by Emily Larkin
Arabella risked a glance at him.
St. Just was looking at her. “Your secret is safe with me. I give you my word of honor.” His voice was quiet, sincere, with an undertone that sounded like—but couldn’t possibly be—admiration.
Arabella swallowed. “Thank you,” she managed to say.
They strolled for several minutes in silence. Her pleasure in the gardens was gone. She felt like a mechanical doll, an automaton, her legs moving stiffly.
At the junction of two paths, St. Just paused. “I’d like to thank you for the service you did my sister. We’re in your debt.”
Arabella glanced at him—and couldn’t look away. The expression in his eyes was extremely disconcerting. She moistened her lips. “I could hardly have left the items in Lady Bicknell’s care.”
There, an admission, aloud, of my complicity. She felt a surge of panic, of fear.
“I imagine you could have left them, very easily.” His gray eyes smiled at her. “And yet you chose not to.”
She looked away from those warm, smiling eyes, and swallowed again.
St. Just resumed his strolling pace. The Round Pond came into sight between the trees. “I applaud your choice of . . . er, victims, Miss Knightley.”
A response to this praise seemed appropriate. “Thank you,” Arabella said. Her half-boots crunched lightly on the chipped stone, but it felt as if she walked on quicksand, as if the footing was treacherous. She was tense with dread. The warmth in St. Just’s eyes reminded her of Lord Emsley. She repressed a shudder. Was St. Just going to demand something in return for his silence?
Panic rose in her throat. What does he expect from me?
“I assume that the proceeds of your activities go to the poor,” St. Just said.
“Yes,” Arabella said, staring down at the path.
He stopped and turned to her. “Miss Knightley, excuse my curiosity, but what do you do with the jewels once you have them?”
She raised her gaze. “I beg your pardon?”
“What do you do with the jewels? How do you sell them?”
“I take them to a friend who knows a . . . a fence.” She resolutely didn’t look at Polly, standing one pace behind them on the path.
“A friend in the ton?”
“No. In Whitechapel.”
She expected disdain, contempt even; instead St. Just nodded. “And then you give the money to charity?”
“I give it to a school.”
“Which school?”
Arabella flushed. “A school that I . . . founded.”
His eyebrows rose. He stared at her for a moment, and then said, “Tell me about your school, Miss Knightley.”
She looked at him doubtfully.
“Please, Miss Knightley. I’d like to know.” He was telling the truth; she saw it in his face, heard it in his voice.
Arabella cleared her throat. She fixed her gaze on the Round Pond. “Several years ago I founded a school, for girls from the slums.”
“Only girls?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So that they don’t have to be prostitutes.”
Adam St. Just was silent. Above them, a thrush sang.
“Most of them go into service,” Arabella said, staring at the Round Pond. “But once I gain my inheritance, I hope to set up a bakery and some other businesses, as well as more schools.”
She glanced at him. He was staring at her. The expression on his face was unreadable. “That’s what I do with the money, Mr. St. Just.”
He stared at her for several more seconds, his gaze so intent, so direct, that it almost made her step back a pace. It felt as if he was looking inside her. “Does your grandmother know?”
Arabella almost laughed. “No.”
He accepted this with a nod. The intensity of his stare didn’t waver. “Where’s the school?”
“In Swanley.”
His eyebrows rose. “So far from town? You go out there?”
“My friend . . . he goes in my stead, or sometimes . . . my maid goes.”
St. Just glanced at Polly, and then returned his attention to her. “How do you find the girls for your school? Do you go into the slums yourself?”
“My friend chooses them for me.”
“A big man,” he said. “With fair hair and a broken nose.”
Arabella looked at him warily. “Yes.”
St. Just answered her unspoken question: “The landlady at Jenny’s boarding house described him to me.”
Arabella returned her attention to the pond. There seemed to be nothing more to say.
“Miss Knightley, may I visit your school?”
