I have a papa who has tried to be both mother and father to me.’
‘You have a soft heart, Miss Gilpin. I am persuaded you will make a splendid mama.’ He dug his elbow into Jonathan’s ribs when that worthy seemed unable to stifle his laughter and added, as they shuffled forwards, ‘Are you here alone?’
‘No, my father is here. I believe he has gone into the library with Lord Milgrove and another of the Coram trustees and will join me directly.’
‘In the meantime you have no one to serve you. Please allow me to help you. Would you like the chicken, or would you prefer the ham? Some green salad, perhaps? And there are love-apples, too. I wonder how they acquired that name?’
She looked hard at him, wondering whether he was teasing her, but his expression was inscrutable. ‘I have no idea.’
‘I believe they are supposed to have aphrodisiacal qualities,’ Jonathan put in. ‘But I have never put them to the test.’
They were bamming her. Charlotte felt the colour rising in her cheeks. ‘I should like the ham and the green salad,’ she said. ‘And one of those little tartlets, but I think I will give the tomatoes a miss.’
Alex noted the colour rise in her cheeks and realised suddenly that she was beautiful and for a single heartbeat he was tongue-tied, but gathered himself to put some of the food on a plate for her and helped himself to another plateful, which he carried to one of the little tables arranged about the room. Jonathan, plate piled high, joined them.
While they ate they engaged in a lively conversation about the music they had been hearing, the weather, the terrible state of the roads and the dreadful crime which was becoming more and more prevalent, especially in the capital. Pickpockets abounded, some as young as five or six who had been taught to creep under the skirts of a man’s coat and cut away his purse. They were so deft and so slippery, the victim did not know he had been robbed until he went to fetch out his purse to pay for something and by then the culprit was long gone.
‘We have to find the gang leaders,’ Jonathan said. ‘You may depend upon it they are being trained by unscrupulous men. It is not the children’s fault. If they are hungry and ragged, who can blame them when someone offers them a way out of their difficulties?’
‘Oh, I agree wholeheartedly,’ she said. ‘Something ought to be done, not to put the children in prison, but to help them keep out of it. That is why the Coram Foundling Hospital is so important— besides taking in unwanted babies, they house some of these urchins, but unfortunately there are more such children than they have room for.’
‘Arresting the men who train them in their pocket picking is equally important,’ Jonathan said.
‘Lord Leinster is one of the Piccadilly Gentlemen, as am I,’ Alex told her by way of explanation.
‘I have heard of them,’ she said, looking from one to the other. ‘I believe they investigate crimes and bring the criminals to justice. I remember reading about some coiners being apprehended through the offices of the Piccadilly Gentlemen. And wasn’t there a murderous gang of smugglers rounded up by them recently?’
‘We do what we can,’ Alex said. ‘Unfortunately we are only a small force and cannot be everywhere.’
‘Do the Bow Street Runners not work to the same end?’
‘They can arrest wrongdoers when they are brought to their notice, but they do not go out investigating crime,’ he explained. ‘Besides, they do not operate outside London unless they are sent for.’
‘There should be runners in every town and on the roads,’ Jonathan put in. ‘A national force. It is hardly possible to travel abroad in one’s own coach without being held up by highwaymen.’
‘I have heard my father say it is the common practice to have two purses,’ she said. ‘One with little in it to hand over when stopped and the other containing one’s real valuables to be well hid.’
‘I have heard that, too,’ Alex said. ‘But so, I think, have the robbers and if they suspect anything has been withheld they rip everything out of the coach to find it and often manhandle the poor travellers when they try to resist. It is sometimes more expedient to hand over one’s belongings and hope the criminals will be caught with the booty still on them.’
‘Which is a rare event,’ Jonathan put in morosely. ‘And when they are apprehended and put into prison, they somehow manage to escape.’
‘You will surmise from that,’ Alex told her, smiling, ‘that my friend is even now engaged on tracking down two escaped prisoners. They held up a coach and fatally wounded the coachman who dared to try to defend his passengers.’
‘They are dangerous men, then?’
‘Very dangerous.’
‘Then I hope you will take great care on your journey into Norfolk, Captain.’
He looked hard at her, but there was no irony in her tone and nothing in her expression to suggest she was roasting him and he accepted the advice on face value. ‘I shall do that, never fear.’
‘My father has devised a secret compartment in some of his coaches,’ she said. ‘It can only be found and opened if you know the way of it.’
‘Is there such a place in the carriage I have bought?’ Alex asked.
‘Yes, did I not show it to you? How remiss of me. Remind me to do so when you come to take delivery.’
Her father arrived at this point and seated himself at the table to join in the conversation which ranged from ideas for reducing crime to the latest news of John Wilkes’s controversial arrest on a charge of seditious libel and his subsequent release on the grounds that the arrest contravened his rights as a Member of Parliament.
‘Just because he is a Member of Parliament is not fit reason for him to escape punishment for wrongdoing,’ Charlotte said. ‘No one, high or low, should be above the law.’
‘Oh, I agree,’ Alex said, smiling at her vehemence. ‘But it is a free country and if a Member of Parliament cannot express an opinion without being arrested, then who can?’
‘There is a difference between opinion and sedition,’ Henry said.
‘Certainly there is.’
‘Papa, Lord Leinster and Captain Carstairs are members of the Piccadilly Gentleman’s Club,’ Charlotte told her father, changing the subject before the discussion could become heated. ‘Did you know that?’
‘I have heard the name somewhere, but there are so many clubs nowadays, it is difficult to remember them all. Remind me, my lord.’
He was jovial and wary at the same time and Alex was reminded of Jonathan’s assertion he was looking for a titled husband for his daughter. Jonathan was married already and he, as a mere sea captain, would never do. It was strange how that old rejection was still able to hurt, even when the last thing he had on his mind was courtship and marriage.
They were strolling homewards, he and Jonathan, picking their way along the muddy street when his friend mentioned Miss Gilpin again. ‘I was wrong and you were right, Alex. Miss Gilpin is not an antidote at all. On closer inspection, her skin has the bloom
