Scrawled orders came in a note on Cecy’s breakfast tray, delivered at five minutes short of noon: Carriage wear. Warm, inconspicuous. Boots. Be ready by one. NB
To which she promptly replied: Mr. Black. I must decline your gracious invitation. I own nothing inconspicuous. CL.
This brief exchange resulted in the delivery of a perfectly hideous cloak and broad-brimmed bonnet of boiled wool in an indeterminate color between brown and gray. With a grimace of distaste Cecy allowed Emerson to wrap it around her highly fashionable walking dress of a dark blue wool so fine it rippled like silk. The maid set the bonnet over Cecy’s perfectly arranged hair, tweaking a curl to fall over each ear, before tying the limp ribbons in a bow on one side—which fashionable touch did nothing to improve the impossibly drab creation, which resembled nothing so much as horse blinders! Cecy, rejecting so much as a glance into the pier glass above her dressing table, shuddered and drew on her gloves.
“Well, miss,” Emerson declared. “You did say you wanted to leave your old life behind.”
Cecy sniffed, grumbling, “’Tis like blinkers on a carriage horse. I can see nowhere but straight ahead.” Nor would she have to worry about any gentleman approaching her, having been overwhelmed by the sight of her beauty.
“Perhaps ’tis just as well, miss. If you be going to the park, you’ll not want anyone to recognize you, particularly with that man. And if you be going to his part of town, then heaven forfend anyone should see your face.”
“Indeed,” Cecy murmured as she drew on her gloves. Emerson might be more of a treasure than her unprepossessing demeanor indicated.
Suddenly, the drab cloak and bonnet became her friends, a disguise in which she could hide from everyone she knew, particularly Longmere. “Thank you, Emerson.” Welcoming the anonymity, Cecy began her journey down several flights of stairs to the entry hall below.
He was waiting in the hall, his gray eyes surveying her every step down the final flight of stairs. A scowl for her boots, which were undoubtedly too highly polished. A nod of approval for the cloak. A curl of his lips for the bonnet. Imperious fingers stretched out, ruthlessly tucking the two sandy brown curls out of sight. At his touch Cecy’s breath caught, her head swirled. She couldn’t have protested if her life depended on it. Nicholas Black had just eradicated her last bit of femininity, yet she had never been more aware of a man in her life. Or of her own fragility. Not even when Longmere was beating her half to death.
Dear God, what had she done, coming to this place?
Leaped out of frying pan into the fire, that’s what! mocked her inner voice.
One good thing about the bonnet, Cecy discovered as her employer seated himself beside her in the shiny black closed carriage—its wide wings protected her from so much as a glimpse of her companion. She sat stiffly upright, picturing herself alone, on her way to some grand ton event, a party at Carlton House perhaps or a ball at Osterley. A delightful fancy full of lively chatter, brilliant colors, and might-have-beens, until a stern voice said, “Miss Lilly?”
The carriage had stopped. She turned her head toward the door, and fear struck. The Devil beckoned her, hand outstretched, urging her toward the unknown, toward a job whose duties she could not understand, let alone perform. At least that’s what she thought they were doing at this dilapidated three-story building which sagged only slightly less than the other elderly buildings around it. He hadn’t said a word, of course, though he’d had several miles to prepare her for whatever she was about to see.
Men!
“Miss Lilly!” More demanding. Cecy, eyes narrowed, took his hand and descended from the coach, pulling the boiled wool cloak tight around her. Nicholas Black had been right, blast him. This place—this entire section of London—was no place for a carriage gown of blue superfine.
Cecy gaped as a matron welcomed them with a warm smile—an unaccountable reaction to Nick Black. The woman led them down a central corridor with classrooms on both sides, filled with children whose sharp eyes slanted in their direction as they passed by. In some rooms the hum of young voices reading aloud faded when the children saw them, only to resume again full force as the visitors went out of sight.
Orphanage. School. Plain but clean. Discipline strong but not rigid.
