Page 24 of Exile's Return
She turned to leave, but stopped and looked back at him as he said, ‘Good night, Agnes, and sleep well in the knowledge that whatever it takes, I will see you reunited with the children. You have my word.’
She frowned. ‘That is a kind sentiment but why are you helping me?’
He met her gaze without blinking. ‘I told you, we have a mutual interest.’ Giving a half shrug, he added, ‘And also because I abhor injustice of any kind, and to place the fate of two innocent children in the hands of Tobias Ashby, and, I have no doubt, Septimus Turner, is an injustice. Pack only what you can carry and be ready to leave by noon. Good night.’
As she reached her room, Agnes fell into a chair, physically drained. She stared at the empty fireplace, the autumn chill in the room winding around her like a cloak. She let out her breath, watching it steam in the light of the single candle.
Leaning on her hand, she thought about the man who had come to her rescue.God sends his angels in strange guises, she thought. But then, God has many different kinds of angels, and there was less of Gabriel and far more of Michael in the man who had offered her his assistance. Was Daniel Lovell or Lucas or whatever he called himself the slayer of dragons and avenger that would defeat Satan?
If she closed her eyes she could picture him, clad in black with his bright sword in his hand, facing a dragon. It would be fun to weave a tale for the children.
At the thought of the children, she jerked awake. She had to pack. For herself she had little but the respectable petticoats and bodice she was wearing, some clean linen, and…
She looked at the box of James’s possessions. Taking a deep breath, she knelt on the floor and opened it. If it had been tidily packed, someone had been through it, throwing everything in higgledy-piggledy.
She picked out a shirt, holding it to her face and breathing in James’s scent, still so redolent in the fabric. For a moment her courage failed her. However flawed, her life had been happy and comfortable. Now she had no home, no money, and no prospects. Her single thread of hope was a man with a past who called himself Daniel Lovell.
Chapter 10
‘What do you mean, you want to come with me?’ Daniel put his hands on his hips and fixed Matt with a hard glare.
Did everybody in London want his company?
The urchin regarded him without blinking. ‘You’re a gentleman and I can learn to be your servant. I’d like that.’
‘It doesn’t suit me to have a servant, particularly one who looks and smells like you,’ Daniel replied.
The boy’s mouth turned down at the corners and he looked down at his feet, where a long, blackened toenail protruded from the broken shoe.
Daniel huffed out a sigh of exasperation and hunched down to look the boy in the eye. ‘Look, lad. I don’t know what’s waiting for me where I’m going and frankly, you would be in the way. You can’t come with me.’
‘But I’ve got no other life, Cap’n.’ The boy’s voice broke on the verge of tears.
Daniel ran a hand over his eyes. Matt could be dead within a few years if he continued his hand-to-mouth existence on the streets, if not from illness or starvation, then the hangman’s noose. He sighed and rose to his feet.
‘If I can find a respectable job for you, will you promise me you’ll stick to it and not go back to thieving?’
Matt frowned and shuffled his feet. ‘Who’d want me?’
‘I think I know just the person,’ Daniel said.
He took the boy by the back of his filthy jerkin and propelled him toward the Old Bayly. Outside the Ship Inn, Matt struggled and squirmed in Daniel’s unrelenting grip.
‘You!’ Nan Marsh greeted the sight of the struggling youngster with crossed arms and a look on her face that would freeze the fires of Hell.
‘I believe you are acquainted with my young friend here,’ Daniel said.
‘What’d he do? Try to rob yer?’
‘No, nothing of the sort. I have a favour to ask of you, Mistress Marsh, and I can think of no one better to accomplish it. I will pay you well to subject this verminous creature to a hot bath accompanied by a dose of soap. I think underneath all that dirt is a good-hearted lad who would make a good pot boy.’
The corner of Nan’s mouth twitched and for a moment Daniel thought she might smile. She looked up at him with a definite twinkle in her eye as Matt protested, ‘A pot boy, me? I don’t fink so!’
Daniel lifted him off the ground and held him at arm’s length until the boy stopped struggling.
Nan pushed her sleeves up and turned a gimlet eye on Matt. ‘Leave him to me. I’ll have ‘im so clean you won’t recognize him.’
‘No!’ Matt squirmed harder. ‘Not a bath!’
