Rob grinned. ‘I feel better already.’
They were still smiling as they crossed St James’s Street and climbed into the waiting gig. It was a top-of-the-range model, sleek, glossy black exterior, cream leather seats; a small white circle enclosing a red diamond shape adorned the front plate. Ned did not look back. Just took up the reins and drove off.
‘I think you hooked Misbourne.’
‘Let’s hope.’ The wheels sped along. Ned kept his eyes forward concentrating on the traffic. ‘I can’t make Dawson’s ball tonight.’
‘Not like you to miss a big event like Dawson’s.’
‘I have a commitment elsewhere.’ His face was closed and impassive, his usual expression when it came to dealing with friend and foe alike.
‘All the bigwigs are going to be there.’
‘I know.’
There was a small silence before Rob said, ‘Must be important, this other commitment.’
‘It is.’ Ned slid a glance at his friend, let his eyes linger for a moment, in that quiet confrontational way, and smiled.
Rob smiled, too. ‘All right, mate. I get the hint. I’ll stop fishing about your mystery woman.’
* * *
A few hours later, Ned walked alone into the Red Lion Chop-House. Some heads nodded at him, recognising him from the weeks before. Ned felt the usual comfort and ease that sat about the place, felt it as soon as he crossed the parish boundary that divided the East End from the rest of London. The taproom was busy as usual, the tables and rowdy noise of the place spilling out into the alleyway in front. His eyes scanned for Emma, but did not find her.
The first suspicion stroked when he saw that it was Paulette who came to serve him.
‘Your usual, is it?’
He gave a nod. ‘Emma not in tonight?’
‘Thought you might ask that.’ She smiled a saucy knowing look. ‘Emma’s gone. Landed herself some fancy job as a lady’s maid again. An offer she couldn’t refuse apparently, lucky mare. She left a message for you, though. Said to tell you goodbye. That she was real sorry she couldn’t tell you in person. Said she hoped you would understand.’
He dropped a coin into her hand for passing on the message. ‘Forget the lamb and the porter.’ He didn’t wait.
There were other chop-houses in Whitechapel. Other serving wenches. But Ned didn’t go to them. Instead he made his way up along Rosemary Lane to Tower Hill and the ancient stone bench beneath the beech trees. And he sat there alone and watched the day shift finish in the docks and the night shift begin. Watched the ships that docked and the ships that sailed. Watched until the sun set in a glorious blaze of fire over the Thames and the daylight faded to dusk and dusk to darkness.
Had she waited just one week...a single week and how different both their lives would have been.
Loss and betrayal nagged in his gut. He breathed in the scent of night with the underlying essence of vinegar that always lingered in this place. And he thought of the scent of soap and grilled chops and warm woman.
He thought of the teasing intelligence in her eyes and the warmth of her smile.
He thought of the passion between them and the sense that she made his world seem a better place.
He thought of what might have been, then he let the thoughts go and he crushed the feelings. Emma de Lisle had not waited. And that was that.
Ned was not a man who allowed himself to be influenced by emotion. He had his destiny. And maybe it was better this way. No distractions, after all.
He heard the cry of the watch in the distance. Only then did he make his way back across town to the mansion house in Cavendish Square.
* * *
Along the Westminster Bridge Road in Lambeth, the evening was fine and warm as Emma and the Dowager Lady Lamerton approached Astley’s Amphitheatre.
‘I say, this is really rather exciting,’ her new employer said as they abandoned the carriage to the traffic jam in which it was caught and walked the remaining small distance to the amphitheatre’s entrance.
‘It is, indeed.’ It was only Emma’s third day returned to life in London’s high society, albeit at a somewhat lesser level to that she had known, and already she was aware that there was a part of her that had settled so smoothly it was as if she had never been away—and a part that remained in Whitechapel, with her father...and another man.
She wondered again how her father was managing in his new lodging. Wondered if he was eating. Wondered if Ned Stratham had returned to the Red Lion yet and if Paulette had passed on her message.
‘In all of my seventy-five years I have yet to see a woman balancing on one leg upon the back of a speeding horse,’ said Lady Lamerton. Her walking stick tapped regular and imperious against the pavement as they walked.
Emma hid her private thoughts away and concentrated on the dowager and the evening ahead. ‘I hope you shall not find it too shocking.’ She tucked her arm into the dowager’s, helping to stabilise her through the crowd.
‘But, my dear, I shall be thoroughly disappointed if it is not. This latest show is quite the talk of the ton. Everyone who is anyone is here to see it.’
Emma laughed. ‘Well, in that case we had best go in and find our box.’
As being seen there was more important than actually watching the show, Lady Lamerton and Emma had a splendid vantage point. There was the buzz of voices and bustle of bodies as the rest of the audience found their seats.
‘Do look at that dreadful monstrosity that Eliza Frenshaw has upon her head. That, my dear, is what lack of breeding does for you, but then her father was little better than a grocer, you know,’ Lady Lamerton said with the same tone as if she had just revealed that Mrs Frenshaw’s father had been a mass murderer. Then had the audacity to nod an acknowledgement to the woman in question and bestow a beatific smile.
Emma drew Lady Lamerton a look.
‘What?’ Lady Lamerton’s expression was the hurt innocence that Emma had already learned was her forte. ‘Am I not telling the truth?’
‘You are never anything other than truthful,’ said Emma with a knowing expression.
The two women chuckled together before Lady Lamerton returned to scrutinising the rest of the audience with equally acerbic observations.
Emma let her eyes sweep over the scene in the auditorium before them.
There was not an empty seat to be seen. The place was packed with the best of the ton that had either remained in London for the summer or returned early. Ladies in silk evening dresses, a myriad of colours from the rich opulence of the matrons to the blinding white of the debutantes, and every shade in between. All wearing long white-silk evening gloves that fastened at the top of their arms. Their hair dressed in glossy ringlets and fixed with sprays of fresh flowers or enormous feathers that obscured the view of those in the seats behind. Some matrons had forgone the feathers in favour of dark-coloured silk turbans. There was the sparkle of jewels that gleamed around their pale necks or on their gloved fingers that held opera glasses. Like birds of paradise preening and parading. Only two years ago and Emma had been a part of it as much as the rest of them. Now, beautiful as it was, she could not help but be uncomfortably aware that the cost of a single one of those dresses was more than families in Whitechapel had to survive on for a year.
There were many nodded acknowledgments to Lady Lamerton and even some to Emma. Emma nodded in return, glad that, for the most part, people accepted her return without much censure.
Her eyes moved from the stalls, up to the encircling boxes and their inhabitants.