Darke London (2 page)

“And where did you just ‘happen along’?” Elijah asked abruptly.

Julian blinked. “A deserted dock near the Isle of Dogs,” he answered cautiously, knowing full well what would happen next.

“I see.” A heavy frown creased Elijah’s forehead as he continued to disinfect the woman’s neck. “So, you just happened to be passing a deserted dock near the Isle of Dogs late at night and miles away from home, and you just happened to come across a beast doing unspeakable things to a defenceless woman. Is that it?”

“Father, I—”

“Do you know this woman? Tell me the truth, Julian.”

“No! I’ve never seen her before tonight. I swear.”

“And her attacker?”

“I would recognise him again anywhere. He was unusually big and ungainly, with pockmarks around his eyes.” Julian paused. “I don’t know who he is, but I know who he works for.”

His father expelled a sigh heavy with resignation. “Let me guess. He works for Thaddeus Ormond, and you know this because you’ve been haranguing Sir Thaddeus. Yet again.”

“I’ve not been haranguing Ormond. He refuses to receive me,” Julian protested, bitterness tingeing his voice. “But if I’d not been following him, this poor creature would be dead.”

“How is she connected with Sir Thaddeus?”

“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I followed Ormond when he left his house this evening.” His plan had been to accost Ormond in public, because he could no longer gain access to him at his Mayfair townhouse, having already been thrown out by Ormond’s sneering footmen. But for the moment he preferred to keep this detail from his father.

“I followed him to a rather mean street near Spitalfields,” Julian continued. “He stopped outside a shabby house and this woman emerged. She appeared quite willing to get into his carriage. I followed them for some while. They came to a halt at a deserted spot, and the woman seemed to fall from the carriage as if she’d been pushed out. Then, a large ruffian suddenly approached and dragged her away. Ormond made no attempt to help her. In fact, he stuck his head out and watched on as the animal threw her into another waiting carriage and sped off. I followed the vehicle, but lost it when we approached the Thames. By the time I found it, the woman was struggling with her attacker. She fought valiantly, but he hit her over the head. She fell to the ground, and no doubt he was going to finish her off before dumping her in the river when I came to her rescue and beat him off.”

“Hmpf.” Elijah grunted. He dressed the last of the woman’s injuries, then wound a bandage around her head to protect the stitches. He beckoned Julian to help him fold a clean sheet around their patient’s body. “That’s all you and I can do for her at present. We’ll let Figgs and Mrs. Tibbet put her to bed upstairs.”

“No, I can carry her up myself—”

“You’ll do no such thing. I must see to your injuries.”

“They’re nothing but scratches. I’ll see to them later myself.”

Elijah’s face turned puce. “I know you’re a strapping lad of four and twenty, but you’re not too old for a good old-fashioned beating if you disobey me.”

Elijah had never so much as raised a finger against Julian. The idea of him administering a beating was ludicrous, but not the slightest bit amusing. Julian sank down in a chair. “Very well, Father,” he said with unusual meekness.

His father summoned the servants and gave them instructions. Figgs gathered up the cocooned woman and left with the housekeeper trotting behind.

“Take off your shirt,” Elijah ordered Julian when they were alone.

Julian silently obeyed. The shirt peeled off reluctantly, sticking to the congealed blood oozing from his cuts. His father grimaced before he set about cleaning and dressing the wounds.

“So you managed to beat off a large assailant armed with a knife?” Elijah said after a few minutes, his tone remaining stiff.

Julian nodded tiredly. Now that the immediate crisis had passed, exhaustion threatened to swamp him, and he was glad to be seated. “Sparring with Gareth has its uses.”

“Indeed, but you were lucky. The man had a sharp knife and a savage temper. Any one of these cuts you sustained could have been fatal.” He jabbed at Julian’s chest with his acid-soaked cleaning pad.

Julian winced. “He was big and vicious, but he fought without discipline. He’ll be nursing a few bruised ribs tonight. I only wish I could have held the cur captive and forced him to—argh!” He flinched as carbolic acid soaked into a deep cut. “Do have a care with that, Father.”

