Darke London (5 page)

Drawing in a quick gasp, Nellie halted abruptly. It was the man-beast of her delirium, the hulking creature with the split mouth who’d frothed and bellowed at her. She’d thought him just a nightmare, but here he was in the flesh, his face screwed up in a ferocious scowl— And that hand of his clutching a cloth, that was not flesh but the eerie metal pincer she recognised from before… Her throat tightened as she recoiled from the creature.

“Miss Barchester, it’s only Figgs, our manservant.” Julian’s calm voice broke through her gathering turmoil.

His manservant? She swallowed and peered at the man-beast more closely. His scowl was more timorous than fierce, she perceived. It was merely the crags and bumps on his face that gave him such a forbidding expression. And the split in his mouth was due to his cleft palate, which was also responsible for his unintelligible mutterings. And the metal pincer was there because he had no left hand at all. He wasn’t a beast, just a humble servant regarding her with apprehension because of her reaction to his unusual appearance.

Shame instantly engulfed her. With her facial scars and mutilated hand, she was every bit as deformed as this man, and yet she’d reacted towards him with such horror. Was that how she wanted others to treat her?

“F-Figgs, I do apologise most profusely.” She stepped towards him and tried to give him an encouraging smile.

Startled, the servant garbled something out which she couldn’t understand. For a moment she wondered if her smile had seemed hideous to him.

Julian nodded at the man as if he understood him perfectly. “Very well, Figgs. Carry on.” He waited until the man had shuffled out of the workshop before addressing Nellie. “Figgs lost his hand when he was a boy, run over by a coach. He is a little hard to understand, especially when he’s nervous, but he’s a very loyal servant. He’s been with us for years.” He moved to the wheelchair Figgs had been polishing and ran his hand over the shiny smokestack. “What do you think of my contraption?”

She examined the machine more closely. “It looks like a steam-powered wheelchair.”

“Exactly right. I call it my motor-chair. It can travel for two hours on one load of coal.” He grinned at her, pride in his machine showing through.

“I thought you were a doctor, not an engineer.”

“I’m a bit of both. I trained as a doctor, but I’ve always had an interest in making things. In Edinburgh I was able to combine my fascination with anatomy and engineering. These days I hope to use both skills to help my patients. This motor-chair is for an ex-soldier who lost both his legs in the war. Fortunately he’s wealthy enough to afford it. The motor-chair was easy enough to build, but other items are more of a challenge.”

She glanced at him curiously. “How so?”

“Well…” He gave her a considering look before beckoning her to one of the benches. “Come over here. I’ve been working on something recently. I wasn’t going to show it to you just yet, but since you’re here I see no reason not to.”

Thoroughly intrigued, Nellie moved closer. On the bench were a few pliers and cutters, together with coils of wire and a small wooden box. Julian moved around the bench to stand opposite her and placed his hands on the box. He studied her with an air of suppressed anticipation.

“Miss Barchester, unfortunately there is no remedy for your scars. I tried to stitch as carefully as I could, and of course the scars will fade a little, but you will never be rid of them.”

At his words, she lowered her head, unable to take the frank pity in his eyes. Julian had just acknowledged that she was ugly and unappealing, and would always remain so. Her heart dipped, and she had to clench her hands to stop them from trembling.

Julian began to speak quickly, stumbling over his words. “Deuce take it, I didn’t mean to offend you, Miss Barchester. I—”

“No, no. I’m not offended.” She gulped but could not meet his eyes.

“I meant no offence. I merely wished to point out that—oh, dash it all. See here, I have something to show you.” He threw open the box and pulled something out. “Look, Miss Barchester. See what I have made for you.”

Hesitantly, she lifted her gaze until she spied the object in his hands which he held out for her inspection. “What—what is it? It looks like a glove.”

“Precisely, but this is no ordinary glove. It has two artificial fingers to replace the ones you lost.” Raising the glove, he waggled it at her.

Nellie stared at the disembodied fingers waving in front of her. She’d never seen anything like that before. They looked bizarre…grotesque…like spare parts for a broken marionette… Is that what she was to him? A damaged puppet for him to dabble with? A surge of nausea stung the back of her throat.

