“Verona, let’s go.” Mrs. Bosworth grabbed Mother’s arm. She looked the woman over, her eyes sharp enough to draw blood. “Whoever you are, get away from us. You’re no better than you should be and have no one to blame for your circumstances but yourself. Accosting your betters in public like this. Go back to the rookery, where you belong.”
Mrs. Bosworth hustled Mother up the steps to the street, but Charlotte didn’t follow. Instead she yanked off her muff, tucking it under her arm, and peeled off her gloves. Dudley hovered nearby, shifting his weight, too much of a gentleman to leave without Charlotte but clearly uneasy.
“Here, take these.” Charlotte held the gloves out to the woman. “What’s your name?”
The woman studied her skeptically. Her cold-reddened hand trembled as she took the woolen gloves from Charlotte’s fingers. “You look like your father. Same coloring.” She stuck her hands into the gloves. Did she think Charlotte would snatch them back? “My name is Amelia Cashel. Former mistress of the Earl of Tiptree.” She almost sneered, her words bitter and hurt.
“Charlotte, come here at once.” Mother’s voice shot down the steps.
“Please, you say you have a daughter? How old is she?” Charlotte dug in her reticule and pulled out her entire savings, meager as it was, forcing down any remorse for the library subscription she had hoped to purchase.
“Her name’s Pippa, and she’s nineteen.”
Pressing the coins into the woman’s hand, Charlotte nodded. Her mind raced but felt stunned into immobility at the same time as she hurried up the steps, Dudley coming along behind like a faithful hound.
She had a sister.
“Charlotte Tiptree, this might be the most foolish thing you’ve done in your entire life,” she whispered to herself as she hurried down the street, head bent, lugging a basket that bumped against her thigh with every step.
Ice coated the gutters and glazed the cobbles, and she had to watch her step lest she fall. The darkness didn’t help. She’d left behind the lighted braziers and streetlamps a few blocks ago. “At least you can be thankful that the moon is nearly full.” Though the moonlight seemed to do little good. The stars were mere pinpricks, and the buildings created shadows deep enough for a horde of miscreants to shelter in.
Having given every cent in her purse to that woman, Charlotte had none for hiring a coach, and her father had taken the carriage out tonight. She was forced to walk. It might be less than two miles from Mayfair to St. Giles in distance, but it was leagues in social standing and safety. Block by block along the Tottenham Court Road, the houses dwindled in size, the side streets narrowed, and her tension increased.
Her hands ached with cold. She hoped her gloves were even now warming Amelia Cashel’s hands … or Pippa’s. Charlotte had no second pair, and she couldn’t carry the basket and use her muff, so cold hands it was.
She’d never been to one of London’s rookeries, much less one as extensive as St. Giles. If she wasn’t wont to snaffle her father’s newspapers and read them in secret, she wouldn’t even know what a rookery was, much less where to find one. According to the broadsheets, the rookeries teemed with villains and ne’er-do-wells, women of low morals and men of evil intent.
Which made tonight’s gambit seem foolish indeed as she bumped along, head bent, trying to keep a grip on both her imagination and her courage lest the one get out of control and the other flee entirely.
As Charlotte saw it, she had two major obstacles: finding Amelia Cashel’s residence in a warren of tenements and squatters’ flats, and getting back to Mayfair safely. All without her parents any the wiser.
If her mother knew where her daughter was and what she was doing, she’d grab Charlotte by the cloak and drag her to Aunt Philomena’s on foot, bouncing her every step of the way.
Dinner tonight had been a nightmare. Her mother had sat as still as a Roman statue. Father presided over the meal as if nothing untoward had occurred. Had Mother even told him? He’d surely find out soon enough, London gossip being what it was. Charlotte toyed with her food, her mind consumed with the knowledge that her father was a philanderer and liar and that she had a sister. Well, a half sister, but a sibling nonetheless.
Pippa.
Pippa Cashel. Nineteen years old. Which made her two years or so younger than Charlotte. All her life she’d wished for, prayed for, longed for a sibling, a sister, someone to share things with, to talk with, to laugh with. She knew her parents were disappointed that they had been unable to produce more children, in particular a son, but Charlotte shared that disappointment.
She had grown up lonely, and a sister would have banished loneliness.
Charlotte glanced at her father. He looked the same as always, perfectly barbered, impeccably if plainly clothed, his features sharp, his coloring, as Amelia Cashel had said, fairish like her own. She glanced around the dining room, taking in the papered walls, high ceiling, a single candelabra on the table, but high overhead a chandelier that could be lit when company came over and her father wanted to impress. A fire in the coal stove had warmed the room, and the food, while plain, had been plentiful.
But no one had spoken a word during dinner.
Now, as Charlotte hurried farther from her home in Mayfair, cold, scared, on a mission of mercy that might not even be wanted, guilt smote her. Her sister had none of what Charlotte took for granted every day. Pippa’s mother hadn’t even owned a pair of gloves.
If Amelia Cashel was to be believed, her daughter, Pippa, was now a doxy? As proper and sheltered as Charlotte had been, she knew what a prostitute was, what happened during the transaction. She had science and medical books to thank for her knowledge, since her mother would never speak of such an intimate subject as relations between a man and woman. If either of her parents knew she read about anatomy and physiology, they would be horrified.
But the idea of any woman being forced to be employed as a prostitute … Most women of society seemed to believe that a woman who sold her favors did so because she wanted to, because some fatal flaw in her character that she couldn’t overcome made her behave so poorly.
Was that true?
Were the Cashels merely subject to their sinful natures?
If so, what did that make her father, who had kept a mistress for two decades? Who had turned them out without any means of support when he tired of them?
Shame writhed through her middle, and she gripped the handle of the basket until the wood bit into her hands.
The air stank. Trash gusted along the street, and the buildings loomed overhead, the upper stories cantilevering out over the ground floors, cutting off the faint moonlight. Lamplight showed around tattered curtains or crooked shutters, and a rat scurried across her path. She stifled a yelp, jumping as it skittered into a pile of old rags crammed into the corner of a stairwell.
She’d arrived in the rookery.
A sign hung over one establishment halfway down the block, where light poured from every window. With such frigid temperatures gripping the city, no one lingered on the street. A man hurried from the opposite direction, head bent. He glanced up but wasted no time ducking into the tavern.
As Charlotte slowly approached, she could make out the sign swinging in the wind from two icy chains. Each swing squeaked, emphasizing the quiet everywhere else.