Adam stared at her helplessly. “Grace . . .” One of his father’s favorite sayings pushed into his mouth: For heaven’s sake, try to behave as a St. Just! He bit it back.
His sister stood, brushing crumbs from her lap. “Thank you for telling me about Bella.” She bent and kissed his cheek. “I must go. Aunt Seraphina is taking me shopping.” A smile, a swirl of sprigged muslin and golden ringlets, and she was gone.
Adam sat for a moment, staring at the empty doorway. He lifted a hand to his cheek and lightly rubbed where Grace had kissed him. What had happened to the sister he knew? The tractable, biddable girl? The girl who looked to him for guidance and acquiesced obediently to his wishes?
She’s growing up. She has a mind of her own.
It was a thought that filled him with foreboding. The world was suddenly a dangerous place, full of traps for innocent and headstrong young girls.
I need to find her a husband. Fast.
Adam muttered a curse beneath his breath. And then he ate the last of the macaroons.
CHAPTER THREE
THAT AFTERNOON ARABELLA took her maid, Polly, her sketchbook and pencils, and the stolen ruby earrings to Kensington Gardens. “Come back in three hours,” she told the coachman.
She strolled with Polly for ten minutes and then exited the gardens. The carriage, with the Westwick coat of arms glinting within its widow’s lozenge, was nowhere in sight.
Polly hailed a hackney coach. “Rosemary Lane,” she told the jarvey as they climbed inside.
Rosemary Lane was only a few miles from Kensington Gardens, but the slums of Whitechapel were as far from the grand squares of Mayfair as heaven was from hell. Arabella climbed down from the hackney and stepped over an open gutter, while Polly negotiated with the reluctant jarvey to return for them in an hour.
Their destination was just off Rosemary Lane, a narrow old-clothes shop with cracked and boarded-over windows. Hinges squealed as Arabella pushed the door open, a bell jangled harshly overhead, and the smell of musty, unwashed clothes invaded her nose. The scents of stale sweat, old perfume, spilled alcohol, and tallow candles mingled sickeningly together. For a moment she had to pause, quelling the nausea that pushed up her throat.
The shop was dimly lit, full of mounds of used clothing. Coats hung from door mantels and hooks in the ceiling, their cuffs shiny with wear. Racks crowded the room: worn shirts and faded flannel waistcoats, stained trousers, frayed dresses and yellowing petticoats. Scuffed shoes and boots with cracked soles lay in piles on the floor.
Polly bustled in behind her and shut the door with another squeal of the hinges. “Sally,” she called out. “It’s us.”
They changed in a small, cramped backroom, unbuttoning each other’s gowns and swiftly unlacing the short stays. Arabella hung her clothes—French muslin gown, linen chemise, cambric petticoat—carefully on hooks, and then stripped off her silk stockings and laid them over the back of a chair. The only item she didn’t remove was the pocket containing Lady Bicknell’s earrings, tied around her waist.
Having undressed, they dressed hurriedly again, in the clothes of the poor. Arabella pulled on a coarse chemise, a discolored blue dress that was too large for her, rough woolen stockings, a battered pair of men’s lace-up boots, and a stained apron. She wrapped a ragged shawl around her head and shoulders. “Ready?”
Polly rolled up sleeves that were too long for her and reached for her own shawl. “Yes.”
They left the old-clothes shop through the back door, stepping into a dark and malodorous alley. Arabella linked her arm with Polly’s and set off briskly in the direction of Berner Street.
The scuttling rats, the stinking piles of refuse, the rivulets of foul water running down the middle of the streets, were familiar. They didn’t frighten her, but they brought back memories of the three years she’d lived in Whitechapel. The deeper they penetrated the warren of small, dark streets, the stronger the memories became. These were the sounds she remembered from her childhood: drunken shouts, the slurred singing of an inebriated woman, crying children, the yelp of a kicked dog.
“Nice to be back,” Polly said, tightening her grip on Arabella’s arm. “Ain’t it?” She no longer spoke like a lady’s maid; her accent was pure Cockney.
Arabella glanced at her. Polly’s jaw was grimly clenched.
She felt a stab of shame. What had happened to Polly in these filthy streets was far worse than anything she’d experienced. She halted. “Polly, if you want to return to the shop—”
“And let you walk by yourself?” Polly snorted. “Not likely! And besides—” she took a step, tugging Arabella with her, “—I want to see me brother.”
Arabella bit her lip and allowed Polly to pull her along. No one paid them any attention, two women in ragged, shapeless clothes. She scanned the street, taking care not to catch anyone’s eyes. Her gaze slid over men’s faces, unshaven and defeated, over the sunken cheeks and despairing eyes of women. I can’t help them all, she repeated in her head. Not all of them.
But she could help some of them, and it was the children her eyes lingered on: grubby and half-naked, some running and shouting and playing with each other, others sitting listlessly on filthy doorsteps. I can help some of them. And her fingers strayed to her waist and the hidden rubies.
In Berner Street, with its soot-stained brick buildings crammed closely together, she glanced again at Polly. The grimness was gone from her maid’s face. Polly’s step quickened as they approached the third house from the corner, and her knock on the battered door was loud and cheerful. “Harry?” she called, pushing open the door. “It’s me, Polly.”
Arabella followed her into a narrow hallway and shut the door. She blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness, hearing a shout of “Pol!” and the clatter of boots on a wooden floor.
Arabella grinned as a burly, broken-nosed man swept Polly up in
