Anne spent the afternoon hunched over her writing desk at her charity’s lodging house in St. Giles. The Christmas when Anne had been fourteen, there was an incident in which the Astley family’s longtime nursemaid, Bridget, fell pregnant. Bridget had sworn up and down that she had been raped by one of Lord Cheltenham’s houseguests, a Lord Fitzhenry. Anne’s father hadn’t wanted to believe this and had dismissed Bridget. Anne had pleaded with him on Bridget’s behalf. She had begged. She had even cried. But nothing she said had swayed him.
It was Michael who saved Bridget in the end by going to his own father and persuading the marquess to intervene. When Lord Redditch told Anne’s father that he believed that Fitzhenry fellow to be the worst sort of cad, that personally he believed Bridget when she said it had been rape, and that he thought Cheltenham was being overly harsh, Anne’s father had finally yielded.
The incident had shaken Anne’s sheltered existence to its very foundations. This wasn’t some whispered tale about a neighbor’s cousin’s maid, it was Bridget, someone Anne loved. It had opened Anne’s eyes to how fragile a woman’s place in the world truly was, and how easily a woman could find herself cast out and abandoned through no fault of her own. After that, Anne had become determined to assist those women upon whom society had turned its back, and the Ladies’ Society for the Relief of the Destitute was the result.
When Anne first came to London and began planning her charity, she had been shocked to discover the extent to which the cards were stacked against the poor, and especially poor women. One could be forgiven for assuming that a fancy West End mansion with marble floors and gilded plasterwork cost more to rent than a dilapidated shed in St. Giles, but you would be wrong—tenement housing rented for four times the price per square foot, and often more.
It was expensive to be poor. If you couldn’t afford to buy a full haunch of meat, you had to settle for scraps that were mostly gristle and bone, paying the same price per pound and getting little nutrition in return. It didn’t end there—the reputable shops wouldn’t sell tea in quantities of less than a pound, and thus the poor were forced to pay unscrupulous dealers twice the price per ounce for adulterated products. The same principle applied to everything from coal to oats to potatoes to sugar (sugar! As if Anne’s residents could afford sugar). If you couldn’t afford to buy in the quantities sold by the high street shops, you had no choice but to get your daily bread from the disreputable. And thus, those who could least afford it ended up being charged the dearest prices for their daily necessities.
The situation was bad for all the working class, but it was worse for poor women than for poor men, because women’s wages were on average one-third to one-half lower than men’s, even when they were performing the exact same work. Wedgwood paid the women who painted flowers on its china sixty percent of what it paid men to perform the same task. Male weavers were paid decent wages to knit stockings, but the women who seamed those same stockings by hand worked for pennies. And male tailors were paid a living wage, while women received an absolute pittance for their sewing.
The rationale behind this discrepancy was that men were the breadwinners, and that women shouldn’t be working at all. Well, even if one were to accept that as true, where did that leave women who were on their own with children to support? Society’s prevailing sentiment was that charity should be limited to the “deserving” poor, and that to aid unwed mothers would only promote licentiousness. It galled Anne to have to turn away women trying to provide a better life for their children because they had once sold their body to put food on the table. She was hard pressed to understand why society deemed the counsel of Jesus to “judge not” unapplicable. But, as much as she hated it, to maintain her status as a respectable woman and attract donors to the Ladies’ Society, Anne was forced to only accept applications from the “deserving” poor.
The good news, if one could call it that, was that even with the prospect of opening a second lodging house, there were more than enough respectable widows and legitimately born orphans to exhaust her budget a thousand times over. It seemed clear to Anne that the problem was structural: when women were paid such miserably low wages, their families inevitably faced destitution. And however much society might squawk were she to suggest raising wages for all women, surely everyone could agree that the situation was unfair to respectable widows struggling to support their children, especially when so many of their husbands had lost their lives in service to king and country.
