The Lady and the Highwayman Page 3

  “A pleasure, Miss Black.” Mr. Darby offered a respectful bow. “May I make known to you my friend?” He motioned to a gentleman on his other side, one who stepped forward in that moment, coming into view for the first time.

  Elizabeth’s breath caught. Here was a man a woman could not help but notice. His dark hair, though neatly combed, had something riotous about it, as if barely tamed by his ablutions. The beginnings of stubble darkened his jaw and chin. And those dark eyes beneath thick brows watched her in such a way that she could not be certain he didn’t see more than she realized. Here was the perfect model for a penny dreadful hero—or villain.

  “Fletcher Walker,” Mr. Darby said, completing the introduction.

  “Pleasure, miss.” Mr. Walker dipped his head, an acceptable motion of greeting but one that felt the tiniest bit audacious. He seemed to know his mannerisms and speech revealed him to be a bit below his company and that he found the arrangement amusing.

  “Fletcher Walker?” Elizabeth hoped she kept her interest at just the right level to not draw too much scrutiny. Fletcher Walker was the name of a very successful author of penny dreadfuls. “Your name is very familiar.”

  “I’ve a propensity for scratching pen to paper,” he said. “And I’ve been told I spin a good tale.” His was not a voice borne of an upper-class rearing. There was something of the middle class in his tenor, but it felt acquired. If she had to guess, she would say he’d come from the lowest dregs of society but now occupied a higher rung. “Perhaps you know my work.”

  Mr. Headley nearly snorted, a moment of unexpected incivility. “That is unlikely.” He looked to her once more. “Mr. Walker dabbles in the . . . less refined areas of, well, I dare not say ‘literature.’”

  “Why?” Mr. Walker asked. “Is it too difficult for you to pronounce?”

  Oh, this Fletcher Walker was a dastardly sort. She liked him already.

  His remark clearly caught Mr. Headley unawares, though he regained his footing quickly. “I only meant that the penny dreadfuls are not quite the same offering as those more nuanced books authors such as Miss Black produce—books which we describe as literature.”

  “I’ve heard a few choice descriptions for them highbrow novels.” Mr. Walker was not the least put off by Mr. Headley’s disapproval.

  “You’ve only just released the first installment of a new ‘Urchins of London’ tale, I believe,” she said.

  Mr. Headley eyed her with something akin to horror. “Do not tell me you read them.”

  Heavens, she did far more than merely read them.

  “It does not do to ignore success in one’s chosen field, even if that success occurs in slightly different incarnations than one is accustomed to.” She addressed Mr. Walker once more. “I believe you are by all accounts the most successful author in your particular area of literature.”

  “I commend you on your pronunciation of that very difficult word.” He spoke dryly but with unmistakable humor. Here was a man with whom she would enjoy a verbal sparring match. She didn’t dare risk it, though. Not in their current company. Prim and proper, that was the key to her school’s continued success and her hard-won independence.

  “Mr. Walker has recently been unseated,” his friend said. “A newcomer has taken the upper hand.”

  “That must be a sore disappointment,” she said. “I find myself forever chasing the success Mrs. Gaskell has claimed in our shared area of publishing.”

  “You’ve the good fortune of being able to name your rival,” Mr. Walker said. “Mine is an unknown, as slippery as an eel pie in the summer sun.”

  “Is that not rather appropriate?” she pressed. “A genre so given to mystery and intrigue suddenly seized by an inscrutable phantom?”

  “I’ll grant you, it’s fitting,” he conceded. “I’ve my suspicions Mr. King enjoys sending us all on an endless chase.”

  Mr. King. How tempted she was to grin, to gloat, to do something at the sound of that name.

  “This mysterious author is the new ‘king,’ if you will, of the penny dreadfuls?”

  “He is, indeed, a rather dreadful king.”

  Oh, yes, he had a sharp wit. She liked that more than she ought.

  “We’ll run him to ground, though. Someone’s bound to know who he is.”

  “Is it this puzzle which has brought you here this evening?” she asked.