She glared at him. “How dare you.”

A look of complete confusion came over him. “But, Miss Barchester, I only wish to help you—”

“Help yourself, more like. Is this what you do, Dr. Darke? You experiment on devastated patients for your own gratification? Am I just another of your human menagerie, like Figgs and Mrs. Tibbet and your legless soldier? Well, you can think again. I won’t be a part of your sick endeavours.” She stared at her dismembered hand, and all the anguish she’d been suppressing welled up in a bitter tide. “I wish to God you’d never rescued me. I wish you’d left me to die instead,” she muttered, before she whirled around and fled the building.

Chapter Four

Julian spurred his horse on down the muddy road, eager to put distance between himself and Monksbane. Or rather, between himself and Nellie. The stinging words she’d flung at him reverberated in his head. Had he done her a grievous disservice in saving her life? He’d been so puffed up with his deeds that he hadn’t properly taken into consideration her sensibilities. And now she thought he viewed her as nothing more than a sideshow freak, a submissive patient with whom he could experiment. Intolerable!

He’d become too distracted with Nellie Barchester. He’d allowed his blossoming feelings for her cloud his judgement. Yes, he admired her instinct for survival, her deep well of inner strength, her grace that transcended her ravaged face and hand, but he knew very little about her. She was connected to Sir Thaddeus Ormond, yet she refused to tell him what that relationship was, and until she did could not be trusted. He had to remember that. And, too, he had other fish to fry, not to mention numerous patients he’d neglected in the past week.

The road soon reached the built-up areas that marked the creeping tide line of the encroaching city. Fields and woodland gave way to rows of terraced housing, quiet receded before rumbling trains and raucous traffic, and the grey sky faded to a dirty smudge. He had a few patients here, some humble factory workers, other more well-to-do folk who commuted on the train to the city—shop clerks, articled clerks, government workers. He did his rounds, and then was on his way again.

The city burgeoned like a great, grimy pudding smothered in a thick sauce of smog. Hunched across the landscape, hordes of factories belched out smoke like so many fire-breathing dragons. Fine specks of ash sifted through the air to settle on everything in a sooty film. Julian’s pace slowed as the roads became choked with all manner of carts, wagons, omnibuses and carriages. He’d enjoyed his years of study up north in Edinburgh, but London was like no other city, and the place did not agree with him. It was too dense, too avid, too clamouring, too vast. The day was half-gone, and he still had a way to travel, but he pushed on. His ears ached with the din of clattering wheels and angry drivers. Pungent odours assaulted his nose as he neared Mr. Cazalet’s street. Here were row upon row of narrow houses, many of their front rooms serving as shopfronts. Tailors, watchmakers, milliners and shoemakers plied their trade, while match girls, organ grinders and costermongers tramped up and down the road, hawking their wares.

The retired jeweller seemed pleased to see him again—perhaps he didn’t have many visitors—and ushered him into his modest house. An enormous fire roared in the fireplace, filling the small sitting room with a stifling heat. Mr. Cazalet, apparently immune to the heat, made coffee for his visitor before taking the armchair closest to the fire. While the old man chatted about the comings and goings of his neighbours, Julian sipped the strong, black coffee from a seat furthest away from the fire and surreptitiously loosened his necktie. After a while, he was able to steer the conversation back to the subject of his brooch. This time, he did not have specific questions for the jeweller. On his previous visit, Mr. Cazalet had already pulled out one of the many ledgers that lined the shelves of the room and showed him the entry meticulously recorded—one ruby-and-diamond bee brooch repaired for Miss Ophelia Ormond—that had finally pointed Julian towards Sir Thaddeus Ormond. This time, he merely wanted to know anything about the Ormonds that the jeweller might be willing to tell him.

Mr. Cazalet was surprisingly forthcoming. He’d sold several pieces of jewellery to the Ormond family, and they’d sent many of their repairs to him. That was some years ago. And then suddenly they’d started selling jewellery through him too.

“Not only jewellery, but silver plate too,” Mr. Cazalet said. “Rumour had it Sir Thaddeus’s father had lost the family’s country estate! Gambled away, they said, just before he died. The Ormonds were hard put to meet their debts.”

