Page 16 of When We Touch

Those first days were pleasant, indeed. It was as if she had found a dear mentor. An older man, but a good friend.

All seemed to be comfortable. If not elated, she was content. Though it was coming quickly, the wedding remained in the future. This time before offered her a strange freedom.

But then, Sir James returned.

Apparently, he meant to stay awhile. Unfortunately, he was not being sent about on the Queen’s business.

Maggie had never imagined just how completely the term “fly in the ointment” could describe someone.

It wasn’t so much that he did anything. Or, for that matter, said anything.

He was just there. With them so frequently.

Watching her. Studying her. And forming his opinion.

And not a good one, at that.

It was the way he looked at her. As if she were a pedigreed dog—or a mutt pretending to have a pedigree! —purchased at a very high price, who would soon turn and bite the hand that fed her.

No, it wasn’t in anything that he did.

He was overly polite. Courteous to the extreme. But every time their eyes touched, the contempt within his gaze, to her great distress, was chilling. In turn, she learned to accept his touch of assistance in and out of carriages, up and down stairs, and through crowded streets with an icy venom of her own. They despised one another. Naturally, for the sake of Lord Charles, they would not let on.

Nor did Maggie intend, in any way, to let the man alter her life.

Two weeks into the engagement, with the wedding but another two weeks away, she set out for the East End.

Charles was a staunch supporter of the Salvation Army, and hadn’t seemed in the least shocked or horrified to find that she put her time in with the organization at St. Mary’s.

It had been on a night out with members of the Ton that she had met Nathan, the husband she had so dearly loved, and lost. They had thought that “slumming” in the East End would be quite a diversion. But a gang of street thugs had set upon their carriage, and Nathan had been the one to come to her rescue when the rest of her party had disappeared.

Through his eyes, she had seen a new world.

Nathan had been the one to tell her that indeed, charitable contributions were desperately needed, but so was a personal touch.

Through him, she had learned so much. In the circles in which she had moved, she had known about the growth of the merchant class, and men who had made fortunes as entrepreneurs, doctors, politicians, writers, and even performers.

She had not seen the fate of those who were not born to family, fortune, or even simple decent income.

Few of the members of the glittering Ton of London ever ventured so far—to a place that was but a stone’s throw away from their elegant homes. She’d never have gone herself—if they hadn’t done so as a lark.

She had been so ignorant herself of the suffering there, and of the way that matters only became worse, year after year.

Nathan had died on the streets of the East End, trying to wrest a knife from a man gone insane with syphilis. He had killed the fellow before succumbing to his own wounds, and he managed to save the man’s starving wife and eight children.

The people of the East End were like rats in a cage, Nathan often said. Too many, too close together. Unwashed, uneducated, and with no real chance of escape. Some had shops and factories, and some worked in those shops and factories. Much work was only occasional. Sometimes a woman could find work as a laundress, or sewing. Sometimes she could not. Men lined up at the crack of dawn for a chance at hard labor. Sometimes they were able to work ten to fourteen hours a day for a few shillings. Sometimes they could not. Sometimes they had an actual address, but even then, they would live with many others in a single room, and their beds would be nothing but straw or old newspapers.

So it was with the man Nathan brought down, and the family left alive.

They had lived together in a one-room tenement. In the buildings, chamber pots were emptied—into the yards—once a week. The stench was abominable. Actual bathrooms or even outhouses were completely lacking, and few of the tenements had inside running water of any kind. Even the gas lamps, prevalent on so many streets, were few and far between.

A commoner, Nathan had still been the son of a knighted soldier, raised in the St. James area. He had served in the military, the Home Guard, and been called one day to quell a riot. From then on, he’d known that he’d wanted to be a policeman. And to help those in such desperate need in the East End.

His dedication had been his demise.

Maggie had managed to arrive before he had drawn his last breath. And with his last words, he had begged her not to hate the man who had killed him. She had come from such privilege; watching him die had taught her such humility. Agony, but humility as well.

And so, in his memory, she had begun to fight for the wretched and poor.