And so Anne had written a pamphlet proposing to raise wages for widows with children to support. It had seemed logical at the time, but it had proved to be an unmitigated disaster. She had been mocked by polite society and had quickly learned that men didn’t appreciate a woman making even the gentlest suggestion as to how they should run their businesses.
Although her pamphlet had been a failure, the lodging house run by the Ladies’ Society was an unqualified success. It was simple in principle: treat its residents with basic fairness. Charge them a reasonable rent instead of the exorbitant rates charged by the slum owners to the east. Have a communal kitchen so groceries could be bought in bulk. Provide schooling for the children for their own benefit, but also so their mothers didn’t have to dose their little ones with laudanum so they could get some work done, an all-too-common practice.
People often lavished praise upon Anne for her charity toward these “wretched creatures,” which made her feel uncomfortable. Most of what she was doing didn’t even qualify as charity, although she supposed the twice-a-week meat-and-potatoes program for the hungry and the Christmas initiative she’d started last year to give plum puddings to poor children might count as such. But her lodging house charged rent, the only thing that set her apart from other landlords was that her goal was to break even, not to make a fortune upon the backs of the poor. And in Anne’s experience, there was nothing wretched about her residents. They were hard-working women who weren’t looking for a handout; all Anne really did was remove a few of the obstacles that made their situation untenable.
Anne smiled at the shout of children playing in the streets below. It had taken a while to accustom herself to the noise and bustle of London, having grown up in the idyllic countryside of the Cotswolds. But over the past four years, London had become her home. It was here in London that she had found a sense of purpose, something more meaningful than the endless rounds of balls and parties. And London was where the Ladies’ Society could do more good than anywhere else.
That made London precisely where she belonged.
She returned to her stack of correspondence. Toward the bottom, she found two pieces of good news. One came in the form of a letter from Mr. Archibald Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy, whose family ran an iron manufactory. He was requesting a meeting. Anne had no idea what that was about, but the Nettlethorpe-Ogilvys were one of the richest families in Britain, so she penned a delighted response, hoping she might be about to gain a new patron.
Anne’s heartbeat kicked up a notch as she read the sender’s name on the final letter in her stack: Marquess Graverley. For the past few weeks, she had been searching for a new vice president for her board of directors. And although all of the board members of the Ladies’ Society up until this point had been, well, ladies, it had occurred to her that every eligible young miss in London would flock to her events if one particular man was guaranteed to be in attendance...
And so yesterday she had swallowed her qualms and braced for almost certain rejection, and sent a letter to Marcus Latimer, the current Marquess Graverley and future Duke of Trevissick, who was without question the most eligible bachelor in all of England, asking if he would consider serving as her vice president. Lord Graverley did not have a reputation for his charitable works; much to the contrary, he was known for being every inch the rakehell. Yet, much to Anne’s astonishment, in the past three months he had become a fierce advocate for her society.
As she popped open the wax seal, Anne reminded herself to keep her expectations in check. Lord Graverley would surely decline, just like the last three candidates she had asked. Except… he hadn’t declined. He wrote that he would be honored to serve on the board of such a worthy organization.
She read the marquess’s note a third time, still not quite able to believe it. In addition to being a rich future duke, Lord Graverley was almost absurdly handsome, with pale hair, ice-blue eyes, the sort of cheekbones that would make a sculptor weep, and an elegant fencer’s physique.
Had someone asked her yesterday, Anne might have named Lord Graverley as the most handsome man of her acquaintance. Today, however…
A tremor ran across her shoulder blades at the memory of how Michael had looked last night. Although most women would probably still prefer Lord Graverley’s refined features, Anne found Michael’s newfound combination of tall, dark, and hulking far more affecting.
She shook her head to clear it. Gracious, what was this? Handsome was nowhere near the top of the list of qualities she sought in a husband. What she needed was a good man, of excellent character, and of the rank and position her family expected her to marry. Someone who would treat her kindly, help her start a family, and support her rather than limit her in her work for the Ladies’ Society.
