The Wedding Bed (The Sun Never Sets, Book One) by Payne Ava Archer

Author:Payne, Ava Archer [Payne, Ava Archer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AAP Hot Historicals
Published: 2014-01-13T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

India. Well, not exactly India, but likely as close as Calla would ever find in London. Since her arrival in England, she’d seen the “better” parts of the city—St. James, Mayfair, Hyde Park, even the shops of Piccadilly. But nothing compared to what she saw now. Derek had instructed his driver to deliver them to the Shadwell district of London’s East End. Here the dark, dusky faces of lascars, the Indian sailors who manned the ships, swarmed through the streets.

As she alighted from the carriage, an icy breeze whipped around her, stinging her cheeks. She brushed a stray lock of hair from her eyes and peered around her. For a moment, she could only gape as she tried to absorb it all.

The sounds. All of it loud and raucous. Coarse, cockney English. The musical Hindi of her youth, liberally mixed with Punjabi, Persian, Cantonese, and a broad assortment of languages and dialects whose names she could only begin to guess.

The sights. Everywhere she looked, motion. Bustling carts, wagons, and drays. Ramshackle warehouses and dilapidated tenement apartments. Fighting dogs and feral cats. Women and children of every race and nationality poring over the flimsy goods offered in dim little shops and rickety market stalls.

Then there were the smells. She’d acquainted herself with dozens of new scents since her arrival in London—both pleasant and unpleasant—but here the fetid, marshy odor of the Thames was finally overtaken. Calla breathed in the sharp tang of tea, combined with the heady aroma of spices, wines, and incense. Layered beneath that, the pungent mixture of unwashed bodies, alcohol, cheap perfume, burning coal, and horse dung. The stench of piles of refuse untended and left to rot.

“This way.” Derek took her elbow and guided her down the street.

Calla cast him a glance from beneath her lashes as they walked. He surveyed the busy scene not with the wonder she felt, but with an expression of grim purpose. So this, too, was marriage, she thought. She’d won the battle, pushed to have her way, and as a result she’d created a rift with her husband she didn’t know how to mend.

“Are the streets here always this crowded?” she asked, barely matching his pace as they jostled through the teeming population.

“No.”

“That’s good.”

“They’re worse in the spring.”

So much for polite, conciliatory banter. She sighed. “You’re angry with me.”

He gave a brief shake of his head, but didn’t slow his step. “The fault is mine, not yours. A gently bred young woman does not visit the likes of High Street—or anywhere else in the East End, for that matter.”

“Even if you’re accompanying me?”

He gave an abrupt, humorless laugh. “Especially if I’m accompanying you.”

“What does that mean?”

For the first time since they had exited his carriage, his gaze settled on hers. He drew her to his side in the middle of the busy sidewalk. She was afraid they might obstruct traffic, but they barely impeded the flow. Pedestrians streamed around them on both sides, barely sparing them a glance.

“Aside from the

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