Page 56 of A Sham Engagement

And yet he’d gone with Benjamin into the lion’s den. Or the wolf’s den, for Reuben Sharpe did not sound like a proud and brave lion. What was that strange and ugly animal, looking as though it had been made from the bits left over when God had created all the rest, that she’d seen on display at Astleys? A hyena. Reuben Sharpe sounded like an ugly hyena.

“And Jack has let you have this house ever since?”

Martha nodded. “I work for it, you mark my words. Don’t you go thinking I’m a sponger. I’m not. He saw my girls, and Benjamin too, and he realized there’s children out there, in those back streets, all over London, in need of the sort of care a good woman can give a child. Littl’uns with no mothers, no blankets to keep them warm of a night. No food to fill their bellies. When he finds one, most often little girls as they’re the most at risk, he brings them back here for me to mother. I’ve twenty girls here right now, the newest from just a few days ago. They get an education, enough to see them employed as something other than street sellers or whores. No girl leaves here without having a job of work to go to as a maid or a shopgirl.”

Elenora felt tears stinging her own eyes, a most unusual experience as she normally found crying an impossible achievement. She would have taken out her handkerchief, had she not already given it to Miss Douglas. As it was, she had to be content with her sleeve.

Martha reached out and patted her hand. “Excuse me being familiar, Miss Elenora, but you seem such a nice young lady, and interested in what Lord Jack gets up to. I believe he started this house, this home for the little orphans he finds, partly because of helping me, but also because of little Edward. Let me tell you the lad’s story too, to make the square. Then you’ll know everything.”

Elenora bit her lip. “I keep thinking I shouldn’t have let Jack go on his own. That he’s going into danger with this man who was, is still I suppose, your husband, and the more you tell me, the more I think I’m right. We should go after him.”

Martha shook her head. “We can’t. I can’t go back there. Not ever again. I swore it to myself eight years ago. And I can’t let you go there. It’d be more than my life was worth. Lord Jack’d never forgive me. Let me tell you about Edward.”

Elenora fought to control the urge to leap up and run out of the tiny room that had suddenly become claustrophobic. “Go on.”

“Lord Jack, he fell hook, line and sinker for young Mary the moment he clapped eyes on her. Fell hard and fell strong. And she saw he was what she needed. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, and she’s long dead now, but she used him all right. I’m sure she had feelings of some kind for him, I could see that, but he, well, like I said, he was smitten. He’d have done anything for her. Under his patronage, she was soon singing and dancing across the finest stages in town, singing to the Prince himself, even. They called her the Welsh Nightingale. Did I tell you that already? She was Welsh, you see, and they say all the Welsh can sing. Music’s in their blood.”

This was a different side to the story from anything Elenora had heard before.

“Then she found she was with child. You’d have heard her screaming and carrying on if you’d been out at sea in a ship on your way to France, I can tell you. Loud enough to scare every raven in the Tower. Loud enough to wake the dead. She didn’t want that bairn getting in the way of ‘her career’.”

Not wanted Edward? Elenora thought of the bright and lively little boy with his love for history… and cows. Of how he stretched himself along the rug with his soldiers and how his small, booted feet kicked in the air with delight. Of how Jack watched him, eyes full of love. A father’s love.

“But she died when he was born, like God had heard her and been spiteful. She didn’t want the babe, so he took her away from him.”

“I knew that bit. That she died.”

“Jack was in a rare taking. We thought he’d go mad with grief. I don’t think he ever has got over it. That’s why he saves what orphans he can find. Thinking that each of them could have been little Edward, or perhaps, Mary herself. He couldn’t save her, so now he saves other children.”

“And that’s why he doesn’t want to marry anyone.” The words were out before Elenora could stop herself.

Martha’s honest brown eyes widened. “Doesn’t want to marry? Why, he’s got himself engaged to you. You’ll be marrying and giving Edward the mother he’s never had before long. And brothers and sisters too, if you’re blessed.”

Somehow, it felt wrong to lie to this woman who’d just unburdened her chest to her so fully. Elenora licked suddenly dry lips. “I can’t lie to you Martha. Jack and I are not really engaged.” The whole story came tumbling out.

Martha listened, and when Elenora finished, she took both her hands in hers. “My dear, you don’t shock me. Nothing can after you’ve lived with a man like Reuben. But I’ll tell you this—Lord Jack has it in his eyes that he cares for you. I saw it tonight, and I’m never wrong. And you—well, I see love in your eyes when you’re thinking of him like you are right now. I’m not sure this engagement is the sham you think it is.”

Elenora gazed into Martha’s kind brown eyes, something strange kindling in her heart. It might have been hope. “You really think so?”

Martha nodded. “That’s a man in love I’ve seen tonight, but a man who doesn’t yet know it.”

“And me?”

“And you’re the same.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Benjamin led Jack up a creaking spiral staircase to the rooms above the tavern crowded in under the eaves. A long, low ceilinged corridor ran along the back of the building with a few shabby doors opening off along one side, from behind which came the definite sounds of people participating in sex. Havelock’s unfortunate women at work. Would he have put his daughters into this profession to make money out of them if Jack hadn’t stepped in to save them? Probably.

Opposite these doors, high up, mean and filthy little windows stared out at the far-too-close, and sagging, rooftops of the building next door. For someone who professed to see his father only rarely, Benjamin seemed to possess an intimate acquaintance with what lay behind these doors, for he steered Jack past them with brash confidence and a knowing smirk.

At the final door, Benjamin halted and glanced back at Jack, the smirk replaced by a cocky grin on his ratty face. With one hand, he pushed it open.

Jack stepped inside.

The room contained a single narrow iron bedstead pushed up against one wall, close under the sloping ceiling, and beside that a rickety table on which stood a lantern. Seated on this bed was the man Jack had seen watching his house, devoid now of his lost sailor’s hat. As Jack came in, this man rose to his feet, and Jack was able to look him up and down in the harsh lamplight.

He stood taller than the scrawny Benjamin, but not so tall as Jack, and his build was on the light and wiry side, although well camouflaged by his loose sailor’s clothing. An air of secretive strength hung about him, honed, no doubt, by his years at sea. He stared back at Jack out of eyes puckered by long years squinting into the sun and wind on board a ship, and his skin had that desiccated, weathered look Jack had seen on the old tars of Limehouse and beyond many times before. Impossible to hazard a guess at his age, but to Jack, the man looked prematurely aged by the harshness of his life.