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He's a minister to whores… She's a fallen woman… Lord Lieutenant Henry Evesham is an evangelical reformer charged with investigating the flesh trade in London. His visits to bawdy houses leave him with a burning desire to help sinners who've lost their innocence to vice—even if the temptations of their world test his vow not to lose his moral compass…again. As apprentice to London's most notorious whipping governess, Alice Hull is on the cusp of abandoning her quiet, rural roots for the city's swirl of provocative ideas and pleasures—until a family tragedy upends her dreams and leaves her desperate to get home. When the handsome, pious Lord Lieutenant offers her a ride despite the coming blizzard, she knows he is her best chance to reach her ailing mother—even if she doesn't trust him. He has the power to destroy her… She has the power to undo him… As they struggle to travel the snow-swept countryside, they find their suspicion of each other thawing into a longing that leaves them both shaken. Alice stirs Henry's deepest fantasies, and he awakens parts of her she thought she'd foresworn years ago. But Henry is considering new regulations that threaten the people Alice holds dear, and association with a woman like Alice would threaten Henry's reputation if he allowed himself to get too close. Is falling for the wrong person a test of faith …or a chance at unimagined grace? Content Warning: Fair readers, a note on content, for those who like to know. (If you prefer to be surprised, skip this part!) This book contains explicit sex; kink and hierophilia (look it up!); feelings of guilt and shame concerning sex; prostitution (both practitioners of and debates about the legality of); parental mortality; toxic families of origin; religious faith, including questioning of and alienation from; allusions to body image issues; and quite a lot of truly despicable cursing.
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The Lord I Left
Scarlett Peckham
This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.
This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Lord I Left
Copyright © 2020 by Scarlett Peckham
Ebook ISBN: 9781641971249
Print KDP ISBN: 979-8-60236-307-4
IS Print ISBN: 978-1-64197-138-6
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
NYLA Publishing
121 W 27th St., Suite 1201, New York, NY 10001
http://www.nyliterary.com
Contents
Praise for Scarlett Peckham
About This Book
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Historical Notes
Thank you—and a sexy little gift from moi!
Want more books from Scarlett?
And lo! Now for a whole new series!
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise for Scarlett Peckham
"An astonishingly good debut...The whole book is a breath of fresh air, both a complex, layered story and a soaring romance with two very real people at its heart." — The New York Times Book Review on THE DUKE I TEMPTED
"Peckham’s meticulous character work pays off in spectacular, grandly romantic fashion and The Duke I Tempted ends with particularly cathartic and hard-won happily ever after." — BookPage on THE DUKE I TEMPTED
“If you want something to speed your heart and stop your breath as you read beneath the covers, with only the meager flashlight beam warding off the enveloping night — then you have a rare treat in store." — The Seattle Review of Books on THE DUKE I TEMPTED
"With her ability to tread the line between the most diverting of historical circumstances and a progressive level of sex positivity that makes me want to sing her praises from the rooftops, Peckham proves herself one of the most exciting romance authors on the rise." — Entertainment Weekly on THE EARL I RUINED
"A beautifully written, character-driven story that expertly unravels a big misunderstanding, and surprises with its twists and turns and wicked secrets right up until the end." — NPR on THE EARL I RUINED
About This Book
He’s a minister to whores… She’s a fallen woman…
Lord Lieutenant Henry Evesham is an evangelical reformer charged with investigating the flesh trade in London. His visits to bawdy houses leave him with a burning desire to help sinners who’ve lost their innocence to vice—even if the temptations of their world test his vow not to lose his moral compass…again.
As apprentice to London’s most notorious whipping governess, Alice Hull is on the cusp of abandoning her quiet, rural roots for the city’s swirl of provocative ideas and pleasures—until a family tragedy upends her dreams and leaves her desperate to get home. When the handsome, pious Lord Lieutenant offers her a ride despite the coming blizzard, she knows he is her best chance to reach her ailing mother—even if she doesn’t trust him.
He has the power to destroy her… She has the power to undo him…
As they struggle to travel the snow-swept countryside, they find their suspicion of each other thawing into a longing that leaves them both shaken. Alice stirs Henry’s deepest fantasies, and he awakens parts of her she thought she’d foresworn years ago. But Henry is considering new regulations that threaten the people Alice holds dear, and association with a woman like Alice would threaten Henry’s reputation if he allowed himself to get too close.
Is falling for the wrong person a test of faith …or a chance at unimagined grace?
Author’s Note
A note on content, for sensitive readers who like to know.
(If you prefer to be surprised, skip this part.)
This book contains the following: explicit sex; kink and hierophilia (look it up!); feelings of guilt and shame concerning sex; prostitution (both practitioners of and debates about the legality of); parental mortality; toxic families of origin; religious faith, including questioning of and alienation from; allusions to body image issues; and quite a lot of truly despicable cursing.
Dedication
For Sarah E. Younger, whose faith in me—and in this series—is one of my great blessings.