Michael has every one of those qualities, a little voice whispered in the back of her head. Why should you not have it all?
It was the voice of a young Michael that answered, as clear and sure as the day he’d uttered the words. Absolutely never… Not in a million years…
She sighed. It did her no good to dwell upon such things. She needed to find a man who might actually consider marrying her.
There was a knock at the door. Anne looked up to see Mrs. Godfrey, who lived on-site and oversaw the day-to-day operations of her lodging house, flanked by two boys and bearing a tea tray.
“Good afternoon, Lady Wynters,” Mrs. Godfrey said. “I have Nick and Johnny here, just as you requested.”
“Thank you,” Anne said as Mrs. Godfrey set down the tea tray, curtseyed, and took her leave. Anne smiled at the boys. “Please, have a seat.”
She poured for the three of them and gestured for the boys to help themselves to the plate of currant biscuits, which they did with obvious delight.
“How are you settling in?” Anne asked.
“I wuv id here,” Johnny said through a mouthful of biscuit. Nick elbowed him and he swallowed, then cleared his throat. “Beg pardon, m’lady. Mrs. Briggs said I wasn’t to do that no more. That I need to swallow first.”
Anne nodded, taking care to keep a straight face. “That’s quite all right. And how about you, Nick? How do you like your new home?”
Nick blinked incredulously. “Are you bamming me? We get meat every day, and two rolls at breakfast, and I mean with butter.” He shook his head. “I never heard the like.”
Anne’s smile was bittersweet. Nick’s enthusiasm for something as simple as a roll was charming, even if the reason for it was distressing. Master sweeps were notorious for underfeeding their climbing boys so they could fit themselves into the tiniest of flues. Nick and Johnny had been so filthy they’d had to wash them in a tub out in the courtyard, and Anne had been distressed to see arms as thin as matchsticks and chests that were practically concave emerge as they peeled off their squalid clothes.
She cleared her throat. “And how do you boys find Mrs. Briggs?”
“Mrs. Briggs is grand,” Nick said as he selected another biscuit.
“Hasn’t clouted us once,” Johnny added.
“I should hope not,” Anne said, setting aside her teacup. “I was wondering if you two could tell me how you came to be working for your former master sweep.”
“You mean Mr. Smithers?” Johnny asked.
“The very one.”
“Well… uh…” Johnny scratched the side of his nose. “My papa was in the army. My mum went with him. But they both died. This was…” He screwed up his face in concentration.
“Smithers took Johnny on about two months ago,” Nick offered.
“Yeah, two months, I guess. I went home on a ship. One of the officers said I’d live with a new family. A carriage came and took me to Mr. Smithers.”
“A carriage?” Anne leaned forward. “Do you mean Mr. Smithers came to collect you in a hackney carriage?”
“No, there wasn’t no one inside,” Johnny confirmed. “And it wasn’t no hackney. It was a fancy carriage. Black and shiny with a golden crest on the door.”
“I remember the crest, too,” Nick said. “That sounds just like the carriage that came for me.”
A crest would make it possible to identify the carriage. Now they were getting somewhere. “What was it on the crest?” Anne asked.
Johnny said, “It was two pigs,” in the same instant Nick said, “A pair of elephants.”
“It weren’t no elephant,” Johnny said. “Aren’t they the ones with long noses?”
“It was elephants,” Nick insisted. “They did have a long nose, and tusks.”
The two boys fell to arguing about it. Anne sighed. This was a good reminder that the memories of small children were fallible. Not that she had spent hours memorizing every crest in Debrett’s Peerage as her mother had desired, but she felt fairly certain no noble house would select a lowly pig for its emblem, and elephants seemed only a little less far-fetched.
Anne cleared her throat. “You say this same carriage came for you, too, Nick?”
