Page 48 of A Sham Engagement

The way to Betterton Street led them through some of the less salubrious parts of London. The big houses of the rich, like his, were frequently cheek by jowl with those of the poor, their cramped homes clustering in behind the huge expensive ones, often close to the mewses at the backs of the big houses. It was possible to go from wide open modern streets to the rookeries that had existed since the time of Good King Henry in as much time as it took to run downstairs in his own house.

And these streets, even though they weren’t within the rookeries as yet, were not safe at nights, particularly not for a woman. He’d already decided he’d be leaving Elenora with Mrs. Sharpe, however much she protested. The pistols banged his leg again. Thank goodness he’d had the sense to bring them with him, despite the panic still coursing through his veins. And he had his trusty sword stick in his hand, ready to be drawn at a moment’s notice.

He glanced over his shoulder, more wary now it was too late. The irony of that almost made him laugh, but it would have been a bitter, angry mirth. Anger at himself and his stupidity. Which Edward was paying for.

Having lived mainly in Town since he was eighteen, which was now nearly twenty years, he well knew the hazards that could befall the unwary if they ventured out after dark, particularly into the streets they were now entering. Narrower streets, lined with terraced redbrick houses, where lights only glowed in a few meager windows. Streets whose dirty cobbles were uneven and lit but intermittently with the feeble glow of the old oil lamps. The new, better gas lamps had not yet reached these less-favored sections of the city.

They passed an alehouse on a corner. The sounds of a piano being played, and of raucous revelry and shouting, spilled out onto the cobbles through the open doors, as a man lurched drunkenly out and nearly crashed into them. The stink of alcohol came with him, but luckily he swayed away to cast up his accounts in the gutter, where no doubt others had done the same before him. Many times, from the stink.

Elenora shrank closer to Jack, eyes wide with shock. A back street alehouse would not have been a sight she’d be used to, however sanguine her outlook on life. Jack hurried her on, leaving the man to his noisy voiding of his drink and dinner.

He slowed at the end of the street, looking left and right as a gong farmer and his noisesome cart trundled past. “Where are we going?” Elenora asked, her hand to her nose at the stench of the man’s load. “Where is this person you think might be able to help us find Edward?”

Jack pulled her across the road to avoid the stinking cart. “I keep a house in Betterton Street. A woman runs it for me.”

Her eyes flew wide. Was she leaping to conclusions? Most likely.

He shook his head as they hastened on, leaving the gong farmer behind. Another alehouse loomed ahead. “No. It’s not what it sounds. You will see. We take in children off the street—orphans, and even those cruelly treated by their parents, sometimes. The woman, Mrs. Sharpe, was born in the gutter herself as most of her charges were, but hauled herself up out of it by her own endeavor, and with a little help from me. She’s a kind and matronly soul and looks after the children well, preparing them to have a useful role in life. She cares for them. I pay for it. Saving them from the gutter at my expense.”

“How can she help us?” Elenora, who seemed to have taken this confession in her stride, was panting now from the exertion. Her stays wouldn’t be helping her. A ridiculous thing for a girl to wear when undertaking exercise of any sort. He must remember she wasn’t used to charging about London in the middle of the night.

“She has many connections still with the underworld from which she came. And so do some of the children in her charge. Her adult son especially.” Yes, Benjamin was the one he wanted to talk to. If he was there. At twenty, Mrs. Sharpe’s firstborn lived and worked elsewhere, but had more than one foot remaining in his old life having been too old to change when Jack had rescued his mother and siblings from his father. But he was a good lad at heart, even though Jack suspected, despite his holding down a job in the docks, he also led a life less law-abiding with his father.

He thought of Josie’s pinched, gray face and shorn hair. “Do not be misled into thinking the children I’ve rescued will be like Edward or your sisters. These are children who’ve been bred like rats in the rookeries, for whom thieving has been a way of life in order to stay alive. They’re hard work to bring round to the decent life we offer them, and we haven’t always succeeded. Some return to the only way of life they’ve known.” Always difficult when that happened, making him feel as though he’d failed that particular child. Worse if it was one of the girls. A boy might return to thieving, but a girl almost always went back to selling her body on a daily basis.

Nearly there now. “We do our best to persuade them to stay, but, for some, their old life lures them back. However, we do have our successes. And the children who return to the rookeries, who I won’t call failures, still view Mrs. Sharpe with favor. They keep in touch, and thus she has a network of informants who can help her rescue other children when the need arises. It’s complicated.”