Chapter 1
Mary-le-Bone, London
January 1758
The London morning smelled of smoke and had the look of a sketch crudely rendered in blunt charcoal. Icy sludge dripped from sodden eaves into the rivulets of muck that passed for streets, sloshing Henry Evesham’s newly polished boots.
It was an ominous morning to begin a journey. Which was appropriate, given Henry’s destination.
“I’ll just be a moment,” he told Elena Brearley’s groom, handing off the reins of his too-fine, borrowed curricle. He walked briskly from the mews to Charlotte Street, stopping at the solemn door of the house marked twenty-three.
It still struck him how little Mistress Brearley’s townhouse resembled its forbidding reputation. When he’d first come here, he’d imagined a spired fortress acrid with the stink of brimstone and noisy with wails of pain. Not this quiet, stately residence, more like an exclusive members club than the lurid whipping house of his imagination.
Henry flicked his knuckle against the door, tense at who might open it. He exhaled when, small mercy, the tall, black footman in the powdered wig appeared, rather than the petite, white woman with the intense brown eyes.
Dove’s eyes, he’d thought when he’d first seen her. Dove’s eyes, he’d thought again when she’d glared at him as he left this place last week.
But no, alas, that was not accurate. If he was being honest with himself—and he’d vowed tobe rigorously honest with himself—Alice, for it was untruthful to pretend he did not recall her name—had glared not because he’d left but because he’d fled, bolting up the stairs and out the door as if his life depended on it.
(No. Not his life. His soul.)
“Good morning, Stoker,” he said brightly to the footman. By now, they knew each other, the denizens of Charlotte Street and Lord Lieutenant Henry Evesham.
Still, the servant went through the customary stiff-lipped ceremony that bartered entrance to the door.
“Your key?” Stoker asked, holding out his hand.
Henry rummaged in his overcoat for the elaborately worked iron, its end marking his identity with a sigil of a cross affixed in thorns. The fearsome whipping governess Elena Brearley, he had discovered, was not above a joke.
“Keep it,” Henry said. “I shan’t be back after today.”
If this announcement meant anything to Stoker, the man did not betray it, only stepped aside, allowing Henry entry. “You’re not expected,” Stoker said in his usual hushed tone. “The establishment is closed today.”
Henry smiled cheerfully, for this was precisely the reason he’d chosen today to come. “I hoped that since you’re closed Mistress Brearley might be free for a brief word. In private.”
He followed Stoker at a distance down the corridor into the bowels of the house, inhaling its scent of vinegar and polished wood. It was nothing like the way most brothels smelled, an odor of stale gin and pomander masking the livelier, human scents of lust. He’d visited enough bagnios in the past two years—fine ones with half-dressed painted ladies offering entertainment and strong spirts, low ones offering little more than dirty cots for rutting—to know that this place was as unusual as its mistress claimed.
He was aware of her particularities by now—the codes of discipline and discretion Mistress Brearley believed made this place safer than others of its kind. It was her mission to persuade him that wider adoption of her ways would reduce the dangers of the flesh trade for whores and culls alike.
He was not sure he was convinced. But he recognized in her a seriousness of purpose that beat in his own breast.
They were both evangelists.
Stoker led him up a flight of stairs to a large parlor. Velvet curtains blocked the daylight and a fire roaring in a man-sized hearth gave the double-vaulted room its only light. It was, as always, midnight in this room, though outside the morning bells had just struck eight.
Elena Brearley sat still and regal, writing at her desk. She paused and lifted her eyes in greeting. “Henry.”
“Lord Lieutenant,” he corrected, with a wink. It was a little joke between them, his insistence on a title that he knew Elena Brearley would never utter. Her establishment observed a different hierarchy than the one outside its walls. The only title honored here was Mistress Brearley.
A touch of wry amusement curled around the edges of her mouth. “I did not expect to see you here again.” She looked at him directly, her gaze expansive and forgiving, like she knew the precise makings of his soul—every virtue, sin, and limitation.
He did the only thing he could before such a gaze, which was to pretend he did not notice it, that it did not make him want to flinch.
“Ah, yes, my apologies for my haste in taking leave last week,” he said. “I belatedly remembered I was overdue for an appointment at the Lords. I hope your girl was not alarmed at my abruptness. Thank you for seeing me, nevertheless.”
She smiled at his lie, saving him the trouble of mentally reproving himself for it. “Of course. You know it delights me to find myself of service to an emissary of His Majesty’s government.”
She always spoke to him in this mordant tone, as though they were on opposite sides of an irony so vast that it could only be amusing, and they both knew it. It made him want to tell her all his secrets, though that would be perverse—the man of God confessing to a whore.
“I am grateful for all of your assistance,” he said. “It has been immensely helpful in preparing my report to the Lords.”
“I wait in suspense to learn your recommendations.”
“I’m delivering the report in a few weeks. I’ll see to it you receive a printing.”
