Ever His Bride (17 page)

She’d heard of the slum and its grinding
poverty, but she could never have imagined a wretchedness so deep
as this. She stepped around a heap of withered vegetables and the
dirt-colored man who guarded it as if it were a mountain of gold. A
somber-faced child hung fast to his hand—boy or girl, she couldn’t
tell, for the matted hair and the ragged clothes. Broken crates and
sprung barrels narrowed and twisted the passage, home to rats and a
playground to more children than she’d ever seen in one place.

She’d eaten a currant cake in the brightness
of Threadneedle Street, and now it threatened to rise in protest
over the reek of offal and stagnant water that pooled beneath her
shoes. And still she hurried deeper into Bethnal Green, ashamed of
her disgust but more determined than ever to find Giles.

As she rounded a corner into a crowded
square, her feet slipped out from underneath her, laying her out
flat on the cobbles.

“Careful, miss.” A young woman with falsely
rouged cheeks smiled down at Felicity, helped her to her feet, and
handed her the bundle of shirts. “‘Fraid yer lovely dress is ruint
f’good.”

Felicity swallowed back her nausea. “It’s all
right. Thank you.” Her elbow ached, but she had only wounded her
pride and filthied the front of her skirt and bodice, pink linen
turned to brown muck. “You’ve been very nice.”

She would have asked about Giles, but the
young woman had disappeared in the next moment, lost in a street
that teemed with gin shops and old-clothes stores, with sad-faced
people who wore one rag atop another.

Finding Giles wasn’t going to be easy.

She tucked the bundle against her and tried
not to look too closely at the odd characters huddled in the
doorways, and leaning drunkenly against lamp posts.

The lane bent again and she found herself at
the center of an intersection, facing a ramshackle building whose
second floor listed against its neighbor.

THE BEGGAR’S ACADEMY. As tumbledown and
dreary as it looked, it was her first sign of hope. If Giles lived
here in Bethnal Green, and if he attended school at all, this was
probably where she would most likely find word of him.

The rickety door hung open on a single iron
hinge. She heard young voices beyond, and another older, more
soothing one. The shadows weren’t inviting, but the lack of an
invitation rarely stopped her. She stepped into the barren
anteroom, and then deeper into the gloom.

An elderly woman sat in a chair at the far
end of the long, narrow room, reading aloud by the light of a
single candle and surrounded by bedraggled but enraptured
children.

Such a forlorn place for a school. It wanted
windows, and chinking for the walls. A coat of whitewash and a few
more lanterns would help dispel some of the shadows. And food in
the bellies of the lank-limbed children, and fresh country air in
their lungs—

Wherever would one begin to put it right? She
swallowed hard against the currant cake and the teary lump in her
throat then turned to leave.

“Do come in, miss.” The old woman had risen
on a cane. “I’m Gran McGilly. And you’re welcome here at the
Beggar’s Academy. What is it we can help you with?”

“Oh . . . hello.” Felicity tried not to
stammer at being caught in midflight. “I’m Felicity Mayf . . .
Felicity Claybourne. I’m sorry to interrupt. I was looking for
someone—a young boy, nine or ten years old, I think. Giles
Pepperpot. Do you know him?”

Gran McGilly laughed broadly and gathered an
armload of boys and girls as she hobbled toward her. “Everyone
knows Giles. Don’t they, loves?”

The children giggled and agreed as they
swarmed around Felicity, small ones and some closer to her own
height, every one of them dressed in castoffs.

“Is Giles here?” She looked for him among the
upturned faces and cast a hopeful smile over them, ashamed at
herself for wanting to run from the horrible smell of unwashed
bodies and filthy clothes. She had an uncharitable thought about
protecting her purse, but dismissed it entirely.

“Giles doesn’t have time for us anymore.”
Gran McGilly grunted softly as she sat down at the worktable. A
little girl scrambled onto her lap. “All full up with schooling, he
says. He’s a very busy lad, you know.”

“Does he live nearby? He helped me recently,
and I’d like to pay him for it.” She felt idiotic still clutching
the bundle to her chest.

“Like most of the boys around here, he lives
where he pleases.”