  “No, actually.” He deferred to his friend, something she would wager did not come naturally to him. Fletcher Walker was quite obviously a man accustomed to taking charge of any situation.

  “We understood the focus of tonight’s salon was to be education,” Mr. Darby said. “That happens to be a topic that interests us.”

  Yes, he had said something about that when they’d first begun speaking.

  “You advocate for the education of the poor, I believe,” she said.

  He nodded. “Ragged schools mostly. Mr. Hogg’s in particular.”

  She was familiar with the endeavor. “Many have said he is foolish to take in students whom other schools have deemed too dangerous or too far down the path of ill repute for redemption.”

  “And many have said educating girls is a waste as well,” Mr. Walker tossed in. “It is possible ‘many’ are wrong.”

  “It is more than possible, Mr. Walker. It is true.”

  Mr. Headley tugged at her arm, urging her toward a different group of attendees. She offered a quick farewell to Mr. Darby and Mr. Walker. Even as she moved about the gathering, speaking with people she knew, meeting people she didn’t, her thoughts and, more often than she cared to admit, her gaze returned to the intriguing Mr. Fletcher Walker.

  He was chasing down the elusive Mr. King.

  What would he think if he knew he had, in fact, been speaking with . . . her?

  by Fletcher Walker

  Chapter I

  Morris Wood had clocked twelve years of life and had nothing but survival to show for it. He worked what reputable jobs he could scrounge, filling the gaps with pickpocketing and nipping second-rate bunts from unsuspecting costermongers and selling the bruised or misshapen apples for a few coins. He wasn’t a bad sort, just a lad born under an unlucky star.

  “Carry your parcels, miss?” he asked, his tattered hat in his hands, as a finely dressed woman stepped out of a milliner’s shop.

  She looked to her maid, walking at her side. They exchanged amused smiles.

  He wasn’t so easily put off. “You’re like to be full knackered after a day of shopping. Allow me to lug your goods, miss.”

  Morris watched, hopeful. The younger misses and the oldest matrons were most likely to cross his palm with a farthing or more, sometimes even a shilling. He need only bow and scrape and try to look a bit younger than he was. Pity paid, after all. And little ones got a blimey lot of pity.

  The fine lady motioned to a carriage two skips away. “I am going only so far as there.”

  “I’d carry your load that far, miss.”

  The gentry sorts had a way, when he’d worn them down, of dropping their shoulders and sighing like they had to empty their lungs all at once. Pity paid, but so did exasperation. He’d take the coins however they came.

  The lady’s parcels were carried to her carriage. Two sixpence were set in his hand. He pocketed them, along with the few other coins he’d managed to pull together that day. It was a meager pile, nowhere near the bunce he’d like to claim as his own. Still, it’d be enough to pay his daily due for the roof over his head that night. Another couple of morts out doing a bit of shopping, a gent here or there with a bit of silver jingling in his coat, and Morris’d have something left over after the Innkeeper took his share.

  He walked down the street with his hands tucked in his pockets, whistling. The day was fine. He appreciated the weather for more than the convenience. Rainy days or windy days or otherwise miserable
days tended to empty the streets. It was hard to go dipping when there were no jangling pockets wandering about. Honest work wasn’t easier to claim either when the fine coves and morts kept to their houses.

  Morris spotted his chum Jimmy standing by a fish­monger’s cart. He gave a quick nod, pausing as he drew near. “Swiping?” he asked behind his teeth.

  “Guarding.” Jimmy’s eyes pulled wide, looking as surprised as Morris felt. Urchins like them weren’t usually trusted with preventing a thieving.

  “You drawing bunce for it?”

  Jimmy nodded. “I’m to watch all these carts and warn if someone’s looking to nip off with something. The lot are paying me a shilling for the day.”

  “A shilling?” Morris whistled in appreciation. “I ain’t never pulled down a shilling in one day for anything respectable.”

  “Boy,” a gravelly voice called. “I don’t pay you for nattering.”