His remit as Lord Lieutenant was to investigate the toll of vice upon the innocents of London and propose ways to fight the scourge. He’d done careful research for two years, haunting houses of ill repute and interviewing everyone from palace courtesans to alley trollops to those who bought their wares. All that was left was to weigh the evidence and decide whether stricter punishment or progressive reform would best serve London’s streets. Whatever he decided would make enemies of half the city—either the brothel-keeps and harlots who wished to ply their trade in safety or the moralists who hoped to drive them out of sight.
Mistress Brearley continued to look closely at him, as if she might make out from his posture whether his report would prove him to be an ally or an adversary. “I do hope you will consider all that we discussed as you form your conclusions,” she said, searching his eyes.
He dodged her gaze. Despite his prayers for moral guidance, he did not yet know what he would do.
He was conscious of the city’s factions watching him for clues. But he had swum in ambiguity so long that his own beliefs—once so unshakable he had made his name espousing them in fiery print—had become murky and disordered. He was a man divided.
“Your proposed reforms will certainly be among my considerations,” he said blandly.
“That is heartening. But do also remember what we spoke about last week.”
He stiffened. He had inquired as to her prices—a standard question he’d forgotten to ask on earlier visits, given her insistence on speaking of condoms and physicians and license fees and guilds—and she’d replied that the price would depend on the nature of his desires.
“I have no desires,” he’d said briskly. (Liar, he’d dutifully accounted to himself as he’d done so.)
“I was speaking rhetorically,” she’d answered, using a tone that was not so different from the one he’d used on the men whose lives he’d upended during his time at Saints & Satyrs.A tone that said we both know what you are.
“But if that is true, Henry,” she’d gone on thoughtfully, “I do wonder if it’s just. A man tasked with reforming the flesh trade, one would think, has a responsibility to understand the yearnings at the heart of it. Does he not?”
“One can judge a crime without committing it.”
“And one can possess a desire without indulging it,” she’d replied, staring at him entirely too long. “As a man of God, I’d assume you value empathy.”
He’d been silent, unwilling to engage her on this point, for he was here to ask questions, not proffer whatever lesions dotted the purity of his relationship with sin for her inspection.
He’d been relieved when she’d dropped the matter and summoned her girl to give him a tour of the premises.
But he’d been wrong to be relieved. For if Mistress Brearley had sensed the secrets buried in his guts, Alice had brought them roiling to the surface by doing no more than entering the room. Ever since he’d first set eyes on her, with her petite frame and faraway expression and enormous, doleful eyes—
Yes, he knew what yearning was.
Elena cleared her throat, reminding him that she was waiting for an answer.
“Of course I recall our conversation. And I appreciate your advice.”
“Then I won’t repeat myself. But I urge you to think of the good that you can do. The suffering you might prevent.”
On this, they agreed. It was a call from God, his mission, and he was grateful for the chance to do work of lasting moral consequence. That he’d found the work to be a trial—that it tested his ethics and compassion, necessitated he walk the tempting pathways of a sinner—made him certain the sacrifice was worthy.
He sighed, and ceased the effort of trying to look official. “I rarely think of anything else, of late. That, I promise you.”
She nodded. She always seemed to believe his good intentions despite the threats he’d made against her in his previous line of work. He admired this about her—her capacity for forgiveness. He was not sure he would be so charitable, were their positions reversed.
“How can I help you today, Henry?” Elena asked.
He tried to look extremely casual, though this was difficult, in her hard-backed wooden chair. “In my haste to leave on my last visit I wonder if I misplaced a book. I must travel to the country to write my report and I hoped to retrieve it before I left, if you’ve come across it.”
“A book?”
“Yes—leather, bound, handwritten. It contained my notes.”
It was his journal, actually, but he could not bring himself to admit to Mistress Brearley that he had left such an intimate personal artifact here, where anyone might read it. He suspected it had fallen from his satchel when he’d gone running out the door the week before.
Mistress Brearley shook her head. “I would have sent it back to you had I discovered it. Our respect for discretion extends to exotic creatures like Methodists, same as it does to flagellants and whores.” She smiled.
He was relieved she hadn’t found it. God alone should be privy to the writings in that book.
He must have dropped it somewhere else after he’d rushed off in his ooze of guilt. Losing it in some anonymous alley or bank-side muck would be infinitely preferable to losing it here. It would diminish his authority for such people to know the nature of his private struggles. And if theyknew, they might expose him.
He bowed and took a slip of paper from his pocket. “Please write to me at this address should it turn up. Thank you for your time. I must be on my way.”
He moved toward the door, but before his fingers reached the knob, it flew open with such force that the wood cracked against the plaster wall behind it.
He jumped back just in time to avoid being struck on the chin. The serving girl, Alice, rushed blindly past him toward her mistress’s desk, breathing like she’d taken a bullet to the lungs.
Mistress Brearley stood abruptly. “Alice, what is it?”
