“Let me hold her for a bit,” Sophy said. “You’re tired.”
“No, not yet.” Lucie still trembled, and she hadn’t said a word since Clevedon carried her out.
“Come.” Sophy put her hands out. “Erroll, will you come to Aunt Sophy, and let Mama rest for a moment?”
Lucie lifted her head.
“Come,” said Sophy.
Lucie reached for her, and Sophy unhitched her from Marcelline’s hip and planted the child on her own. “There,” she said. “It’s all right, love. we’re all safe.” She started to walk with her, murmuring comfort.
Leonie said, “We’ve insurance. We’ve money in the bank. But above all, we’re all alive.”
Completely true, Marcelline thought. They were all alive. Lucie was alive, unhurt. Everything else…
Oh, but it would be hard. They hadn’t enough insurance. They hadn’t enough money in the bank. They would have to start over. Again.
Leonie put her arms about her. Marcelline couldn’t cry, though she wanted to. It would be a relief to cry. But tears wouldn’t come. She could only rest her head on her sister’s shoulder. She had her daughter, she told herself. She had her sisters. Right now, that was all that mattered.
All the same, they couldn’t stay like this, in the street. She needed to think. She raised her head and moved away and straightened her posture. “We’d better go to an inn,” she said. “We can send to Belcher.” He was their solicitor.
“Yes, of course,” Leonie said. “He’ll advance us some money—enough to pay for lodgings, I daresay.”
This area of London, where the Inns of Court lay, was the lawyers’ domain. Their solicitor’s office was only a short distance away. The question was whether they’d find him at his office at this hour.
“We’ll find a ticket porter, and send to Belcher,” Mar-celline said. “Sophy, give Lucie back to me. We need you to talk sweet to one of the reporters, and get a pencil and paper to write a note to Belcher. I think I saw your friend Tom Foxe in the crowd.”
While Marcelline took Lucie back, she searched the area for the publisher of Foxe’s Morning Spectacle.
She became aware of a flurry of motion.
The Duke of Clevedon emerged from the shadows, Tom Foxe hot on his heels. “Your grace, I know our readers will be eager to hear of your heroic rescue—”
“Foxe!” Sophy cried. “Precisely the man I was looking for.”
“But his grace—”
“My dear, you know he won’t talk to the likes of you.” Sophy led him away.
Clevedon came to Marcelline. “You need to come with me,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“You can’t stay here,” he said.
“We’re sending for our solicitor,” she said.
“You can send for your solicitor tomorrow,” he said. “He’ll have gone home by now. It must be close to midnight. You all need something to eat and a place to sleep.”
“You need to go away,” she said, lowering her voice. “Sophy will keep Foxe off for as long as she can, but you’ve given them a prime story, and he won’t be kept off forever.”
“In that case, we’ve not a moment to lose,” Clevedon said. He held out his soot-blackened hands to Lucie. “Erroll, would you like to see my house?”
Lucie lifted her head from Marcelline’s shoulder. “Is the c-carriage th-there?” Her voice shook, but she was talking.
Relief surged, so powerful that Marcelline swayed a little. She hadn’t realized how terrified she’d been, that Lucie would never speak again. For months after recovering from the cholera, she’d had terrible nightmares. It had left her a little more fearful and temperamental than before. Children were resilient; that didn’t mean terrible experiences couldn’t damage them.
“I’ve lots of carriages,” he said. “But we’ll need to take a hackney to get there.”
“Are there d-dolls?”
“Yes,” he said. “And a dollhouse.”
“Y-yes,” Lucie said. “I’ll c-come.”
She practically leapt out of her mother’s arms into his.
“Clevedon,” Marcelline said. But how could she lecture him, when he’d saved Lucie’s life? “Your grace, this isn’t wise.”
“It isn’t convenient, either,” he said. “But it must be done.”
And he walked away with her daughter.
This gateway cannot possibly be described correctly, as the ornaments are scattered in the utmost profusion, from the base to the attic, which supports a copy of Michael Angelo’s celebrated lion. Double ranges of grotesque pilasters inclose eight niches on the sides, and there are a bow window and an open arch above the gate.
Leigh Hunt (describing Northumberland House),
The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events, Vol. 1, 1848
Like its present owner, Clevedon House mocked convention. While other noble families had torn down their ancient houses overlooking the river and moved westward into Mayfair, while commercial enterprises took over what the nobles had abandoned, the Earls and Dukes of Clevedon stubbornly remained. One of the last of the palaces that had once lined the Strand, Clevedon House sprawled along the southwestern end of the street, overlooking Charing Cross. It was a great Jacobean pile, complete with turrets and a heavily ornamented gateway topped by a bay window that was topped by an arch upon which a lion stood roaring at the heavens. Marcelline had passed it countless times on her way to one of the many shops and warehouses in the neighborhood.
Within, she found it even larger and more imposing than the street front promised. A marbled vestibule led to an immense entrance hall. At the other end, apparently a mile away, a crimson carpet climbed a great, white marble staircase whose ornate brass balustrades seemed, at this distance, to be made of golden lace. Black, bronze-topped columns adorned the yellow marble walls.
As Marcelline and her family uneasily followed Clevedon past a gaping porter into the entrance hall, a straight-backed, dignified man not dressed in livery appeared, magically, it seemed, from nowhere.
“Ah, here is Halliday,” Clevedon said. “My house steward.”
Halliday, apparently inured to his grace’s erratic habits, did no more than widen his eyes momentarily as he took in the duke’s smoky visage, his torn, blackened clothes, and the equally dirty, bedraggled child in his arms.
“There’s been a fire,” Clevedon said shortly. “These ladies have been driven from their home.”
“Yes, your grace.”
Lucie still in his arms, Clevedon gestured the house steward aside. They spoke briefly, in low voices. Marcel-line couldn’t make out what they said. Too stunned and tired to question anything at this point, she left them to it.
Leonie had wandered away a few paces to study the candelabrum that stood on marble bases, one on each side of the bottom of the staircase. When she came back, she reported in a whisper, “They would have paid at least a thousand apiece for each