Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune (24 page)

Peggy straightened up and brushed her skirt down. ‘I don’t know why you’ve put him in this thing, Kit. It’s not exactly comfortable. The perambulator we brought him over in is better. Why would his father, this David, want it?’

I moved some papers on my desk. The less she knew the better. Ominous noises were swelling beyond the door. Through the soles of my boots I could feel the floorboards of the office shifting in time with the stamping outside.

‘I . . . I suppose it’s because this is a good strong way to carry him. It’s got leather straps.’

Peggy sighed. ‘If he doesn’t come soon I’m going to have to go. I promised Dan and I can’t let him down. I haven’t seen him for two days now. He sent word that he’d be at The Lamb with the others later and he’s expecting me.’

I smiled. ‘You go. You’ve done wonders enough, Peg.’

Tell truth, I was relieved at the thought she might not be there when Joey and David arrived. She bent to tuck the blanket round Robbie’s arm again. When she straightened up her eyes were glassy.

‘It’s probably for the best. I reckon I might disgrace myself in front of his father.’ She rubbed her cheeks roughly with the heels of her wrists. ‘Look at me now! I’m soft as butter these days, but I’m going to miss him something terrible. I said as much to Lok when we were packing his things together before we came over to The Gaudy this evening. He’s fond of Robbie too.’ She nodded at the door. ‘He doesn’t say much, does he, the new fixture? He didn’t open his mouth when we walked here.’

‘Amit’s a mute, Peggy. He doesn’t say much to anyone.’

‘He don’t need to. He’s the size of a bull. Have you seen his hands?’

I nodded. ‘He used to work for my grandmother. I trust him.’

She looked down at Robbie again. ‘If his father never turned up, me and Dan, we would have taken him in, Kit. Two can’t be much more bother than one, can it?’

I almost laughed aloud at the thought of Robbie not being a bother, but the look on Peggy’s face made me button it. She really cared for that boy and it was a wrench for her to see him go.

She bent low and brushed a kiss on Robbie’s brown head. ‘When we were packing his things up, we couldn’t find his rabbit. I looked everywhere, but it was gone. You were mending it, weren’t you? That’s why you come up to get it.’

My hand strayed back to my pocket. ‘I . . . I think it’s still in my workbox.’

Tell truth, I didn’t like to show Peggy what had happened to Robbie’s toy. It was hidden in a drawer of the desk right next to her.

The office door opened and we both swung round.

Aubrey Jesmond stepped into the room. He pulled the door shut to muffle the sounds coming from the hall and raised an eyebrow. ‘I think you’d better run the sailor routine again, Kit – the punters are tearing the place up out there. Lally Conway’s hiding in the yard.’

It was late now. Too late.

The last of the punters had rolled down the steps of The Gaudy and into a rising fog an hour back. I went to the office door again and looked out into the hall. The lamps were still burning. Amit Das unfolded his arms and looked at me hopefully.

I shook my head.

‘Not yet.’

I heard the clatter of someone cleaning high in the gallery. I walked a little way out between the tables and chairs and shielded my eyes against the gaslights.

‘Who’s up there tonight?’

A small voice came back. ‘It’s me, Edie Strong, Miss.’ I squinted. Less than six months back it had been me up there with the bucket and mop, swilling out the unmentionables. I moved deeper into the hall trying to catch sight of her wiry little body.

‘Tell you what, Edie – you can pack that up now. It’s late and your mother will be worried. Get off home.’

‘You sure, Miss? I’m happy to do a bit more. It’s a right old state up here.’

‘And it’ll be a state tomorrow morning too, but you’ll be fresh on the job. Go home, Edie. Use the side, the front will be locked.’

I turned and walked back to the office, the hem of my skirt catching in the sticky pools of spilled alcohol staining the boards. I paused when I was level with Amit, dug in my pocket and handed him my keys. ‘When Edie’s gone lock the side. If you hear a knock out front, don’t open up. Come and get me.’

He took the keys in his paw, nodded and leaned back against The Gaudy’s red varnished wall.

I closed the door gently behind me. Robbie was making little snuffling sounds in his sleep now. His hand clenched and unclenched on top of the blanket. He missed his poppet.

I pulled the package from my pocket and let it fall open on the desk in front of me. The big emerald, green as a new-hatched pea, glinted in the soft light of the lamp.

I was amazed when Joey slit that cloth rabbit open. I watched, puzzled, as he forced his fingers inside, pulled a small felt bundle from its stomach and rolled the contents into his palm.

Three emeralds had been sewn into the poppet. Joey had taken two and left the third with me as a precaution. After he left The Palace he was planning on going straight to a Dutch stone dealer in the rookery by Goodman’s Fields. He reckoned he’d get a fair price on the smaller of the two and use part of it to pay the remaining portion of the passage on the
Frisia
. The rest, he said, was their future – David’s and Robbie’s.