Before, the girl had always seemed impassive, betraying no emotion beside an occasional touch of perverse playfulness beneath the solemnity of her appearance. Her beauty was in the intelligence of her eyes, which danced in a way that made you long to know the private thoughts that made them flicker so.
But now, her eyes were wild, and she clutched a piece of paper to her sparrow’s chest so tight that her knuckles glinted blue. Her hands, he noticed, were so small he could fold both of them inside one of his large paws. (But he should not be thinking of fleshly contact with a woman. Not ever, but especially not now, when the girl in question was so upset she could hardly breathe.)
“It’s my mother,” Alice choked out. “She’s suffered an attack. Her heart. My sister writes—” she frantically shook her head, as if unable to speak the dire words aloud, and held the letter out to Mistress Brearley.
“We expect she has but days,” Mistress Brearley read aloud. “Oh, my dear girl.”
“My sympathies,” he murmured, without thinking.
Alice whipped her head around, and he realized, belatedly, she had not noticed he was here.
“Oh—I was not aware you had a—” She edged closer to her mistress without finishing the thought, her expression indicating she would have been more pleased to see a beggar pustuled in contagious pox than Henry.
He no doubt deserved that look, and longed to shrink away, but the minister in him could not help but see the anguish in her shoulders and wish to comfort her.
“Miss Alice, I’m so sorry you’ve had bad news.” He pushed a chair toward her, for she seemed unsteady on her feet. “You should sit down,” he said in a low, soothing voice. “You’ve had a shock. Perhaps you’d like to pray?”
Alice looked up at him in bemusement, then quickly turned back to Elena without answering, as if she could not waste time in making sense of him. “I have to get back—my sisters …”
Elena came and bolstered Alice against her arm, rubbing her back. She stood half a foot taller than the girl, whose head would not meet Henry’s breastbone.
“I’ll need to find a mail coach right away,” Alice said, speaking rapidly. “It’s at least three days home and if I miss it today, I may not get there in time to—”
A sound escaped her that was not speech so much as heartbreak.
“Breathe, my girl,” Elena murmured. “I’ll have the boy run and fetch the timetables to Fleetwend while you pack.”
Fleetwend. The name was familiar to Henry. He’d been there once, on a revival.
“Fleetwend’s in Somerset, no?” he asked. “On the River Wythe?”
Elena looked at him over Alice’s head. “Yes, that’s correct Alice, is it not?”
Alice nodded a tearful assent into her sleeve.
He felt a chill run up his spine. God is great.
Her town was only a few hours drive beyond his father’s house. This was no coincidence. He had lost his journal for a reason: so that he might be in this very room, on this very day, when he happened to be on his way to Somerset just as a young woman found herself in desperate need of passage there.
Joy in God’s providence warmed him like a flame had been kindled in his belly. He needed this. A reminder of the foundation of his faith.
He inclined his head down to Alice’s height, so that he could speak softly to her. “I’m headed that way, Miss—” he did not know her surname.
“Hull,” Mistress Brearley provided.
“Miss Hull. If you do not mind traveling by open carriage in cold weather, it would be no trouble to take you to your family.”
Her face twisted, in some reaction he could not precisely read, but which was not gratitude.
“I could not impose upon your kindness.” Her eyes darted to Mistress Brearley’s, as though looking for confirmation.
“’Tis no imposition whatsoever,” he said in his most reassuring voice. When she did not look soothed by his tone, he stepped nearer and tried a joke. “I’m a minister by training, Miss Hull. We never turn down the chance to play the Good Samaritan.”
His quip did not a thing to ease her look of worry. She stepped backwards, away from him. He remembered, too late, that his prodigious stature was not often regarded as soothing by petite young women. He was crowding her. He moved away and rounded his shoulders, making himself smaller to give her space.
“I’m afraid I can’t promise much comfort, but I can get you to your family by tomorrow evening. You have my word.”
Alice once again gave a beseeching look to Mistress Brearley, but her employer looked reflectively at Henry. “Alice, the mail coach will take twice that much time in winter weather,” she said quietly. “You’d do well to consider Henry’s offer.”
Some silent understanding passed from mistress to maid, and Alice dropped her shoulders, immediately acquiescing to her employer’s wishes.
“Thank you,” she said, turning to him, her face resigned. “If you will grant me a moment, I will gather my things.”
“Of course,” he said.
She quickly left the room. Even in distress, her movements were as precise as the words of a poem. Not a single footstep wasted.
“You are very gracious to look after her,” Mistress Brearley murmured, her eyes following Alice. “She’s the eldest child and the family will need her.”
“’Tis my pleasure to do a kindness for a woman in need.”
And a recompense, to make up for the sinful thoughts he’d had of her. And perhaps, more selfishly, a way to reassure himself he was still the godly man he wished to be. The one he had so nearly lost to the lapses that had gripped him this last year.
He would get her home.
He would not fail himself, nor Reverend Keeper, nor the Lord.
Not again.
