Mark pinched his brows and bowed his head, pleading, “Oh, Eliza… Eliza… Come back to me, my love.”
His coachman steered the horses toward Cambridge Circus, and then pulled to a halt at the kerb. The busy junction teemed with foot traffic and conveyances. Pedlars hawked their wares. Clerks and shopgirls hastened about their business. Booksellers and cafe waiters served eager customers, paying no mind to the man disembarking from large, black landau.
He’d never ventured this far from home before and eyed the narrow streets that were his destination with a frisson of real fear.
“Which way to Little White Lion Street,” he asked his driver.
The man shifted on the box to gesture with his whip. “Take Little Earl Street to the Dials, and then right onto Little White Lion.” He glanced at his employer, who still wore the sober black clothes of a banker. He stood out like a sore thumb in his tall hat and frock coat. “But are you quite sure, sir?”
“No question about it, I’m afraid.” He was going after Eliza even if it killed him.
Keeping his pace brisk, Mark descended into the bowels of London, a rank-smelling, foul, putrid place. The filth made his eyes water. Faded, pasted advertisements, peeling placards, and vulgarities were scrawled across the grimy, brick-faced buildings. Gaunt faces peered at him from darkened doorways. Starving children begged for change. Prostitutes propositioned him.
The best-dressed fellows wore drab, tattered clothes, and many women, it seemed, made do with little better than rags. He remembered meeting Eliza in her shabby skirt and patchwork jacket. She’d been scuffed bloody and stinking badly, and he had listened in horror as she explained that cleanliness and good health marked one as a target. If a girl could afford a bath and decent clothing, then she could afford to part with them. If she dared to develop a pleasing figure despite her malnutrition…
Mark did not wish to think about that, just now. He couldn’t bear knowing the woman he loved had endured such hardship, such violence. Whatever the Duchess of Bodlington threatened to do to her, it was not worth this degradation.
Passing gin shops, pie carts, and public houses, he searched for any sign of Eliza. He found only thieves and cadgers, and the suspiciously narrowed gaze of a landlord marked his progress into the slums. Young boys raced across iron footbridges high overhead, crisscrossing the rooftops of printmakers, warehouses, and breweries.
He felt as though he was being followed—hunted, even—yet when he turned, no one was there. Sweat prickled his forehead. A chill shivered up his spine. He stepped in something reeking and wet. Mark wandered the warrens and alleyways, growing sooty, dirty, and disheartened. How could anyone survive this wretched place?
A gentleman had no business in Seven Dials.
His presence was not welcome here.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
She’d taken a bed in a dingy dosshouse over Comyn Ching Court, just off Little White Lion Street. Eliza was scared, hungry, and sad. She dared not show her face on the paving stones that she’d once called home, for her landlord, the butcher, and even those boys who’d beaten her lurked nearby.
A tart in the cot next to hers studied Eliza’s trimmed nails and combed hair, and doubtless coveted the simple skirt-and-jacket that she had worn from Green Street—only because her old things had been burned.
She had not taken anything else from Sir Mark van Bergen. Eliza had left with her wallet of pound notes stuffed down the top of her corset. It wasn’t an ideal hiding place for her fortune, but Eliza hadn’t had time to bind her breasts and hips. She had run away before the duchess changed her mind.
Eliza didn’t want to ruin Mark’s life. She must find a way to leave London forever so that neither of them would ever cross paths with the Bodlingtons. The man she loved had worked too hard to lose his livelihood onheraccount.
“Ain’t seen ye since ye was snatched by th’ coppers,” said the tart. “Serves ye right, bringing food where folk ain’t got none.”
“Intended to share it, I did,” said Eliza, shedding the last layers of her articulate speech. For weeks, she did her best to fit into Mark’s world, and to keep Mother’s lessons in her heart, but what was the use? She was back in Seven Dials where she belonged.
The tart coughed. “Share it?Ha!”
Determined to ignore her, Eliza curled upon the lousy, musty-smelling mattress. There were no bed linens here, no soft feather tick. Only a lumpy pallet on a dirty floor and one shared chamberpot for each room. Womenfolk had to take turns in the corner or risk running the gauntlet to the common privy out back. Modesty, privacy, and all human dignity were abandoned, for they knew that it was too dangerous to be so vulnerable there.
Eliza kept her back to the wall. She dared not close her eyes. Somebody might come to steal her clothes, boots, and lingerie that could be easily sold or traded on the street. They would molest her and discover the wallet stashed between her breasts. Then her situation would be dire, indeed.
Suddenly, a commotion arose in the dosshouse. A girl who worked a tea urn at the Crown pub dashed through the narrow, slanting doorway, rousing the women. “There’s a toff in the Dials!”
“What?”The tart blinked in the excitement, as most of them had never seen an honest-to-goodness gentleman. For ensnaring him, they’d get a meal and pint for their troubles.
“He’s mine!” cried the girl. “I seen ‘im first!”
Tupping a rich man might change their lives…
“How’s he look?” asked Eliza, fearing the worst. Surely, Mark would not be so stupid!
The girl from the Crown joined the others at the window. They peeled back a layer of greasy newsprint which had been pasted over the broken glass. “Dark as the devil, he is. Clad in all black like an undertaker.” She sighed. “Tall, and lean, and fit. I can see his gold fob watch from here!”
Eliza rose to see for herself.
