Page 58 of Never a Duke
“I want him to return punctually,” Ned said. “Artie has been truant from work lately, and when I ask him what he’s about, he glowers at me as only a boy upon his dignity can glower.”
“You are worried for him?”
Ned passed Rosalind her bonnet. “He’s too young to have a sweetheart. He’s not dicing with the footmen or grooms. He’s off on the king’s business, but which king?”
Rosalind arranged her bonnet over a chignon Ned had helped her put to rights. He was competent at assisting a lady with her toilette, and how Rosalind envied the women who’d taught him those skills.
“Does Artie have family?” Rosalind asked.
“The badgers taken on at the bank typically don’t, or no family who can claim them. Artie might have an uncle at the Marshalsea prison, or a cousin in service somewhere, but he doesn’t talk about having family.”
A boy without family would always give Ned Wentworth cause for concern.
Ned tied Rosalind’s bonnet ribbons in a loose bow. “The badgers are answerable to me, and if Artie is up to no good, then I have chosen poorly.”
“You don’t care about that,” Rosalind said, lying back on the blanket. “You fret that he’s off picking pockets instead of earning an honest wage. If he ends up in Newgate, you will blame yourself.”
Ned sat cross-legged on the blanket beside her, not touching. “Newgate is not the worst horror that awaits a boy on his own in London.” His gaze was fixed in the direction of the road, as if he truly did worry that Artie would steal a vehicle he could barely drive and a horse he could not care for.
“You fear he’ll end up transported?”
“Transportation is harrowing enough in theory, even for a lad in good health with stout boots and a warm cloak. But Rosalind, there are children all over London, miserable little wretches who would leap onto the transport ships if they only could.”
His expression looked all the more bleak because he sat amid a blooming orchard, the afternoon graced with the music of a small stream and the chirping of sparrows.
And yet, Ned wasn’t making sense. “Nobody leaps onto a transportship unless the alternative is the noose, Ned.”
“You are not in favor of transportation?”
That he asked her opinion meant worlds. Her father and brothers wouldn’t bother, unless for the sport of belittling her views.
“For able-bodied men in good health, perhaps, as long as they leave no family behind, but I favor the notion that justice should have a rehabilitative aspect, else we are simply making the disaffected more bitter and dangerous. And for women and children, to subject them to such terrible hardship for the price of a stolen spoon? What we spend punishing them could be better spent teaching them a trade, but no, we must cast the unfortunates to the ends of the earth because our goods need markets and we need raw materials. And we call ourselves a Christian nation.”
Ned rose and extended a hand to her. “I had a trade, or the beginnings of one. My brother was the equal of any journeyman tailor. England did not want our skills.”
Rosalind got to her feet with Ned’s assistance. She wanted to hug him, to ask him what memory haunted him, for clearly, the discussion had touched on old wounds.
Ned, though, was busy shaking out the blankets.
“What are you being too much of a gentleman to say, Ned? You listen to me. I am eager to listen to you as well.”
He folded a blanket just so, such that the corners matched exactly, and passed it to her. “My sentiments on the behavior of London’s good, Christian citizens toward its burgeoning population of starving poor do not bear repetition in polite company. What those children do to survive…”
He shook the second blanket vigorously, scaring the birds into silence.
Rosalind was about to ask him whathehad done to survive—what he’d done that was worse than picking pockets or mud larking—when the clatter of wheels sounded from the direction of the road.
“He’s on time,” Ned said, relief in his eyes. “He’s trotting, but the little blighter didn’t strand us out here in the shires after all.”
As Rosalind and Ned came in sight of the road, Artie smoothly slowed the gelding to a walk and turned him into the orchard lane. The beast obligingly halted on command, and Artie was positively luminous with pride.
“Good lad,” Ned said, passing the hamper and fiddle case into the gig. “You are punctual, and Hamlet appears rested. You found a meal?”
“Aye, guv,” Artie said, hopping onto the back perch. “Caught a nap too. The grooms woke me in time to help them hitch up.”
Ned took the blankets from Rosalind and stashed them in the vehicle. “You doubtless got in the way and reduced the stable lads to cursing. Pay attention to how I get us out of here. If you can tool along on the roads, your next feat is to master backing to turn. My lady, up you go.”
Rosalind took a seat on the bench, feeling a little resentful of the boy perched behind. Of course Artie’s accomplishment deserved acknowledgment. The lad had practiced a new skill and been conscientious about his duties, but what had passed between Ned and Rosalind in the orchard had been precious.
