Twenty-nine
Georgette had thought herself prepared for Whitechapel.
She was not.
Lackaday Lane was dreary, but it seemed the sun had never shown here in Whitechapel. It would have had to fight its way into the twisting streets where the houses sagged against each other like drunkards, their facades tired and crumbling.
A brawl broke out before one of the taverns they passed, and a crowd gathered to shout encouragement to the combatants and lay wagers on the outcome.
Even when one of the men lay battered on the cobbles, the other fellow continued to kick him with the viciousness of a mad horse and no one moved to interfere.
A woman huddled in the doorway of a shuttered-up storefront, tipping back a flask and wiping her mouth on her raggedy sleeve.
She seemed to have no plans beyond her next drink.
As their hackney moved along at a foot pace in the clogged streets, Georgette wondered at the hundreds of people wandering aimlessly.
“Haven’t they homes to go to?”
“No,” Nathaniel said. “Most of them live in common lodging. By night they’ll share a room with six or seven strangers, but by law, they must vacate it during the day. Thank God the last of winter is leaving us. Whitechapel on a gray January day is a special sort of hell.”
She glanced at him sharply. “How do you happen to know so much about it?”
“When I first returned from France, I didn’t want to tar my family with my disgrace,” he began.
“As I recall, you were not discharged from service with any sort of discommendation.”
“No, but only because the victory at Waterloo overshadowed the defeat of Maubeuge enough for some well-placed lords, my father among them, to hush it up.” He continued to stare at the foot traffic, but Georgette had the distinct impression he was seeing something else entirely.
“Even so, I couldn’t go home. A little leaven makes the whole loaf rise.
The whiff of scandal for one member is enough to taint an entire family.
So I made Whitechapel my home. It was all I deserved. ”
Georgette prided herself on her vivid imagination, but even she couldn’t imagine Nathaniel as one of the residents of Whitechapel.
He was a man of fastidious habits. She’d never seen him less than splendidly turned out.
Even a dash into dirty Lackaday Lane had never left so much as a smudge on his cuffs.
How had he borne living in the squalor of Whitechapel for even a day, let alone months?
“What made you finally leave here?”
“Caroline,” he said. “My sister wouldn’t give up on me. She fretted my father into hiring an inquiry agent to find me and bring me, by force if necessary, back to the family country seat.”
“What makes me think force was necessary?”
One corner of his mouth turned up in a rueful grin. “If I hadn’t been the worse for drink he’d have never gotten the drop on me.”
Their carriage rumbled past a waif on the corner selling matches, her cloak whipping around her slight form. The fabric seemed far too thin to keep out the wind whistling down the narrow streets. Georgette hoped matches were all she was selling.
“I haven’t any money with me,” she said woodenly, wishing she could help the child.
“Even if you did, you’d dare not give her any but the smallest coin.”
“Anything more would make her a target for thieves?” Georgette guessed.
“Or her employer,” Nathaniel said. “The children in this neighborhood are little better than slaves to the ones who provide them with goods to sell.”
Georgette’s chest constricted. “I had no idea. Why is nothing done about this?”
“What would you do? Take the children from their families? Each penny they earn helps put bread on the table.”
“Surely the government could—”
“No doubt there are reforms that might help the lot of these poor, but with the Crown racking up debt to build follies at the royals’ country estates, it’s not likely anything more can be spared for Whitechapel.”
The needs were overwhelming, but surely if she were a royal duchess, she might—
“And lest you think once you’re married to Cambridge you can divert some funds in this direction, let me remind you that control of your considerable dowry will lie in your royal husband’s hands,” he said with bitterness. “You’ll be lucky if he gives you pin money.”
“How will we find Mrs. O’Toole?” Georgette asked, mostly because it irritated her that Nate knew the direction her thoughts traveled so well and she didn’t want the conversation to wander back to the duke.
“We ask. Or rather, I ask.” Nathaniel rapped on the ceiling of the carriage and it halted. “Stay here.”
He climbed out of the equipage and stopped the first man who trudged past. After a few moments’ conversation, Nathaniel returned, gave the driver new instructions, and rejoined Georgette.
“Sadie O’Toole has opened a new brothel in the next block over,” he explained as the carriage moved forward. “She’s brought in a fresh stable of girls and is busy refurbishing a former common lodging house. The place has a red door, the fellow said.”
“Would you have said Sadie O’Toole had the means to do all that?” Georgette asked.
“No. When I repaid her for the rest of her lease, it was only a couple pounds. Even her girls’ debts didn’t amount to enough to open a new place.
Not even here.” Nate eyed the foot traffic as if he were looking for someone in particular.
“Clearly, she has a benefactor of some sort who is supporting her business.”
Someone who can’t satisfy their needs elsewhere. Someone who likes “gasping,” Georgette thought, remembering Madam Bouchard’s ghastly explanation of some of the House of Sirens’s more exotic specialties. Or someone who likes making other people gasp.
Vesta’s death by strangulation was enough like that aberrant behavior to make Georgette wonder if Sadie O’Toole’s mysterious investor and the person responsible for the murders on Lackaday Lane were one and the same.
The carriage stopped halfway down the block from a crumbling brick structure with a red door.
The dentils beneath the cornice hadn’t seen a lick of paint in years.
Several of them were black and decayed as a diseased mouth.
Vibrant cerise curtains hung at the windows on either side of the red door, their bright pink all the more garish in contrast with their shabby surroundings.
Nathaniel made no move to climb out of the carriage.
“Aren’t we going in?” Georgette asked.
“No. We are reconnoitering. Sh!” He pulled the curtains on the carriage closed so no one could see in, but was careful to leave enough of a slit in the velvet for him to see the door clearly.
