Page 50 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

Phoebe stood up a bit straighter as Eliza swung the door open. She had to lean on her stick to do so; odd that someone so young should need one. The bits of her Phoebe could see looked quite normal, so perhaps her legs, hidden by her drab brown gown and apron, were not. For all she knew poor Eliza might have legs as bent and twisted as Abner’s under her gown. She’d better think more charitable thoughts about her. Difficult.

“Why, Mr. Booth, how kind of you to call on us.” Eliza fairly beamed at Gabriel, clearly much more at home with him in his disguise than she was when he looked like he’d come straight from a Mayfair ball. Perhaps it was because in his workman’s clothes he looked more like her than he had that fateful night. If you were a girl like Eliza, you might dream of a handsome young gentleman like Gabriel, but actually securing one would be nigh on impossible.

Surprised at her own insight, Phoebe took a better look at Eliza, who might not yet have equated the scruffy boy before her with the young lady of the other night. If someone did her hair for her in a more ladylike style than the way she had it now, scraped back from her face in a tight bun, and put her in a pretty gown, she wouldn’t look too out of place in a ballroom. Although instinct told Phoebe Eliza would undoubtedly feel as out of place as she did.

The door from the parlor opened and Violet came out accompanied by a tall young man in the somber garb of a man of the cloth. Both of them looked more than surprised to see Gabriel and Phoebe.

Violet recovered herself first. “Eliza, take Mr. Booth and his brother through to the kitchen and give them a cup of tea and some pound cake. The Reverend Reed is just leaving. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

The Reverend Reed? Could he be the clergyman Gabriel had told her about who’d secured royal patronage for his orphanage for the upkeep of children from middle-class families?

The Reverend ran his curious gaze over Phoebe, who kept her head down again and slunk past him as close to the wall as possible, trying her best to walk like a boy. She had the uncomfortable feeling this clergyman might be more observant than all the denizens of the St Giles Rookery put together. But they were past now and following Eliza into the furthest recesses of the house and through a door into a warm and cozy kitchen. Six small children were sitting on benches around one end of a large table, drinking milk from horn beakers.

These must be the children Gabriel had already rescued. None of them looked older than four or five, although that was a rough guess on her part, not being well-used to gauging the age of small children, or even seeing them up close.

Eliza’s mother, Bessie, was seated at the other end of the table caught in the act of slicing and thinly buttering bread. She looked up with a welcoming smile. “Gabriel.” Her eyes narrowed as she took in Phoebe. “Another of your brothers, eh? I’m thinking this one’s the young lady who brought you here the other night, if I’m not mistaken. I never forget a face, still less such a pretty one. You make far too pretty a boy, my dear.” And she chuckled.

More astute, then, than the Reverend. But then, she’d probably already met Cecilia in similar garb also pretending to be one of Joe’s fictional brothers. A sudden worrying thought struck Phoebe; did Gabriel make a habit of bringing young ladies to the rookery and his orphanage? Was he in the process of educating more young ladies than her as to what the dark side of London looked like? The thought that she might just be one in a long list of young ladies whose eyes he’d attempted to open disturbed her. She very much wanted to be the only one.

“You can wash your hands at the sink, miss,” Bessie said, all practicality. “Then you can get on with the bread and butter for these six, if you don’t mind, and I’ll make the tea for us all. Eliza, you go and see if the babies are awake and need changing and feeding. If one wakes when the others don’t and starts to screaming, we’ll have them all awake at once and it’ll be chaos if we haven’t finished feeding these little ones.” She winked at Phoebe. “I rather doubt this young lady’s ever had to give a bottle to a baby, and I know Gabriel’s only done it once or twice. So we don’t want six babies down here all wanting bottles at once. Not to mention needing their nappies changing. Which they’ll all need for certain.”

Phoebe couldn’t help her recoil at the unpleasant thought of having to help change a baby’s diaper.

Bessie ran her eyes over Gabriel. “As for you, young man, you’re looking a trifle pasty if you don’t mind me saying so. You sit down with the little ones and miss here can butter you some bread as well as them. You look like you could do with something inside of you.” She shook her head as though in despair. “I daresay you’ve been into the rookery again, haven’t you?”

