Her confidence heartened me. By the time we reached Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Sir John Soane’s interesting museum, I’d formed an idea. It was audacious, and Daniel would not thank me when he learned of it, but if I was successful, I’d have eyes and ears in that house. Whenever Daniel was in danger, I’d be able to act.
After we’d looked over Sir John Soane’s collection of scale models of ancient buildings, Grace and I had a longer walk and a lovely tea out before I returned her home.
I was always heavyhearted when I said good-bye to Grace on Thursday evenings, but today I walked to busy Cheapside with renewed purpose. Eventually I found an empty hansom and stepped aboard.
“Where to, missus?” the cabbie called to me as I closed the door and settled the lap robe.
“Portobello Road,” I told him. “Hurry, before the market shuts for the night.”
2
Portobello Road lay in Kensington, north of the palace there, and led up a hill that ultimately ended in a burial ground and the prison of Wormwood Scrubs. A market for fruits and vegetables and other goods often set up in Portobello Road, including a few stalls for trinkets and sundries—nothing valuable but nice to have.
It was one of these bric-a-brac stalls that I made for as the afternoon merged into a long, late-spring twilight. I walked slowly along the road, pausing often, as though I browsed for curios. I did spy a lovely comb and brush set on one table that I contemplated purchasing for Grace, if I decided it was worth the thruppence asked for it.
But I was not here to buy things. I halted for a time in front of the stall I’d sought, without letting on why I was there. The stall’s table was strewn with bits and bobs of all sorts—thin chains with lockets, colorful little boxes, finger rings, pen and ink trays with inkpots missing their lids, mirrors and brushes,empty perfume bottles, and cracked and faded cups celebrating Queen Victoria’s coronation more than forty years ago.
Lounging in a chair behind the pile of trinkets was a lady with a black jacket buttoned to her chin, her long legs stretched out under a bright blue skirt. She had very dark hair, its color due more to artifice than nature, and a pair of lively blue eyes under a worn feathered hat five years out of fashion.
Those eyes focused on me, at first shrewdly—a seller deciding how to entice a customer—then with a jolt of recognition. She sprang to her feet with a swing of skirts and gaped at me over the table.
“Well, if it ain’t Katie bloomin’ ’Olloway, come to slum in the Portobello Road,” she screeched to all and sundry.
“Kat,” I corrected her, though she knew exactly what my name was. “How are you, Hannah?”
“Keeping. I’m keeping.” Hannah Dunnett grinned at me, showing clean but crooked teeth. “Nothing on this table’s nicked, if that’s what you’ve come up this ’ill to twit me about. Leastways, not by me. I pick things up here and there, so who knows? How about you, me dear old darling? Widowed now, ain’t ya, poor thing, with a little girl to bring up on your own.”
“I am doing well, thank you for asking.” I hadn’t spoken to Hannah in years, but her infectious friendliness made me wonder why I’d waited so long. When one struggled, I supposed, one felt that one had to do it alone. “My daughter is growing tall and so beautiful.”
For a moment, I forgot everything difficult in my life. Grace had told me today she did not want to be a young lady, but she already was one. She was almost as tall as I was, with her brown hair sleek and curling, her face holding the adult beauty she would soon achieve.
“Aw,” Hannah said as she studied my expression. “I’m glad for ya. I’d love to see her.”
“An excellent idea. I’ll bring her along one day.”
“No, ya won’t.” Hannah bellowed a laugh. “You’ve forgotten all about your friends, haven’t ya? Dragging yourself from hoity-toity Mayfair, where you’re queen of cooks. I’ve heard all about you, Katie H., in your bloomin’ mansion.”
“Cease with your bloomin’ this and bloomin’ that,” I admonished her. “You sound ridiculous.”
“That’s the way us Cockneys are supposed to talk. Innit?” Hannah laughed again, her warmth of character I remembered so well filling the space.
“You can sound like anyone you wish,” I told her. “I’ve heard you do it.”
“That’s true. I can talk like a toff if I want.” Hannah drew herself up and took on the stuffy tones of a lady of breeding. “How do you do, madam? May I tempt you with a fine piece of jewelry for your charming daughter?”
“I have few coins to spare.” I turned over one of the little boxes, which held a painting of a girl with golden curls on it. The girl reminded me of Grace when she was younger, though her hair was a different shade. The box was the least worn of those on the table, and the tiny hinges and catch still worked. “But I might have this.”
“A penny for it.” Hannah relaxed into her own voice, which hailed from the same part of London as mine. “I know that’s dear for such a trinket, but I have it on authority it used to belong to a duchess.”
“It never did, and you know it.” I reached into my coin purse and extracted a copper penny. “These are turned out in a factory somewhere in the north. But it’s pretty enough.”
Hannah chortled as she snatched up the coin and tucked itinto her pocket. “You were always sharp, weren’t ya? Now, I know you didn’t make your way to me ’umble little stall to pass the time of day and buy a present for your girl. What’cha want, Katie?”
“Do you do domestic work any longer?” I asked, as though idly curious. “Or are you a merchant only now?”
“Ah, me.” Hannah collapsed into her chair and heaved her cracked leather boots onto an upturned crate. “I never took to life in service. I only got myself into that house as upstairs maid so I could pinch things, and you know it.”
Hannah had been working in a large house where I’d been hired as a kitchen assistant before my marriage. Her name had not been Hannah at the time—she’d given our mistress a false one. I’d never suspected her as anything other than a prim and rather disdainful upstairs maid in her starched cap and pinafore, until the night I’d walked into the second-floor sitting room and found her calmly robbing the mistress’s desk.
