Ernest raised his eyebrows. “What do you have there?”
She grinned. “Just a little lard. The cook was going to throw it out. I convinced her I had a far better use for it.”
She set the pot on the table and stood over Ernest, peering down at his thick hair.
“May I?” she asked, a little of the confidence suddenly gone from her voice.
Ernest nodded. Rachel dipped her fingers into the pot, then slowly ran her hands through his hair. At her touch, he felt a shiver slide down his spine. He swallowed hurriedly. He felt her work the grease through his locks, working them into an unruly mess.
All too quickly, she pulled away. She stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Oh yes,” she said, a cheeky smile on her lips. “Now you’re beginning to look as you should.”
She reached for the cracked mirror that hung on the wall and handed it to Ernest. He peered at his reflection and was unable to stop a laugh escaping. His auburn hair was wild and dirty, poking from his head at bizarre angles. In the mirror, he could see he had wiped a streak of lampblack across his chin. He looked oddly like another man. Who might he be, Ernest found himself wondering if he had been born into such a life? What adventures might he have had? Who might he have loved?
He put the mirror down and smiled up at Rachel.
“I’ll never be able to replicate such a thing on my own,” he said. “I shall have to come and find you each time I come back to—” He stopped abruptly, realizing how forward, how presumptuous his words sounded.
Rachel said nothing. She wiped her hands on the cloth she had brought from the kitchen and began to set the bottles back in her basket.
“Why?” she said suddenly.
Ernest blinked. “Pardon?”
“Why are you doing all this?”
Ernest hesitated. Ought he keep his reasons a secret? He didn’t want to, he realized. Not from Rachel Bell. He wanted to share. Wanted to tell her of that chest of clothes he had found in the wardrobe. Tell her of his mother’s lies. Of the things Phillips had heard George Owen say.
“I’m looking for my sister,” he said simply.
Rachel’s eyebrows shot up.
“I was told she died when I was a child. But I’ve reason to believe she is still alive.” It was the first time he had admitted such a thing aloud, and it made something turn over in his stomach.
Rachel slid the basket back beneath the bed and sat back in her chair. “I see.” She frowned. “You believe she’s here? In Bethnal Green?”
“No,” Ernest admitted. “But the man I’m looking for, George Owen, I believe might have information. He used to work as a gardener at my father’s house in Pimlico some thirty years ago. The last I heard of him, he was living out here.” He lowered his eyes. “I know it’s a long shot. In all likelihood, the man is dead. But I don’t know where else to start.”
“I don’t know George Owen,” Rachel told him. “But there are people I can ask. Perhaps someone may have heard something of him.”
Ernest met her eyes. “You’ll help me?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
He felt a smile in the corner of his lips. How refreshing it was to be spoken to this way. Spoken to without formalities, without how-do-you-dos and finely-whittled etiquette. For a fleeting moment, Ernest found himself wishing he really were that man with blackened, miner’s hands, and unwashed hair.
“Come back and see me this time next week,” said Rachel. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
Ernest smiled, his heart quickening again. Was it the possibility of his search progressing that was making him feel this way? Or was it the thought of seeing her again?
She had lit something inside of him that Ernest knew had nothing to do with finding Unity. He pushed the thought away at once. What point was there letting himself think about something that could never be?
Best focus on the task at hand. I have a mystery to solve. Something has happened to my sister. I will not let myself be distracted.
Chapter 6
Rachel leaned on the counter of her friend Betsey’s bakery. She inhaled deeply, the smell of warm bread making her stomach groan.
Betsey laughed. “Hungry, are you? And here I thought you’d come for my sparkling company.” She handed Rachel a warm bread roll.
She bit into it, savoring the taste of it on her tongue. “Your sparkling company,” she said, her mouth full, “and a free feed.” She grinned at Betsey.
Betsey waved a flour-covered spatula at Rachel. “There’s something about you today. Don’t know what. A look in your eyes, maybe.” She eyed her friend. “Anything you’d like to tell me?”
Rachel took another enormous bite of the bread. She and Betsey had become close friends in the three years since her parents had died. The day after burying her mother, Rachel had stumbled red eyed into Betsey’s bakery to buy a loaf of bread. Betsey had asked her what was wrong, and Rachel had found herself blurting out the story of the frozen river and her father the waterman, right up to the illness that had claimed both her parents in a single winter. Betsey had taken her to the back of the bakery and made her a pot of tea.
Betsey knew it all, of course. Knew how Rachel earned a living, knew of her dreams for a better life. Though Betsey had a husband and three children of her own, she had never looked down on Rachel.
“I admire you,” she’d said once. “I admire your strength. I admire your willingness to do whatever needs to be done.”
Your willingness to do what needs to be done. Rachel had never thought of things in such a way before. She had never considered herself to possess any great amount of strength. She simply did the things she had to do to survive.
Being around Betsey made her feel good about herself—something that was far too uncommon in her line of work.