The question was entirely unexpected. Her gaze flew to him. “The school? Why?”
“I’m a wealthy man, Miss Knightley. Your school sounds like something I should like to invest in.”
“Invest?” she said doubtfully. “But there’s no profit—”
“In terms of money, no. But in terms of people, I expect your school turns a great profit.”
Arabella stared at him in astonishment.
“May I visit it?”
Arabella glanced at Polly. Do I trust him? Polly looked equally as baffled. She raised her shoulders in a barely perceptible shrug.
Arabella bit her lip, uncertain. “I’ve never visited it myself.”
“Never?” Astonishment was visible on St. Just’s face.
“How can I? It’s further out of London than Richmond. I’d need the best part of a day, and my grandmother—”
St. Just understood. “Hard to keep such a visit a secret from her.”
“Yes.”
He frowned slightly. “But if you’ve never seen the school, how do you know everything is in order?”
“Harry takes care of that for me.”
“Harry?”
“Harry Higgs. My friend.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “The friend who knows a fence?”
“Yes.”
His frown deepened. “You must trust this Harry Higgs a great deal.”
“I do.”
He looked at her for a moment, still frowning. “May I meet Mr. Higgs?”
Arabella glanced at Polly again, and received another shrug.
She looked back at St. Just, studying his face. The gray eyes met hers steadily. He seemed to be entirely in earnest.
Arabella made her decision. “Very well,” she said, and had the sensation that she’d just plunged off a cliff. Trusting Adam St. Just seemed a terribly reckless thing to do. “We can go now, if you have the time.”
He appeared startled. “Now?”
“Yes.” Because otherwise I might lose my courage.
* * *
ST. JUST STEPPED fastidiously over the open gutter in Rosemary Lane. “Mr. Higgs lives here?”
“No,” Arabella said. “This is where we change our clothes.”
“Change them?” He raised his eyebrows. “Is that necessary?”
“You may venture into the slums wearing that—” She gestured at his superbly cut coat of olive green superfine and the glossy hessians with their golden tassels. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.”
St. Just looked down at himself. “You think it would be foolish?”
“I think it would be dangerous,” she said frankly.
He glanced sharply at her, and then nodded. “Very well. A change of clothing, then.”
Arabella watched his face as they stepped into the old-clothes shop, with its racks of used clothing and the dozens of coats hanging from hooks screwed into the ceiling. The smell was nauseating, as if a hundred unwashed people were crammed inside. She thought St. Just flinched slightly as he inhaled. His face stiffened. He’s holding his breath.
St. Just glanced at her and swallowed. “Fragrant.”
The comment was so unexpected that she almost laughed aloud.
Polly entered the shop last and closed the door. “Sally!” she called. “It’s us.”
Sally, a stout woman missi
ng most of her teeth, squinted at St. Just in astonishment.
“This is a friend of mine,” Arabella said. “He’s coming with us today and needs a change of clothes.”
Sally’s sparse eyebrows rose as she examined St. Just from head to toe. Her gaze lingered on the hat of felted beaver fur with its tall crown and slender brim, the exquisitely tied neckcloth, the ebony-topped cane.
“I want him to look disreputable.”
“Disrepu’ble?” Sally went off into a cackle of laughter. “He’ll never be disrepu’ble, that one.”
“Do your best, Sally,” Arabella said, biting back a grin at the expression on St. Just’s face.
She and Polly changed quickly in the back room, while Sally selected clothes for Adam St. Just. When they emerged he was standing, waiting, a bundle of clothing in his arms and a pair of worn boots held in one hand. He didn’t appear to have been offended by Sally; he looked bemused, but not affronted.
“A han’some one, he is,” Sally said once St. Just had entered the back room, digging Arabella in the ribs with her elbow.