This was news to Julian. He’d been inside the Ormond’s West End townhouse, had seen all its showy grandeur. How had the family fortunes been restored?

But Mr. Cazalet had gone on to a much more important subject. “That was about the time Miss Ormond came to me with her bee brooch. She came into my shop herself, you see. Didn’t send in her maid or footman like she usually did, just her and a companion, her old governess, I believe. No doubt she wanted to keep her visit a secret.”

Julian had brought the bee brooch with him. He drew it from his pocket and fingered it, the refracted light glowing into his eyes. It was a neat little piece, finely crafted even if the jewels were of no great value. Ophelia Ormond had personally brought in this brooch to be repaired because she didn’t want anyone to know of it.

“Ah, ’tis a pretty thing.” Mr. Cazalet nodded his gnomish head towards the jewel winking in Julian’s hands. “Just the sort of thing a young beau would give to the woman he was wooing. Miss Ormond paid me in cash for the job. Didn’t want the account going to her brother. She was very afraid of her brother finding out, and I’m not surprised. Always a hard man, he was.”

“Do you know who gave her the brooch?” Julian sat tensed on his hard stool, barely able to breathe as the old man packed a long pipe with baccy.

Mr. Cazalet wrinkled his brow. “I don’t recall any name.”

Disappointment crushed his lungs. He shouldn’t have hoped; there was no reason why a genteel young woman like Ophelia Ormond would tell a mere jeweller something so personal.

“But that brooch was very precious to her,” Mr. Cazalet continued. “She begged me to take good care of it. Not that it’s worth that much, mind, but it must of meant something to her.”

“And the woman who accompanied her?”

Mr. Cazalet sucked on his lit pipe. “Nay, she were a plain old bird, anxious about Miss Ormond, is all I remember.”

“Did you see Miss Ormond again after you’d mended the brooch?”

“Never again, no.”

“You seem very sure.”

“After you left the last time, I checked my ledger, but there weren’t no more entries for Miss Ormond after that.”

Julian gripped his knee in some frustration. The date in the jeweller’s ledger was less than a year before he, a newborn babe, had been left at the door of Monksbane. Who had given Ophelia Ormond that brooch? A man she cared about deeply. Someone she’d kept a secret from her domineering brother. Someone not suitable to associate with the Ormonds, let alone sue for her hand.

Julian’s imagination roamed down a well-worn path. Disaster had struck Ophelia. She’d fallen pregnant, and either she was abandoned by her lover, or Sir Thaddeus had forbidden her to marry him. Julian preferred to believe the latter. So poor Ophelia had been bundled off somewhere to hide her disgrace, perhaps with only her old governess for support. It was a common, sordid story. Unwanted babies born out of wedlock could be handed off to so-called “baby farms”, to be used or abused as luck would have it. But somehow Fate had intervened on his behalf, and he’d been deposited on Elijah Darke’s doorstep. Ophelia Ormond might not have been able to keep him, but she had done her best for him, and the brooch she’d left with him confirmed that.

Moisture prickled unfamiliarly behind his eyes. He gritted his teeth until the weakness passed. On the street outside, a muffin man tramped by, his raucous bell jangling Julian’s nerves. Using his coat sleeve, he wiped away a rivulet of perspiration from his temple.

Still smoking, Mr. Cazalet, unaware of his turmoil, was rambling on. “That were the last I saw of the Ormonds. Shortly after, I heard tell Sir Thaddeus married a brewer’s daughter with fifty thousand pounds to her name. No doubt he didn’t want to do business with me again, not when he’d used me to sell off the family silver. Eh, I weren’t sorry to lose the business. Sir Thaddeus is a hard sort of gentleman, very hard.” Removing his pipe from his mouth, he sat forward in his armchair, his eyes gleaming behind his pebble-like spectacles. “Young man, would I be wrong in assuming you’re somehow linked to the Ormonds?”

Frowning, Julian contemplated the old man. How far could he trust him? Then again, he’d already revealed so much just by showing him the brooch. He twirled the piece about in his fingers, then pushed it back into his pocket. “I merely seek the truth.”