Sophia James - Miss Lottie's Christmas Protector

The Foundation was finally in sight, at least, but as she waited for the carriage to slow in front of it she saw Jasper King focus on something that was happening to one side.

When she looked over she was horrified to see Mrs Rosa O’Brian hurrying towards them, very under-dressed for a freezing London day. She stopped as Lottie banged her knuckles against the window and opened the carriage door.

‘Oh, thank the Lord you are still here, Miss Lottie. I had a feeling you may have gone to the country with Miss Millie and your mother for the Christmas party. I remembered you speaking of it.’

When they alighted Lottie realised Jasper was there, too, right beside her, his large frame sheltering her from the freezing wind. Rosa was now weeping, highly distressed by something. Lottie could never remember her being quite so hysterical.

‘It’s Harriet White. She is missing and I think I might know exactly where she is.’ Her Irish brogue was strong, but Lottie had spent a good amount of time in her company to easily understand what she was saying.

‘Missing?’ It took her a few seconds to place this word into some sort of order and her heart lurched.

Rosa nodded and as she burst into louder sobs Jasper King looked away. Perhaps he had had enough of crying women today, Lottie thought. Perhaps he was at the very end of his tether with feminine histrionics. She half-expected him to simply return to his carriage, call the driver on and disappear. But he did not. Instead he stood there in the wind without even reaching for his hat.

‘Where do you think she is?’ Lottie asked this of Rosa gently, trying to understand exactly what ‘missing’ meant.

‘Old Pye Street is where she is and you know what happens there?’

A further distressed howl followed these words and, looking at Jasper, Lottie saw his puzzlement. With little option but to explain she did.

‘It is an area quite close that is renowned for its prostitution. It is not a good place for a young woman to be at all, for there are people there who would take advantage of innocence.’

Probably the females of his acquaintance didn’t know of such debauchery, let alone mention it. But Lottie had been brought up alongside the women and children the Foundation helped and things such as these were a known entity in everybody’s life. Good and evil co-existed simultaneously and it was only a short step from respectability and righteousness into disaster and ruin should circumstances conspire against one.

A man like Mr Jasper King might have little grasp of the precariousness of living at the bottom with his grander upbringing and his wider social circles. Rosa’s face, for example, was marked with scars from a relationship that had soured in her early twenties. She looked nothing like the woman Lottie had noticed holding on to Jasper’s arm at the charity event they had just been to. In truth, when Lottie had first set eyes upon Rosa’s visage even she had been shocked.

And yet Mr King did not move away. Rather he questioned Rosa more closely.

‘What brings you to think this woman—Harriet White was it?…’ he waited till Rosa nodded ‘…that she might be in this particular place?’

‘Mr Wilkes, who works at the laundry, said as much, sir. He said there had been whispers of it and that he would not be surprised because Harriet is the sort of girl who might be persuaded to…’ She stopped and blushed.

‘I see.’ When Jasper said this his words were tight and Lottie hurried in herself.

‘Then we must go there right now, Rosa. We must go and ask Frank Wilkes exactly what it was he heard and try to find out where she is. Harriet is a special friend of mine, you see,’ she added, turning to Jasper King. ‘She came to the Foundation as a young girl and we grew up together, and although she sometimes can be a little wild we shared a lot of the same dreams. If anything has happened to her…’ She could not finish the obvious and swallowed. ‘I have to help her.’

Grabbing her reticule from the carriage floor, she positioned her hat more firmly on her head, but Mr King stopped her as she took the first step away.

‘Where do you think you are going? To the laundry? To do what?’ He did not sound happy as he loomed above her.

‘To try to find out what has happened, of course.’

‘Alone? You are going to go there alone? Have you no sense? What happens when the pimp hears of your questions and the brothel owner is affronted? What then? These men are not honourable adversaries—they are hardened criminals and you would be no match at all for them.’

‘So I am supposed to just leave it at that. Allow Harriet to be used and then discarded? Allow her to simply throw her young life away?’

‘How old is she?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘And how old are you?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘Only three years’ difference and you think I should allow you to throw your life away in a senseless and stupid attempt to make it otherwise. This is not the sort of thing you should be getting yourself mixed up with, Miss Fairclough, and if your brother was here he would say the very same thing. Under no circumstances whatsoever should you go to that laundry and especially not by yourself.’

The controlling way Jasper said these words made Lottie stand on her tiptoes and face him directly.

‘You cannot stop me—besides, I have no care for your opinion. Harriet White is my friend and she needs help so I am going whether you like it or not.’

Rosa beside them was crying constantly now, her nose running and her eyes red, and the rain suddenly decided to step up a notch and turn into a downpour.

‘Then get in. Both of you. How far is it to this laundry?’

Lord, Jasper thought, save me from women who have no sense or wisdom. The fact that Charlotte Fairclough would even consider the prospect of going into battle alone infuriated him, but he could not allow the consequences that might follow without making an effort to restrain her.

He would go into Old Pye Street himself to try to find the missing Harriet White and God help anyone who tried to fob him off once he was at his destination.

The scars on the face of the woman opposite pulled at his heartstrings, too, he supposed. Those on his legs were bad enough, but at least they were not on display for the whole entire world to see. Charlotte Fairclough now had her hand entwined through Rosa’s and was patting the top of it in an effort to calm her down, though it did not seem to be doing much good.

Did she not see how small she was, how impossibly delicate? How was it she did not recognise the danger of striking out to right all the injustices in the underbelly of London town? Her curls had fallen out further so that it barely looked as if any hair was left pinned up. She was coughing again, too, and that worried him. Miss Fairclough should be at home tucked up in bed with a hot lemon toddy and some tender loving care. Yet here she was in wet boots that looked as if they had seen better days and a cloak with patches upon the pockets. The rain had made her cold because she was shaking and he noticed she swallowed often in between her coughing fits as if to beat back tears. Or take in air.

She was nothing like anybody else he had ever met. Even Verity Chambers, whom he had once thought perfect, sensible and polite, would not have struck out to help another in the way Charlotte Fairclough had. He grimaced.

How did she do this to him so easily, raise an ire that had been largely indifferent or dormant for years? He swore under his breath and thought with resignation that it was turning into a full-time occupation just trying to keep Silas Fairclough’s stubborn sister safe.