Buch lesen: «Miss Lottie's Christmas Protector»

Chapter Two

Early December 1842

Jasper King lay in bed at his town house on the west side of Arlington Street in Piccadilly overlooking Green Park and watched the smoke rings from his cheroot rise towards the high ceiling and its ornate centre rosette.

He’d moved into this house because he’d felt he needed a base and after years in Liverpool he’d wanted to come home to the city he’d lived in as a child and finally rest for a while. His father would have approved, he thought, smiling as he remembered the man who had brought his children up almost singlehandedly after the death of his wife. Arlene Susan King. His mother. He had not known her so his memories were only from stiff etchings, the sepia images giving little away as to the true nature of the woman. She had always felt like a stranger.

He shook off such melancholy, his thoughts returning to the day at hand. His elder sister Meghan had said she would meet him after two in the afternoon at a Christmas party she had helped organise so he still had a few hours to use up in the meantime. As a man who had been busy for so many years with the engineering firm his father had started, and all its demands, this was an unparalleled indolence, but for once he allowed the sheer silence of living to wash across him as he simply sat and did nothing.

Three years ago at this time he had hit rock bottom, the laudanum calling him home.

Stretching his right leg, he winced. The pain was still there, but the hurt had diluted into the known. He was no longer as whole as he once had been, but the shock had receded somewhat and a sort of resigned acceptance had followed.

Drawing again on his cheroot, he enjoyed the earthy mellow taste of tobacco. He’d have liked a brandy along with it, but had made it his purpose to rise above multiple vices with a dedicated resolve and he seldom gave in to any craving now without a fight. The opium and morphine had long gone and for that he was glad, but he still remembered the hell of a job he’d had to get off it as if it were yesterday.

Three hours until he saw his sister. The contrast between what he was doing and thinking here and now and all the expectations required for later amused him. For so long he’d been a hidden person and the thought of attending a gathering of those with the sole devotion to do good works made him tense. He was far from being a saint.

Lifting up the thin book on his lap, he let it slip to the floor, its spine flattening open on the parquet. A Journal of a Voyage Round the World.

Jasper wondered why he read such things, given he had never been to the far-flung destinations Captain James Cook had been wont to in his tiny boat and was hardly likely to, but something inside sought the incredible drama of lives lived to the very edge.

He wanted a release from himself and he reasoned worlds far from his own reality might almost give him that. It was comforting reading about men who risked everything for the pursuit of something far greater than themselves. Men who pushed the boundaries and reaped the results.

The clock on the mantel boomed out the hour of eleven and he watched the minute hand move around the numbers below it. A second. A minute. An hour. A day. A year. A decade. A lifetime.

Lists reassured him because they signified control. One followed the next. In order. In sequence. He could recite all the components of endless directories he’d memorised with ease and often did so.

Was this the beginning of the slide down into despondency? Like his father? That thought worried him and he leaned back against numerous carefully positioned pillows and breathed out.

Even his slumber now held an unchanged and precise structure and he longed to return to the time when he could’ve slept anywhere. The time when release came simply with the closing of one’s eyes.

So many damned years ago. When he was fit and whole. He grimaced as his foot lost its purchase on the sheets and his injured leg jolted.

A doctor’s visit was in order again. He knew it. The metal was still in his thigh, scraping against bone and moving in ways that his body recognised as dangerous. Sometimes he almost wished that which was foreign inside him might just enter into his bloodstream and that would be the end of it. A physician had told him such a catastrophe was eminently possible and the horror he’d once felt at such a warning was waning.

Pushing back the covers, he sat on the side of the bed. He needed to shave and have his hair cut. He needed to lighten up. He needed to live again as though every day might be his last, but Christmas was coming soon and the whole idea of such an enforced joviality made him tired.

Meghan had had a baby earlier in the year and she wanted him to be more of a part of her family life in order to get to know his niece, Sarah. She was worried for him. He could tell that she was.

Just thinking about baby Sarah made him smile. She was fat and hairless and the rings of flesh around all the parts of her body transformed her into a tiny Buddha just waiting for her chance to rule. He’d never thought about children much until meeting her and she had stolen his heart at the very first sight of her toothless smile.

He’d bought a doll’s house to give her at Christmas and he’d had small figurines of their family made by a craftsman in Liverpool. His own image had surprised him for in porcelain he looked a lot more gregarious than he felt he ever did in real life. He hoped his sister would like the present for she’d seemed exhausted lately, the chaotic household all about her adding to her fatigue.

He should be more thankful of the silence in his town house, for a few hours in the company of his sister and her offspring usually saw him scrambling back to Piccadilly in relief. The bank drafts he’d arranged each month for Meghan had brought a little escape for her from the constant worry of financial hardship and although Jasper would have liked to have donated more, his sister’s husband, Stephen Gibson, was a proud man and had refused the offer. Instead, Jasper had set up a further trust fund for his niece and given Meghan the rights of withdrawal from it.

A knock at his door had him turning and his valet, Hutton, walked in.

‘I’ve clothes for your outing, sir, and would recommend you take the thicker wool coat. It’s cold today.’

‘Almost snowing.’ A quick observation out of the window showed purple clouds on the horizon that were trailing quickly south.

‘Your sister sent a note just to reiterate that she will meet you at the address she told you of. She hopes you will not be late.’

‘Thank you, Hutton.’

‘Very well, sir.’ The man hesitated. ‘There is another matter, sir. A letter arrived a moment ago and the delivery boy asked if you could see to it straight away.’

