“I take it, by your unsubtle change of subject and distinct lack of answer to my original question before the concept of Shakespeare confused you, that it’s true?” She gave him one of her withering schoolmistress’s looks as if he had indeed been a bad boy. “Youarehere in Covent Garden this morning because you’ve gambled yet another night away and haven’t yet been to bed.”
As it was a definitive statement rather than a question, he decided not to disabuse her of her predictable outrage, because it was always predictable whenever he was concerned. For all her charitable deeds, and her habit of trying to see the good in everyone else, she had never once given him the benefit of the doubt. Never mind that he had turned out to be more hero than villain all those years ago when she had pinned him to the ground enraged. He had been on a covert, but intensely personal, mission to thwart his odious father from stealing Giles’s dukedom.
And there was no point correcting her that he didn’t gamble any night away, his customers did, while he worked his fingers to the bone to make sure they all had a good time. Why would he attempt to when Venus was so wedded to her initial, visceral loathing of him that she could never see past it? And it went without saying that that suitedhim right down to the ground, because everything about the tart vixen appealed to him too much and he really didn’t need that sort of distraction in his life.
So instead he shrugged, deliberately vague about how he came to be here so that her pretty eyes narrowed his way again.
“I’m merely taking a walk before I hit the mattress. Stretching my legs and getting some fresh air after a stuffy night spent indoors. And by fresh I mean frigid, as it’s cold enough to freeze your kn…” Perhaps not a turn of phrase suitable for such a prim and proper young lady’s ears? “Certainly colder than I’ve seen it in years.”
“We are due more apparently.” She offered him a begrudging half smile, because the weather was always the safest topic of any here in England. In his humble opinion, the whole country was as unhealthily obsessed with it as they were with drinking their awful tea. “Imminent and heavy. So it is probably advisable to stay inside and batten down the hatches while the storm clouds above do their worst.” She pointed to the ominous violet-gray clouds that hung heavily over the city like a shroud. “Especially if we have another blizzard like we did on Thursday.”
“Which begs the obvious question, Miss Venus—” She almost succeeded in covering the wince at the second mention of her hated name in as many minutes, but he couldn’t suppress all of his amusement at that. “—seeing as youalwaysgo to bed at a respectable hour, what business brings you to the bowels of Covent Garden this chilly blizzard-loomin’ morning?”
She beamed. “Why, the orphanage, of course. Snow or no snow, I still have a full day of lessons ahead, and I couldn’t let my students down.”
He knew that she spent most of her days teaching the forgotten and motherless children of the slums. It was impossible to avoid that knowledge when her entire family, and even his flippant cousin Giles, viewed her as some sort of saint who walked on water.
“I didn’t realize that washere.”
Please let it not be right here!
She laughed and that made her fine eyes sparkle. “I know you spend most of your time in your den of iniquity at the docks nowadays, but where else do you expect the Covent Garden Asylum for Orphans to be, Galahad, if not here—inCovent Garden?” She wafted her gloved hand toward the misaligned front door he had only just been contemplating and the small, dull brass plate.
He squinted at the tiny words engraved on it in abject horror before he blinked back, stunned. “Thisis your famous orphanage?” They were neighbors!
Neighbors!
“This?”
“It is indeed.” She bristled at his obvious disgust and set her jaw, reading the cause of it entirely wrong. “And irrespective of what you might think of its shabby exterior, Galahad Sinclair—” She looked him up and down as if the very sight of him offended her. “—weare rightly proud of what goes on inside.”
And just like that, there was a big, fat, unwelcome fly flapping in his ointment.
Chapter Two
I still cannot decide whether I want to live in a quaint thatched cottage or a castle. I suppose that all depends on whether I marry a farmer or a prince. I have no objection to a farmer, of course, as the world needs food, but think it would be more romantic to wait for a prince…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 14
“Good morning, Reverend… Mrs. Witherspoon.” Vee stripped off her gloves and stuffed them in the pockets of her coat before she hung it on the hook behind the back-office door. She forced a cheery smile at the two occupants, even though five minutes with Galahad Sinclair had thoroughly spoiled her good mood.
That cocky, golden-haired, green-eyed devil never failed to rub her the wrong way no matter how many times she promised herself that she wouldn’t allow his barbed but well-aimedMiss Venusesto get under her skin. The handsome wretch always managed to make her feel both stupid and self-conscious. As if he saw her, everything she stood for and everything she said or did, as one big joke. And a pitiable, humorless joke to boot, which really galled because she had an excellent sense of humor. Usually. It just went into hiding around him.
“Ah—you are back!” The jolly-faced and white-haired Reverend Smythe was sitting behind his desk sipping his morning tea ashe opened his correspondence, while the small, rotund, but indomitable matron who kept the orphanage running like clockwork bustled around him fussing. “We thought you’d be snowed in at Hampshire for weeks with this dreadful weather, didn’t we, Mrs. Witherspoon? We had a full twelve inches here on Thursday. It took an hour to shovel a path to the doorway.”
“We had closer to a foot and a half in Fareham that day, but thankfully nothing since. Hence the main roads were quickly cleared, and I was able to travel home only five days later than I originally planned.” She sat opposite the reverend as a steaming hot cup of tea appeared before her.
“Aside from a week’s worth of lessons and the shoveling of all that snow, what else have I missed?” She knew already a lot would have happened in the ten days she had spent in Hampshire with her sister, because thanks to the forty children who called this home, this place was always a swirling vortex of activity. It was one of the reasons she loved working here. You never quite knew what to expect from one day to the next. Whether that be a minor triumph or a major calamity, there was never a dull moment.
“The pump outside froze, so we’ve been having the devil of a job getting water.” True to form, Mrs. Witherspoon began to list them while ticking them off on her fingers. “But we did get a nice, unexpected donation from the Guild of Tailors and a promise to take on two more apprentices next year as soon as we have some reliable boys turn twelve.”
Vee huffed. “Only two?” Placing the older children with decent masters to learn a trade was getting harder and harder.
Plenty of the unscrupulous ones wanted orphans, of course, to exploit and work into the ground, which was precisely why she thoroughly vetted them before she allowed anyone access to theirs. It was the sworn mission of the Covent Garden Asylum for Orphans to give the unfortunate children within its walls a decent future—and certainly one that was better than their past—so she owed them all her utmost diligence.If they fell back into the vicious circle of poverty and hopelessness from whence they came, it would be near impossible for them to ever climb back out.
That Vee knew from bitter personal experience.
But while she had dropped almost to the bottom of that bleak pit of despair, at least she had always had Minerva and Diana, her older sisters, beside her. Most of the children here had no one.
