Page 18 of Benefactor to the Baroness (The Seductive Sleuths #3)
R osemary stood at the back of the line of children, holding her valise in one hand and waving to Cookie and Winter with the other. Unlike the previous day, the sky today was slate gray, and a slight drizzle had dampened every surface and scrap of fabric. Halifax spread out before them, squat buildings dotting the land as far as she could see.
She chose her steps carefully as she followed Annie down the gangplank and onto the bustling dock. Cookie had piled their bags next to the main road, where Fontaine was speaking to a man in a black slicker coat, presumably arranging transportation. The clang of bells, shouting of merchants, and roar of waves hitting the shore made it impossible to hear anything Fontaine said, even though she was only a few feet away.
Annie curled her fingers into Rosemary’s hand.
“What is it?” Rosemary asked, leaning over so she could hear Annie’s response over the cacophony.
“It stinks,” Annie said.
She was not wrong. The rank smell of sewage combined with the fishy aroma of the nearby market tangled in her nostrils and made her nauseated. It was a painful reminder of London and the family she had left behind. She hoped the letters she’d sent Saffron and Angelica before she’d left would keep them from worrying too much. The moment they were settled, she would write again and assure her nieces that she was well.
“Ugh,” Annie said. She wrinkled her nose and lifted her sleeve to her face.
Rosemary removed a perfumed handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to Annie, who draped it over her face.
“—robbery!” Fontaine cried.
Rosemary straightened and pushed through the children to stand by the baroness, whose cheeks were bright red.
“What’s wrong?” Rosemary asked.
Fontaine gestured to the man sitting in the driver’s seat of the enormous coach in front of them. “Five pounds! That’s what he’s demanding to bring us to the Halifax office. It’s—It’s—” She crossed her arms and scowled. “That is robbery, sir.”
The man shrugged and flicked his reins. The two black horses attached to his conveyance plodded away, leaving them standing next to their bags with no way of getting to their destination.
“What now?” Rosemary asked. Several of the sailors milling around them drew closer, casting appraising glances at their belongings. The children closed ranks the way they had in the workhouse, with Annie and Peter standing between the younger ones and the adults.
Fontaine put her hands in her hair and groaned. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I—”
“The lady did right,” an unfamiliar voice said.
As Rosemary peered through the crowd for the speaker, there was a chirruping sound. A mud-splattered cab led by two mottled, gray horses appeared and took the place of the departed coach. The driver wore a black overcoat that was crisscrossed with seams, as if someone had ripped the garment into pieces and then sewn it back together. He slipped down from his post and removed his bowler hat, revealing a face as heavily lined as his coat.
“’Tis a scam they’ve got goin’.” He spoke with a peculiar accent where the vowels were softened, and the ends of words were left off. “Offerin’ a ride to new arrivals who don’t know the currency.” He nodded to Fontaine. “You did right. Proper fare’s a dollar per person.”
“A ‘dollar,’” Rosemary repeated. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Xavier place his hand on the flank of one of the cab’s horses.
“The local currency,” Fontaine said. She reached into her pocket, removed several silver coins, and handed them to the man. “Captain Charles traded some of his dollars for my pounds this morning. Will this suffice, ah…sir?”
“James,” he said. Then he flicked his hand, and the coins vanished. “Aye, it’ll do. Where will I be takin’ you lot?”
“1416 Arcadia Avenue,” Fontaine said.
James leaned back on his heels and clicked his tongue. “Quite sure o’ that? Nothin’ but a mess down Arcadia.”
The disapproval in his voice reminded Rosemary of the way Mr. Blake had spoken when he’d intruded on the meeting in the salon. Like a man who didn’t believe a woman could do anything of value on her own.
“Yes,” Fontaine said, crisply. “The Halifax Home for Destitute Children is our destination.”
James shrugged. “Arcadia it is. Now get the children inside, ’afore the locals take more interest. You, too, boy. Bertha ain’t got much patience.”
Xavier flinched away from the horse he had been patting.
Several men who had been staring at them shifted. Gooseflesh erupted on Rosemary’s arms.
“It’s time to go, everyone,” Fontaine said as she opened the door to the cab.
Thankfully, the children did not need to be told twice and scampered inside.
James loaded the bags atop the cab quickly, suggesting to Rosemary that she was not the only one who felt tension winding around her. Every time she turned her head, someone was gazing at them. Then they were off, and Rosemary felt as if every bone in her body vibrated as they maneuvered through the crowded market.
“Why can’t we stay with you?” Annie asked. “I don’t want to go to another workhouse.”
Fontaine winced. “It’s not a workhouse. It’s, ah, well, it’s not an orphanage, either. It’s…a good place.”
“How can you be sure?” Peter asked, clutching his brother’s hand. Both boys wore the same fearful expression as they had the day Rosemary and Fontaine had rescued them from the workhouse. That fear tugged at something in Rosemary’s heart and made her reach out and touch the boy’s shoulders.
“We won’t leave until we’re certain it’s a good place. A safe place.”
The boys glanced at each other and relaxed fractionally, but the atmosphere in the cab remained tense as they crossed a bridge and ventured away from the city center. Towering, nondescript buildings made way for sprawling homes with bright-green lawns, which then transformed into battered structures that jut out of the ground like jagged teeth, surrounded by wide swaths of empty land. The farther they drove, taking one branching street after another, the more she felt as if something were wrong. Why would a charitable organization that specialized in taking in children from across the ocean place their office so far from the docks?
She glanced across the cab, prepared to ask Fontaine if she was certain they were headed in the right direction, when the cab slowed to a stop, and she heard the shushing sound of James sliding off his post.
She peered out the window, searching for any sign that might indicate they had arrived at their destination, but the few buildings near them were half-complete, vacated, as if the construction crews assigned to them had vanished before finishing their tasks.
“Wait here, children,” Fontaine said. She maneuvered to the door and opened it to reveal the scorched ruins of a house.
Rosemary stepped over Peter and Quinn to exit the cab, closing the door behind her.
“What is this?” Fontaine asked James, her voice pitched high. “I told you to bring us to 1416 Arcadia Avenue.”
“Aye, you did,” he said. “It burnt down three weeks past. I thought you were knowing this and wanted to see the mess for yourself.”
Rosemary crossed the street to the ruins. Blackened, wooden beams stuck out of the ground like the ribcage of a giant. The few remaining windows held shattered panes of glass, and tattered curtains waved in the wind.
She approached a fallen square of wood, in much better condition than anything else around it. She picked it up and used a handkerchief to rub the dirty surface. The words written on the plank were nearly illegible, but she could make out the final two: Destitute Children .
It was the home they had come to visit.
She brought the sign to Fontaine, who gasped when she looked at it.
“It can’t be,” she said. Then her knees buckled, and Rosemary barely had time to drop the sign and wrap an arm around the dowager baroness before she crumpled to the ground.
“No, no, no,” Fontaine wailed.
The door to the carriage opened, and the children peered out, unusually silent, their eyes wide.
“How much money do you have with you?” Rosemary asked Fontaine. “I think we might be here for a while.”