Chapter 2
Singing stops the tears, Alice’s father had taught her as a girl, whenever she’d skinned her knee or suffered a child’s momentary sadness. Sing a little song, and before you know it, you’ll be smiling. And so, as she climbed the steps to her room at the top of the house, she forced out the first tune that came to mind.
My Pin-Box is the Portion
My Mother left with me;
Which gains me much Promotion,
And great Tranquility:
It doth maintain me bravely,
Although all Things are dear:
I’ll not let out my Pin-Box
F’less than forty Pounds a Year
Mama would murder her for singing vulgar tunes at such a time—take it as proof that despite her daughter’s supposed London polishing, Alice was still strange, like Papa’s people. Even in the best of times, Mama’d hated the broadsheet ditties Alice’s father had always hummed as he’d tinkered in his workshop. Her mother preferred ballads. The kind about death and doomed love affairs and the forgiveness of the Lord.
But none of those subjects were likely to keep Alice from crying, so she opened the door to her chamber and sang the next verse louder as she found her traveling satchel and began to gather her possessions.
My Pin-Box is a Treasure
Which many Men delights;
For therewith I can pleasure
Both Earls, Lords, and Knights,
If they do use my Pin-Box,
They will not think it dear,
Although that it doth cost them
A hundred Pounds a Year.
Her voice caught as she yanked her formal receiving dress from its hook. It had been made for answering the door at Charlotte Street. She would likely need it for her mother’s funeral.
Her mother’s funeral.
Her hands shook too badly to fold the garment properly. She pressed her face into the fabric.
How could this be? A month ago her mother had been her usual forceful self, sending preserves and knitted mittens and a pointed letter declaring it time for Alice to come home and have herself made Mrs. William Thatcher before some other, cleverer, girl claimed the title first.
Alice had resented it, this unsubtle hint that she should end her time in London and return to the drab life that awaited her in Fleetwend, where everyone thought her perverse and loose and willful. She’d made excuses not to come for Christmas, sending a box of candied cherries in her stead.
Candied cherries. Of all the awful things.
She’d thought if she stayed away long enough her mother might come to prefer the money her daughter sent home from London to the prospect of William Thatcher for a son-in-law.
And if not, she’d thought that she had time to seek forgiveness.
Years and years to make her case by a slow process of simply not returning.
But she’d been wrong. If the doctor was correct in his assessment, her mother had, at most, a week.
She pulled her trunk from beneath the bed and rummaged through her letters and books until she found a silver chain buried at the bottom. She fished it out and rubbed the harp-shaped pendant on her dress. Her father had given this necklace to her mother when they’d married. When Alice left for London, her mother had pressed it into her palm. He loved you so, child. And so do I. Don’t forget it. A sentiment so shocking in its uncharacteristic sweetness that she’d not been able to answer. She’d buried the necklace in her trunk and hadn’t looked at it since she’d arrived here.
Now it was dull and tarnished.
She kissed the little harp, feeling like the most ungrateful girl who’d ever lived. “Forgive me, Mama,” she whispered, looping the chain around her head and under the high collar of her dress. “Wait for me.” Her voice was hoarse with the sadness that seemed determined to seep out as tears, so she squeezed her eyes shut and started up another verse.
I Have a gallant Pin-Box,
The like you ne’er did see,
It is where never was the Pox,
Something above my Knee:
O ’tis a gallant Pin-Box,
You never saw the Peer;
Then would not want my Pin-Box
For forty Pounds a Year.
Elena peered into the room, holding a cloak. “Oh, Alice. Only you would sing bawdy songs with grief.” Her mistress’s face, usually as serene as the surface of the moon, was taut with concern.
Alice shrugged, grateful that Elena never cared when her behavior was strange. “Better to sing than to weep.”
Elena looked at her tenderly, like she was going to embrace her. Alice shook her head and darted over to rummage in her satchel, because Elena’s kindness would make the tears fall down, and once they came they wouldn’t stop.
Elena knew her well enough not to press emotion on her. She tipped up Alice’s chin instead. “In any case,” she said with a sly smile, “don’t let Henry Evesham hear you singing about your pin-box.”
The thought of shocking the judgmental lord lieutenant lifted Alice’s mood. She returned Elena’s mischievous expression and leaned into her ear to sing her favorite verse.
The Parson and the Vicar,
Though they are holy Men,
Yet no Man e’er is quicker
To use my Pin-Box, when
They think no Man doth know it;
For that is all their Fear
Although that it doth cost them
A hundred Pounds a Year.
Elena threw back her head and laughed. “Hush! If Evesham hears you, the poor man will go running for the street again.”
“The poor man,” Alice scoffed. “Please. It’s scarcely worse than the filth he wrote in his paper.”
Evesham had found fame as the editor of the evangelical news rag Saints & Satyrs, which he used as a pulpit to decry London’s sins and vices. He’d nearly exposed this club two years before, riding the pressure on their necks to a plum position for himself with the House of Lords, who’d made him a lieutenant tasked with investigating the flesh trade.
