“You’d be surprised how many of these children are afraid to open up,” she said, hunting for something amidst the litter of hair clips and books on her dressing table. “And I don’t blame them. From what I’m hearing, their distrust of authority figures is more than justified.”
Sebastian found himself smiling. After working on everything from Catholic emancipation and the slave trade to labor laws and the economic causes of the current proliferation in the number of prostitutes in London, Hero was now writing an article on the poor children who eked out a meager living by sweeping London’s street crossings. She was so taken with the project that she was thinking about doing a collection of such articles to be gathered into a book entitled London’s Working Poor.
“Ah, here it is,” she said, coming up with a pencil. She straightened, caught him smiling, and said, “You’re laughing at me.”
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t admire what you do.”
She poked the pencil into her reticule and reached for her gloves. “My father, needless to say, is scandalized. I’m not certain which concerns him more: the possibility that I might contract some dread disease from one of the wretches or the lowering suspicion that I’m turning into a maudlin lady bountiful.”
“Surely he knows you better than that.”
She gave a soft chuckle. “He should by now. I’m far too much his daughter to ever take to ladling out soup or teaching Sunday school.” She looked up from pulling on her gloves, and whatever she saw on his face stilled her amusement. She said, “There’s something more, isn’t there? Something besides Rhys Wilkinson’s death.”
He nodded. “Have you seen this morning’s papers?”
“Not yet. Why? What has happened?”
“Russell Yates has been arrested for the murder of an Aldgate diamond merchant.”
She kept her features carefully composed. She was very good at hiding what she was thinking. “And did he do it?”
“He says he didn’t. I believe him.”
“Can you prove it?”
“I don’t know. All I know is, if I don’t, he’ll hang.”
She reached for her hat and turned away, her attention all for her reflection in the mirror as she settled the velvet-trimmed confection on her head. Like most of London society, Hero knew only too well that the woman who was now Yates’s wife had once been Sebastian’s mistress. She knew, too, that something had happened between them the previous autumn, something that ended in Kat Boleyn’s marriage to Yates and sent Sebastian into a brandy-soaked downward spiral from which he had with difficulty only recently emerged. But that was all she knew, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to tell her the rest.
He said, “This is something I must do.”
He watched while she positioned her hat just so, then pivoted slowly to face him again. “Are you concerned that I might object? Pitch a fit and take to sulking in my room in a jealous pique?”
He gave a rueful laugh. “No. But-”
“You told me just now that you admire my work. Do you think I don’t admire what you do? Do you imagine I’m the kind of woman who would begrudge your efforts to save a man’s life simply because you share a past with that man’s wife?”
He shook his head. Reaching out, he cupped his hand beneath her chin, tipped his head to brush her lips with his. “You’re a wonder to me, Lady Devlin,” he said, his breath mingling with hers.
She smiled. But he saw the shadow in her fine gray eyes, and he knew that while she could never begrudge him what he was about to do, that didn’t mean the situation didn’t worry her.
Just as it worried him.
Chapter 7
The boy looked to be eight or nine years old at most, his face round, with widespread eyes and a short upper lip, his sandy hair as dirty and matted as moldy hay.
He sat on the bottom step of the Church of St. Giles, a cheap, ragged broom clutched in one fist, his head tipped back as he peered up at Hero. He wore tattered corduroy trousers and a threadbare man’s coat so big its tails hung down to his ankles and he’d had to roll up the sleeves like a washerwoman. His hands, like his feet, were bare, and every inch of visible skin so grimy as to resemble aged oak in hue. But his light brown eyes were bright and lively, his features mobile and expressive as he let his gaze take in the glory of Hero’s braid-trimmed gown and plumed, broad-brimmed velvet hat.
“Are you really a viscountess?” he asked, lisping slightly.
“I am, yes.” Hero nodded to the elegant equipage drawn up at the kerb beside them. “See my carriage?”
The urchin-who said his name was Drummer-stared at the shiny, yellow-bodied carriage with its team of restless, highbred blacks, its liveried coachman and footman waiting impassively. “And ye want to talk to me?” said the boy on a rapt exhalation of breath.
“I do, yes. I want to know how long you’ve been working as a crossing sweep.”
The lad screwed up his features with the effort of thought. There were thousands of poor boys and girls like him across London-children who made their living by sweeping the mud and manure from the city’s street crossings. In a sense, it was a form of begging, although the children did perform a service. Since they staked out a site and worked the same location for years, the trustworthy ones soon became known in a neighborhood and could also earn extra money by running errands, holding horses, or carrying packages for the area’s inhabitants.
“Well,” he said, “I started at it right after me da died, the winter I turned ten. I’m twelve now, so it’s been more’n two years, I guess.”
Hero made a surreptitious adjustment to the notes she was taking in her notebook. “And is your mother still living?”
“No, m’lady. She died o’ the flux just six months after me da. He used to be a bricklayer, ye know. But he fell off a scaffold and broke his leg so bad he died from it. At first I tried tatting hair nets, like me mum used to do. But I weren’t no good at it. Then I seen other children getting money for sweeping the crossings, so I bought meself a broom and took it up. I usually work this corner with another boy named Jack, but he ain’t been well lately.”
“Where do you live?”
“Usually I takes a room with some other lads in a lodging house up the lane there. But it’s thruppence a night, and with winter comin’ soon, I’m saving me money so’s I can buy me a pair o’ boots.”
“So where are you sleeping now?”
“Here, m’lady. If I rolls up in a tight ball in the shadows by the door, the charlie don’t usually see me. And even if he does rouse me, I just come back once he’s gone.”
Hero refused to let herself think about the fear, loneliness, and hunger that must haunt this child as he curled up for the night on the cold stone steps. Yet she found she still had to clear her throat before she could ask, “And how much do you earn, on average, with your sweeping?”
The boy looked confused. “On average?”
“How much do you usually make a day?”
“Yesterday I only took in tuppence ha’penny, it was so dry. Dry days is always the worst. We likes it when it rains-particul’rly a hard wettin’ what makes lots o’ mud but then clears up, so that folks come out again. On a good day, I can make as much as tenpence. But the brooms wear out faster when it’s muddy. A broom costs tuppence ha’penny, and it’ll only last four or five days in wet weather, where’s I can get a fortnight out o’ one if things is dry.”
Hero glanced down at the boy’s broom, which was basically a bundle of twigs lashed to a stout stick. He might lack an understanding of the concept of averaging, but he obviously had a solid grasp of the economics of his business-and the forethought to forgo lodgings on an autumn night in order to save for the boots he knew he’d be needing in the coming winter.
“What hours do you normally work?”
“The take is best here between nine and seven, although I know some lads what work Mayfair, and they don’t usually start till noon or even one, when the nobs come out. I wish I could get in with them,” Drummer added wistfully. “They can take as much as a shilling a day, only their spots is all full up right now. But I goes with them at night to the opera and tumbles.”