But there was something else in that rabbit. Joey had been rough with it when he freed the emeralds and one of its ears had come loose. I reckoned it was the one Robbie had been chewing on. When Joey handed the poppet back to me I’d found a ragged strip of paper folded in two and rolled up tight inside the fraying ear.

I placed the emerald next to the lamp, smoothed the paper out over the desk top and looked at the Russian script. At the bottom there were three signatures – that, at least, was clear. I recognised one of the names now – Романов – it was Romanov in their writing. Misha had shown me.

When I asked Joey what the paper was he wouldn’t say, but he told me it could never be parted from Robbie. That was why he left it with me. I folded it again and slipped it back into my pocket.

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead in my hands. Why weren’t they here?

There was a soft click and a rustling sound. I looked up.

Joey was standing with his back to me staring out into the hall through the half-open door. He was wearing a woman’s travel coat, cut in the French style, and the hat I’d seen before, the one with the muslin veil.

‘Joey! At last.’

I stood as he turned from the door to face me. He drew back the veil and my heart twisted in my chest.

It wasn’t Joey standing there after all, but I knew who it was.

The tall, dark-skinned woman stepped forward and held out a gloved hand.

‘Not Joey, Kitty. And it’s not David either. I’m Della, Della Lennox. Robbie’s mother.’

I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t. My mouth felt like the bottom of Jacobin’s cage. I stared down at the long tapering fingers in fine leather. It was the hand I’d held in Paris thinking it to belong to David Lennox.

And it did, in a manner of speaking.

I dragged my eyes from the outstretched hand and looked direct into a pair of pale green eyes set in a long face, broad at the temple and narrow at the chin. It was David’s face all right, but it wasn’t him.

I glanced down at the woman’s coat, taking in the ruffles and tucks that nipped the fabric into an unmistakable shape. David’s clothes had hung loose on his tall, spare frame, but all the while underneath it all . . .

‘No!’ I don’t know if I said the word aloud or just formed the shape of it. I stepped back abrupt, sending the chair behind me toppling to the floor.

Della moved closer. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she was striking, in a hard and angular way. ‘Where is he? Where’s my boy?’ Her voice was low and husky. The Scots accent gave it an edge, but now it was undeniably female. Even in his sleep Robbie must have recognised his mother. Little mewing noises came from the box behind my desk as he struggled to wake himself.

Della’s eyes widened. She darted around the desk and froze for a moment as she stared down at the trunk.

‘Oh, thank God!’ She brought a hand to her mouth and gulped down a shuddering lungful of air, before swooping to gather Robbie up into her arms. The blanket fell to the floor as she stood there with her back to me rocking from side to side, cradling his head against her neck. I watched her shoulders rise and fall as her fingers caressed the back of his downy head.

Then she loosened his white cotton gown and gently probed his skin. I knew what she was looking for. Della’s back stiffened.

‘What’s this?’ She didn’t turn to show me, but I was certain she’d found the nick on his hand and the bruising.

‘He . . . he had a little accident, that’s all. We called a doctor out. It’s healing. The doctor says he’ll be fine.’ Without thinking, I rattled off the explanation I’d prepared for David. A part of me couldn’t take in the fact it wasn’t him standing there.

She didn’t say anything for a moment and then I heard her whisper, ‘Thank God, thank God.’ She nuzzled against Robbie’s cheek. ‘I’ll never leave you again, never. I promise. Never again, my little prince.’

Although she spoke softly, the words were shot with a violent passion and I knew she was swearing an oath to him. Della brushed her lips over the top of his head and breathed deeply as if she was inhaling him, body and soul.

And then she began to sob.

The sound was muffled as she buried her face in his gown, but to my ears it was halfway between joy and a sort of despair. Robbie tightened his fat little fingers around the trailing ends of the veil hanging off her hat and he crooned with pleasure.

Of an instant the office disappeared. The world contracted to a point that was Della and Robbie Lennox, mother and son bound together so tight they were one person. It was as if I wasn’t there. And it came to me then that love was a very different thing to the fancy glittering bauble I’d been rolling around in my head for the last few days.

There was a day, long ago, when Nanny Peck had taken me and Joey to see a circus set out on London Fields. I remember the tiger most particular. Beautiful he was, with his paint-sharp stripes and his great golden eyes. But he was terrifying too. As we watched him through the bars of the cage, his musky animal scent filled my nose and I could sense a power rolling off him. I remember how it made the hairs on my arms prickle.

