, having one-handedly removed the plates and horn beakers to beside the sink, sat back down and listened as each child was named and introduced to Phoebe.
The laudanum was already having an effect and he could either no longer feel the pain in his arm or it just wasn’t registering.
Lovely. He could see how someone might become addicted to this sensation.
Most pleasant. It was difficult to concentrate on what Bessie was saying.
The children seemed a little confused by her addressing their visitor as “Miss Phoebe” while she was dressed as a boy, but they smiled shyly at her and after a couple of minutes she removed her woolen cap and let her glorious chestnut hair hang loose.
Now, despite the trousers, she looked a proper girl, and Gabriel found his thoughts straying to where he didn’t want them to go.
No doubt the laudanum was helping with that particular daydream.
He struggled to redirect his thoughts down a less disturbing avenue, but only came up with what she’d said to him such a short time ago.
She’d proposed. Unheard of for a young lady to do.
Granted, she’d done so in a rather matter-of-fact manner and said she had to marry someone, so why shouldn’t it be him.
Should he feel insulted? Or had she said that because in her heart she truly wanted to marry him?
Or had it been just a whim, a way of being able to help financially with the orphanages?
More than likely, given his less than aristocratic origins.
And on top of that, had she even considered what marriage entailed?
Now he was back to the thoughts he’d wanted to banish.
He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable, and tried to listen to Bessie.
She was telling Phoebe how long the children had each been at the orphanage. Little Robbie, the oldest at nearly five, was chattering to her about the letters he knew and telling her he could count to a hundred.
None of the children had been here above three years, as that had been when he’d first taken the lease on the house, just after he’d finished at Oxford.
Robbie had been the first, a little scrap of a two-year-old, barely heavy enough for a baby, found with his dead mother and brought to them by one of the contacts Gabriel had within the rookery.
For money, of course. The best and only way to get the people of St Giles to help him was to offer them money.
Each of these six, and the six younger children upstairs, had cost him money he could have spent on their clothes and food, but he didn’t begrudge it. He was just glad they were all safe.
His eyes were drawn to Phoebe’s lovely, concerned face.
How many children could he save if he had the Downham fortune behind him?
Bessie was telling her how many more children they could help when they opened the next orphanage, and of the six younger children upstairs, all under three, that Eliza was in charge of.
A frown slipped across Phoebe’s brow at mention of Eliza.
Had he been wrong, or had he noted a look of relief on Phoebe’s face when Bessie had sent her daughter upstairs to deal with the little ones?
Did Phoebe not like Eliza? Surely not. Most puzzling.
Eliza was a pleasant, eager-to-please young woman.
Why Phoebe might not like her was beyond him.
And he was back to wondering if she might like him.
Hoping. Might her offer have been provoked by more than altruism?
He couldn’t tell. If so, she was a brave and bold young lady.
Braver and bolder than any he’d ever met.
He studied Phoebe’s intent expression as she listened to Bessie explaining how they ran the house.
How pretty she was with her hair loose about her shoulders.
His heart gave a little lurch of sadness.
If they succeeded in locating his mother, he would be far below her socially.
Too far below for her aunt to consider him as a suitor.
He managed to tune in to what Bessie was now saying.
She was in full flow. “With twelve children all under five in the house, Violet, Miss Anscombe that is, has a tight ship to run. She’s a fine woman with accounts. Never a penny out. And that can make all the difference.”
She was indeed worth every penny of her salary, although he strongly suspected she often bought treats for the children out of it. She was a woman of strong religious beliefs and stern expression, but within her resided the softest of hearts, and she dearly loved the children.
“She used to manage a shop,” Bessie said, lifting each child down from the benches they’d been sitting on. “You children can go out in the yard for a little while for some fresh air until Miss Eliza comes back.”
Cheeky little Robbie, the only redhead amongst the orphans, stood on tiptoe in front of Phoebe to kiss her on the cheek. “You look like an angel, miss.” And he ran away crowing with laughter. The back door banged behind them.
“He’s a one, all right,” Bessie said. “Going to be a charmer when he grows up.” She smiled fondly.
“They’ll be all right outside for a few minutes.
The yard’s out of the wind and they can’t get out of it.
The bolt on the gate’s up high and the walls are too smooth for even Robbie to scale.
He’s a right little rascal, that one, always into mischief. ”
“He’s very bright,” Gabriel put in. “I think he’ll be our first child to go to Christ’s Hospital School.”
Phoebe studied her hands in her lap.
Bessie’s smile was indulgent. “That’s a long way in the future for him. But I won’t say he’s not got a chance. I’d be that proud if he did.”
“What exactly is this Christ’s Hospital School?” Phoebe looked up from her hands but kept her gaze fixed on Bessie, steadfastly ignoring him.
Bessie smoothed her apron. “It’s a big school a clever boy can go to even if he has no money. An orphan like Robbie could go and really make something of himself. It’s in the City of London, at Greyfriars’ near St Paul’s. It’s a good way out of poverty for a clever boy.”
The interruption caused by Bessie’s return seemed to have wiped Phoebe’s proposal from existence.
Only of course, it hadn’t. What she’d said couldn’t be unsaid, even if it could be ignored.
However, Phoebe’s heightened color and intense interest in what Bessie was saying combined with her refusal to even look at him suggested she might still be thinking of it.
Which pleased him, as he couldn’t get it out of his own head.
She was listening with such admirable interest one might have said she was hanging on Bessie’s every word.
In the rookery he’d detected a variety of emotions—distaste, fear, resentment that he’d brought her there, and pity for those she saw.
Now, in a safe place, and perhaps because she was busy shoving all other things out of her mind, she exuded genuine concern and interest in the children.
He was right to have brought her both here and to the rookery.
They were interrupted yet again by Violet’s arrival, in the act of tying an apron over her plain gown. “I’m sorry. I had some paperwork to tidy away or I would have been with you sooner. The Reverend Reed left his regards for his fellow do-gooder Lord Gabriel Wycliff.”
She poured herself some tea and sat between Gabriel and Phoebe. A smile appeared on her gaunt face. “I believe he had no notion that the vagabond Eliza was welcoming in was the man he sought an interview with today.”
A little explanation was needed. Gabriel turned to Phoebe.
“The Reverend Reed is the gentleman I told you about who has succeeded in gaining the sponsorship of the rich and important for his own orphanage on the Hackney Road. Consequently, it’s on a much larger scale than ours.
His establishment is confined to the children of the slightly better off who have fallen on hard times.
Those who had upstanding parents. They are not children who are considered to be responsible for their own poverty, you see, but the poor children of the rookeries are.
” He gave a shrug. “Although how one can blame a child for being born into a family from the rookeries when he has had no say in the matter, I have no idea.”