“Do you really think it’s wise for me to travel with him? After all he’s done to us?”
Alice had been horrified when her mistress had invited Evesham to the establishment to learn more about their practices. He’d promised them discretion, but the more he knew about this place, the more evidence he had to imperil all their lives.
Elena just smiled in that mysterious way she had, like she’d already read the ending to the story of your life. “He’s the pious sort, Alice, but I suspect he’s a decent man. You’ll be safe with him.”
“I don’t doubt for my safety. Just my sanity, stuck beside a sneering Puritan.”
“I believe he’s a Methodist,” Elena said mildly.
“Whatever he is, he looks at me like rancid meat, and I am too distraught to pretend to be pleasant to him.” Her voice quavered. She was tempted to sing another verse about her pin-box to steady herself.
Elena only shrugged. “Well, you ought to try. He’s traveling to the countryside to write his report, and I sense he’s still undecided on his findings. Perhaps you can help sway him to the merits of reform. You’ll have the advantage of the final word. It could be an opportunity.”
Alice did not need to be reminded that Evesham had the power to make things far more difficult for them if he urged harsher laws. She was flattered her mistress thought her capable of influencing his views. But she did not for a moment believe it to be true.
“I doubt the lofty lord lieutenant would welcome my opinions on the law. He acts like merely breathing the same air as me is sinful.”
“You might be surprised,” Elena said. “You never know what lurks beneath the surface of a man.” She paused, and bit her lip. “Though, perhaps you’ll agree his surface is … remarkable. Ironic, that a man so disdainful of the flesh should be so singularly blessed in its bounty.”
Alice groaned, relieved she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Evesham’s looks—his burly arms, his lantern jaw, the almost obscene fullness of his thighs beneath his breeches.
She shot Elena the smallest hint of a smile. “It isn’t right, a man like him looking like that.”
Elena’s eyes twinkled. “At least you will be able to enjoy the scenery he provides, if not the company.” She held out the cloak. “Here, take this for the journey. It’s terribly cold.”
Alice took the heavy garment, a lustrous, purple velvet lined with ermine. It was the kind of robe a queen might wear—no doubt one of the many outrageously fine gifts from Lord Avondale that Elena stored unused and unacknowledged in her dressing room. Elena found Avondale’s relentless attempts to win her affection tiresome, but Alice thought the intensity of his devotion to his whipping governess was rather touching.
What do you want, Alice? Mama was always demanding in her letters. You’re never satisfied. Here, she’d found it. She wanted a life like Elena’s. Freedom to rule over a kingdom of her own, surrounded by people who would delight in her eccentricity, rather than wishing it away.
Elena patted her hand. “Come. Evesham is waiting. Write to me as soon as you can and take the time you need with your family. We’ll delay your training until you are able to return.”
Alice nodded. She did not say what she feared: that her training as a governess would never happen, for the life she had been planning would not be possible if her mother died.
She wouldn’t think of that right now. For now, she must simply get home.
She followed Elena down the stairs, pausing at a shelf of books the artisans here passed among themselves. She treasured this modest collection of well-paged tomes on history and philosophy. The presence of ideas had been a second form of payment here, and the one she’d miss the most. She grabbed two volumes she’d not yet read, not much caring what they were, and tucked them in her bag.
Downstairs, Evesham was waiting by the stairs. His bright green eyes rose at the sound of her footsteps. “Ah. There you are. Allow me to take your bag.”
He lifted it as though it were no heavier than a house cat. Perversely, she felt a little thrum at the sight of his long legs ambling toward the door. Perhaps because she had the stature of a dormouse, something in her always lit up in the presence of large men.
She immediately snuffed it out. She would not do Henry Evesham the great honor of lusting after him.
“The groom brought Henry’s curricle around,” Elena said. “And Mary will bring some bricks to warm you.”
Alice stepped out the door to see a vehicle more fit for a fashionable gentleman of leisure than a renegading man of God—a slight, gold-lacquered thing on thin wheels pulled by two elegant horses.
Evesham held out his hand to help her step from the mounting block to the seat. Noting her expression, he let out a sheepish laugh. “Not what you were expecting.”
Alice shook her head, surprised he was perceptive enough to see what she’d been thinking.
“Not my usual conveyance,” he allowed, smiling. “It’s borrowed—but it’s built for speed. We’ll be in Fleetwend by tomorrow night with any luck.”
He stepped up into the curricle, causing the entire seat to shift with his size, and Alice to topple against his shoulders, which were as wide as two of her.
“My apologies,” he murmured, whipping his arm to his side like she might pollute his clothing.
She inched away, offended that he should recoil when it had been him who jostled her. She tucked herself into Elena Brearley’s regal ermine, wishing it could protect her pride from his judgement.
Mary, the old cook, came and piled steaming bricks around Alice’s feet, and a warm flask in her lap. “Cider for the chill.” She lowered her voice. “With a touch of gin in it to warm you, if the likes of hisself will let ye touch the stuff.”