I felt something like that now. Real love is a beast that can’t be tamed or controlled. It’s raw and fierce and savage, and it gives off a heat like a furnace so you can actually feel it on your skin.

Great waves of love were coming off Della and her boy. As I just stood there watching them, I found myself wondering how she felt that day at the Gare du Nord when she handed Robbie over to me. She must have been tearing herself in two inside at the thought of being parted from him, at passing him like a package to a virtual stranger, but she went through it without giving the game away.

Della Lennox was the best actress I’ve ever seen – and the bravest.

All the same, I was furious with her – Joey too.

I curled my fingers round the edge of the desk and cleared my throat.

‘Where’s Joey? He said you’d both come for him.’ My voice sounded like chalk on a blackboard. I wanted to scream at her, swear at her, call her a hundred names not fit for a woman to hear – or use come to that – but I tried to swallow it down. I gripped that desk so hard I could feel my nails gouge into the wood. Two of us could put on an act.

Della looked up. She huddled Robbie close, just as Peggy had always done, and kissed his head again.

‘He’s not here?’

I shook my head, but didn’t say anything. Something was roaring in my mind and I didn’t want to let it out.

Della blinked slowly. ‘Then I’m sorry, Kitty, I don’t know. He was supposed to meet me earlier this evening, but he didn’t come. It’s why I left it so late before . . .’ She broke off and allowed Robbie to bat her cheek. She closed her eyes and revelled in the pleasure of that touch. It was a moment before she even remembered I was there.

‘He met me at Victoria Station this morning and gave me the travel bills. It was all planned. We didn’t come over together because it was safer and besides there was someone in Paris I had to find. I’ve been searching for him for so long. It’s why I had to send my boy on without me.’ She smiled and kissed Robbie’s head again. ‘You know where we’re going, the plan?’

‘You . . . you’re leaving tomorrow for Hamburg, all three of you.’ My voice came brittle as fine bone china.

‘Yes. Then Josette will go back to Paris and Robbie and I will sail to New York. But we’ll need papers. We’ll be travelling under new names. Your brother knows someone here in London who can help us.’

Della half sat on the edge of the desk, one arm folded around Robbie, the other lightly stroking his head.

‘He left me at the station to collect the documents. He wouldn’t let me come with him. Instead we arranged to meet again in the ladies’ waiting room at five. I’ve been there all day – I can’t remember how many cups of piss poor tea I’ve drunk, Kitty, how many polite conversations I’ve had about the weather, when all I could think about was my bairn.’

She shook her head. ‘When he didn’t come back for me—’

‘You came on here to The Gaudy alone?’

Della nodded. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. Joey is . . .’ She glanced at me. ‘It’s seems odd to call him that. Your brother is my friend and without him I don’t know what I would have done, but he has secrets.’ She shook her head. ‘God knows, we all have enough of those, but Jose . . . Joey’s secrets frighten him. The message you gave him that night, something about Bartholomew?’

I nodded. ‘It was from our grandmother –
Bartholomew waits.
Did he tell you what it meant?’

‘No. I asked after you’d gone. He wouldn’t say anything. Besides there was so much else to arrange it didn’t seem important. But this morning when we met at the station, he couldn’t settle. We didn’t speak for more than ten minutes and all the time he was in a fret – watching the door. His hands were shaking, even though he tried to hide it. Your brother is usually very good at . . . deception, Kitty, you must know that?’

I folded my arms. ‘You’re not so bad at it yourself, David.’

I let that hang there for a moment and was gratified to see her look down.

‘You used me. Both of you!’

I couldn’t help myself. Now I’d started, the words came spitting out like sparks off a Catherine Wheel.

‘You played the gentleman with me, Della Lennox, stroking my hands, speaking soft, running your eyes over me, making me feel . . . making me think that you might . . .’ I stopped, gripped the edge of the desk and carried on. ‘Making me think that you might be a man, when all along you were playing me like a trout in a stream. And it was a dangerous game you got me into, wasn’t it?’

She opened her mouth to say something, but I cut her off sharp.

‘No! There’s nothing you can say to make it right, so don’t try. People have died here for the sake of your child: a little one pierced through the heart with a shard of glass, another crushed under a cart, the mother maimed for the rest of her life – which won’t be long – and a good man . . .’ I swallowed, ‘. . . a good friend torn apart in his lodgings.’

Della clutched Robbie tight to her side and unpinned her hat. She laid it on the edge of the desk, but the weight of the trailing veil made it slip to the boards. Her hair was cropped close to her head. Pearl earrings trembled from her ears. The lamplight made them glow like tiny moons against her skin. She shifted Robbie’s weight and reached out to try to catch my hand.

