if he comes to the shop? Salterton, the dark man? What if he asks me what happened at Lord Narborough’s house? Do I tell him? Or lie? Do I try and find out about him and then tell Lord Stanegate? But he is a Carlow.
There Nell’s train of thought stuttered to a halt and she sat staring rather blankly into her cooling cup of black coffee. A night’s restless, dream-disturbed sleep had done nothing to calm her.
She was afraid of Salterton, she realized, although she did not know why. Something about him made her think of knives. But she was afraid of Stanegate too. He had power and influence, and however unwittingly, she had been the cause of his father’s collapse. Only he did not believe it was unwitting.
If only that were all. Lord Narborough was his father and he had been her own father’s friend, she knew that much. Something had happened when she was very young and her father was taken away. And then Papa had died and Mama had never smiled again—and she spoke the name of Carlow like a curse.
Over the years, growing up, Nell had pieced together a little. Papa must have done something wrong, she had concluded. But she was a girl and a child and no one worried girl children with hard truths, even when not knowing seemed worse than whatever it was that had plunged them into disgrace and penury after her father had gone. Perhaps Nathan and Rosalind had known more; they were older than she. But it had never been spoken of, and the far-off days when there was a big house and her memories of rooms full of treasures and a park might only be a dream, not truth at all.
Something bad, very bad, had happened to Papa. So bad that it stained them all with its tarnish, so bad that he...died.
Nell should hate the Carlows, she knew that, because her mother had told her that George Carlow was responsible for everything that had befallen them. Traitor, she had called him. False friend, treacherous.
But there was something about his son, the viscount, that seemed to fill Nell’s consciousness, to stop her thinking straight. And it was partly, she was honest enough to admit, a very basic attraction, something in his masculinity that called to the feminine in her. As though he was the man who haunted her dreams, her ideal, the man who would be her friend as well as her lover.
Fantasy. Marcus Carlow would haunt her in truth if he found her, there was no doubt about that. Nell shivered and put the cup down on the hearth. Her toast was getting cold. She nibbled it, telling herself that to huddle by the meagre fire, instead of sitting up at the table like a lady, was justified in this cold weather and had nothing to do with a primitive need for safety.
Yes, fantasy. Men were not like that god in her dreams, none of them, and viscounts would certainly have one use, and one use only, for unprotected milliners’ assistants.
She got up and put the dirty earthenware in a pail to wash up with her supper plates, then shook out her pelisse and tied her bonnet strings. Reticule, gloves, handkerchief. Her thoughts skittered away, back to the aching worry. Was Lord Narborough better? What had she done? He had seemed kind when that flustered young footman had shown her in. Tired, but kind. But that had to be a mask. What secrets was he hiding?
If her father was still alive he would be the same age as the earl. She wished she could remember him, but all that came back from that distant time was the sound of weeping and her mother’s curses.
Shivering with more than the cold, Nell locked her door and went down the stairs, narrow at first, then widening as she reached the lower floors. This had been a fine house once; traces of dignity still hung about the width of the doorframes, the bewebbed cornices, the curl of the banister under her hand as she reached the ground floor.
‘Mornin’, Miss Latham.’ Old Mrs Drewe peered out of her half-open door, seeing all, noting all, even at half past five in the morning. Did she never sleep?
‘Good morning, Mrs Drewe. More fog, I’m afraid.’ As she closed the front door behind her, she heard the wail of the Hutchins’baby on the second floor. Teething, Nell thought absently as she turned onto Bishopsgate Street and began to walk briskly southwards.
She was lucky to have her room, she knew that, even if it was on the third floor of a Spitalfields lodging with nosy neighbours and crying babies. It was safe and secure, and the other tenants, poor as they were, were decent people, hard-working and frugal.
And she was lucky to have respectable work with an employer who did not regard running a millinery business as a subsidiary to keeping a brothel, as so many did. It seemed very important this morning, hurrying through the damp fog in the dawn gloom, to have some blessings to count. Even the fact that Mama was at peace with Papa now felt like a blessing and no longer a source of grief. Whatever this mystery was, at least Mama was spared the worry of it.
Past the Royal Exchange, looming out of the fog, gas flares hardly penetrating the murk, on down the street with the towering defensive walls of the Bank of England on her right and into Poultry. The crowds of early-morning workers were thicker now and she had to wait a moment at the stall selling pastries to buy one for her noon meal.
And then she had reached the back door of Madame Elizabeth—millinery à la mode, plumes a speciality. The clock struck the hour as she hung her pelisse and bonnet on her peg and put her pastry on the shelf in the kitchen.
It was warm and bright in the workroom as she tied on her apron and went to her place at the long table alongside the other girls. It was not out of any concern for her workers that Madame provided a fire and good lamps—warm fingers worked better and intricate designs needed good light—but they were a decided benefit of the job.
Nell smiled and nodded to the others as she lifted her hat block towards her, took off the white cloth and studied the bonnet she was working on. It was for Mrs Forrester, the wife of a wealthy alderman, a good customer and a fussy one. The grosgrain ribbon pleated round inside the brim was perfect, but the points where the ribbons joined the hat required some camouflage. Rosettes, perhaps. She began to pleat ribbon, her lips tight on an array of long pins.
‘Your admirer coming back today, Nell?’ Mary Wright’s pert question had her almost swallowing the pins.
Nell stuck them safely in her pincushion and shook her head. ‘He’s no admirer of mine, if you mean Mr Salterton. I’m just the one who delivers the hats.’
‘And does final fittings,’ one of the girls muttered. It was a sore point that Nell had the opportunity to go out and about and to visit the fine houses the other milliners could only dream about entering. Her more refined speech and ladylike manners had not been lost on Madame.
‘Well, he only wanted a parcel delivered,’ she said, skewering the finished rosette with a pin and reaching for her needle.
‘I’d deliver a parcel for him, any time,’ Polly Lang chipped in. ‘He’s a fine man, he is.’
‘How can you tell?’ Nell’s needle hung in mid-air as she stared at Polly’s round, freckled countenance. ‘I’ve never seen more than a glimpse of him.’
‘He’s got money; he can have a face like a bailiff, for all I care,’ Polly retorted with a comical grin. ‘You must have seen his clothes. Lovely coats he’s got. And his boots. And he’s dark. I like that in a man, mysterious. I reckon he’s an Italian count or summat, incogerneeto, or whatever you call it.’
‘Incognito,’ Nell murmured, setting the first stitch. ‘He’s certainly that.’
The shop bell tinkled in the distance and Nell stabbed herself. Feminine voices. She relaxed,