* * *
TEN MINUTES LATER St. Just emerged. His appearance was entirely altered. He wore trousers that were ragged, frayed, patched, and stained—as well as too wide in the leg and several inches too short. His shirt was of coarse, discolored cotton; an over-large and threadbare Benjamin coat with put-out elbows and shiny cuffs hid most of it. A filthy muffler, tied around his neck, and the pair of battered boots with splitting seams completed the ensemble.
Arabella covered her mouth with a hand.
St. Just had seen her amusement. His lips twisted wryly. “Am I disreputable enough?”
Arabella cleared her throat and turned to Polly. “What do you think?”
“He needs a hat.”
Sally produced one with a low and lopsided crown. The wide brim was visibly greasy.
St. Just accepted the hat with a grimace of distaste. He placed it gingerly on his head.
Arabella bit her lip. She felt a pang of sympathy for him—but also a spurt of mirth. Was it wrong of her to find his discomfort so amusing? Probably.
She observed him critically. He looked as rough as it was possible for a gentleman to look, but even so . . . “Slouch,” she said.
St. Just rounded his shoulders.
Arabella nodded. “And now, if you could walk a little . . .”
St. Just obliged, taking a turn about the shop. Coats dangled about his ears, in danger of swiping the shabby hat from his head. Despite the hunched shoulders, he still moved like a gentleman.
Arabella exchanged a glance with Polly.
“Different boots,” Polly said firmly. “Much bigger.”
Wearing boots that were several sizes too large, St. Just’s walk became shambling and graceless. Clump, clump, clump he went down the narrow aisle.
“Perfect!” Arabella said.
His glance was wry. “I’m glad you approve.”
* * *
THEY LEFT THROUGH the back door, stepping out into the dank, noisome alleyway behind the shop. A rat scuttled into the shadows.
“Walk between us,” Arabella said. “And don’t speak to anyone.”
They walked quickly, hurrying through the warren of streets, skirting piles of refuse and splashing through dirty puddles. The noises of the slums filled her ears: shouts, crying children, yelping dogs—and at one point, a lullaby sung by a young woman on a doorstep, holding a baby wrapped in a shawl.
Smells mingled in her nostrils, the fragrance—to use St. Just’s word—of tanneries and breweries, foundries and slaughterhouses, the fetid odors rising from the piles of refuse, the whiff of open gutters.
Miss Smell o’ Gutters, Arabella thought, glancing at St. Just.
There was no longer any wryness in his expression. His face, below the greasy brim of his hat, was grim and his arm under her hand was tense.
In Berner Street, Polly knocked on the door of Harry’s house.
“Is this where you used to live, Miss Knightley?” St. Just asked in a low voice as they waited on the doorstep.
“No. We were in one of the rookeries.” She glanced at him. “Much worse than this.”
St. Just looked around at the soot-stained brick buildings, the boarded-over windows and cracked panes of glass, the rivulet of filthy water running down the middle of the street. His mouth tightened, but he said nothing.
The door opened. Harry stood there, big and fair-haired and broken-nosed, precisely as St. Just had described him. “Pol!” His welcoming smile vanished. “Who’s this?”
“This is Mr. St. Just,” Arabella said.
“St. Just?” Harry subjected Adam St. Just to a thorough scrutiny. Arabella had no doubt that he saw the smoothly shaved jaw and the manicured hands. “One o’ the nobs?”
“Er, yes.” She wondered if St. Just had ever heard himself addressed in quite that way before. “He knows about Tom.”
Harry glanced sharply at her. “Told ’im, did you?” She read disapproval in his face, heard it in his voice.
Arabella shook her head. “He guessed.”
Harry’s attention swung sharply back to St. Just. “Did ’e now?”
“May we come in? Mr. St. Just is interested in the school. He says he would like to contribute.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed. “He sez, does ’e?”
St. Just spoke for himself: “I am quite serious, Mr. Higgs.”
The two men matched stares for a long moment, taking measure of each other. Harry was apparently satisfied with what he saw, for he gave a short nod and stepped back from the doorway.
