Scandal's Reward by Jean R. Ewing

Author:Jean R. Ewing [Ewing, Jean R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1994-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Several hours earlier that same day Catherine was rattling toward the stews of Whitechapel in a hired cab. The note had come when she sat alone in the drawing room. Amelia was out, visiting more distant relatives of the previous Lord Brooke. David was still down in Somerset. Little Annie was due to arrive from Exmoor any day.

Perfectly content in the beautiful room, Catherine had read a little, then played through most of her favorite pieces, when the footman knocked, carrying a slightly scruffy note on a silver salver. Her hands shook as she sat down at the piano to read it. Almost faint with excitement she sprang up, only to knock several sheets of music to the floor. Hurriedly, she gathered them together, set them on the bench, and thrust the note beneath the pile. Penning a quick note to Amy, in case she should return early from her duty visit, she scrupulously followed the directions she had been given.

These involved a considerable walk from the gracious square to a fountain in a public thoroughfare. There she had met a silent man in a black coat and round hat, who had offered to escort her to where she might meet with the object of her curiosity: John Catchpole. She heard Lower Hobb Lane mentioned, but she was too unfamiliar with London to recognize the name. They were now swaying together in the cab behind the uneven trot of a run-down horse. Without speaking a word, her companion rapped on the roof of the vehicle with his stout cane. The horse stopped. Taking her elbow, the man propelled her from the cab.

“We walk from here, miss. Stay close. No one’ll bother you if you’re with me.”

With those words, the fellow dived into the crowd. Catherine looked about with dismay. The streets were alive with human activity, but the conditions in which these activities were being carried out were those of the utmost squalor and misery. An open sewer ran down the middle of the narrow lane into which she followed her guide, while dogs and half-naked children rooted around without concern in the filth. Her ears were assailed with a cacophony of raucous shouts and bellows, as the inhabitants of the foul closes yelled their comments to each other.

Coming from the clean air of Exmoor, Catherine had never seen anything so appalling. As a vicar’s daughter, she had witnessed poverty up close before, but poverty tempered by the country environment and the mercy of her father’s ministrations, nothing like this. Even in her simple dress and pelisse, she stood out dramatically from the crowd, most of whom were dressed either in rags or various styles of tawdry finery that proclaimed to the world their unsavory profession. What on earth had she risked by coming here with this total stranger? Bravely squaring her shoulders and ignoring the hostile glances she was getting, Catherine followed the round hat into a bewildering maze of ramshackle dwellings.

Finally the man disappeared into a narrow doorway, through a passage, and up a flight of stairs.

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