Lady of Ashes (38 page)

“I’m afraid I’m still a bit sore. And, no, I’m afraid I have no glorious tale of derring-do for you today. In fact, I completely missed meeting them, for which I must apologize to you.”

“What happened?”

“I was just thinking about having some lunch. Why don’t you join me?”

Over seasoned fish, Sam told her of his misadventure the previous evening: “. . . and so the young woman I thought was helpless and alone actually had at least one accomplice, and once she tricked me into leaving the safety of the street, it was quite easy to bash my brains in and steal everything I had. I vaguely remember waking up in a mound of trash and stumbling back here to sleep a few hours in my room before deciding I needed a doctor, which the hotel manager summoned for me. Fortunately, he doesn’t think there is any grave damage to my head. The same cannot be said for my pride.”

“I’m just happy you weren’t more badly hurt—or even killed.” Tears sprang unbidden into Violet’s eyes and she dabbed at them quickly with her napkin.

“Why, Violet Morgan, don’t tell me you’re weeping for me.”

“No, of course not. It has just been a difficult day.” She sniffed and launched into telling him what happened with Harry and her carriage.

“How much worse can this day become?” she said.

He closed a hand over hers on the table. “Let’s hope we’re done with bad news. What I need to concentrate on now is where our criminal friends are hiding out. I’m not sure it’s safe for you to be at the shop now that you have ostensibly ignored their demand.”

“Oh! That reminds me. I left Susanna at home this morning and promised I’d return later to pick her up. She must be worried to death by now.”

Sam quickly settled the bill and they headed back to Violet’s townhome. She deposited Sam in the drawing room while she combed all three floors of the house, calling Susanna’s name. The girl was nowhere to be found. Susanna’s bed was unmade, but that wasn’t atypical, although Mrs. Softpaws’s incessant pacing back and forth on top of it was. Where had she gone? Surely she hadn’t decided to go to the shop on her own.

She returned to the drawing room, where Sam was examining a recent portrait Violet had had made of Susanna by the eminent Mr. Laroche. Susanna sat on a chair with an impossibly large bow on the back of her hair to match the one at her waist. Mr. Laroche’s tinting gave Susanna an impish look even though she was practically on the edge of becoming a young woman.

“She’s not here. We should check the shop; maybe she went there.”

“On her own?” Sam said.

“She must have done so. Where else could she be?”

For the second time that day, Violet rushed into the streets of London. Poor Sam gallantly kept up with her, even though his head was probably aching beyond belief.

“Susanna!” she called out as soon as she opened the shop door.

Will emerged from the back room. “She’s not here, Mrs. Morgan. I thought you left her at home?”

“I did, but . . .” All of a sudden Violet remembered the last note. Fishing it from her reticule, she showed it to Sam while Will disappeared again to whatever task he was performing.

“Who sent this to you?” Sam said.

“I don’t know. Cubby and Slade?”

“But why would they send it to you before your planned meeting with them? It makes no sense.”

“I don’t know, Sam, I don’t know.” Violet heard the hysterical pitch in her own voice. “My God, do you think they took Susanna once no one met them at the White Hart? How will I find her? What will they do to her? I never should have left her alone; she’s not used to being alone. Oh God, oh God, please help me.” She sank down on one of the visitor chairs.

Sam crossed the room to the front door and locked it, switching the sign to “Closed” before returning to Violet and dropping to one knee and taking her hands in his.

“Violet, listen to me. This is my fault; I was the one who didn’t keep the appointment time.”

“But you were—”

“I was taken out by my own stupidity. But hear me, sweetheart, we are going to find Susanna. I won’t rest until we do. And she’ll be fine. They wouldn’t dare harm an innocent child like Susanna.” Sam gently lifted her up and put his arms around her.

With that, Violet burst into a flood of tears that refused to cease. She stayed locked in his embrace until she was so weak from weeping that she began shivering. Sam took her home and made sure she had a pot of tea next to her on the sofa before leaving with a promise to return as soon as he could.

V
iolet crumpled the new note up in her palm and resisted the urge to weep uncontrollably again. After several gulps of air, she smoothed out the paper and read it again.

Violet read it three more times. Were Slade and Cubby asking her to look for them in order to sacrifice herself in exchange for Susanna? She’d do so gladly, but they hadn’t provided a single clue as to where they were.