Dear Lord! She was actually doing it. Inspecting, cataloging, accepting Mr. Black’s word that he actually wanted her opinion.
Surely it was all a hum . . . Charity had no place in the world of Nick Black. And yet they were here. The matron knew him. The children as well. That wasn’t idle curiosity she’d seen on their faces. Of course with a man of Nick Black’s reputation, who knew . . .?
As they entered what appeared to be a common room, warmed by a coal fire, the matron paused. “A proper greeting for your benefactor and his guest,” she announced. A bevy of children shot to their feet, abandoning whatever tasks they had been assigned. The boys each sketched a bow, the girls curtsied.
“G’day, Guv,” said a boy of about nine. “What’cha done with Fetch. Ain’t he with y’ today?”
“Fetch is fetching,” Nick Black returned easily. “Running errands, while I show Miss Lilly some parts of London she hasn’t seen before.”
“So who’s the lyedy, Guv?” an older boy asked flat-out, giving Cecy an assessment so sharp it almost made her squirm.
“Jeremiah!” the matron barked.
The boy shrugged. “Was only askin’. Guv never brought no mort with him afore.”
“Miss Lilly,” her employer informed him, “is considering whether or not she is willing to work with the lot of you, maybe see if she can turn you into proper nobs.”
Cecy flushed when every last child dissolved into giggles, not seeming to mind the thinly veiled mockery of the remark. The matron offered Cecy a sympathetic glance. “Never mind them, miss. They’re all fly to the time of day, too wise to expect miracles. We’re happy to have any help we can get. In whatever form you might manage it.”
Cecy managed to hide her chagrin. Evidently, the woman thought she was a wealthy patron, someone considering a donation . . .
No, of course not. Not in such a hideous cloak and bonnet. So, merciful heavens, what must the matron be thinking?
That you are what you are, a sinner in search of redemption.
Meekly, Cecy followed the matron as she continued their tour, leading them through the refectory and up steep stairs to two large rooms filled wall to wall with cots, one room for boys and one for girls. Bleak but clean and neat. Nonetheless, she shuddered. Surely bright colors must be possible somewhere . . .
Oh, no. She was doing it again. Taking Nick Black seriously, her mind already spinning into possibilities for improvement.
As if he sensed her train of thought, as they climbed back into the coach Nick Black said, “The whole house will be part of your duties from now on. Not an easy task. The children need to learn how to make their way in the world without sliding back to mudlarking and flash houses. We are also obligated to find them suitable positions when they’re old enough.”
A rap on the ceiling and the coach rumbled into motion. “We’re off to the second of the two homes I sponsor for children of the streets,” he deigned to inform her, his voice as cool as the February day. “They don’t have to be orphans. Some know who their mothers are, some do not. A few even know their fathers. We take any smart enough to know they want something better than thieving or earning their living as whores, male or female.”
What? Cecy blinked, swallowed, picturing the little faces they’d just left behind. She hadn’t spent time in London’s Covent Garden underworld without knowing about male whores, but children . . .? Somehow that, like Longmere’s potential for abuse, had miraculously passed her by.
“Well, Miss Lilly?” her employer snapped. “Are you strong enough to face the evil and compassionate enough to forgive the children for sins not of their making?”
“I would like to be,” Cecy returned faintly. “But how can anyone know until they’re tested? I would have sworn there was no part of the life of a courtesan that would not suit me . . .”
“Fair enough.” He cleared his throat and Cecy turned her head so she could look directly into his face. The gray eyes were as cool as ever, his mouth a thin line, but somehow she got the impression his attitude toward her had mellowed ever so slightly.
Unlikely, she corrected. Nicholas Black was the most unreachable man she had ever met. A month ago, she would have considered him a challenge. Now, her only interest was pleasing him enough to keep a roof over her head and food in her mouth.
And the right to sleep alone in her bed.
How far the courtesan had fallen.
