Page 36 of Return to Wildsyde

Lyall laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Jack, she’s fine, I promise. Perhaps she has turned her ankle in a rabbit hole and it’s taking her a long time to get home but I’m certain it’s nothing serious. I’ll find her, I promise ye.”

Jack nodded, returning a brave smile. “Yes. Thank you, my… thank you, Lyall.”

“No bother. Now run along and eat yer dinner afore Mrs Baillie skelps ye for spoiling all her hard work.”

“But ought I not to come and—”

“Get, now,” Lyall said firmly, pointing at the castle. “I mean it.”

Jack nodded and ran back indoors.

Lyall hurried to saddle a horse the moment the boy had gone. What he’d said to Jack was true, but the cliffs could be treacherous, and if the foolish girl had gone down to the beach in this weather and the tide had cut her off… No. Just a turned ankle, or she had got herself turned around somehow and taken a wrong path. It was nothing serious. Nothing to get in a lather about. Yet something fearful and anxious twisted in his gut, and he knew he would never forgive himself if anything happened to her.

Chapter 12

To the Sons of Hades,

I thought you ought to know, this is just the beginning. I will destroy your club, and I will destroy you.

―Excerpt of a letter to The Sons of Hades, from an unknown correspondent.

7th June 1845, Gillmont, Hampstead Heath.

“Mr Weston!”

Miss Elmira Hastings ran from the door of the pretty farmhouse building, heedless of the rain that had been falling with increasing fervour for the past twenty minutes.

“Miss Hastings, please go inside. I shall just see to my horse, and I will be with you,” Larkin insisted. The girl was too slender, despite the many food parcels he sent to her. No doubt she shared everything out and kept nothing for herself, despite the fact they kept Gillmont well provisioned. But somehow word got around and there were often hungry mouths appearing at the back door, hoping for a share of the kindness that he knew could be found here.

“But you are soaked to the bone!” she exclaimed, her large blue eyes wide with concern.

“And so shall you be if you don’t heed me,” he said, laughing. “Please, go inside or I shall be forced to carry you in myself, and then where would we be?”

She blushed and gave him an uncertain look, for she never seemed sure whether he was joking. Just as well in this instance as she did as he told her, hurrying back inside the house.

Once his horse was comfortably settled, Larkin hurried around and let himself into the kitchen. No one stood on ceremony at Gillmont, and he was greeted with the scent of something rich and meaty as Joanie turned, rolling pin raised and a scowl on her ruddy face.

“Oh, it’s you!” she said, her face clearing. “Lord love you, I nearly brained you good. Can’t you holler when you come in?”

“Afternoon, Joanie. Sorry I startled you. That smells delicious, what are you cooking?”

Larkin hurried over and gazed into the huge pot she was stirring. He picked up a spoon, about to dip into it, and got his knuckles soundly smacked.

“No picking. You’ll spoil your appetite,” she said severely, and then caught him up in a bear hug.

Seeing as Joanie was about two feet shorter but outweighed him by several stone, this was quite an experience, but one to which he’d become accustomed. She pressed her lips to his cheek and gave him a noisy kiss before letting him go again.

“Run along, now. You’ll find Elmira and her babe in the front parlour.”

Larkin laughed, swiped a biscuit from the table where they had been set to cool, and danced out of the way as she attempted to smack his backside. He left her chortling merrily as he made his way down the corridor to the front of the house. Joanie had been destined for the workhouse when she’d heard a whisper about Gillmont and thank goodness she had. They had desperately needed a cook, and Joanie, who had grown up on a farm until circumstance found her working in a brothel, had learned her art from her grandmother.

Most of the women here had stories to tell, usually involving unscrupulous men and broken hearts. Larkin sometimes wondered how they could bear to look at him, knowing the trouble his sex had brought them. Elmira was a case in point, and one that had touched him profoundly. She was a lady by birth, but having a child out of wedlock had cast her into the same situation as Joanie: abandoned by her family, shunned by her friends, and with no way to earn her keep than to entertain those same men who would call her a whore, yet offered her no other means of supporting herself. Happily, Larkin had discovered Elmira before she had been reduced to such desperate straits.

Gillmont had started when he and his friends had heard a man boasting at the tables of their club, of how the woman he had made pregnant had begged him for help and he had cast her aside. He had actually laughed as he recounted how he’d told her it was her own fault for acting the slut and that she deserved all she’d got. The girl had been little more than a child, taken in by promises of marriage and everlasting love. Larkin and Ashton had quietly taken the man out back and taught him the error of his ways, not that it would change anything. It certainly wouldn’t change that man, nor the world, but they had found the girl, and then not had a clue what to do with her. Gillmont had been Larkin’s idea, and one he was profoundly proud of. No one else knew the circumstances in which his mother had met his father, and he wasn’t about to tell them, but she had been desperate, penniless, and with no other option than to become mistress to a man she’d never met in return for a roof over her head. Happily, that lonely, decent man had been his father, and it had been a love match from the beginning. But what if his mother had not been so lucky? His sister, too, had been foolish, falling in love with a man who had given her a child and abandoned her. If not for the good man who had come to her rescue, married her and loved her with all his heart…what then?

“Oh, there you are,” Elmira said, getting up and hurrying to him. “Now take that coat off at once, for it is wet through.”

“Afternoon, George,” Larkin said, seeing the young woman lounging by the fire with her feet on the fender.