* * *
THEY TALKED FOR more than an hour, in the small parlor with its lumpy sofa and scarred wooden furniture. Tess joined them, blushing prettily when St. Just rose and bowed to her.
If St. Just was uncomfortable in the company of persons of such low class, he hid it well. He asked a lot of questions about the school, and listened intently to the answers. There was no condescension in his manner, no disdain, no contempt. He looked as at ease as if he sat on a giltwood chair surrounded by peers of the realm.
At the end of the visit, Harry and St. Just shook hands. It wasn’t a polite touch of fingers, but a longer grip, like that between equals.
Arabella blinked, astonished. They like each other.
It was an extremely disconcerting realization.
* * *
AS BEFORE, ADAM walked between them, Miss Knightley on his left, her maid on his right. No, not her maid; her friend, Polly. He looked around as they made their way back through Whitechapel. His gaze slid over men lounging in doorways and dirty children playing in the gutters—and a young woman who was clearly a prostitute. Adam observed her obliquely. Her face had been pretty once, now it was ravaged. Her hair was as golden as Grace’s. He heard Miss Knightley’s voice in his ears: Better, or merely luckier?
He looked away.
This was no place for anyone; and most certainly no place for a child—and yet Arabella Knightley had been a child here. The sights, smells, and sounds that assaulted his senses—the piles of rotting refuse, the foul language, the drunkenness, the rats feeding openly in the gutters—were what she’d grown up with. She’d run through these filthy streets, breathed these noisome smells, seen the depths to which people could descend—and instead of turning her back on it, she’d chosen to come back, to help.
His admiration for her, his respect, was beyond words. She was remarkable.
To his right, Adam heard language that made him blench. He glanced involuntarily at Miss Knightley. She seemed utterly unperturbed. Dressed in the ragged dress and dirty apron, with her sable hair hidden beneath a shawl, she was indistinguishable from the other women on these streets. If she wanted to, she could vanish, blending with the people around them. He’d never find her again.
The thought made alarm surge inside him. He reached for her hand and tucked it firmly into the crook of his arm.
She glanced up at him, her eyebrows raise
d slightly in enquiry. “Mr. St. Just?”
Adam shook his head, and tensed as half a dozen boys barreled out of an alleyway ahead of them. He stepped in front of Miss Knightley, shielding her as the boys jostled past, shouting to one another.
“Oi!” Polly said indignantly, aiming a kick at one of them. “Clear orf!
Miss Knightley came out from behind him. “Mr. St. Just, you don’t have to protect me.” Her expression was amused.
Yes, I do. It was instinct; he didn’t have a choice. Adam stared at her, at the dark eyes and the fine-boned face, and was shaken by the fierceness of his need to keep her safe.
“They’re just boys,” Miss Knightley said. “There’s no harm in them.”
“Unless you don’t mind your pocket being picked,” Polly said darkly.
Miss Knightley shrugged and smiled. She began walking again.
Adam swallowed. I have to protect her. He strode after Miss Knightley, took her hand again, and placed it firmly on his arm.
She glanced at him. He clearly saw her amusement.
Adam ignored it. He offered his other arm to Polly.
They stepped over a particularly foul gutter. The stench made him almost gag. How had Arabella Knightley survived this? For that matter, how had Harry Higgs and his wife survived it? How could anyone come from this Hell on earth and not be as mean-spirited, as crude, as their surroundings?
And yet Harry Higgs—who’d never left these slums—was an admirable man: intelligent, forthright, and in his own way, honest.
Judge a person by who they are, not what they are. It was the lesson Miss Knightley had been teaching him the past few weeks. Harry, with his execrable English, was as worthy of respect—if not more worthy—than any member of the ton.
Adam looked at Arabella Knightley again, at her dark lashes, the delicate indentation in her chin. His father had been wrong seven years ago. You should have urged me to marry her, Father. She’s more a prize than any duke’s daughter.
* * *