Mary shared Alice’s opinions on the wisdom of consorting with the likes of Henry Evesham. All the servants did.
Henry smiled at Mary. “One could not judge Miss Hull for drinking whatever she likes in such circumstances,” he said in a kindly tone.
Alice glanced over at him. His cheeks were flushed. She wondered if he made this false display of charm because he was embarrassed he had flinched from her. Or perhaps it was because he sensed how everyone here resented him for the way he had threatened their livelihoods and walked about their home as if it—they—might infect him with low morals.
She took Mary’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be thinking of you, child,” Mary said.
Elena held up a hand. “We all will. Travel safely.”
“Onward, then,” Henry said, taking the reins. “You must be eager to get home.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
But as Charlotte Street receded behind them and the curricle wobbled its way over the cobbles heading north, she knew it was a lie. It had been years since she’d thought of home with anything like longing. The tension between herself and her mother had grown so sharp after her father’s death it had been like the pitch of tuning fork, a note that always trembled in the air. Don’t be odd, you little changeling. Stop wandering off, don’t mourn so, never look at men that way. You’ll become unruly like Papa’s people and give your sisters strange ideas.
She was not ready to leave Charlotte Street.
Because she knew—had always known—what leaving here would mean.
It would be a kind of death. And she wasn’t ready.
She’d only just begun to feel alive.
She shut her eyes and began to hum a filthy song about a high-prized pin-box, if only so she would not weep.
Chapter 3
Henry’s father had often bitterly complained that Henry was so dogged in his principles he ran roughshod over practical reality. Observing Alice Hull hunched to the furthest edge of the curricle, shrouded in her cloak and humming joylessly beneath her breath, he wondered if perhaps he’d been over-moved by the spirit in insisting on driving this young woman in a small vehicle on a two-day journey in bad weather.
It was clear she loathed him.
He held himself rigid, hoping if he kept his elbows wedged against his sides, kept his knees pressed up to his breastbone like a mantis, he might demonstrate he desired nothing more than her comfort, and win some small measure of her trust.
But she had not so much as looked at him. They’d been on the road ten minutes, and he was already sore.
He distracted himself with trying to make out the tune she hummed. He didn’t recognize the melody, but there was a pleasant timbre to her voice. He wondered if she hummed to fill the silence—and if so, if he should speak to her.
But what should he say? The rude way he behaved last week would make the usual pleasantries seem awkward, but to acknowledge the rudeness seemed more awkward still. Normally he took pains to move through the world respectfully, even when he disapproved of the parts of it he walked through. But that day last week, he’d been in such a state that he’d run all the way from Mary-le-Bone to the Thames and then across the bridge to Southwark, repeating Reverend Keeper’s counsel in his head: vigorous exercise quiets an unruly mind.
It hadn’t worked.
A gentle rain began to fall, veering sideways in the chilly wind. He glanced at Alice, worried she’d be cold. She looked like she was trying not to cry.
Poor girl. What would ease his mind, were he in her position?
Prayer.
But he was not her minister, and she hadn’t asked, and he did not wish to be presumptuous. Better to begin with lighter conversation.
“What’s that song you’re humming?” he asked her.
“You wouldn’t know it,” she said. She did not resume the tune, and the silence between them seemed heavier than the clop of the horses’ shoes against the cobbles.
“I didn’t mean to stop you. You have a lovely voice.”
She said nothing. Her silence was excruciating.
“I’d planned to stop for the night in West Eckdale,” he told her. “There’s a pleasant inn there, if that’s agreeable to you.”
She nodded.
“And we’ll take luncheon at a public house at noon. Though tell me if you’d like to stop before then for your comfort.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted the intimacy of what he’d just suggested, for they were little more than strangers. He wracked his mind for something more to say, but he’d only ever conversed with fallen women to interview them about their work, or to pray with them when they came to him in supplication, wishing for God’s forgiveness. He could not fathom what he and Alice Hull might have in common.
He wished he had not spoken to her at all.
The curricle hit a puddle that he hadn’t seen, tossing them both up an inch into the air. He landed back on the padded bench with a thud, his arm falling heavily on Alice’s. Her teeth clicked with the impact.
“Are you all right?” he asked, scrambling away so as not to crush her.
But it was too late, because he’d already felt the softness of her cloak, the slightness of her body beneath it. Already noticed that she smelled sweet, like milky tea with honey.
He did not allow himself sweet things.
(Not anymore.)
“I’m fine,” Alice said, scooting so close to the side of the curricle that she was nearly hanging out the door.
“Had I known I would have a passenger, I would have hired a more spacious chaise for the journey.”
“I’m grateful for any transport. You need not concern yourself with my comfort.” She was polite, but stiffly so, as if the effort of being civil caused her strain. He wondered if this was due to her grief, or her suspicion of him.
“In that case, I’ll focus on my own discomfort,” he said, shooting a rueful grimace at his knees. “I feel like a grasshopper in knee breeches, crammed into this little cart.”