The police had proven less than helpful. After they carefully questioned her about Graham’s activities, Susanna’s awkward relationship to Violet, and Violet’s interactions with an American foreigner, the two officials she and Sam visited at Number Four Whitehall Place suggested that perhaps Violet had a domestic household problem.

Sam was livid over their apathetic response and demanded they do something. Casually informing him that American citizens had no right to demand anything, they dismissed both Sam and Violet with a halfhearted promise to alert other officers about the missing child.

Sam was nearly apoplectic by the time they left, vacillating between anger at police incompetence and fury at himself for what he perceived as his own failings.

 

Knowing the value of the newspapers, Violet took her ambrotype of Susanna to an engraver, who reproduced the likeness for an advertisement Violet placed, offering a reward for anyone with knowledge of Susanna’s whereabouts. Meanwhile, she knew Sam was scouring docks, inns, and every conceivable nook and cranny of London he could think of where Graham and Fletcher might have been conducting business. Every turn he made led to nowhere, and he became gloomy and dejected.

Violet was chewing her fingernails ragged, she’d stopped eating entirely, and her eyes were puffed from crying and lack of sleep, but she kept trudging through her days of accommodating customers as best she could.

Mary’s response was a predictable outpouring of love and grief over Susanna’s disappearance and an offer to do whatever was necessary to help.

Letters flew back and forth between Violet and her parents, as they inquired constantly as to the status of Susanna’s disappearance and whether they should take the train up to help Violet search for “our precious girl.” Violet advised them to remain in Brighton, wanting to devote every minute to Susanna and not having to worry about hosting her parents, especially now that she lived in smaller quarters.

Even with every ill that had befallen her over the past year—Graham’s perfidy, the train crash, her public humiliation, and death all around—how did any of those compare to the loss of sweet little Susanna?

Charles Francis Adams eagerly opened the letter from his son, now a captain in the U.S. Army. Although he wrote frequently to Charles Francis Jr., few letters successfully made the return trip. Today’s letter was a treat.

Charles Francis carefully folded the letter and added it to his thin stack of correspondence with his eldest son.

What if the North lost the war and the union of states was no more? It was unthinkable. At least the president was finally too consumed with General McClellan’s peninsular campaign to be as concerned with Adams anymore. Secretary of State Seward continued to be his champion back home, too.

They were of one mind, he and Seward, convinced of U.S. sovereignty, at home and abroad, and both just a little suspicious of British statesmen, whom they were sure would never look out for U.S. interests.

Adams’s family history, well ingrained in its members, had taught him that liberty from the British nation was always just a minor argument away from being threatened. From the Revolutionary War, to the War of 1812, to the recent scrape over the
Trent
Affair, Adams men were always in the thick of the physical and verbal battles with their English cousins.

Charles Francis glanced at his pocket watch. Almost time for dinner. Abigail had invited over a gaggle of female charity workers to discuss some sort of project, and she wanted her husband there to show his support for whatever it was.

He sighed. His time could be better spent elsewhere. Harper had uncovered some intelligence suggesting that a steamer recently sailed from Liverpool to the Portuguese island of Terceira was to be equipped and armed as a commerce raider. Further rumor indicated that the South already had a name for her, CSS
Alabama
.

Speaking of Harper, it was time he summoned Harper back for a report. The man hadn’t been by since he’d reported that Mrs. Morgan’s ward had gone missing.

Why was that confounded woman at the center of so many of Adams’s troubles these days?

 

“Did you see this notice in
The Times
?” Lord Russell asked as he sat down to a hastened breakfast of sausages and tomatoes at Lord Palmerston’s residence. They were to meet with the queen at Windsor later this morning to discuss the impact of Princess Alice’s nuptials to Prince Louis of Hesse, an event that had been conducted with unmitigated doom at Osborne House on July 1.

It had been months since the prince consort’s death, and she still stayed sequestered at Windsor, surrounded by her ladies and doing nothing all day but eulogizing her husband to them. At least she’d left Osborne House for a residence closer to London.

He and Palmerston were hoping once again to rekindle the queen’s interest in state affairs.

“No, I haven’t had a look at the paper yet this morning. What does it say?” Palmerston slathered lemon curd on a thick slab of bread and took a large bite, the crumbs spilling down on the opened paper Russell had laid before him.

