Page 1 of Return to Wildsyde

Prologue

My Lord Buchanan,

It is with deep regret that I write to inform you that the bodies of your wife and an unidentified male were this morning found off the coast of Rattray. We believe they ran into difficulties and the boat broke up on the rocks there. The necessary arrangements are in hand to restore your wife’s body to you for burial.

With my sincere condolences,

―Excerpt of a letter from Mr Hamish McDonald, Justice of the Peace, to The Right Hon’ble Lyall Anderson, Viscount Buchanan, (son of The Right Hon’ble Ruth and Gorden Anderson, The Countess and Earl of Morven).

6th May 1845, Blythe Tenement, Tottenham Court Road, Camden, London.

“Come now, my precious darling. We’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t cooperate with me, now, are we? That’s the way, lovely boy,” Luella crooned, her tone one that generations of Fulbrights had used to wheedle their own way. “If you’d just come a little closer, we could… Drat you!”

The cat edged farther back along the ledge, out of grabbing distance, and Luella groaned.

“Have you got him?” Mrs Wilkinson asked eagerly.

“No, the dam—dear creature is being a little stubborn.”

“Oh, my goodness.”

Luella pulled her head in from the window to see the spare, bent figure of Mrs Wilkinson wringing her handkerchief, her watery blue eyes heavy with reproach. “But you promised, Lulu.”

“I did,” Luella said brightly, cursing herself for having done so. “Just… give me a moment.”

She darted out of the door, ran down the stairs of the dingy tenement building and out into the bustle of the street beyond. She hurried past the pawnbrokers—where she had spent far too much time of late—and Barney’s Coffee Shop, then avoided a drunk intent on dancing with her outside the rag and bottle shop, and made it to the butcher, who gave her a baleful glance and folded his arms.

“No,” he said.

Luella shot him her most winning smile and said brightly, “It’s all right, Mr Tucker. I’m not here to ask for more on tick.”

“No, and you ain’t here to pay, neither,” he said, his mouth set in a determined line.

Luella sighed, unable to deny it, but sent him her most melting look of pleading. Her wide, grey eyes were her best feature, everyone said so, and Papa had made her practice this appealing look in the mirror until it was perfect. None of the Fulbright line except for her cousin Lilith could lay claim to beauty. Though they were all well enough to look at—and Luella was a pretty girl, it was true—this was not their strength. Papa said fate had blessed her with charm and charisma and not much else. Pa had told her that everyone wanted something and, as an attractive woman, men would fall over themselves to do what she wanted in the hopes of pleasing her. She wasn’t so naive that she believed pleasing her was all they’d want, though.

Luella knew she could do it too, as she was doing now, but much to her father’s fury, she rarely practised it. He found her disgust at the way of life he and many of their close kin favoured, utterly unaccountable. He father thought the idea that she wished to make a respectable living quite laughable. Still, now and then there was no other option than to bat her eyelashes, and it wasn’t as though she was trying to con the butcher.

“Please, Mr Tucker. Mrs Wilkinson’s cat is stuck out on the ledge outside her window and she’s on the third floor. It won’t come in, and she’s beside herself. Don’t you have just a little bit of fat, or even gristle, that I could take to tempt him back inside?”

Mr Tucker sighed and shook his head. “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”

“No, it’s true, I swear it,” Luella pleaded, noting the softening in his expression. She had him now. If her father had seen her, he would have told her to go in for the kill and at least get a couple of sausages off the fellow. Her stomach growled at the idea, but she ignored it with determination. “Look, that little scrap of fat you just cut off there, that’s all I need. Oh, please, Mr Tucker. She’s just a lonely old lady, and the cat is her only company. She’s so worried she’ll probably have an apoplexy and turn up her toes if I don’t—”

“Oh, bleedin’ hell, go on, take it,” Mr Tucker protested, wrapping the sliver of fat in a bit of newspaper and handing it over the counter to her. “Go on now and take your violins with you.”

“Thank you!” Luella grabbed the thin parcel and blew him a kiss before running out of the door again.

She ran back to the apartment block: a tall, neglected building with soot-coloured brickwork and hardly a window without a broken pane of glass. Mrs Heeley, a woman who might have been anywhere between forty and sixty, sat on the steps, watching the world go by and taking desultory swigs from a gin bottle.

“Good afternoon,” Luella said as she sidestepped something disgusting. She gave a little squeak as a rat ran over her foot and behind the step Mrs Heeley was sitting on. The woman didn’t so much as blink.

With a shudder, Luella hurried into the building and on up the stairs, avoiding the rotten tread which had fallen through and stepping over the one which would go any day now.

“Where have you been?” Mrs Wilkinson cried, still wringing her handkerchief.

“You’ll see,” Luella said breathlessly as she unwrapped the newspaper and hung out of the window again to see the big ginger tom glaring at her. “Now, my fine fellow, look what I have.”

Luella held the thin piece of fat out, and the cat sniffed the air.