Page 30 of Dark Tidings on the Thames
“He doubled it, or so I heard. Stopped her in the park, followed her in the street. He heard of Glynn’s specials and trooped all through the city, from one flower girl to the next, until he found one who could get him what he wanted.”
“Which is where you enter the story, I presume?” asked Niall.
“So help me, it’s true,” Jeanette said. “He come back to me, after. Said the lightskirt had been impressed he’d managed to get it.” She shrugged. “It raised her status, I suppose, getting something rarefied. He wanted another, even grander. But he wanted to go straight to the source. He wanted me to bring him to Glynn.”
“He wanted to cut out the middleman—but you were the middleman,” Kara said, nodding.
“See? Ye understand. But he wouldn’t. I told him I would get him what he wanted, but he wanted to do it his way and he would not stop houndin’ me. Relentless, he was, and mean about it. It set my back up, I tell ye, and I dug in. I wouldn’t tell him, so he followed me,” she said indignantly. “It’s sneaky, if ye ask me. But he caught me goin’ to Glynn for my flowers and he worked out it were her.”
“He approached her directly?” asked Niall.
“Didn’t he? He set in to flatterin’, wheedlin’, and cajolin’ her. He wanted her biggest, best, most beautiful creation.”
“Did she make it for him?” Kara asked.
“Of course she did—what with the amount of money he offered? She would have been stupid not to do it. It were a beauty, I heard.A double armful of devotion,that’s what the girls who saw it all happen have called it.”
“Saw allwhathappen?” asked Niall. He sounded as if he weren’t sure he wished to hear the answer.
“A couple of the flower girls saw him when he come to pick it up his prize one afternoon. It were so big he could scarcely maneuver it through the streets. They followed as he marched it straight through to the park, where he presented it to his light o’ love.”
“And was it well received?” asked Kara.
“Well enough, at first. The girl were flattered, o’ course. Hard not to be, eh? I don’t know exactly what happened to shift her reasonin’, but she had been strollin’ with a few other o’ the highflyers. They are a catty bunch. Perhaps one of them said somethin’ against him or his offerin’, but the girl he’d chased so hard threw his great, glorious special back at his feet. She gave him the sharp side of her tongue, too. Told him to leave her alone, that she had a bigger fish on the hook.”
“She humiliated him,” Niall said.
“In front o’ the whole of Polite Society, all on the stroll during the fashionable hour.”
“So, why punish Glynn?” asked Kara.
“He didn’t. Not at first. He retreated for a bit, hid away somewhere, licking his wounds—but he was still bound up on setting himself up a mistress. I suppose he thought it would redeem his reputation. He knew that there were flower girls who grow older and switch to peddling themselves, instead of their blossoms. So he decided to look there.”
Niall’s brows rose. “He looked to you?”
“He might o’ done, but I ducked every time I saw him comin’,” Jeanette said. “No, he turned to Glynn. I think he thought, because of her scar, she would be sure to accept him. Grateful, even, for the chance. But she didn’t. She turned him down flat. Sent him on his way just as roundly as his lightskirt had done.”
“Oh, no,” Kara breathed.
“Exactly.” Jeanette took a long drink of her ale. “It happened in the evenin’. I was comin’ into the Garden and I passed him as he stalked out. I shied away from him, he looked so… furious. White faced and tremblin’, and filled with hate and despair.”
Kara exchanged pained glances with Niall.
“I could have warned him off, had I known what he meant to do,” Jeanette said sadly. “Glynn would never enter into an arrangement likethat. She didn’t trust no man. Two things about her that anyone who knew her understood—she hated the river and she had no use for men, in general.”
“So he took out all his anger and disappointment and frustration on her?” mused Niall.
“He couldn’t vent his spleen on his lightskirt. She really did get herself a well-heeled, high-placed protector. His kind never admit their own fault in their own messes. So he threw it all at Glynn.”
“But I don’t understand. Why did Glynn believe so firmly that it was Yardley tormenting her?”
“Because this gent is sneaky, as I said before. He didn’t confront her out loud and in the open like Yardley did. The cobbler showed her his anger, right to her face. Buthim? He kept to the shadows and the crowds. And Glynn—well, she didn’t come from London, did she? I don’t think she ever understood the push and pull, the maneuverin’ a girl has to do to make her way here. Sometimes I think she believed everyone is as open about what they feel and think as she was. She was so forthcomin’ about her own feelings—like not sellin’ her specials to the girls she didn’t much care for.” Jeanette shook her head. “Glynn didn’t understand that sort of skulkin’.”
The more Kara learned of Glynn Foulger, the more she thought she would have liked her, had they met. “Did you not try to warn her?”
“O’ course I did! What do ye take me for? I told her he was lurkin’ and starin’. I told her I’d heard from Charlotte and Sue, girls who sell out by St. Paul’s and the area ’round there. Those two saw him comin’ and goin’ from the direction of Paternoster Row, where all the printers keep shop. He was out there arrangin’ fer those broadsheets, I’d wager. I warned her that he meant to do her harm. But she thought of him as young and inexperienced. Inept, even. I told her I’d seen him watchin’ her—and do you know what she said? She hoped he would run into Yardley and spook him, then perhaps she would have somepeace.”
Kara sighed. Could the woman’s death have been avoided if she had listened to her friend?