“Well, I just saw him . . . out on
Shoreditch—”

Gran McGilly laughed fondly and pulled a
gentle comb through the tangled hair of the little girl on her lap.
“Oh, you’ll not find Giles, unless he wants to be found. Keeps
himself two steps ahead of the constabulary. But then that’s the
fortune of the cleverest boys in Bethnal Green. They either run
ahead, or they’ll be run down and crushed.”

Giles might not want to be found. She’d given
him no reason not to trust her—except that she was an outsider.
That had become quite clear. She had no idea that he lived in this
squalor, that he had attended this very bleak school for
beggars.

Beggars—such an incriminating word for the
innocent, dark-eyed children who watched her and touched her
muddied clothes as if she were an oddity at the circus.

“So is this the only classroom?”

“Room for eighty on a good day. We even board
a few here at the academy as well, upstairs mostly—the orphans and
the ones who’ve been forgotten.”

Felicity moved farther into the room, trying
not to imagine where the throat-thickening smell of the sewer was
coming from. “How many children do you board?”

“That all depends upon the time of year, and
the threat of cholera, the weather, how far the stores can be
stretched. We’ve been here nearly thirty years. Begun by the Ladies
League of Ragged School Reform, but they’ve long ago disbanded; and
I’m afraid we’re sadly overlooked, but for the occasional kind
heart.” Gran McGilly gathered up a hank of thin, dull-brown hair
from the little girl on her lap and tried to tie it back with a
too-short length of twine.

“Here, use this.” Felicity started to untie
the white ribbon from the lacing at her throat, but the woman shook
her head slightly, her glance encompassing all the other little
girls.

“Oh, we like our hemp ties, don’t we Floree?
No fancy ribbons for us.”

She’d never in her life felt so inadequate,
so of place. Had never imagined a simple ribbon could have such
meaning. Gran McGilly was a very practical woman. She would have to
be, to run such an ill-funded school with such a kindly heart.

“Are you the only teacher here, Mrs.
McGilly?”

“Come, call me Gran, everyone does. There’s
four of us who do the regular work. Cooking, washing up, teaching.
We make do.”

The idea of leaving these children in the
darkness seemed suddenly heartless and sinful. “Would more candles
help?”

Gran raised her kindly blue eyes. “Candles
would be much appreciated, Mrs. Claybourne.”

A perilous thought came to her. “And what
about copper cook pots?”

“And soup!” little Floree said, rubbing her
tummy and rolling her eyes. “Yum! I like ta’tato soup.”

Gran hugged the girl. “Whatever you can do,
Mrs. Claybourne.”

Tears stung the backs of her eyes. “Good.
Then I’ll be back. As soon as I can manage. But just now I need to
try to find Giles.” She hurried to the door, and Gran called back
the children who wanted to cling. She felt terribly guilty leaving
the frail old woman with all her charges, but she had no choice at
the moment.

Felicity gave a feeble wave, then rushed out
of the Beggar’s Academy into the congested square, thinking to take
a less fetid breath. But the air had thickened with the stink of
ale, and with the lewd comments from doorways of places she didn’t
want to think about. She must find Giles, and give him the shirts
as soon as possible; that would make her feel so much more
charitable—and so much less like the callous Hunter Claybourne.

She hadn’t gotten a half-block through the
muck and the unflinching stares when her bundle was yanked out of
her arms from behind.

“Hey!” She’d come too far to deliver these
shirts and, by God’s grace, she was going to—

“Giles! There you are!” She’d never been so
happy to see anyone. She reached for him, but he recoiled and
backed away a step.

“Y’ followed me!” he shouted, his face
screwed into an angry landscape of grime. “Why, Mrs.
Claybourne?”

She hesitated, Gran McGilly’s warning still
sounding. “Well, I . . .” People were looking at them, looking at
her, and murmuring. She felt their stares as she had felt each of
Madame Deverie’s pinpricks.

“Ooo! Another one of them missionary ladies,
Giles?” The crackling voice came from behind her and ended in a
croupy cough. “Taken a fancy to yer ugly mug, has she?”

“Shut it, Harry!” Giles said, without a
glance at the other boy. “And you, Mrs. Claybourne, had best leave
while y’can. We’re an unsav’ry lot.” He shoved the shirt bundle
back into her arms with too much malice for a boy of ten.

“Please take them, Giles. I owe you.” She
tried to press the bundle gently into his hands, but he crossed his
arms over his tattered, too-short coat.