The second home for London’s street children was much like the first, though the location in the narrow rabbit warren of Seven Dials was more depressing, the conditions inside rougher, smellier, and definitely not as clean. Clearly, work was needed, though Cecy doubted Mrs. Dawes, the formidable matron would listen to a single word offered by the former mistress of the Marquess of Longmere.
But when she said as much to Nick Black, he stated in a tone so authoritative it might have come straight from the Devil himself, “Mrs. Dawes will listen to whomever I tell her to listen.”
And that was that.
“A change of pace,” Mr. Black offered as the carriage turned north—or at least that’s the direction Cecy thought they were going as row houses dwindled, giving way to fields and farms. She wouldn’t ask him, blast the man. Let him be mysterious if he wished. But she pushed back her bonnet so she could see better. Ah, she’d almost forgotten how lovely the countryside could be—fresh air, fallow fields, sunshine peeking through clouds not filled with smoke. The pungent odor of manure. This was the England of her childhood. Alas, the journey ended all too soon.
They turned down a muddy lane to a large farm, driving past the disinterested gaze of a herd of cows and past what appeared to be a dairy, pulling up to a sprawling farmhouse. This time, instead of the drone of children reading out loud, they were met by the cry of squalling infants. Multiple infants. But none screaming in rage or pain. Just feed me, hold me, change my nappie, Cecy thought, unsure how she could be so certain. The smell of fresh-baked bread wafted down the corridor in front of them as they followed a heavily pregnant girl to a seat in the parlor. “I’ll get Mrs. Jamison straight away,” she told them and lumbered off.
Cecy drew in a deep breath. “Fresh bread and stew,” she pronounced, sighing in approval. “Do we stay for dinner?”
“We do not.”
“Oh.”
“As you have likely guessed,” her employer said, “this is a home for abandoned women—those with no husbands and a child on the way. Or those who don’t wish their husbands to come anywhere near their babe,” he added with a bleak emphasis that raised goosebumps on Cecy’s arms. “This too will be part of your job. An important part, as these are women who will trust another female far more readily than they’ll ever trust me.”
In characteristic style his voice had no inflection, but the message was pointed. Only a woman who had suffered . . . only a woman who knew what it was to be alone and powerless could understand the occupants of this house.
She’d once been a young lady, Cecy thought. A daughter of country gentry who had risen to courtesan of a peer. At least she had considered it a rise from her bleak childhood . . . until she’d been left for flotsam in the gutter. A woman whose only power now derived from friendship with the scandalous Lady Juliana Rivenhall and the largesse of a former guttersnipe, who, some said, held the reins of London’s Underworld in his hands.
Blood money, that’s what Nick Black spent on his charity projects. The Devil paying his dues. When he must know there was no way the heavens would ever open for such a monumental sinner.
More likely, he was casting good works in the ton’s teeth. Nicholas Black was a man who would enjoy the irony, enjoy thumbing his nose at Parliament, magistrates, judges. The church. At all those who should have a care for the helpless. And did not.
Mrs. Jamison, the matron, interrupted Cecy’s thoughts, sweeping her off on a tour of the farmhouse, leaving Mr. Black behind in the drawing room. Boone Farm was not an establishment where men were allowed anywhere but the parlor, the barn, and the stables.
They were walking down a corridor on the dormered third floor when Cecy gasped and retraced her steps, staring into a room where a young woman with unrelentingly straight dark hair sat, bent over the sheet she was mending. “Holly?” As the girl looked up, Cecy threw back her bonnet, revealing her face.
“Cecy?” Holly Hammond leaped to her feet, the sheet pooling on the floor, revealing a figure that was clearly increasing.
“How? I mean . . .” Cecy faltered, blushing hotly. “I beg your pardon,” she cried, “but I thought you were well set, gone with the banker’s son, not that young lord we all knew wouldn’t . . .” She ground to a halt, floundering. “Oh Holly, I know you were paying attention when we were taught . . . Hell’s hounds!” she exclaimed, dropping to her knees beside her friend. “Tell me how you got yourself into such a fix.”