Anything but a Duke by Christy Carlyle

Author:Christy Carlyle [Carlyle, Christy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Lambeth was as grim as Aidan recalled from his youth. Soot hung in the air and infused every breath with a metallic tang. There were more chimneys now, hundreds of blackened spires choking dark smoke into the air. There were no grassy squares, just brick buildings clustered together and a thick parade of people and carts shuffling between them.

After escaping the workhouse, he’d stayed in Lambeth for several years, working first as a chimney sweep and sometimes a mudlark, retrieving anything of value he could dig up from the muddy shore of the Thames. He’d spent his days covered in grime and his nights shivering against cold cobblestones when he couldn’t find a cheap doss house.

The memories were so grim that he could hardly bear to recall them. When he did, he looked back as if on someone else. A pathetic waif. He sometimes wondered if that boy deserved the riches he had now.

Everett Street was one he’d traversed often, and it was eerie to know that he’d done so dozens of times with no knowledge that he’d been born within the grimy brick walls of a lodging house in the center of the street.

Aidan rolled his shoulders and squeezed at the knot of tension at the back of his neck before knocking on the front door. He told himself to temper his hopes. If the Mary Iverson who’d resided at this lodging house was his mother, she’d done so more than three decades past. There was no reason to believe she might still be alive, or anyone who would remember her and why she’d abandoned her children.

It was several minutes before an old, sickly-looking man leaning heavily on a cane opened the door. He scanned Aidan from head to toe, bending forward to inspect his clothes and boots.

“Hello, sir,” the man finally said. “I take it you’re not after lodgings. Who are you here to see?”

“Mr. Callihan. Would that be you, sir?”

“Aye, that I am.”

“Then I’m here to speak with you. May I come in?”

The old man hesitated, his hand braced against the door frame protectively, but finally relented. “There’s the front parlor if you wish to step inside.”

Aidan stepped into the room the old man indicated and found it filled with personal mementos, photographs, and framed drawings.

“Ask me what you will, sir, but first tell me your name.”

Aidan turned and fixed his gaze on the landlord’s dark eyes. “Iverson.”

The man’s trembling, wrinkled hand came up. He clapped it over his mouth as his eyes bulged. “You’re the boy.”

“Yes.” Aidan stepped forward and barely resisted gripping Callihan by his shirtfront. “Tell me what you know about my mother. About Mary Iverson.”

The landlord stared at him for a moment and then bent on his cane to make his way across the room.

Aidan held his breath, struggling to maintain calm. He waited, somehow, for the man to open a small tin box and extract a piece of paper. Callihan shuffled toward him and stretched out his hand, offering the fragment of newsprint.

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