Hutton proceeded to place a lilac envelope sealed with wax of the same colour in Jasper’s hand. A feminine missive. He recognised the handwriting on the front and his heart sank. Verity Chambers was becoming increasingly forward with her actions in contacting him and he would need to deal with her firmly. However, he could not quite face doing so today.

Balling up the missive, he aimed for the rubbish bin on one side of the room and the small paper flew over in an arc and landed neatly in.

‘Well done, sir.’

He smiled. ‘That will be all for now.’

He’d made a lucky escape from marriage to Miss Chambers three years ago even though at the time he had not thought it. With renewed purpose Jasper opened his book again and went back to his reading.

Lottie wondered momentarily about the wisdom of walking alone across London to a function she had received no official invitation to attend. Her cough had worsened rapidly and there was a wry irony in that. The weather had worsened as well, the snow that had been holding off now falling lightly. Brushing the gathering flakes from her cloak, she bent her head into the wind.

She had exaggerated her small sickness to escape Lady Malverly’s party in the country and pleaded instead to be left at the Fairclough Foundation in the care of her maid until she could join Mama and Amelia in a fortnight’s time. Her family had left two days ago and this morning she was suddenly a lot more ill than she wanted to be, but at least the deception had allowed her plan to be put in place.

The small group of youths came from nowhere on the eastern edge of Great Peter’s Road and surrounded her, leaving her to clutch her reticule to her chest with more force than she meant.

‘Go away, the lot of you.’ It never paid to show any sort of fear, but in truth her heart was beating fast. ‘Go back to where you belong and leave me alone. I have nothing at all that you could want.’

‘Do you not now?’ The largest boy at the front looked her over. ‘Seems to me you are mighty pretty to be alone.’

‘If you touch me, I will hurt you.’

Blackened teeth showed. ‘How did you plan to do that? You are a little on the small side.’

‘The crushing of a foe holds no correlation with the size of one’s muscles. It’s all here, you see, in the head. Give me one moment to lay you out flat on the road or be gone. I have no time to tarry.’

Such confidence seemed to quell a little of the bravado displayed by the group and Lottie pushed her advantage.

‘Well, hurry up. What’s it to be? A fight or the wisdom to retreat?’

‘You ain’t scared, miss?’ A boy from behind the first asked this question, his eyes full of puzzlement.

‘Of course not. I see boys just like you around the Fairclough Foundation on Howick Place, but its seldom one has the temerity to threaten me.’

‘Miss Fairclough?’ Another lanky youth detached himself from the group. ‘It’s you?’

‘Indeed it is.’ She squinted to see his face better, not wanting to extricate her spectacles from the bag which had begun all this nonsense in the first place and draw notice to her possessions. ‘Who are you?’

‘My cousin, Emmeline Fraser, is learning to sew at your school. She loves going there.’

The tone of the group had subtly changed now. It was something to steal from a stranger and quite another thing to do it from a friend.

‘Emmeline’s mother no doubt would be most upset to hear about this awkward meeting then should I find the need to tell her of it.’

The first challenger had stepped back now and the others had followed. She used such indecision to her advantage.

‘Well, I shall bid you all goodbye and I hope next time we see each other it might be in happier circumstances.’

The passageway was opened to her and Lottie stepped through, taking care to lift her skirts over the drain that ran down the middle of the road. The hard anger inside had lessened now, but fright lingered. She really ought to have taken her maid, Claire, with her today as the walk was a reasonable distance and a further fracas was something she did not need.

Smoothing down her golden skirt, she tidied the tendrils of her hair and took in a deep breath.

She could not afford to lose heart if she stood any chance of completing what she had set out to do. Shoving her thick woollen cloak back, she checked to make sure the note she had spent a long time writing last night was still in her pocket. If words failed her at least, she had this to give him. Mr Jasper King. She hoped all this effort would come to something.

After the unsettling meeting with the street youths Lottie wondered if she could still manage to complete her task. Shaking her head hard, she stepped forward. Of course she could. If she were to fail then her sister Millie would marry a man who was overzealous, ridiculous and pedantic to boot and she would be miserable. Lottie could not let that happen.

After walking another quarter of an hour, the streets held a greater cleanliness and beauty and she loosened her guard a little. Great George Street had a different feel from the narrow dank alleyways that sat in the shadows of Westminster Abbey and she was glad to have arrived there.

Jasper King’s sister was called Mrs Gibson, a woman she had met once a few years ago on a committee set up for the Betterment of Women at Risk. Lottie prayed she would remember their association and allow her entrance, but this was just another problem on a day of many. She sniffed and felt red-raw pain sear her throat. She had lost her handkerchief somewhere and had not thought to add a spare to the contents of her reticule.

Her nose was dripping.

Using the back of her hand so as not to stain her dress, she wiped away the moisture, looking up at the house she had finally reached just as the sun came out, its brightness reflecting upon the glass and sending a shaft of light down on the street before her.

Perhaps this was an omen? Perhaps right at this moment Millie was already being courted at the party in the country by a man for whom she could hold a tendre. Lottie frowned even as the thought of what she was doing here had her crossing her heart, such a deception probably the worst idea she had ever concocted.

Lady Alexandra’s parties had always been full of people for whom Lottie held little liking, with their penchant for the chitter-chatter of nonsense and shared gossip. It had been a relief when Mama had agreed to allow her to stay at home in the company of her maid until she was feeling a bit better.

Jasper King held the answer to all their prayers. He might also know where her brother Silas was, for although she hated to admit to worry, it was most definitely there. Seven months without correspondence was an inordinately long time, even for her adventurous sibling.

Two young women in front of her stopped to look around as she took the first step towards the front door. Dressed beautifully, they gave the impression of questioning her presence here, but Lottie was as easily at home with the rich as she was with the poor.