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??s rather thin figure with kindly honesty. “Yer ain’t got much ter fight agin it wif. You lose ’alf yer weight an’ there won’t be nuffink left.”
Hester did not agree with that piece of logic, but she did not argue. She pulled her shawl closer around herself and retraced her steps back between the straw beds and the entrance, and went down the stairs to the outside door and the street.
Outside was pitch-dark and gusting rain on the blustery wind. The solitary gas lamp just around the corner shed a haze of light through the rain, guiding her towards Park Place. She would probably have to round the narrow Limehouse Causeway up to the West India Dock Road before she could find a hansom. She pulled her shawl tighter around herself and bent her head against the rain. It was less than half a mile.
She passed several people. It was still early evening and men were returning from work in factories, dockyards and warehouses. One or two nodded to her as their paths crossed in the misty arc of a streetlight. She had become a familiar figure to far too many who knew or loved someone stricken with typhoid, but to most she was just another drab woman about her business.
The West India Dock Road was busier. There was plenty of general traffic, goods carts, drays, wagons laden with bales for the docks or warehouses, loads taken off barges or ready to go on in the morning, horse-drawn omnibuses, an ambulance, and all manner of coach and carriage of the more ordinary type. There were no hansoms, broughams or fashionable pairs.
It was ten minutes before she managed to stop a hansom looking for a fare.
“The corner of Park Street and Gill Street, please,” she requested.
“It’s less ’n five minutes away,” the cabby protested, seeing her wet shawl, worn boots and dull dress. “Lost the use o’ yer legs, ’ave yer? Look, luv, i’nt worth your money. You can walk it, an’ sure as ’ell’s a waitin’, yer i’nt goin’ ter get any wetter than y’are!”
“I know, thank you.” She forced herself to smile at him. “I’ve got a friend there who needs to go up west, all the way to Mayfair. That’s what I need you for.”
“Mayfair?” he said with disbelief. “What’d anybody from ’ere be doin’ in Mayfair?”
She debated whether to tell him to mind his own business, and decided swiftly against it. She needed him too much. Enid was too ill to wait until she found another cabby who was less skeptical or inquisitive.
“She lives there. She’s been helping us organize the hospital for the fever!” She said it in her own most cultured accent.
“ ’Ad enough o’ Limehouse, ’as she?” he said dryly, but there was no unkindness in his voice, and she could not see his face since he had his back to the light.
“For a while,” she replied. “Change of clothes and some more money.” It was a lie, but one to serve a better purpose. If she told him the truth, he might well whip up his horse and she’d never see him again.
“Get in!” he said agreeably.
She climbed in without hesitation, ignoring her wet skirts slapping around her ankles, and immediately the cab lurched forward.
As he had said, it was less than five minutes before they were outside the fever hospital, and she went inside to fetch Enid, who was by now so dizzy and faint she was unable to walk unaided. Hester and Callandra were obliged to come, one on either side of her to support her, and Hester thanked God in a silent prayer that the street lamp was around the corner and the cabby could see only the lurching figures of three women and not how ghostly the center one looked with her ashen face and half-closed eyes, and the sweat streaming off her, making her skin wetter even than the fine rain of the night could explain.
He peered at them in the gloom, and snorted. He had seen gentry drank before, but the sight of a drunken woman always disturbed him. Somehow it was worse for a woman than a man, and the quality had not the same excuses. Still, if she gave money for the sick, he would reserve judgment … this once.
“ ’Yal in,” he said, holding the horse steady as it smelled fear and threw its head up and took a step sideways. “ ’Old ’ard!” he ordered, pulling the rein tighter. “Come on!” He turned back to his passengers again. “I’ll take yer ’ome.”
The journey was a nightmare. By the time they reached Ravensbrook House, Enid was hot and cold by turns, and seemed unable to keep her body from shaking violently. Her mind wandered as if she were half waking and half in dream.
As soon as they drew up, Hester threw open the door and almost fell to the pavement, calling out commands to the cabby to wait exactly where he was. She rushed up the steps and rang the bell violently, then again and then a third time. She heard it jingling in the hall.
A footman came to the door, his expression fixed in furious disapproval. When he saw a white-faced, bedraggled young woman with wild eyes and no hat, his offense knew no bounds. He was a good six feet tall, as a footman should be, and with excellent legs and a suitably supercilious mouth.
“Lady Ravensbrook is extremely ill in that hansom!” Hester said curtly. “Will you please assist me to carry her inside, and then send for her maid and anyone else necessary to make her comfortable.”
“And who are you, may I ask?” He was shaken, but not to be stampeded by anyone.
“Hester Latterly,” she snapped back. “I am a nurse. Lady Ravensbrook is very ill. Will you please hurry, instead of standing there like a doorpost!”
He knew where she had been, and why. He wavered on the edge of argument.
“Are you hard of hearing?” she demanded more loudly. “Go and fetch your mistress before she falls insensible faint and may injure herself.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He galvanized into action, striding past her down the steps and across the pavement gleaming wet in the lamplight to the hansom where the cabby was fingering the reins nervously, staring down at the doorway as if it were an open grave.
The footman flung the door open and with the expression of a man about to spur his horse into battle, poked his head and shoulders inside to lift Enid, who was now fallen sideways and almost unconscious. As soon as he had grasped her, which even for a man of his strength was not easy, he pulled her out and straightened up, bearing her in his arms back across the footpath towards the door.
Hester took a step down, fishing in her reticule for money to pay the cabby, but he stood up in his urgency to get his horse going, flicking the long whip over its ears, and was already away from the curb and increasing pace before she could go any farther.