“No, you don’t. I was paid fine,” he said. “I
stole a silver teapot and three knives. Now leave, ma’am. This is
no place for th’likes of you.”

Giles had grown taller in the last day, and
tougher. Not a trace remained of the frightened little boy. But she
wasn’t going to let his blustering keep her from her mission.

“Where do you live, Mr. Pepperpot?”

“His name is Potter, lady.”

Giles shook a fist at the other boy, then
turned that same anger back on Felicity. “It don’t matter where I
live.”

“And your name is Potter, not Pepperpot?”
Claybourne had been right, the boy had lied.

“Go, Mrs. Claybourne. Leave here, and don’t
come back.” He dismissed her with a jerk of his head toward his
chums, and started away.

“But the shirts, Giles.”

He stopped short and returned. He took hold
of her arm and started toward one of the shadowy passages. “This
way, Mrs. Claybourne.”

“I know the way out!” she said. But she
followed him, easily committing the route to memory, resigned to
today’s failure but already planning her next foray. There were
missionaries and charity homes all around London. She would see
that Giles was entered into one of them, where he would be fed
wholesome meals, where he would sleep on a clean mattress under
warm blankets. He would get more schooling, and maybe work for
Claybourne one day. Now, there was an idea that would take some
clever negotiations!

“Do you have a family, Giles?”

He growled and stopped short in the midst of
a rivulet of filth. She could feel it oozing past her shoes but
refused to move.

“What are you trying to do to me, Mrs.
Claybourne?” His face wasn’t quite so red, and his voice had
smoothed out some. Pride. That was the boy’s obstacle.

“I’m just trying to set things right between
us.”

“They’re as right as they ought t’ be.”

“Because you were honest enough to bring me
my writing materials, and I wanted to let you know that I care
about what happens to you.”

“I can’t afford ya t’ care, Mrs. Claybourne.
I don’t know you, an’ I don’t want to. Y’come here tryin’ out yer
charity on me, and now y’ have me chums thinkin’ I’m a pulin’ babe.
Go back to Hampstead.”

“But I want to help—”

His fury returned. “Then dump yer charity on
someone ‘at wants it!”

He took her arm and drove her faster through
the twisting passages, dodging heaps of garbage and people, this
alley he must know blindfolded. Then she was thrust suddenly into
the bright sunshine and traffic noise of Shoreditch Road.

“And stay away!” Giles shouted. Then his eyes
narrowed, and Felicity followed his scowl as a dark and
too-familiar brougham drew up beside the broken-down curbing.

Claybourne. And he was leaping at them from
the driver’s seat.

Felicity turned back to Giles to warn him,
but he’d vanished into the mean protection of his warren. She
planted herself in front of the passage opening and stared down her
husband.

“Too late, Mr. Claybourne, he’s gone.”

Claybourne’s gaze settled hard on her,
weighing her down with his livid revulsion. His jaw was etched in
pale stone and sweat beaded at his temples, dampened his rigid
collar. He glanced over her head into the dark passage and a
disgusted shudder shook him. When he took hold of her wrist with
biting fingers and dragged her to the curb, his bare hand was as
cold and damp as a cave wall.

“You have no right, Mr. Claybourne. I’m a
grown woman. I can go where I please.”

“Take her.” Claybourne propelled her roughly
toward Branson, then dropped her wrist as if it would somehow
contaminate him. He left them standing on the curb and threw open
the cab door. The carriage rocked convulsively as he climbed inside
and slammed the door shut behind him.

If she hadn’t known better, if she hadn’t
smelled his aftershave instead of whiskey, she’d have thought him
drunk.

“You’ll have to sit up front with me, Mrs.
Claybourne,” Branson said, plainly uncomfortable as he handed her
up onto the driver’s bench.

“Fine.” She was more than ready to leave
Shoreditch Road for the moment. Her shoes were sopping with filth,
and her skirts caked in an unthinkably revolting muck. She had
failed Giles and lost the bundle of shirts somewhere along the way,
but next time she would come prepared for his rebuff, and with
candles for the children of the Beggar’s Academy.

“I’m coming back here, Branson.”

“The master won’t like it, Mrs.
Claybourne.”

“Good. Because I don’t like him.”