And so, as she ate, she considered telling the older woman about the events of the previous night. Ernest Jackson had left the tavern with lampblack on his hands and a smile on his face. He had also left a faint warmth in Rachel’s chest. She had tried not to think about it. After all, wasn’t the most important rule of being an escort never to develop feelings for a client?
But Ernest Jackson was not a client. She had accepted no money from him and had not done as much as kiss his cheek.
He was most definitely not a client. But he was a nobleman, despite his pathetic attempts to hide it. And letting herself develop feelings for a nobleman, Rachel knew, would be even more foolish than developing feelings for a client.
And so she gave a nonchalant shrug and said to Betsey: “I met an interesting man last night. A man looking for his sister.”
“Oh yes?” Betsey wiped a cloth over the counter, her disappointment thinly veiled. She had clearly been hoping for a juicier story.
“He grew up believing her dead,” Rachel continued. “but he thinks she may be alive.”
Betsey stopped cleaning and raised a dark eyebrow. “Interesting.”
Rachel swallowed the last of her bread roll. “You ought to have seen him,” she said, unable to stop a smile creeping over her lips. “Dressed up in some worker’s clothes, trying to pass himself off as a miner.” She gave a faint snort of laughter. “But he talked like a right toff, so he did. No one was fooled.”
Betsey smiled. She jabbed a finger at Rachel. “I hope you were kind to the poor man. I bet he had no idea what had struck him when he stumbled across the likes of you.”
Rachel gave her a coy smile. “I was a perfect lady.” She leaned against the counter again. “He was looking for a man named George Owen. You ain’t heard of him?”
Betsey shook her head.
“Said he was a gardener at his father’s house in Pimlico some thirty years ago. Ain’t heard from him since.”
Betsey tilted her head in thought. “Perhaps you could ask my ma if she’s heard of this Owen fellow. You know she were a lady’s maid out that way many years ago. Perhaps she might know who to ask.”
Rachel grinned. “That would be wonde
rful.” Here again was that quickening of her heart she had felt when she had led Mr. Jackson up to the top rooms of the tavern, that quickening of her heart she had felt when she had run her fingers through his hair.
She had promised to help him with his search on a whim, not wanting that delicious feeling in her chest to go away. She’d had no thought of how she might be of any use. But Ernest Jackson would be returning to the tavern in a week’s time. And what a grand thing it might be if she had some news to share.
* * *
Ernest stood at Unity’s headstone, his brow creased in thought. A bunch of bluebells lay beside the grave, tied with a thin pink ribbon. For as long as he could remember, his mother had been laying flowers here at Unity’s resting place.
He stared at the headstone, rubbing his chin. He could feel the beginnings of a beard. At his toilet that morning, he had foregone the razor, knowing a little stubble would make him appear more working class. He glanced down at his hands. He had scrubbed them free of lampblack, determined to avoid questions from the duke, yet a faint dark tinge remained beneath his nails.
Suddenly, he found himself thinking of Rachel Bell’s fingers sliding through his hair. He shoved the thought away.
What is wrong with me? Thinking of such things as I stand here at my sister’s grave?
He forced his mind back to the issue at hand. If Unity was truly alive—as he was beginning to feel more and more sure of—then what possible reason could his mother have had for giving her away? And what possible reason would she have had for denying her existence?
His mother had never been a particularly loving woman. For all of Ernest’s childhood, she had been nothing more than a distant figure, constantly swathed in grey and black. She never attended festivities and left the house only to attend church. Ernest had been raised by a parade of nurses and governesses. The women hired to care for him had been loving and kind. He had wanted for nothing throughout his childhood, as had been the case for almost his entire life. But he had learned quickly that his mother was not the woman to go to when he was in a morose demeanor. His mother was as bleak as his father was bold, and that was the way things had always been.
But what if there was more to it? What if his mother was keeping things hidden? Was it the pain of losing a child that had made her the way she was? Or the unending stress of keeping her living daughter a secret?
Chapter 7
Rachel dressed in her best blue woolen gown to speak to Betsey’s mother. She stood in front of the tiny cracked mirror in her room, lacing her stays carefully and neatly pinning her hair into a demure knot at the base of her neck. She carefully slid on her bonnet and cloak, then pulled on a pair of embroidered wool gloves.
This attempt at dressing like a lady had become something of a ritual. Despite her best intentions, Rachel carried plenty of shame over the way she earned a living. When she was not flitting around the city on a gentleman’s arm, or being pounded against some alley wall, she did her best to look a presentable, respectable young lady. Perhaps no one was fooled. Perhaps her eyes had seen far too much to be able to hide behind a bonnet and embroidered wool gloves.
She thought of her friend as she walked. Betsey’s birth mother had been an escort too. Rachel had often wondered if it was why her friend had accepted her so willingly. Unable to raise her, Betsey’s escort mother had given her to a close friend to bring up as her own. It was this friend that Rachel would be visiting today. The woman who may have known the elusive George Owen.
