Page 22 of Lady Daring
He nodded toward the Spickeys, who distributed moral pamphlets along with shawls and stockings. Mrs. Spickey would have an apoplectic fit if she recognized the infamous Lord Daring.
Henrietta narrowed her eyes at him. As pleasurable as his company might be, she must make him go away. “And now you are a philosopher too? You are a man of many talents, Lord Darien.”
“Kind of you to notice, Miss Wardley-Hines. Are you unaccompanied?”
“My father sent three men with me, and the coachman is outside.”
Darien surveyed her companions. John looked respectful, but James eyeballed him from a cocksure stance, chest thrust out like a bantam.
“I see a running footman and a dwarf,” Darien drawled. “Do you also lead a young African boy about on a golden chain?”
“James is not an accessory,” Henrietta snapped. “He is my groom.” She reached for her packages. “You’d best leave, Lord Darien. I cannot look after them, attend to my mission, and keep an eye on you as well.” Good heavens, what if someone offended his lordly sensibilities or, worse, committed indignities upon his person? She could not be responsible for that.
Darien studied her from head to toe, marking her sensible German riding habit, at least five years out of fashion, and sturdy boots. “Keep an eye on me? And here I labored under the assumption that I had come to look after you.”
“On yer guard, Miss Hetty,” James advised, glaring at Darien. “The gentry coves don’t let this fine swell in their drawing rooms no more, an ’e’s on the hunt for a ladybird. Well, long shanks, Miss Hetty is no looby, and she ain’t laced mutton neither! So ye best cut your sticks afore we cut ’em for ye.”
“James, mind your tongue,” Henrietta scolded as Darien’s face shuttered behind the mask of the bored aristocrat. The reminder of his reputation, that he seduced women for sport, stung him. But why, if he had earned it?
He held her gaze, and her pile of supplies. “I shall leave if you have concern for your reputation,” he said quietly.
Here was the man she recognized, her rescuer who had found her in tatters on the street before St. James and swept her into the chapel for repairs. The man who had chatted with her over Etruscan antiquities and returned her ostrich feather, which, though she would never tell him this, Henrietta had kept under her pillow while she slept.
“John,” Henrietta addressed the remaining footman, “if this gentleman proves impertinent, I hope you will…box his ears.”
“Miss!” said John, his eyes wide.
Darien laughed, and the mask dissolved. “Really, Miss Wardley-Hines? You instruct a man in your employ to lay hands upon the son of a peer?”
“Oh, very well,” Henrietta said. “If you take liberties, I will box your ears myself. Now, to the business at hand.” She caught the eye of the ward nurse, a tired-looking woman in a neat apron. “I wish to visit the infirmary ward.”
The nurse beckoned. “This way.”
Mrs. Spickey sidled close. “Miss Wardley-Hines, surely you did not arrange for Lord Daring to meet you here?”
“Indeed not, Mrs. Spickey. I met Lord Darien last evening at Lady Ellesmere’s conversazioneand mentioned we were visiting the workhouse today. It seems he felt moved to contribute to our efforts.”
Mrs. Spickey’s pinched expression reminded her of Aunt Althea’s. Mrs. Spickey would never be invited into the drawing rooms of the upper class. “Lord Daring at a conversationalevening,” she said. “And now visiting the parish workhouse? I did not think either of those activities in his usual style.”
“Perhaps there is more to Lord Darien than we have been given to believe,” Henrietta said.
“I will not allow Constance to talk to him,” Mrs. Spickey decided. “And you must not encourage him, Henrietta.”
“So I have been informed by my brother and Sir Pelton,” Henrietta said firmly. “Several times.”
Constance trailed behind her mother, her hair primly tucked into a straw bonnet, lace mittens covering her hands. She was a darling, biddable girl, and she could not be trusted out of her mother’s sight because she had never been taught to use her own mind. Henrietta thanked her lucky stars and Aunt Davinia for Miss Gregoire’s Academy for Girls. She only hoped she would not have to guard Constance from Lord Darien, in addition to everything else.
The infirmary ward for women and children was occupied past capacity, with rows of cots bracketing the walls. Light and air being considered unhealthful and possibly carrying disease, the few high windows were shuttered, and tallow candles sputtered smoke. The air stank with illness, medicinal herbs, and the chamber pot in the corner behind a sheet, its contents emptied outside the one open window as needed. Henrietta looked around and wondered where to begin.
“Ooh, ’ere’s a rum mort,” squealed a woman in a ragged gray cloak, long unwashed. “Draw your bung for ye, shall I? Fancy there’s some gelt in that nugging dress!” She reached for Henrietta’s skirts.
Henrietta clamped a hand over her pocket. The woman’s breath held the stink of rotten teeth, and her face was scarred from smallpox.
“I haven’t any coin,” she said, it having been emphasized by the Auxiliary matrons that any money they distributed wouldat once be extorted or traded for gin. “Would you like one of these?”
The woman seized a knitted shawl and turned to Darien. “Yer Jemmy fellow, then?” She tugged down her bodice to expose a pair of heavy round breasts. It was only her face and hands that were worn, Henrietta realized; she was, in all likelihood, young.
“’Ere, ye great gorger,” she cooed at Darien. “Tip me a hog and I’ll tickle your rod! Blow your pipe for a kick!”