Russell pointed to a boxed-in notice about two-thirds of the way down the left-hand page. “Our dear Mrs. Morgan has troubles once again. This is the third placement of this advertisement in as many days.”

Palmerston brushed away the crumbs and studied the engraving that accompanied Mrs. Morgan’s plea for help finding her ward. “The woman has a black cloud of death trailing her, doesn’t she?” he said. “I wonder if Minister Adams knows about this?”

“Actually, my thought was that we could use this to awaken the queen from her stupor.”

“You think this will concern her? One missing child among hundreds of others in London?”

“Because the child belongs to Mrs. Morgan, yes. The queen has an unhealthy fascination with the undertaker, in my opinion, but if she thinks Mrs. Morgan is in distress it might force her to look beyond her own pain.”

“I see. Well, it’s worth a go.”

 

To Lord Russell’s gratification, the queen reacted just as he had hoped, despite the fact that Violet Morgan was now not only a working woman, but one without a husband, two things the queen frowned upon.

“Oh, the poor dear. Imagine the horror of having your child taken from you so suddenly for no reason at all. Surely we can do something to help her.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Lord Palmerston and I spoke with the commissioner this morning and he said the police have all been alerted regarding the girl’s disappearance and are keeping an eye out for her.” He didn’t share the commissioner’s opinion that there was little hope of the girl being found. In fact, he had the sense that the commissioner had little concern for the case, despite a visit from the prime minister and foreign secretary over it.

“The poor dear,” Victoria said again. “She must be nearly out of her mind from the pain of it all. It’s not unlike what we have suffered since the death of our beloved prince consort.”

Well, the queen’s
initial
reaction was as Russell hoped it would be.

For the next hour, she waxed on about Albert’s many virtues until the two statesmen were finally able to make excuses and slip away.

“We do believe,” Queen Victoria said to the door closing behind them, “that Mrs. Morgan might benefit from a visit to Windsor so we can share our heartaches together.”

 

Violet recognized the sparkling coach with the royal crest on the door.
Not again,
she thought, immediately regretting her momentary disloyalty to the queen.

As expected, the liveried servant emerged from the carriage and presented Violet with the queen’s express wish that she come to Windsor on the occasion of her own great tragedy, that she and the queen might console one another.

Violet bit her tongue against a pert response. The queen didn’t really care for anyone’s company these days. Therefore, she knew it was a singular compliment to be thus invited.

“I’ll get my hat,” she said, scratching out a quick note for Sam and letting Will know she’d be gone the remainder of the day before plucking her widow’s bonnet off its stand and following the man out.

 

The queen greeted her stoically, as though they shared an identical tragic secret. How easy it might be for an observer to assume this, given that both women now wore black gowns and black gloves, and had jet draped around their necks and wrists. The queen’s dress was fuller, of course, and her necklaces lay in greater number around her neck and reached almost to her waist.

Her eyes were less swollen than the last time Violet had seen her, yet she had a pinched expression, as though her corset was too tight. Whereas she’d looked so pale and emaciated just after Albert’s death, now she was putting on considerable weight. Her fuller face helped hide her overbite. Violet wondered if she might end up with the same pinched look, which then reminded her of Susanna’s disappearance, which nearly brought up tears that were perpetually waiting for release.

 

It was too unseemly to weep before the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Violet sniffed as inconspicuously as she could and focused on the wall behind the queen’s head until she felt she was in control of her own nerves.

“Mrs. Morgan, we can only imagine how deep and piercing is your grief. For you had not only lost His Highness Prince Albert—a tragedy we might never be able to speak of again without it grasping our hearts—but then your own husband. We don’t hold his villainy against you. Now someone has stolen your ward. What manner of beast has man become? We know your great pain, Mrs. Morgan, for we still suffer, too.

“One rides along in the carriage of life, certain that nothing more than ruts to jostle us and a bit of rain to soak us will ever come along, and then we are faced with an oncoming train that demolishes our carriage and destroys our life’s ride irrevocably.” Victoria sighed, winded after her long homily.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Violet said dutifully.
Did the queen read about my involvement in the Clayton Tunnel crash?
“One’s life changes in a flash into something unrecognizable.”

“Yes, yes, a pity. You know, Mrs. Morgan, your visit is quite fortuitous. We were just thinking the other day about our dearly departed Albert.” The queen shifted in her chair. “In particular, we were contemplating the new resting place at Frogmore. It will be ready for him soon.”