Page 19 of A Sham Engagement

She shook her head. “I fink I had one once, but I don’t recommember rightly. No one calls me anyfin but Josie now.” She thought for a moment. “Or mostly jus’ ‘girl’, when they wants me.”

“Well, Josie, can you tell me where you sleep at nights, then? Does someone other than your mother take care of you? Perhaps an older sister?” Surely someone had her under their wing and he could class her as “looked after.” She could only be eight at the most, hardly any older than…

“I ain’t got no one. I finds meself a corner, outta the way. There’s dange’rous people about at nights. But I’m real good at hidin’.”

A corner. A child sleeping in a cold corner in February in these inadequate rags, hoping not to be discovered by the scum who roamed the streets under cover of the darkness. He knew all too well what sort of men peopled the back streets at night. Seeing street children dead from the cold, or dead from other things, had started all this for him. That and…

He shook himself. He wasn’t about to let this child become one of their number, not when he had the means at his disposal to save her. “Will you trust me, Josie, when I say that I mean you no harm?” There were plenty of men, even gentlemen, about, who would take advantage of an orphan like her for their own pleasure, and he had no idea whether she’d been subject to their attentions.

The gray eyes gazed up at him. “You bought me a pie. I trusts you.” Perhaps she was innocent of such attentions still. She was very small. Savable.

The longing to warn her not to trust men who bought her things arose, but he pushed it away. It would only scare her off, and where he was taking her would be her salvation. He stood up and held out his hand. “Then come with me, and I’ll take you somewhere warm to sleep tonight and where you will be looked after. You won’t need your tray of matches. I know a house where a kind lady looks after children who don’t have their mothers anymore. She’ll give you warm clothes and food and a bed to sleep in.”

He’d already decided not to tell her how she would be taught to read and write and reckon, and then trained for a proper employment in millinery, or as a housemaid. Good employment for a girl like her. Honest employment. Blinding her with what the future could hold might frighten her off. But it was all work she could have no hope of attaining if he abandoned her to her fate.

The little girl, eyes full of touching faith, scrambled to her feet and slipped her tiny cold hand into his large warm one. An odd couple, drawing the glances of passersby, they set off down the street together.

The redoubtable Mrs. Sharpe kept a house that Jack paid the rent on, or rather two houses, for Jack had taken the one next door when necessity had arisen and had a door knocked between the two. They were located in Betterton Street, which lay somewhere around the rather indeterminate junction between the houses of London’s middle class bankers, shopkeepers and businessmen, and the slum area of St Giles that crowded so close behind the homes of the better off.

Numbers 23 and 24 lay halfway along a narrow street of terraced houses, each in possession of a paved yard, with outside water closets, rather than gardens at the back, and with neighbors Jack knew to be respectable shopkeepers and clerks. Not far away from the tenements and rookeries of St Giles that many of the children he’d installed there had escaped from. As had Mrs. Sharpe herself, whose own rescue from her bully of a husband, an out and out villain, he’d effected some years since.

He’d chosen Betterton Street for its quiet neighborhood and lack of interest for the sort of people these children had escaped. And he’d chosen Mrs. Sharpe, thanks to fate, for her motherly demeanor and sensible outlook on life. Plenty of orphanages existed, not least the workhouse, where children were poorly fed and badly treated, mainly due to the corruption of those that ran them, but this was not one of them.

Mrs. Sharpe, whom Jack would have trusted with his own life, had raised seven of her own children, two of whom continued to live with her, acting as surrogate big sisters to the orphans in their parent’s charge. All three of the Sharpes treated the children with kindness and understanding, and the necessary firmness that would transform Jack’s rescued waifs into useful members of society.

He’d forgotten how far it was though. His own long legs were up to the journey, but it soon became obvious that Josie’s malnourished ones were not. By the time he arrived in Betterton Street he was carrying a rather malodorous little bundle clasped to his chest and attracting further curious stares from respectable passersby. The sort who would cross to the opposite side of the road rather than look at a child in need like Josie.

Whenever Jack thought of how blind most people were to the suffering of a large proportion of London’s population, he felt as though his blood might boil. What he’d set up in Betterton Street, although it remained on a small scale, went a little way to assuage his conscience about the opulent lifestyle he’d had the luck to be born into.

On his knock, the door was opened by Lucy Sharpe, the youngest of Mrs. Sharpe’s brood, a sturdy, apple-cheeked girl of twelve. Seeing Jack, she smiled and bobbed a creditable curtsy, something her mother had made sure all her young charges could do. “Milord Jack.”

Jack deposited Josie on her feet once more and took hold of her hand again, lest her presentation at such a splendid house frighten her into flight. A wise move. She hung back, trying to hide herself behind his legs.

“As you can see, I’ve brought you a new sister.” He bent to the child. “Josie, this is Miss Lucy Sharpe. She’s one of the kind ladies who will be looking after you here.”

Josie peeked at Lucy, who smiled back at her with her usual open bonhomie. “Hello, Josie. You’re a very lucky girl that Lord Jack found you.”

Jack glanced at his fob watch. “I’m afraid I can’t stop, Lucy. Will you apologize to your mother for me. I’m rather late for an appointment already. I happened upon little Josie selling matches in Upper Wimpole Street and just couldn’t leave her there. Not in this cold weather. She’s had a hot pie already and has another tucked somewhere about her, but she’d benefit from a bath, a delouse and some clean clothes. I’ll leave her in your tender hands if I may.”

Josie clung onto his hand. “I ain’t goin’ wiv her.”

Jack bent again. She was so tiny. Perhaps younger than he’d at first thought. A lot shorter than…

He smiled at her. “You will be quite safe here, Josie. The lady who runs this house for me, Mrs. Sharpe, is the kindest lady you could imagine. Lucy is her youngest daughter. She has seven children of her own, but only the two youngest live here with her. You’ll like them very much as they’re just as kind as their mother.”

Lucy held out her own plump, well-fed hand. “Come along, take my hand and come inside with me, Josie, and let’s get you warm. You look perished to death nearly out here on the step. There’s a warm stove in the kitchen with the kettle ready to sing on it.”

Josie looked up at Jack. If he wasn’t already running so late for his call on the Wetherbys, he’d have stayed, taken her inside, introduced her to Mrs. Sharpe himself, but he didn’t have time. “I have to leave you here, I’m afraid.” He smiled again, guilt at abandoning her looming large. “However, I don’t do any of the care here myself. I leave that to Mrs. Sharpe and Lucy, and her older sister. Mrs. Sharpe will be like a mother to you, I promise, just as she is the other children here. Right now, you need to go with Lucy.”

Josie tentatively released his hand and slid hers into Lucy’s outstretched one.

Jack stepped back.

Lucy drew Josie to her, slipping a supportive arm around her shoulders. “Brave girl.”

Jack took another step back.

Josie’s head swiveled and, chin on shoulder, she stared back at him. Accusingly. Poor little mite. She only had his word that this was a good place in which he was leaving her. Perhaps she’d heard tales of what happened to little girls who went off hand in hand with strange gentlemen. “I will return tomorrow to see you.” A rash promise, with all he had to do, but it would be good to sit with Mrs. Sharpe in her tiny front room and hear how her little charges were doing. At least one of them had recently left to go into service as a housemaid, and he’d like to hear how she was getting along. He lifted his hand. “Until tomorrow.”