you’re on the right side of London for getting home to Herefordshire.’
He still looked unhappy, and I supposed he was calculating how little profit his long journey would have brought him.
‘You won’t go home quite empty-handed,’ I said. ‘Thisis for the expenses of the journey, and what’s left over you are to keep for yourself.’
I put five sovereigns into his hand. He deserved them, and being reckless with Blackstone’s money was some consolation for having to take it. He looked down at the coins and up at me.
‘I’m sorry it isn’t more,’ I said. ‘I am very grateful to you and hope I may see you again some day.’
The sovereigns went slowly into his pocket, but his hand came out holding something else.
‘My cameo ring? But you were to sell it.’
‘We managed after all, miss. She do resemble you somehow, the lady on it.’
Tears came to my eyes. That was what my father had said when he bought it for me. I drew out the ribbon I wore round my neck with my father’s ring that the black one had so reluctantly given me and knotted the cameo beside it. I thought my good giant might have gone hungry. His cheeks looked hollow.
‘Thank you, Mr Legge. That was a great kindness.’
He murmured something, then ducked into the box to pick up the empty feed bucket and went away across the yard. I spent some time with Esperance, stroking her soft muzzle, watching the way her lower lip drooped and twitched, sure sign of contentment in a horse.
‘I shall come and see you at Ascot when I can,’ I told her.
It occurred to me that, by sending her ahead, I’d committed myself to winning the governess post. Untilthen, I’d been priding myself on my cleverness, but now I was beginning to see how thoroughly I’d got myself enmeshed.
‘And I suppose you’d better go too,’ I said to the cat Lucy.
She gave a little mipping sound in answer and jumped lightly down to her place on the mare’s back. I left them there. In the yard, Amos was filling buckets at the pump. I held out my hand and wished him goodbye, but again he insisted on escorting me back to town. We didn’t speak much on the way and he seemed cast down, but perhaps that just reflected my own sadness at having to part from him.
The London Flyer drew out on Monday, prompt to the minute. I’d arrived early and secured a seat by the window and when I looked out there was Amos Legge, taller by a head and a faded felt hat than the crowd of grooms, ostlers, boys and travellers’ relatives come to see our departure. I waved to him as we clattered away, but if he waved back I didn’t see it for the cloud of dust we were raising.
CHAPTER NINE
Store Street is not in a fashionable part of London. It lies, as Blackstone had said, near the British Museum, off the east side of Tottenham Court Road. They’d been building the new museum for almost my entire life and were still nowhere near to finishing it, so the streets around it were dusty in summer and muddy in winter from the coming and going of builders’ wagons. It was an area I knew quite well because, being cheap, it provided rooms for exactly the kind of musicians, writers, actors and wandering scholars who tended to be my father’s friends. So when I got down from the Flyer on Monday afternoon, I had no need to ask directions.
In other circumstances it would have delighted me to be back among the London crowds, on this sunny day with the season at its height, the barouches whirling their bright cargoes of ladies to afternoon appointments,the shouts of the hawkers and snatches of songs from ballad sellers, the smell compounded of soot and hothouse bouquets, whiffs of sewage from the river and crushed grass from the parks, baked potatoes and horse dung, that would tell you what city of the world you’d arrived in if some genie dropped you down blindfold. Even now, my heart kept giving little flutters of delight, like a caged bird that wanted to be let out, only the bars of the cage were
He still looked unhappy, and I supposed he was calculating how little profit his long journey would have brought him.
‘You won’t go home quite empty-handed,’ I said. ‘Thisis for the expenses of the journey, and what’s left over you are to keep for yourself.’
I put five sovereigns into his hand. He deserved them, and being reckless with Blackstone’s money was some consolation for having to take it. He looked down at the coins and up at me.
‘I’m sorry it isn’t more,’ I said. ‘I am very grateful to you and hope I may see you again some day.’
The sovereigns went slowly into his pocket, but his hand came out holding something else.
‘My cameo ring? But you were to sell it.’
‘We managed after all, miss. She do resemble you somehow, the lady on it.’
Tears came to my eyes. That was what my father had said when he bought it for me. I drew out the ribbon I wore round my neck with my father’s ring that the black one had so reluctantly given me and knotted the cameo beside it. I thought my good giant might have gone hungry. His cheeks looked hollow.
‘Thank you, Mr Legge. That was a great kindness.’
He murmured something, then ducked into the box to pick up the empty feed bucket and went away across the yard. I spent some time with Esperance, stroking her soft muzzle, watching the way her lower lip drooped and twitched, sure sign of contentment in a horse.
‘I shall come and see you at Ascot when I can,’ I told her.
It occurred to me that, by sending her ahead, I’d committed myself to winning the governess post. Untilthen, I’d been priding myself on my cleverness, but now I was beginning to see how thoroughly I’d got myself enmeshed.
‘And I suppose you’d better go too,’ I said to the cat Lucy.
She gave a little mipping sound in answer and jumped lightly down to her place on the mare’s back. I left them there. In the yard, Amos was filling buckets at the pump. I held out my hand and wished him goodbye, but again he insisted on escorting me back to town. We didn’t speak much on the way and he seemed cast down, but perhaps that just reflected my own sadness at having to part from him.
The London Flyer drew out on Monday, prompt to the minute. I’d arrived early and secured a seat by the window and when I looked out there was Amos Legge, taller by a head and a faded felt hat than the crowd of grooms, ostlers, boys and travellers’ relatives come to see our departure. I waved to him as we clattered away, but if he waved back I didn’t see it for the cloud of dust we were raising.
CHAPTER NINE
Store Street is not in a fashionable part of London. It lies, as Blackstone had said, near the British Museum, off the east side of Tottenham Court Road. They’d been building the new museum for almost my entire life and were still nowhere near to finishing it, so the streets around it were dusty in summer and muddy in winter from the coming and going of builders’ wagons. It was an area I knew quite well because, being cheap, it provided rooms for exactly the kind of musicians, writers, actors and wandering scholars who tended to be my father’s friends. So when I got down from the Flyer on Monday afternoon, I had no need to ask directions.
In other circumstances it would have delighted me to be back among the London crowds, on this sunny day with the season at its height, the barouches whirling their bright cargoes of ladies to afternoon appointments,the shouts of the hawkers and snatches of songs from ballad sellers, the smell compounded of soot and hothouse bouquets, whiffs of sewage from the river and crushed grass from the parks, baked potatoes and horse dung, that would tell you what city of the world you’d arrived in if some genie dropped you down blindfold. Even now, my heart kept giving little flutters of delight, like a caged bird that wanted to be let out, only the bars of the cage were
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