“Yes, m’lady. My father was in the army, too. The 18th Royal Hussars.” Nick puffed out his chest. “My mum followed the drum, too, and my parents were both killed. There was an officer, maybe a lieutenant…” Nick bit his lip, thinking. “I don’t recall his name, but he’d lost his leg and was being sent home. He’s the one who looked after me. Said he was going to get me some kind of ship, a print ship, maybe?”
“An apprenticeship?” Anne asked.
Nick snapped his fingers. “That’s the one. The carriage came for me twice. The first time it was empty. I remember my lieutenant got really mad. Said he wasn’t just going to send Robert Palmer’s only son off to God knows where in some empty carriage. So he wrote a letter, and a few days later, the carriage came again.”
“And was Mr. Smithers in it this time?” Anne asked.
“Not Smithers,” Nick said. “A gentleman. Talked like you do. So the lieutenant shook my hand and let me get in the carriage, and then the gentleman took me to this house. I stayed there a few days before Mr. Smithers took me away.”
“Do you remember this gentleman’s name?” Anne asked.
“No, ma’am, I don’t think he said. He was a real strange cove. It was dusk when he came to collect me, and he refused to get out of the carriage. Shook the lieutenant’s hand through the window. He had this big tricorn hat pulled down over his face, and he hunched back in the corner of the carriage. But at one point the lights of another carriage came straight through the window, and I got a look at his face. He caught me staring, and he clouted me.”
“What did he look like?” Anne asked. “What color was his hair, his eyes?”
Nick screwed up his face. “I… I couldn’t say. It was dark, and he had that hat on.”
Anne tamped down the hope that had been rising in her chest. “Then you wouldn’t recognize him?”
Nick bit his lip, considering. “I think I would, m’lady. I’ve a good memory for faces, and I can still picture his. It’s hard to describe on account of his face being so plain. He didn’t have a hook nose, or a scar, or anything like that.”
“How long ago was this?” Anne asked.
“Uh… I passed four Christmases with Mr. Smithers. So sometime thereabouts.”
“You said something about a house,” Anne said. “Can you describe it?”
“It wasn’t nothing fancy. Just a room, and about eight or ten boys sleeping on the floor. The master sweeps would come and take one of us away, another boy would arrive, that sort of thing.”
This house was another potential lead. “Do you remember whereabouts it was?” Anne asked.
“I don’t, but I do recall it was near a kiln,” Nick said, waving a hand in front of his nose.
Johnny perked up beside him. “That’s right—I remember the smell!”
“A kiln?” Anne asked. “You’re sure?”
“Dead sure.” Nick puffed out his scrawny chest. “As a sweep, I consider myself a bit of an expert on chimneys and their smells.”
“You mentioned there was a steady stream of boys,” Anne said. “How old were these boys?”
“Right around Johnny’s age, m’lady.”
“I see. And did this gentleman from the carriage come inside with you?”
“He didn’t. There were three or four men inside who watched us,” Nick added. He screwed up his face in concentration, then shook his head. “That’s about all I can recall.”
Anne thanked the boys and sent them back to Mrs. Briggs with a handkerchief-full of biscuits.
Anne pulled out paper and quill to write everything down before she forgot it. Johnny and Nick had provided several pieces of information—the crest on the carriage door, the kiln, and the lieutenant from the 18th Royal Hussars—which had the potential to be a break in the case. The crest suggested that “his lordship” might indeed be a lord.
She next dashed off a note to Samuel, then rubbed her temple as she considered whether she should write one more letter. You always had to be careful before you started asking questions. You never knew who might be conspiring with a criminal organization. But from what Nick had said, it sounded like the officer who brought him home had genuinely cared what had happened to his fallen soldier’s son and had thought he was placing Nick in a legitimate apprenticeship.
Anne decided the risk was worth it. She pulled out a fresh sheet of foolscap and dashed off a note to Horse Guards, asking if they had any record of an officer of the 18th Royal Hussars who had returned home about four years ago after losing a leg.
She sealed the letter, placed it on her stack of outgoing correspondence, and said a silent prayer that this lieutenant could be found.