She turned to him and smiled, a sly smile, like a cat might wear. “Aye. Quite a delicate contraption for journeying on country roads in winter, this.”
She was just polite enough not to mention that the situation was made worse by the fact he was a giant. Kind of her.
Her voice held the Somerset twang he had grown up with, and her words the bluntness he knew well from his father’s people. He didn’t mind her directness. He was pleased she was saying anything at all.
“Yes, it’s quite a delicate gig for going anywhere,” he agreed. “I borrowed it from Lord Apthorp to economize on the expense of travel. I’m saving to marry, once I’ve fulfilled my duties to the Lords.”
He flushed. Why had he told her that?
“Congratulations,” she said tonelessly.
He flushed deeper, realizing she’d misunderstood him. “Oh. No, I have not yet had the honor of asking for a lady’s hand. I meant only that I intend to … to find a helpmeet and start a family of my own. Soon.”
Reverend Keeper had counseled him to marry, urgently, to avoid another scorching lapse. ’Tis better to marry, Henry, than to burn.
He glanced at Alice again, to see if she had reacted to his strange admission, but she just stared out at the passing streets, like he’d said nothing. She no doubt had more pressing things on her mind than his bachelor status. He was being an oaf, babbling about himself. He offered her the only comfort he could think of.
“Alice, would you like to say a prayer? For your mother?”
She looked down at her lap, her face inscrutable. “If what my sister wrote is true, my mother is past the point of prayer.”
“Prayer is not merely to ask comfort for the ill, but also solace for the bereaved.”
“I don’t pray,” she said flatly.
How impossibly sad. “That need not stop you now,” he assured her. “It is never too late to seek a relationship with God. Or to re-sow the field, if it has fallen fallow, as it were.”
“With respect, Mr. Evesham,” she said curtly, “I am long past saving.”
His heart ached at so young a person believing she had consigned herself to Hell. The vehemence of her voice bespoke a history. People did not turn their backs on God without a reason, and sometimes that reason was in fact the way towards faith.
Was this part of the Lord’s plan? Had Alice been put in his path for a greater purpose than mere transportation? Was he meant to remind her of God’s love?
He hesitated, thinking of a delicate way to tell her no one was past saving. But suddenly she turned and looked him directly in the eye for the first time since they’d left Charlotte Street.
“But then, you know that already, don’t you, Lord Lieutenant? Your views on my character seemed clear enough last week.”
Her eyes held his, demanding he acknowledge her words.
Demanding he remember what he’d sworn to himself he would not think about again.
His cheeks went hot.
He had offended her by not acknowledging what had happened. A misjudgment, for of course it was better to make amends than sit in silent guilt, and to convince himself otherwise was intellectual dishonesty. He’d chosen his comfort over hers. He must make it right.
“Miss Hull, I worried it would be ungentlemanly of me to even speak of such a thing, so forgive my silence, but I am sorry for my unmannerly behavior last week. It weighs on me. You were only doing me a courtesy and I regret the disrespect I showed to you by leaving so suddenly.”
The resentment in her expression become something sharper, like amusement. “Quite a mouth you have on you, Lord Lieutenant. Right poetry.”
He was taken aback. “Well, I am a minister. We do sermonize.”
“And I keep order at a whipping house. You need not apologize to the likes of me. I’ve seen far worse behavior than a scandalized man running away in fear. But let’s not pretend you think I’m the type for prayers.”
Oh, bother and bog. He’d made it worse.
“I was not afraid,” he felt compelled to say, though his tone sounded fussy even to his own ears. “Not precisely.”
In truth, he had been terrified—not of her, but of himself. But he certainly could not explain the distinction, for her comfort on this journey would not improve if she knew what he’d been thinking, then and after, night after night.
“Ah. Ashamed, then?” she countered.
And then it was his turn to stare fixedly, determinedly ahead in silence.
For maybe she already knew what he’d truly been thinking as he’d fled.
And that would be far, far worse.
Chapter 4
Her accusation quieted the lord lieutenant.
Good.
Prayer was Alice’s least favorite topic, and she did not wish to discuss her low opinion of the Church with the likes of Henry Evesham. She preferred to spend her final moments in London taking in the crowds and shops and smells and sounds of life. She already mourned the barkers’ cries and the clattering of carts, the lopsided eaves and medieval walls and twisting alleys in which one could get lost half a mile from one’s doors.
She should be grieving for her mother, but what she grieved was London.
“Do you attend a church, Miss Hull?” Henry asked.
She tore her eyes away from the streets, begrudging his intrusion into her sadness. The man’s determination to engage her on religion was so relentless she would be impressed by his determination, were she disposed to credit him with any favorable quality aside from looks.
“No.”
“I saw you looking at that chapel—” he gestured at a church she’d scarcely noticed they were passing— “and I thought to mention that if you are looking for a congregation, I worship with many former members of your trade.”
Members of her trade?
