by Carol Hedges
***
A wintry day in Leeds is pretty much the same as one in London. Same dark streets, with an icy wind whipping round the corners and catching you unawares. Same acrid smoke-filled air; same soot-blackened buildings.
Same hum and thrum of machinery, same clip-clop of horses’ hooves and cacophony of street vendors’ cries. Same pale watery sunlight casting shadows, and same pale underfed people huddled into their clothes against the winter cold.
Here, in a nice house on the outskirts, Josiah Bulstrode, boot and shoe manufacturer and (much to his surprise) now an engaged man, butters his toast with vigour and takes big crunchy bites.
He breakfasts alone, the black armband on his jacket bearing witness to his recent loss. The fire splutters in the grate. A carriage clock ticks madly on the mantelpiece.
The small and slightly erratic servant girl, who has been hired to replace the more reliable servant girl who has gone back to her mother’s house since Sissy’s death, sidles in cautiously.
“Um … a letter has arrived, Mr … master …”
“Hand it over, Lizzie Lou,” Josiah says with a resigned sigh.
She does. He frowns.
“Now then … Who could this be, writing to me from there?”
Josiah slits open the envelope with the butter-knife and pulls out a banknote. Then another banknote. Then some more.
He upends the envelope. Banknotes flutter out like white birds released from captivity. A couple of bright guineas roll into the centre of the table, coming to rest by the butter-dish. Right at the bottom of the envelope, he finds a tiny piece of paper upon which is written:
There is no Dominion Diamond Mine Company. It was all a fraud. Here is your money back. A Well-Wisher
“Well, now, this is a mystery,” Josiah says to the wide-eyed and speechless servant.
He scoops up the notes and rescues the errant guineas.
“You see all this? Somebody has done me a good turn, Lizzie Lou. I don’t know who it was, but I thank them from the bottom of my heart. Indeed, I do.”
***
It is early evening, a few days after Josiah Bulstrode received his letter full of banknotes, and in the tiny rented terraced house in London, Jack Cully puts down his copy of The Police Gazette and glances across the hearth at his beloved wife.
“You look very tired, my dear,” he says. “I’ve noticed it for some time. Is anything wrong?”
“Yes, Jack, I am very tired,” Emily Cully agrees with a sigh. “But there is nothing wrong.”
She sets down her sewing and comes to sit on his lap, which is very pleasant. Then Emily bends forward and whispers in his ear, and Jack Cully, street-hardened and not one to give way to emotion easily, suddenly finds his eyes filling with tears.
“When?” he asks.
“Sometime next spring.”
And he kisses her and holds her, very gently, very tenderly, as if she is the most precious and priceless and wondrous object in the whole world. Which, as far as Jack Cully is concerned, she certainly is.
***
Next spring, when the Cullys will be blessed by the safe arrival of a beautiful baby girl, whom they will name Violet, the Bois de Boulogne in Paris will also witness the arrival of a beautiful new stranger, whose emerald green eyes and hair the colour of falling Autumn are perfectly offset by the fitted riding dress, clinging so tightly to her provocative curves that her lovely figure is plain for all to see.
She will be observed driving a smart modern phaeton with a pair of perfectly-matched white ponies and an adoring tiger pageboy standing proudly behind her, ready to help her down whenever she chooses to alight.
If you follow the phaeton, and many young gallants do, you will observe it pull up at the door of one of the biggest mansions in the Rue de Ponthieu, where La Belle Anglaise lives in the best suite of rooms. Nobody knows from whence her wealth originates, but it is widely acknowledged that she is immensely rich.
It is rumoured that she has a wardrobe stuffed with silk dresses from Worth, and that her cabinet contains a seat padded with swansdown. It is also whispered that she never removes her beautiful diamond necklace, not even when she is taking a bath.
Finis
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