There was a sense of comfort as she had worked with the students. More than that, there was a sense of competence that made her wonder how often she had done the very same thing in the past. She knew about the orphanage in San Francisco, knew about her work in raising money for St. Andrew’s, because Nathan had told her. But this was something different.
Among the sea of faces in that classroom she had a fleeting impression of other young faces, as though a photograph had been waved in front of her and then quickly withdrawn. The picture in her mind was of two boys, alike in enough ways that they could have been brothers. They were grinning at her, one of them gap-toothed, both of them with dark chocolate eyes. She had thought it was their laughter she heard, but it wasn’t. Caught daydreaming, the schoolchildren were giggling because she had stopped reciting. She went on with the lesson as though nothing had shaken her.
Lydia tried to recapture the images of the young boys, or put a name to either one of their impish faces. She could do neither.
So why had she known beyond any doubt that her birthday was October twenty-first? It was a startling revelation when she had chanced upon it. It might not have happened at all without the opal and a silly superstition. Yet when she airily demanded that Nathan pick a date, she knew immediately that he had chosen the wrong one. He had not understood when she corrected him that she had briefly stumbled upon the past, that she had recalled a birthday fourteen years earlier when she had been given a porcelain bisque doll in a starched gingham dress. She even remembered the doll’s name: Emmaline.
Lydia became forcefully aware of her surroundings when a driver bearing down on her in his carriage called out to her. She jumped back on the sidewalk, her face hot with embarrassment, only due in part to what the coachman had called her. Behind her a man chuckled, and when Lydia turned to give him a cold stare, she saw his eyes running over her with an interest that was appreciative in a base, sexual way. Turning her head quickly to avoid the impending proposition, Lydia glanced to either side of her and hurriedly crossed the street.
She did not recognize anything around her. The community was poor. The houses were clustered, the wooden construction sagging. The narrow roads and footpaths were badly in need of repair and generally filthy. Sailors lolled in the doorways of pubs with names like the Cat & Fiddle, Brown Bear, and The World Turned Upside Down. They watched her go by, leering, calling out to her, but their interest was not attached for long as more amenable young ladies strolled in front of them.
There was a large population of Chinese in the area. Except to try to sell her something in their open-air markets, they paid her little attention. She attempted to speak to two vendors on different occasions, but in each instance their knowledge of English was so poor that she could not make herself understood.
Lydia sensed that she was taking a circular route and that her attempt to regain her bearings had come to nothing. Her suspicions were confirmed when she confronted the wooden sign above a pub named the Roo’s Rest for the second time.
Adjusting the wide ribbon on her bonnet and clutching her reticule a bit more tightly, Lydia looked along the street for someone who might be trusted to give her the directions she required back to Petty’s Hotel.
Nathan satup in bed and threw his legs over the side. He looked around for Lydia, and not seeing her, assumed she had gone to the dining room for breakfast. He had already washed his face, shaved, and combed his hair when he found her neatly folded note on the mantel.
“Bloody hell!” he swore under his breath. Dressing quickly, Nathan went to the front desk to see Henry Tucker. “Did you see my wife this morning?” he demanded without preamble.
Henry blinked widely. Here was the anger Nathan kept tightly leashed given full rein. There had always been a suspicion among the men at Ballaburn that Nathan Hunter was madder than Mad Irish himself. Brigham Moore used to make a joke of it and the graziers would laugh. Seeing it now, Henry could not raise a smile; laughing was out of the question.
“She walked out a little over an hour ago,” he said uneasily. “A stroll, I think. Or shopping. She didn’t say what her intentions were.”
“Did she ask for a direction, mention anything she wanted to see?”
“No.” Henry fidgeted with the register book.
“Did you see which way she went when she left?”
Henry shook his head.
Nathan’s hand clenched in a tight fist. His mouth took the shape of grimness and his angry eyes narrowed. Somewhat to Henry’s amazement, he pushed away from the desk without banging on the top of it.
“Where will you look for her?” asked Henry as Nathan stalked toward the door.
“Wherever there’s trouble.”
The doorto the Roo’s Rest banged open and the barrel-chested owner, his broad features ruddy with anger, hefted a small boy into the street. The boy fell on his hands and knees in front of Lydia, yelping as he scraped his palms and shins on the ground.
The pub owner may have been satisfied with throwing out the urchin, but the boy hadn’t the good sense to know what to do with his freedom. He scrambled to his feet and raised his arm in an obscene salute and yelled, “Bloody barstud!”
Accent aside, Lydia realized the boy had called the owner a bastard. She was knocked aside as the owner came roaring out of the pub, looking angry enough to kill, and made to grab the boy. Lydia managed to keep her balance, and just as the owner’s thick fingers caught his prey by the scruff of the neck, Lydia pelted him with her beaded reticule.
She may as well have swatted him with a pillow for all the good it did. He was startled by the intrusion, but he brushed her off as if she were nothing more threatening or annoying than a blowfly. He shook the boy like a ragdoll so the child’s head flopped one way, then the other, and though the boy kicked and flailed, his strength was pitifully slight compared to his assailant.
Lydia increased her efforts, abandoning the reticule altogether and using her fists. She pounded the man’s back, calling all the while for him to let the child go. The altercation had gathered a small crowd, but no one stepped forward to help her. In fact, Lydia thought she heard wagers being placed on the outcome and the odds makers were not giving her even chances. Thoroughly appalled, Lydia increased her efforts, using the sharp point of her leather shoe to inflict damage.
The Roo’s Rest owner took her seriously now. He released his hold on the boy and took Lydia by the upper arm. She fully expected the boy to run the moment he was loose. Instead, he turned on the owner, scratching the ground and jerking his head like a banty rooster, his fists clenched and raised.
“Leave her be, Bill!” He charged forward with two quick punches to Bill’s middle, retreated, and came back again, butting Bill with his head this time. “D’ye hear me, Bill? Leave her be!”
Lydia thought it was doubtful that Bill responded to anything the boy said. Her heel that was grinding into the toe of his foot probably had more of an effect. He pushed her away hard. She stumbled, twisted her ankle in one of the ruts in the street, and fell down. Pain was instantaneous and sickening. She blinked back tears and sucked in her lower lip.
Boy and man were both distracted for a moment, but the man recovered more quickly, cuffing the boy on the side of his head and knocking him flat to the ground. Bill considered the moaning child dispassionately, shook out his hand, and rolled down both sleeves of his shirt. Money exchanged hands as people in the crowd collected on their wagers. There was a shift in the circle as Bill pushed his way through and went back into the pub. The door swung loudly shut behind him and the crowd slowly moved away, some of the winners following Bill’s path to the Roo’s Rest.
The crowd had cleared before someone offered her a hand. It belonged to the urchin. He was little more than half her height with dusty blond hair and a thin solemn face. Poverty clung to him. It was in more than the ragged, mismatched clothes that he wore, or the dirt that was like a bruise on his fair skin. There was a certain vacant look in his eyes, an absence of hope, a wariness that came from expecting the worst and receiving it. It was a terrible thing to look upon in one so young. Even when he smiled, as he was doing now, it had no substance.