She was gazing up at him, still wide-eyed. “Good heavens. You appear to have a side to you I’d never have guessed at.”

He hadn’t been meaning to try to impress her. His other life, a life none of his family or friends knew anything about, had become so much a part of him he’d ceased to think of the way others might see it. Or if he had, it had been to suspect others might think him mad. It didn’t seem as though Miss Elenora Wetherby was of that opinion.

The name Betterton Street appeared, illuminated by an oil lamp. “She lives down here. It’s not the best of streets, but it’s not a slum. I learned early on that it did not do to transplant slum children into a life of comfort in too respectable a street. They were not made welcome in the first house I acquired, and nor did they take well to living in a genteel area. We had to move them here. They fit in better where they are close to their roots, but not so close as to make it too hard to escape them.”

The house Jack indicated lay halfway down the street, lights showing in its ground floor windows, bright and homely and promising. Elenora stared up at it from the street, the image she’d thought she had of Jack part of a spinning turmoil inside her head. If only they could find Edward there now, but that was an impossibility. If only this unknown foster mother of street orphans might know something that would help. In her heart, she didn’t believe this possible, either, but optimism kept her silent.

Jack rapped on the neatly painted front door with the head of his cane, as she moved closer beside him on the step, not liking the feeling of empty darkness that lurked behind her back, as though waiting to pounce. This was a part of London she’d never even guessed existed. A part of London where a girl like her, in her expensive new gown and pelisse, was sorely out of place.

After a few moments, the door opened a crack and a wary, middle-aged face peered out at them. This must be Mrs. Sharpe herself, not sending one of her charges to answer the door after dark. “Milord Jack.” The woman’s voice was rough, but kind, and more than a little anxious. She opened the door wider, revealing a narrow passageway that must lead through the house to the kitchen at the back. “Whatever brings you here at this hour?”

“An urgent mission,” Jack said. “This is Miss Wetherby, my… betrothed.”

Mrs. Sharpe stepped back, her face softening into a welcoming smile, although still with her initial wariness fringing it. “What am I doing, keeping you on the doorstep. Come inside out of the cold, Miss Wetherby, my lord. Come inside right now.”

Jack led Elenora inside and the door closed behind them. Mrs. Sharpe opened another door on the right which proved to lead into a small, cluttered parlor. Two young girls were sitting sewing by the light of two bright oil lamps in front of a small coal fire. They looked up at the newcomers in curiosity. “Milord Jack,” the older of the two said, rising to her feet and bobbing a curtsy. A poke in the shoulder got the second one to do the same. Her ‘milord’ just a mutter.

“Daisy, Ruth, good evening,” Jack said. “May we have the room to ourselves?”

The two girls, who must have been about ten and twelve, dressed smartly but plainly in somber gowns and starched white pinafores, scuttled out, abandoning their sewing. If they were anything like Elenora, then that would be with relief. She took a quick peek at their work, but the neat stitching put her own efforts to shame.

“Do please sit down,” Mrs. Sharpe said. “If you’ve come again to enquire about how Josie is doing, then I can report to you that she’s settling in well, the poor wee mite. I’ve put her in a room with Beth and Sarah. They’re kind girls and a little older than her. Sarah has taken her under her wing.”

Who was Josie? All these names meant nothing to Elenora, but she could hazard a guess. How many orphans was Jack supporting? It sounded like a lot. Still waters run deep, as her old governess had been wont to say. How had she not guessed this about Jack with the way he was with his son? What a suit of armor he wore, letting people think he was nothing but a heartless rake. And yet here he was, spending his money on children who until he’d met them had possessed no hope, no chance of betterment.

A feeling of inadequacy that she’d never considered how children might be living such a different life than the one she and her siblings led sank over Elenora as she took a seat on a straight backed chair. Even when Papa had gambled all his money away, they’d still not ended up destitute as these children had been—without homes or food or someone to care for them. Until Jack had come along.

Elenora sank onto a stiffly upholstered chair, but Jack remained standing, his whole being bristling with urgency. “For once I’m not here to enquire about the welfare of your charges. Not tonight. I need your help, Mrs. Sharpe. A terrible thing has happened. My son has been snatched by I know not who. For what reason also escapes me, but the man who has taken him, is, I fear, someone who has been following me about in my daily life. I glimpsed him a few times but thought nothing of it, like a fool. Only too late did I work that I was being followed and spied upon. One of those times was here, outside this very house.”

Mrs. Sharpe’s soft brown eyes narrowed and sharpened in an instant. “Your little lad? Taken? When?”