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to just go in?” Georgette asked. A gentleman in a theatrical black cape rapped on the red door and was admitted. “Other people are.”
“No, it wouldn’t be simpler. For one thing, I don’t know what’s on the other side of the door. I have no idea if I can protect you in there.”
“You have a pistol,” she pointed out.
“In France I had a whole company of men armed to the teeth, but that didn’t stop most of them from being killed at Maubeuge, did it?” he said through clenched teeth. “We trusted the report of others when we should have done our own scouting.”
His frown deepened. “I should have done it,” he amended.
“There’s no way you could have known you were being given false reports. I understand you feel responsible, but clearly someone sabotaged your company of soldiers. Isn’t there some way to prove that you were not at fault?”
“There is.” The muscle in his cheek ticked.
“A certain well-placed gentleman has assured me he holds the proof that would exonerate me, as well as Warrington and Sharp, who were the other commanders that day.” Tension knotted his brow.
His whole face seemed at war with itself.
“But the price he’s demanding for the information is too high. ”
“If it’s a question of funds—”
“No, damn it, I don’t want your bleeding money.”
Georgette flinched as though he’d slapped her. She bit her lower lip, wishing she hadn’t made him think of the disaster in France again. He suffered so over it, but he didn’t need to lash out at her about it.
She never knew what might trigger a memory of Maubeuge. It seemed as if anything she said might lead his thoughts there.
She leaned toward him so she could peer out the narrow opening too. Concentrating on the current search seemed safer than wandering through Nathaniel’s past. “What are we looking for?”
“A familiar face.”
Almost to a man, the passersby had their hats tugged so far forward, their features were obscured.
Minutes ticked by, but Georgette didn’t see anything of import. She fidgeted with her reticule, wishing again that it held her coin purse for the sake of that little match girl. She would happily empty the contents into that child’s lap, no matter what Nathaniel had to say about it.
“Honestly, why don’t we simply go up to the door and ask to speak to Mrs. O’Toole directly?
We wouldn’t have to go in. She could come out,” she finally said.
“It certainly worked for me at the House of Pleasures. Once I gave Madam Bouchard a chance, she was very forthcoming about a number of things.”
“I’ll bet,” Nate said wryly, but didn’t look away from the slit in the curtains. “It’s a safe wager someone not involved with the Lackaday Lane killings would be forthcoming.”
“How did you know Madam Bouchard wasn’t involved?”
“Murder is bad for business. Makes the customers nervous,” Nate said. “She may have been upset with Vesta for leaving her, but she didn’t stand to gain anything by her death.”
“Then why would Sadie O’Toole kill Vesta? She was gone from Lackaday Lane by the time the murder happened.”
“I didn’t say she did it, but I think she may well know who did,” Nathaniel said. “However, if our killer is one of her regulars, or more to the point, her investor, she’s not likely to tell us for the asking.”
“From your description of her, Sadie O’Toole strikes me as a businesswoman first,” Georgette said. “She might tell what she knows for the right price.”
One of Nate’s brows arched. “That’s a thought. But information that can be bought is always suspect. She might only tell us what she thinks we want to hear.”
Something must have caught his eye because he sat forward suddenly and followed the progress of a man in a dark tweed greatcoat till he disappeared into the red door.
Georgette couldn’t make out the man’s face since he wore a black-and-white-checked deerstalker with the flaps tied down.
But she didn’t think the fellow more remarkable than any other gentleman who ducked into Sadie O’Toole’s new establishment.
Nate, however, smiled grimly and reached up to rap on the carriage ceiling, signaling that they were ready to move on.
“This whole exercise is a complete waste of time,” she said.
Nate didn’t correct her, but it was obvious he’d seen the familiar face he was looking for.
Georgette didn’t dare ask him who the man in the tweed coat was.
She was still smarting over accidently reminding him of Maubeuge and didn’t want to chance that the connection Nathaniel had made with the fellow was somehow related to his time in the military.
As the neighborhood outside the carriage windows improved, Georgette found she could stop worrying the ties on her reticule. Whitechapel had bothered her more than she would admit.
“Now where are we bound?”
“Back to Madam Bouchard’s,” he said. “It seems I may owe your footman an apology.”
“Mr. Darling? Even if you did, he and Mercy are probably not still there. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have returned to Yorkingham House and raised a hue and cry over the way you carried me off.”
“No, I imagine they are still at the House of Pleasures,” Nathaniel said a trifle sheepishly. “It was not intentional, you understand, but during your abduction, Mr. Darling was knocked unconscious.”
Her mouth gaped for a moment. “Why on earth did you do that?”
“I’d just laid out the house bully and thought one of his friends was coming up the stairs after me,” Nate said. “It was only after I struck him that I realized it was your Mr. Darling.”
“Oh, dear.”
“He’s probably fine.”
“Probably?”
“Well, I expect the tumble down the stairs didn’t do him any favors, but when I stepped over him as I carried you out, he was still breathing.”
Georgette shook her head. “He deserves a rise in his pay for this.”
“I’ll be happy to contribute to it,” Nate said. “Provided he hasn’t sounded the alarm. Surely he wouldn’t. He knows I’d never do you harm.”
Maybe not physically, but her reputation would be in tatters if anyone knew they’d spent a stolen couple hours in bed at his Cheapside flat.
Her parents would be devastated by the scandal. The royal match would be off and it would mean a hasty marriage with Nate. Her mother would find exchanging a royal duke for a second son to be lowering in the extreme. Her father would never call her “Georgie” again.
Worst of all, Nathaniel might profess to love her now, but would his affection withstand being forced into a union he hadn’t offered?
She cringed inwardly. They simply couldn’t be caught in a compromising position.
Which meant she had to make sure they didn’t get into one ever again.