Christmas Child: an absolutely heartbreaking and emotional Victorian romance by Carol Rivers (classic english novels txt) 📕

I would like him to know that I protest at the situation he puts you in.’ He puffed out his red cheeks in annoyance. ‘Nevertheless, I suppose we must do something.’

Ettie flung her arms around him. ‘Thank you, Terence, oh, thank you. When will we go?’

‘I suppose it must be soon,’ he muttered.

‘It’s of the utmost urgency, as you can read.’

He rolled his eyes and scratched his chin. ‘Then let me think of a plan.’

Ettie waited anxiously, listening to his protesting mumbles and sniffs as he frowned in concentration.

‘Most important we don’t let on about our errand,’ he decided at last. ‘Or we’d be lambs to the slaughter.’

‘Then how do we transport it?’

The butcher heaved in a breath and lowered his voice. ’Here’s what we’ll do. I shall hire a cart and horse from a smithy I know this very evening. Not a comfy ride to the City, no, but workmanlike and won’t arouse no suspicion. At six sharp in the morning, I’ll arrive in your backyard. We shall load that monster between us before Silver Street is awake. With luck and a fair wind, we’ll be back before nine.’

‘I’ll be waiting, Terence,’ she assured him.

‘Now you’d better lock the chest away or the scent of all that loot will seep under the door and alert the whole neighbourhood.’

When the wooden panel was reinstated and Terence had left to hire the horse and cart, Ettie went to her bedroom. She took out her Sunday best coat and bonnet for she wanted to look presentable tomorrow when she turned over Lucas’s chest to London’s Bank of England.

Chapter 33

Ettie was ready long before Terence arrived, a little knot of anxiety in her chest. The morning was overcast and Terence sweated as he took the greater weight of the chest and they dragged, pushed and hoisted it aboard the waiting cart. It was a few moments before he restored his breathing but once their burden was hidden by sackcloth, Ettie felt much relieved their struggle was over.

A fresh breeze struck up as they passed down Silver Street, keeping Ettie alert for unwanted attention. But it was only the marketeers who, bleary eyed, were rigging up their stalls. Once Soho was behind them, Terence began to whistle, resuming his usual calm demeanour.

The lamplighters were out with their long poles, working amidst the early morning smells from the coffee stalls and bakeries. The roads were not yet congested and recognizing very few landmarks, Ettie suspected that Terence was taking a short cut to the city by way of back lanes.

‘You all right, young beauty?’ he asked as he tickled the horse’s rump with the whip and adjusted the tilt of his battered hat, a tri-corner style suited to a man of his generation.

Ettie smiled, thinking how they had both made an effort to look presentable for the clerks of the Bank of England. She had read in the convent’s history books that the bank was named The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, which had amused her until she thought of all those precious books now lost in the fire. It had taken a few minutes to remind herself how lucky she was; if it wasn’t for Terence, she would never have been able to make this journey.

‘How long now?’ she enquired.

‘Just a half hour up the road there’s Princes Street and we’ll turn down Bartholomew Lane. There’s a place we can leave the cart and horse tethered.’

‘Have you been there before?’ Ettie asked in surprise.

‘Once or twice maybe. Came up to town with Gladys to enjoy the occasional show at a decent music hall that wasn’t an excuse for a doss house.’

‘What’s a doss house?’ Ettie enquired innocently.

The butcher laughed as he urged the horse on. ‘Sorry, lass. I keep forgetting myself. A doss house is a glorified lodging like the one near Silver Street where our friend Gino sold his wares. The place was supposed to be a theatre of sorts, but what they got up to inside ain’t for a young girl’s attention.’

At the mention of Gino, Ettie shivered, but she soon rallied and said with a smile, ‘My attention has been brought to a lot of new things whilst living in Silver Street, Terence. My vocabulary is expanding faster than ever it did with the Sisters of Clemency.’

At this, Terence threw back his head and roared with laughter once more. Ettie joined in too and suddenly the day seemed more like a pleasurable outing than one of intense concern.

She had never known anything of her father and barely much more of her mother, but she liked to believe that her parentage might involve someone like Terence, whose second name she didn’t even know and didn’t care that she didn’t know, for his intrinsic goodness shone like a lighthouse across a stormy sea. He had revealed that he thought of her as a daughter. She was beginning to believe that even if not related by blood, there was a connection between them.

Gradually the city came to life with its monuments and pillared buildings, tall grey spires, and historic places that she had only ever seen replicated on paper. Ettie marvelled at the many classes of vehicles beginning to congest the roads. Bicycles, trams, carts, wagons, cabs and buses all merged on the City, as the bowler-hatted gentlemen scurried to their offices. Once more she felt excited, as she had done on the very first day of seeing the capital.

Then with a slow trot, the pony was guided towards a small row of cut trees that grew like a fringed skirt around the most formidable building of all.

‘Here we are,’ said Terence, pulling on the reins so that Ettie could get a clear view, ‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street herself.’

Ettie was taken aback at the sight of the forbidding building; a fortress of dark, carved stones reaching high above the ground to a summit of sentinels perched on the top of the roofs. The austere and dominating facade overshadowed all the other