“You wouldn’t wish to suffer blood poisoning, would you?” Elijah rubbed the pad even harder across an open gash, the merest tremble in his jaw betraying his emotion. “For God’s sake, Julian. When will you leave off this mad pursuit of Ormond?”

Julian gritted his teeth. Carbolic acid he could take, but the raw appeal in his father’s voice was infinitely harder to withstand.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I know I am privileged to call you my father. I know I am being ungrateful and misguided and foolish. I know all these things but…but for the life of me I cannot relinquish my search, not when I’m so close to the truth.”

His father uttered a deep sigh that seemed weighted with decades of melancholy. He screwed shut the bottle of carbolic acid, his hands shaking infinitesimally. At sixty, he was still a handsome, active man, but tonight the creases in his face were sharply accentuated, and he looked every one of his years.

“What is the truth? All I know is that I found you on my doorstep twenty-four years ago, and throughout those years you have been my true son, my only son. That is all I know, and that is all that matters to me. I wish it were so for you too.”

The simplicity of these quiet words pierced him. Elijah was right. They were father and son in everything but blood. That’s what mattered, that should be enough. It
was
enough. He didn’t want any other father but Elijah. But…but…rational reasoning was no match for illogical yearning. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why was he abandoned? All questions Thaddeus Ormond knew the answers to, he was convinced.

“I only wish to talk to Ormond,” Julian said.

Shaking his head, Elijah wound bandage tape around Julian’s chest. He remained silent, but his grim expression spoke volumes. Finally he said gruffly, “Sir Thaddeus is an arrogant nobody puffed up on his lineage and not much else. Do you honestly wish to be associated with such a family, regardless of how illustrious their pedigree might be?”

Why did Elijah always have to sound so right? And why did that merely make him more stubborn?

“Sir Thaddeus couldn’t possibly be my natural father, of that I’m satisfied, but he knows the truth. He knows who gave his sister that brooch. If he would only tell me—”

Elijah uttered a frustrated growl. “That brooch is cursed! I wish to God I’d never told you about it. I wish I’d thrown it away years ago.”

Julian’s fist clenched. “You would do such a thing? The only link between me and my mother?” The night he was left on Elijah’s doorstep, he’d been wrapped in a woollen blanket, the folds secured by a brooch in the shape of a bee. That brooch was
his
. He would never part with it for all the riches in the world.

“Yes! If I’d known it would come to this, then a thousand times yes.” Elijah waved agitatedly towards the table in the centre of the room. “Instead of that poor child, it could have been you lying on that table, your face slashed to ribbons. Or worse. You could be sinking to the bottom of the Thames, or bleeding to death in the slums, or battered senseless in a dark alley. Until tonight you have only been disparaged and ridiculed by Ormond, but now everything has changed. Don’t you see the danger in your reckless pursuit?”

Julian stared. He’d never seen his father so impassioned, almost distraught. Guilt stung him, as it always did when he disappointed his father. He owed Elijah so much, and his compulsion to discover the truth about his parentage was verging on obsessive. Perhaps it would be prudent to rein in his pursuit for the time being. The injured woman was not safely out of the woods yet. Infection could set in, and she would be shocked by the scars on her face. She needed his attention, and besides, there were other ways of pursuing Ormond without confronting him. The little Huguenot jeweller, Mr. Cazalet, who had identified the brooch for him, he might have more information to impart. Julian could pay him another visit whilst also tending to the woman and finding out more about her.

“I’m always careful, Father. And after tonight I will be doubly so. I have a patient to watch over for the next few weeks. I’ll have little time to chase after Ormond.”

His father snorted. “Yes, you’ll have your hands full caring for that young woman, but I doubt that will take your mind off Sir Thaddeus, since you’ve no idea what her connection is to him. For all we know, she could be his secret mistress whom he wished to be rid of.”

Julian’s jaw dropped. How stupid of him not to suspect that. Certainly the woman possessed a unique allure, and she had accompanied Ormond willingly enough. But she didn’t seem the right type for a mistress. Her modest dress, her lack of adornment, her firmly muscled body and short fingernails—all were indications of someone who led a more active life than simply pleasing a man. His teeth clamped together. No, she couldn’t be the kept woman of a pompous fiend like Sir Thaddeus. But why was the notion so repugnant? Was it because he found her desirable himself? He thrust the unwelcome thought from his mind. Until he was sure of her, he couldn’t make any assumptions.

