Articles on new plant discoveries. A history on William Dampier, a buccaneer who’d plundered and murdered his way around the world and yet never forgot his flower press. Words of devotion. Words of excitement.
Before her father’s death, she’d read these with such anticipation, but afterwards…
She shook her head; it was no use.
Verity rose from the chaise and drifted to the small rack of gardening implements, grasped the watering can and plunged it into the barrel of water that connected with the drainpipes outside.
Then she pottered about, admired new blooms and watched as a shadow shifted across a broad palm leaf like a moondial. Her melancholy gently faded as she watered and tended, snipped off dead leaves and breathed in the scent of life.
She added another log to the stove and it roared back into life, giving life…
After a good while, she sat once more and tidied the articles and letters together in order to return them to within the box.
Because now, after all these years, she could allow herself to release the guilt she had held onto. For surely that young girl had been given no choice but to do what she had. If anything, his heartfelt devotion in those letters, that fire which had burned bright for faraway lands, those maps, had compelled her decision.
And as for now…
Well, nothing had really changed. In fact, the earldom had made it all so much worse.
Pandora herself had slammed the lid shut on her box, to keep hope locked within, to keep hope locked within the hearts of us all.
But Verity could not do likewise. She steeled her heart and did what she must…
Breathed deep and let hope slip away forever.
Quiet as a forgotten dream.
16
DO NOT HALLOO TILL YOU ARE OUT OF THE WOOD.
The journey from Mayfair to the furthest reaches of Whitechapel had presented Miles with a microcosm of London within two rain-sodden hours.
It had begun with the elegant townhouses of the gentry, then given way to the commercial delights of Oxford Street, before his hackney had trundled down Great Russell Street, judiciously avoiding St Giles Rookery.
The smart area of Holborn with its ancient legal entities had passed – Gray’s Inn and the Old Bailey Courts – then, likely no coincidence, Newgate Prison.
Saint Paul’s Cathedral had loomed large through the rain, then set them forth into Cheapside – not so cheap as it was home to the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange.
Aldgate had come and gone, where the defensive gates to the original city of London had been situated, before his destination of Whitechapel had arrived, its spine being the Great Essex Road and a plethora of coaching inns.
The driver now trundled aside the white-painted Saint Mary’s Chapel, continued past the workhouse and halted at a long building with modest north façade and Doric porch.
With instructions to collect him in an hour, Miles disembarked. For these less salubrious outskirts, he’d worn one of his old army coats over plain clobber, walking cane left at home although the comforting muzzle of his double-barrelled flintlock still nudged his hip.
He removed his gloves and studied the building. Opened some fifty years ago as a purpose-built infirmary, The London Hospital was funded by annual subscriptions and charity donations. Admission was restricted to non-contagious ailments, but it did cater to the impoverished populace as much as possible and was a testament to the determination and philanthropy of the founders that it had been built at all.
Nigh three hundred patients could be accommodated, the rear wing and two to the south containing the wards.
And a certain Jacob Dempster.
For another grubby lad had found his way to the kitchens this morning to deliver a message from the Prince…
Jacob Dempster
The London Hospital Whitechapel
Ward 5