  No more chattering. Pocketing a shilling meant Jimmy’d have loads left even after paying the Innkeeper. Morris wasn’t about to rob him of that. Honest work was a rare enough thing, and they needed every penny, every shilling, every guinea they could tuck away. Jimmy and Morris meant to make something of themselves. A fellow needed money to do that. Money and a whole heap of luck.

  “I’m a bit short,” Morris said. “May ’ave to pick a kick or two.”

  “Don’t get caught,” Jimmy warned. “Enough of us’ve been swept up.”

  Morris knew it well enough. He kept on his way, keeping an eye out for opportunities. The Innkeeper wouldn’t let him stay without the daily rent. But nearly every night, one or more of the urchins that took refuge in the Inn didn’t return from their day on the street. He’d guess, if pressed, that they’d been caught nipping off with coins or pocket watches or whatever else they could wrap their fingers around to bring back to the Inn. He didn’t intend to take a ride in the Black Maria anytime soon.

  He’d managed to earn a few ha’pennies here and there for odd jobs and tasks. He didn’t have to go dipping the whole the rest of the day. Jimmy’s shilling put Morris’s earnings to shame, but they were a team. What one of ’em tucked away, they’d both be helped by.

  With the relief that came from money in his pocket, Morris made his way quickly down the streets of London toward the slum where he spent each night. He’d not gone far when a sight caught him up short. The finest carriage he’d ever seen. Half at least was covered in gold. The rest, white as snow, hadn’t even a speck of dirt on it, no matter that the streets were terribly dusty. On either side of the driver, who was wearing white livery with a three-point hat, two red flags flapped and flew.

  “S’help me Baub, I’ll have me a carriage like that one day,” Morris whispered to himself, watching the awe-­inspiring vehicle fly past. Someday. Someday he’d be out of the gutter. He’d be able to read, able to pay his own way without being beholden to a cracksman like the Innkeeper, and he’d have a carriage, a fine one like that’n.

  He knew the way to the building that the urchins all knew as the Inn. Even with the rotting planks across gaps in the walk and the needed leaps to get safely over, he didn’t have to think much to manage it any more. Easy enough.

  He ducked through the misshapen hole in the side of the brick wall. No one knew when it had broken or if it’d once been a proper door, but it was their way in and out, and it was the reason the Inn was so blasted cold in the winter and blazing hot in the summer. Still, it was dry and better than sleeping on the street.

  Morris stood in the usual line just inside the hole. The children always queued up when returning for the night. Some were a touch older than he was; most were younger. All were waiting their turn to make the daily payment.

  Behind a tall, battered clerk’s desk stood a grease-faced man, hair stringy and long. He eyed each child as he or she approached. His hand uncurled, palm up, gray fingernails extending like claws.

  “Half farthing.” That was what he asked of the youngest.

  Little George set his nightly rent in the Inkeeper’s hand and slipped passed. Next, a girl closer to Morris’s twelve years approached the desk.

  With the same extended claw, the Innkeeper said, “Ha’penny.”

  “I’ve this watch chain,” Mary told him. “Worth weeks of rent, I’d say.”

  He examined it, that practiced greedy eye of his not missing a thing. “Bit banged up, it is.” He popped it between two of his six teeth and gave it a bite. “Gold, though.” The Innkeeper nodded, dropping the treasure in the box he’d lock after everyone’d paid their due. “Three weeks for you, Mary.”

  She’d be in fine fettle for nearly a month. Anything she earned or swiped, she could keep. Or she could give herself as close to a holiday as any of them would ever know.

  Morris’s turn arrived soon enough.

  “Tuppence.” The Innkeeper’s unwavering hand waited for payment.

  He set four farthings and two ha’pennies in the Inn­keeper’s palm. The man counted ’em, something Morris knew wasn’t necessary. The Innkeeper knew the feel of coin, knew at a glance how much he held in his claws. The coins were dropped in the locking box, and Morris was waved inside.

  One more night off the street. One more night closer to the better life he and Jimmy meant to claim for themselves.

  Morris grabbed a dinged and dented metal bowl from the stack in the corner and crossed to the even more dinged and dented pot hanging in the soot-blackened fireplace. He scooped out a lump of breadcrumb gruel.