“I’m sure she’ll tell us when she’s regained consciousness,” he answered stiffly.

Elijah tugged at his bottom lip. “Whoever she is, I hope she possesses inner strength. Your skill with the needle is remarkable, but nothing can save her from severe scarring. If she was a kept woman, her days are well and truly over.”

With that sombre prognosis, Elijah exited the room, leaving Julian alone to nurse his bruises.

Chapter Two

In the dim glow of Nellie’s lamp, the walls of the corridor ran green with moisture. The dank, musty smell of earth pressed down on her mouth. A longing for fresh air assailed her, but she forced herself on.
Consider yourself lucky you are not one of the inmates
, she told herself sternly. These pitiful creatures passed their endless days here in the isolation ward, their only relief the laudanum her father, the hospital’s resident doctor, doled out miserly.

A sudden howl from close by caused her to cringe. That was the poor woman who’d arrived three weeks ago. At first, she’d been allowed to mingle with the other patients, but her constant crying upset the others, and when she’d attacked one of the wardens with a fork, they had dragged her away to the isolation ward. Out of sight, out of mind. Down here no one could see her tearing at her hair day after day until bald patches peppered her scalp.
Phillip, Phillip
, she moaned intermittently. That must be the name of the well-to-do gentleman who had delivered her to the asylum, her husband perhaps, or her brother. Whoever he was, he’d seemed enormously relieved to be rid of her.

At the door to the woman’s cell, Nellie stopped and peered through the small, barred opening. Darkness swallowed up the room, a darkness thickened by the sour stench of human waste.

“Mrs. Lancaster?” she whispered.

Silence, and then a hoarse sob emanated from the suffocating blackness.

Nellie rooted in the pocket of her apron for the dried apricots she’d brought with her. “Mrs. Lancaster, it’s Nellie. I have something here for you.”

“Who is that?” a reedy voice quavered. “Is that you, Phillip? Have you come to take me home? Oh, I knew you would come. I knew you would not forget me. Oh, Phillip.”

“N-no, it’s not Phillip.”

“But it must be you, Phillip. It must.” The voice grew querulously stronger. Out of the shadows, a figure shuffled towards the door. “So cruel, so cruel, Phillip. I’m not yet dead, but already you have buried me. Buried me alive.”

“Mrs. Lancaster?” Nellie’s heart started to thud as the dishevelled shape appeared out of the darkness.
Be calm, she is behind bars
. The unwashed stench thickened.

“My name is not Lancaster.” The woman grabbed hold of the bars with filthy hands, the fingernails torn and bleeding. “It’s Barchester.”

“But it can’t be! That’s…” Nellie lifted the oil lamp higher. Like a bruise the yellow glow crept over the woman’s face. “Barchester is my name…”

“Then I must be you. I must be Nellie Barchester.”

No. No
. But the woman behind the bars was indeed herself. Her eyes were rolling, her hair crazed, her dress filthy, and her face smeared with drool and snot and unspeakable things. But she was unmistakeably Nellie Barchester. Locked up and forgotten. Legally dead. Buried alive.

Horrified, Nellie stepped back. The lamp slipped from her grasp. It crashed to the floor and burst into flame, setting her dress alight.

Nellie shrieked. The flames leaped up and ravaged her face. She clawed at her cheeks. The pain, oh, the pain was unbearable…

A vortex of agony sucked her up. Fire and darkness shuddered and roared before abruptly dissolving. Her eyes peeled open, and she realised she’d been dreaming. A terrible dream, an unspeakable nightmare, but she was safe, she wasn’t in the asylum. She was lying in bed and her heart was pounding—

A face swam into her vision. A face bent and buckled and folded, with a gaping cleft splitting his upper lip and eyes like beads sunk into his doughy flesh. The face of a man-beast, a pagan creature… Someone screamed; she realised it was her. The creature frothed at the mouth, his guttural grunts sounding like an antagonised bear. He flapped his arms at her…except one of his hands was not flesh and bone but an ugly metal pincer, gleaming with menace as it lunged towards her.