Rachel knew Betsey had been lucky. Women, of course, found themselves with child all the time in her line of work. Potions of Queen Anne’s Lace and pennyroyal went only so far toward preventing such things. Often, the unwanted children were left outside orphanage doors or far worse. For Betsey to have found a loving home to call her own had truly been a blessing.
Rachel knocked on the narrow door beside the bakery that led upstairs to the living quarters. Betsey’s adoptive mother, Mrs. Miller, had been living with her daughter’s family since her husband’s death two years ago. She opened the door to Rachel and gave her a gentle smile.
“Miss Bell. A pleasure to see you.” She gestured to Rachel to enter, then shuffled up the stairs, a wrinkled white hand clutching the banister. Rachel climbed the stairs behind her, inhaling the smell of cooking bread that was rising up from the bakery. Her stomach groaned loudly, and she cursed herself. She hoped Mrs. Miller hadn’t heard.
The house was narrow and crooked, but with three bedrooms and a separate kitchen, it felt like a palace compared to Rachel’s room at the tenement. The range was cluttered with pots and fish kettles, clothes drying in front of the hearth. Evidence of Betsey’s three children lay scattered around the house; a pile of knucklebones sitting on the table, a set of ninepins strewn across the hall.
Mrs. Miller led Rachel into the kitchen and gestured to a seat at the table. “Tea?”
Rachel nodded, taking off her bonnet and setting it carefully on the table. “Yes. Thank you.” She hesitated. “May I help?”
Mrs. Miller waved her request away. “Oh no, my dear. I’m quite all right.” She hung a kettle over the range and bustled over to the shelf for the teapot. When a thin line of steam began to rise from the kettle, she filled the pot and poured two cups. She handed one to Rachel, then eased herself into a chair at the table.
“My Betsey says you are after information.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Rachel realized her heart had quickened.
Am I truly so desperate to help Ernest Jackson?
“I’m seeking information about a man you may have known. His name is George Owen. He worked as a gardener at a manor house in Pimlico many years ago.”
Mrs. Miller sipped her tea. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t recognize the name.”
Rachel felt a faint sinking inside her. “Are you certain?”
“Quite certain.”
Rachel took a mouthful of tea. Perhaps the woman did not know George Owen, but she may have known someone who did. “Betsey tells me you were once a housemaid in Pimlico.”
Mrs. Miller said nothing.
“Is there anyone from those days you are still in contact with? Anyone who might be able to help me?”
The old woman frowned. “Just why is it you are seeking this man, Miss Bell?”
Rachel hesitated. “It’s of no matter.”
Mrs. Miller peered at her curiously. “Betsey tells me there is a man involved.” Her eyes were suddenly sparkling and sly.
Rachel glanced downwards, embarrassed. Strange, she thought, that she might feel embarrassed over this, given everything else she had done in her life. But her meeting with Ernest Jackson felt like a thing she wanted to keep secret. A far more precious thing than a tryst with a sweaty duke after a masquerade ball. She had no desire to share the details with the prying mother of a friend. She told Mrs. Miller simply:
“Someone has requested my help. That’s all.”
“A client?”
Rachel’s eyes widened momentarily, surprised at the old woman’s boldness. “No,” she said hurriedly. “Not a client.” She felt a faint flush in her cheeks. “Just a man who is looking for his sister. A nobleman,” she found herself blurting. And then, to fill the sudden, glaring silence, “who lives in Pimlico.”
Mrs. Miller made a noise from the back of her throat. “May I offer my advice, Miss Bell?”
Rachel nodded, though she felt quite certain she did not want to hear what the old woman had to say.
“You will do well not to involve yourself in the plights of others,” she told her, leaning over her teacup and fixing Rachel with hard eyes. “Especially the plights of the nobility. People like you and I, Miss Bell, we do not belong in their world. And trying to do so will only get you hurt.”
Rachel said nothing. She knew that everything the woman had said was right. She had enough troubles of her own—why was she scratching around in this quest for Ernest Jackson? But of course, as much as she was trying to convi
nce herself otherwise, she knew Mr. Ernest Jackson himself was the reason she was involving herself in his plight.
Don’t forget what he is.
Because, despite his casual demeanor and insistence he address her as a man of her own class, she knew he was far from the kind of person she ought to allow herself to have feelings for. All the lampblack and lard in the world could not change that fact.
Ought she just walk away? Not show herself at the tavern on the night Mr. Jackson had told her he would be returning? Forget involving herself in his quest, forget helping him fit into her world, forget, forget, forget? Such a thing would be wise, for certain. But such a thing would also be impossible. Ernest Jackson had worked his way beneath her skin far too deeply for her to just turn away.
A Fiery Escort For The Roguish Marquess (Steamy Historical Regency) Page 4