  Little George rose on his toes, trying to peer over the lip of the pot.

  “Breadcrumb,” Morris said, tipping his bowl enough to show the boy.

  “Innkeeper done bobbed me.” George’s threadbare shoulders drooped. “Said we’d be twisting down oat gruel t’night. I like oat gruel better.”

  “So do I, lad.” Morris dumped a heap into a bowl for George and handed it to him. “Fill up, though. It’s hard to sleep with an empty belly.”

  He sat down on a three-legged stool, bowl on his knees, and looked out over the children, counting heads. They were two short of their usual number. One of those missing was Jimmy, but he had a longer trek back than usual. He’d be along soon, no doubt. Who else hadn’t come back?

  Morris caught Mary’s eye. “Sally ain’t back?”

  Mary gave a small shake of her head, her mouth pulled low with worry. “Ain’t like her to be late.”

  No, it wasn’t.

  “You don’t suppose she’s—” Mary didn’t finish the question.

  All the nearby urchins looked to him, the same nervous pull to their features. They didn’t talk a lot about how many of them had simply disappeared, but everyone knew. Everyone worried.

  “She’ll be back soon.” Morris spoke more confidently than he felt.

  She didn’t come back.

  Even after Jimmy returned, leftover coins secreted away after paying his rent, Sally still wasn’t there.

  Night fell. Morning dawned. All the urchins left to make their daily silver.

  And Sally didn’t come back.

  In the shadowy stretch of a London back alley, a sallow-­faced man watched the comings and goings of the street children. Young. Energetic. Easily overlooked. A few missing here and there would hardly be noticed. Would his master be pleased at how many he was wrangling so quickly? Just what his master needed: a fresh supply . . . of blood.

  Fletcher pulled the brim of his weather-beaten cap low over his brow, an unlit pipe hanging precariously from the corner of his mouth. He knew how to disappear into the crowds of street people, because at his core, he was one of them, no matter that he’d more money to his name now than he’d’ve ever imagined during his days as a shoeblack, dustman, or pickpocket. He was dressed the part with worn and stained trousers, age-dulled outercoat, and thin-soled work boots that felt at once foreign and familiar, both a costume and a se
cond skin.

  Leaning back against the lamppost sent a streak of cold through his insufficient coat. With the appearance of carelessness, he spun a single penny around the fingers of one hand, watching the comings and goings with vague disinterest. Beneath his bent cap brim, he searched the milling crowd.

  A bootblack bent over a grubby copy of a penny dreadful. Two smaller boys Fletcher suspected were looking for a pocket to pick. A hansom cab driver with a folded penny serial sticking out the back pocket of his trousers. A fishmonger shouting to the crowd.

  A flash of copper a bit ahead caught his eye just long enough to see who held the telltale token. Martin Afola, one of the quieter members of the Dread Penny Society, but reliable to his very bones.

  With a subtle swing of his arm, Martin indicated a man—a sweep, based on the brushes he carried—with the shape and coloring of an overripe apple. Their mark. He barked something at the boy following close behind, a slight, skeletal little thing, covered in soot from his tight, curly hair and downturned eyes to the cuffs of his ragged trousers. Their objective.

  Fletcher made no motions of notice or intention. He kept himself to his place in the lamplight.

  Another flash of copper, this time handed to a small shoeblack who’d only just finished cleaning the boots of Hollis Darby. All was in place, then. The three of them—Fletcher, Hollis, and Martin—were fully capable of undertaking this particular rescue. They were no green branches.

  Education was the topic forever caught in Hollis’s craw. Rescuing London’s street children was Fletcher’s focus. He knew the dangerous, desperate lives they were living. He meant to help as many as he could.

  Martin was particularly needed for this rescue. Those who could, upon a glance, be identified as having ancestors who’d arrived in England from the farthest reaches of the world had reason to be wary of those who didn’t share that background. When reaching out to help the destitute, desperate, and frightened children of London’s streets, the Dread Penny Society had found it best, when possible, to include in the rescue someone in whom those children could see reflections of themselves. It didn’t ease every uncertainty, but it helped.