Page 8 of My Fair Lord

Ned smiled and inclined his head, determined not to shake hands. Just as he reached the door, Van Hoon called out his name.

His full name.

Ned stopped. These days, few people knew him well enough to know how he’d been christened. There were fewer still whom he permitted to use it. Van Hoon was in the first category but not the second. He turned back but did not leave the doorway.

“Yes?”

Van Hoon drummed his fingers together. “I heard interesting news from Yorkshire when I was at my club down in London last week.”

Ned tensed. Every part of his being was preparing to storm out of the room. Members of Van Hoon’s club would be businessmen and traders, grown wealthy in the past twenty or thirty years, but not gentry. Doubtless they enjoyed gossiping just as anyone might.

“I can’t imagine how interesting any news from Yorkshire might be to me,” Ned said.

He turned and walked away, letting the door swing closed behind him. His mood, which had until that point been quite good, darkened. He made his way down the back stairs to the ground floor. The increasingly angry and desperate workers were still there, which was fortunate. It would give him the cover he needed to slip away just in case the brothel muscle had found him. Not that it mattered now. The ring was safely back with its intolerable owner. Ned had been well paid for his work and had not thought it necessary to mention that as well as the ring, he had won a further nine pounds and eight shillings. One of the advantages of his commissions which involved gambling was making extra cash on the side.

Nevertheless, he did feel tainted by the whole matter. Providing a discreet service for the wealthy finding solutions and resolutions to matters was a way to make a living, but it was no life. It made him feel…

He sought for the word to best describe his distaste.

Squalid.

But it was something he was good at; he was using all his talents, and at least he was working and making a living.

He walked out into the warm early evening sunshine, digesting the information he’d learned. So, the intriguingly outspoken and impetuous Miss Wakechild would be attending the reception given by the Earl of Merseyside. Ned couldn’t help but grin, wondering what the hallowed ranks of the nobility would make of her, and which earl or viscount she would have her eye on. The race meeting that preceded the evening was a minor one in the calendar; not grand enough to draw the gentry from all over the country, but there would be a few men of title attending. Obviously, there were enough impoverished landowners who were happy to take American wives with all that wonderful American wealth. Some of them might even use the money to improve their estates beyond their own houses.

He strolled over the road and found a wall to lean against while he let the sun warm his face. He inhaled deeply, thinking about the task he had been approached to undertake that would have taken him to the earl’s reception. He had initially declined because there was always a risk of seeing familiar faces at large gatherings and he wanted to keep a low profile while he was able, but now he reconsidered. The commission would be simple compared to retrieving the ring and he decided he would quite like to see Miss Wakechild in action.

He walked back to his two-room lodgings and changed into a more respectable outfit. He put his fee from Van Hoon in the secure box that he had padlocked to the iron frame of his bed. His funds had been running low and the job had come at a useful time. It was quite staggering to think how much he had earned from a night of drinking and cards, but it was a measure of how desperate Van Hoon had been to retrieve the ring.

The money would keep Ned in what his landlady described as an “elegantly furnished” pair of rooms, a bathroom and toilet between four occupants, and breakfast every day, plus supper on Sundays. It wasn’t home though. He was making enough to survive on, but not much more. Some jobs earned him a bonus and he knew that compared to a dock worker or a clerk, he had no complaints, but for how long would he be able to continue doing what he did? In a bank in Leeds, there was a deposit box containing a few pieces of jewellery which were of real value. The problem was that they were also of sentimental value, having been inherited from his dead mother. He would have to be in severe straits to consider pawning or selling them.

The thought of Yorkshire nagged at him like a bad tooth. His past was catching up with him. People knew where he was. In less than two months, he could be trapped in a life that he had rejected, or been ejected from. Of course if the coin fell the other way – landing on tails, he thought with a grim irony – then the life he had now would be all he could ever expect. He needed to make plans.

He’d had two undertakings relatively close to each other in Liverpool, which meant that he should probably leave the city soon before his whereabouts became known too widely. Bloody Van Hoon wasn’t known for keeping his counsel.

He flipped open an old copy of The Strand and found a chapter ofThe Adventure of the Copper Beeches. He smiled grimly to himself at the latest escapades of Holmes. A consulting detective with rooms of his own in London. A man able to command vast sums for his expertise. What Ned wouldn’t give to be in that position. A consulting dilemma-solver. Obviously he would have to think of a better term for it.

He paid a visit to Mr Halliwell’s home in Allerton to hear what the commission would entail. As he listened to Mr Halliwell explain what he needed of Ned, he daydreamed of a set of rooms where clients came to him rather than him having to traipse around to their abodes. It was a pleasant fantasy but that’s all it was.

He agreed to take the commission, though it sounded dull. The opportunity to attend the event that Miss Wakechild would be at had fallen into his lap and he wasn’t going to ignore it.

His father had believed coincidences were a sign from fate and should be acted upon. Ned thought they were just happenchance, but he was not going to let this one pass him by.

ChapterThree

“Would you look at this rabble!”

Florence’s father was standing at the window of the office he had taken in the Huskisson Building. Beside him stood Arthur Seachie, proprietor of Seachie’s Distillery. It was he who had spoken. Florence had met him before and taken a dislike to him that she had thought was unfair. Hearing the contempt in his voice now, though, she decided it was well founded. He was referring to the throng of men who stood in groups around the doors to office buildings all the way along the waterfront. They were dressed in cheap working clothes that had seen better days, but appeared perfectly civil.

“Cordelia and I passed them coming here. She was quite reluctant to let me walk across the street alone. What are they angry about?” Florence asked as she joined her father and Mr Seachie at the window.

“Wages. It seems the cost of rent is increasing and they want more for nothing,” Mr Seachie said. He clenched his fist and rested it against the window as if he’d like to smash it through. “The grain shipping company charges me more and the porters and lumpers at the docks here grumble all day long. My factory labourers are just as bad. I imagine it’s the same on your side of the Atlantic?”

“Well, yes,” Clayton Wakechild replied, his eyes still on the men and women gathered outside. “It’s a difficult matter trying to do the best for everyone. I have a household to run and dependents to provide for. The shareholders have come to expect certain dividends, but of course the men and women in the factories expect and need their own increase in wages.”

“And why shouldn’t they?” Florence asked crisply. The conversation with the intriguing Mr Blake was fresh in her mind, and his comments about slave wages still rankled. “Our lives have improved as a result of their labours. Why shouldn’t theirs?”

“If they want to improve their lives then they should improve themselves,” Mr Seachie said, giving her a slightly condescending look.