‘I’m sorry, so sorry. I didn’t think –
we
didn’t think. Truly, Kitty, I never meant for you or anyone here in London to be in danger. We thought we’d covered our tracks. We thought it was safe.’

‘Well, you thought wrong.’ I drew back. I was shaking with fury now, but the worst of it was that I was angry with myself. I couldn’t tell whether I was blaming her for putting us all at risk, or – most shameful to admit – for not being David.

I forced a pin deep into the roll of hair at my neck and almost welcomed the sharp prick of pain as it nicked the skin.

‘Anyway, it’s too late for sorry. I reckon it’s time for some answers.’ I leaned forward, flattened my hands on the desk and nodded at Robbie who was playing contentedly with a button on her travel coat. ‘Like who’s his father?’

Della’s eyes slid from mine. She folded her arms around Robbie again and began to rock him gently. ‘Your brother and all his friends tried so hard to help us. The halls in Glasgow, Paris, London – they’re not so different. They’re full of outsiders, but that makes the bonds strong. We’re a family. I don’t know what we would have done without Joey. They would have killed Robbie by now.’

‘
They
being the Russian royal family – the Romanovs?’

Della nodded, but didn’t look up. When she answered it came as a whisper. ‘Sergei, that’s his father’s name. And I was a fool to imagine that we could ever be together. They would never stand for it.’

She looked up now and I caught a flicker of guilt in her eyes. ‘I know about Ilya, Kitty. Joey warned me about him this morning at the station. He blames himself, but he shouldn’t.’

Della shifted about so she could hold Robbie in the crook of one arm as she placed her free hand over mine. My skin didn’t fire up when she touched me now.

‘Listen, you must know this, I didn’t entirely lie to you. I am a singer and the night we met I’d come straight from The Chapeau Rouge where I perform
en travesti –
as a man. It was Joey’s idea that I should meet you like that. He said it would be more . . . persuasive.’

‘He said that, did he? Oh I was persuaded all right. And you knew it, didn’t you?’

Those sea-green eyes slipped away again.

‘I . . . I didn’t want to deceive you, but I knew Joey was right. I’m a woman too, after all. When a man begs a woman for help it’s . . .’ She trailed off.

‘Seductive? Is that what you’re trying to say? You deliberately tried to seduce me that night!’

‘No—’

I pulled my hand out from under hers and stared at her. If she didn’t have Robbie huddled close I might well have gone for her.

‘All right, yes, a little. I’m sorry, but it was for the sake of my bairn. They want to kill him, Kitty. You’d do the same for your own. Tell me you wouldn’t?’

The question swung in the air.

I turned from her, righted the chair and sat down heavily. ‘Go on then. If you’re in a mood to confess, you might as well carry on.’

Della stared up at the ceiling. Just above her head the stain of Fitzy’s cigar smoke spread across the plaster. She was quiet for a moment, but then she began to speak slowly and quietly.

‘The winter before last Sergei came to see me perform at The Chapeau. It’s the fashion for the Russian nobility to visit Paris and when they come they are great patrons of the arts. They and their women are seen at the ballet and the opera. But the men also like to muddy their boots. Sergei came to The Chapeau night after night. I didn’t know who he was. He was just another man – and there were plenty of them at my door, the costume excites them. At first I wasn’t interested, but he was clever, gentle and kind – not like the others. And he was handsome too. But there was something else – he was, he
is
. . . fragile. I wanted to protect him, can you understand that, Kitty?’

I was silent, but it didn’t matter. Della carried on, swept along by her own story.

‘We became . . . close. Then . . . then I found I was to have a child – his child. And when Robbie was born Sergei tried to protect us, but his family . . .’ She looked across at me and shook her head. She made a handsome woman, I’ll give her that, but there were hollows in her high dark cheeks and shadows beneath her eyes.

‘You have no idea how ruthless people can be. His family will stop at nothing to make certain that Robbie does not exist. He was never supposed to happen, Sergei was never supposed to father a child.’ She hugged the baby and rocked him back and forth.

‘But he did, and no one can tell me that it was wrong.’

I stared at the bundle folded in her arms and the thought came to me of how much that child was loved. Peggy and Danny would have taken him for themselves, Lucca had painted him a cradle and even Lok had proved a better temporary mother than me. Whatever Della had done, little Robbie was an innocent in all of this. He deserved a life, or as much of one as he could manage.

We both started at a harsh rattle. It sounded as if someone was throwing stones at the narrow office window. Della slipped from the desk and bent to take up her hat.

‘I’d forgotten the rain here in London, how it never stops. We have to go. The boat leaves on the tide at six. I have to be on board at least an hour before.’ She glanced down at the trunk and bit her lip. ‘Without Joey here I don’t know how I can carry him.’