Phoebe peered at Gabriel. As she’d been spending most of her time with her head down trying not to walk like a girl and attract anyone’s attention, she hadn’t really paid much heed to his face. It was indeed somewhat pale and drawn under the now-yellowing bruises. At least his right eye now opened fully. Guilt over his broken arm resurfaced. Nothing she could do about that now. So she quickly washed her hands in the stone sink and sat down in the seat Bessie had vacated.

Eliza, it had to be said with a disgruntled look on her face, departed, presumably in search of those six hungry babies. How many children lived here? Just the twelve or were there others somewhere? She began to butter the bread, which was easy as it was clearly slightly stale and the butter rendered quite soft by the warm kitchen. However, as she’d never been called upon to slice bread before, this proved a challenge she wasn’t up to.

Bessie filled a large brown teapot from the kettle in the hearth and returned to the table, eyeing the doorstep of bread Phoebe had managed to cut. She sighed. “I can see as you’ve never had to do work in a kitchen before, young lady. Here. I’ll slice a few and you butter them. Gabriel can eat your doorstep. Give him plenty of butter and a good spoonful of jam.” She put a large earthenware pot on the table which proved, on closer examination, to contain strawberry jam.

“From Wentworth,” Gabriel said, taking the proffered slice of bread and jam. “I get all our jams from there, and fruit in the summer. So that, at least, is free.”

“And the children love it all,” Mrs. Thorogood said, patting the nearest one on its tousled head. Difficult to tell if they were boys or girls as all of them had longish hair and wore matching off-white smocks. One white blonde, one redhead, and four various shades of brown, all now enjoying the bread and getting jammy faces into the bargain.

Phoebe obediently buttered some more bread, as the children appeared to have bottomless stomachs, and Bessie returned to the teapot where she poured three large mugs of tea and, without asking, stirred sugar into them. She put one in front of each of them and nodded at the jam. “Now you’ve done the butter, you put jam on the bread for the children, too. They’re growing children so they get as much as they want.”

Six small and hopeful faces regarded Phoebe, most of them wearing milky moustaches along with jam-smeared cheeks. She smiled and dipped into the jam. Very soon each child was eating their second round of bread and jam with relish. Her own stomach did a loud rumble.

“Now you’d best do one for yourself,” Mrs. Thorogood said. “Don’t want you fainting away any more than we want Gabriel doin’ so.”

“I’m not the sort of girl who faints,” Phoebe said, biting into the bread and jam with relish. Food hadn’t tasted so good in a long time, and the tea was hot and sweet and seemed to be reviving her tired limbs. The children watched her as they ate, eyes round with curiosity. Perhaps they didn’t often get visitors.

Gabriel took a sip of his tea and nodded at Bessie. “If you don’t mind, I’ll get you to explain what we do here to Phoebe. She knows the basics, but I haven’t given her details.” He grinned. “And you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve managed to extract a good deal from Abner, so we have money for at least the next month, and enough besides for me to get the next house underway. I squeezed a fair price out of him, and we have Phoebe to thank for that. She gave me the jewels herself.”

Bessie’s rather thick eyebrows rose in inquiry and she gave Phoebe a penetrating look. “Should I be so bold as to ask how that came about? And, while I’m at it, should I perhaps not ask how it was you came to tell her all about this place? I thought we were keeping it a secret from…” She paused. “From the nobs with whom you have to spend most of your time.”

Gabriel, wiping his jammy mouth with the back of his sleeve, grinned. Color had returned to his cheeks. “Don’t ask and you won’t get lied to. But you can tell her what we do.”

“I already know you take in orphans,” Phoebe said. “That’s why I gave Lord—I mean Gabriel my jewels.” She put her hand to her throat. “I didn’t want him to take my pearls as those came down to me from my great-grandmother so they have sentimental value, but the ones I gave him I don’t wear or have a particular liking for.” She glanced at Gabriel. “And I do have more like that I could give you.”

“You can get the money out,” Gabriel said.

With a bit of contortion, Phoebe managed to get the little bag of money out from under her arm and put it on the table. At least this money wasn’t ill-gotten.

Bessie nodded and tucked the bag away in the pocket of her apron. “I’ll pass it on to Violet when she comes in.” She met Phoebe’s gaze. “She does all the books, works out what we can spend, makes sure we don’t run short of anything.”

“She’s going to have to be careful with the money for the next couple of months while my arm heals,” Gabriel said.