Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [101]
“You have told me precisely what I wished to know. And I am sure you are totally reliable and unquestionably are fully aware what you are dealing with. No doubt we will meet again on the matter, or at least you will hear from me. Thank you so much for sparing me your time.”
Priscilla smiled more widely as Emily rose to her feet. “I am always happy to be of assistance to a friend. When you have realized your assets and decided what you would like to invest, come back and I shall put you in touch with the best person to help you, and to be utterly discreet.”
Money was not mentioned, but Emily knew perfectly well it was understood, and she was equally sure Priscilla herself took a proportion for her services.
“Of course.” Emily inclined her head very slightly. “You have been most gracious; I shall not forget it.” And she took her leave and went out of the house into the cold air of the street where even the manure on the cobbles could not spoil its comparative sweetness to her.
“Take me home,” she told the coachman as he handed her up. “Immediately.”
When Jack returned tired and dirty, his face ashen, she was waiting for him. He was just as somber, with an underlying anger equal to hers.
He stopped in the hallway where she had come from the withdrawing room to meet him. She still found his step on the black-and-white flagstones quickened her heart and the sound of his voice as the footman took his coat made her smile. She looked at him and searched his dark gray eyes, with the curling lashes she had marveled at—and envied—when they first met. She had considered him far too conscious of his own charm. Now that she knew him better, she still found him just as engaging, but knew the man behind the manners and liked him immensely. He was an excellent friend, and she knew the supreme value of that.
“Was it very bad?” She did not waste words in foolish questions like “How are you?” She could see in his face how he was, that he had been exhausted and hurt and was as violently angry as she, and as impotent to change or destroy the offenders or to help the victims.
“Beyond anything I can convey in words,” he replied. “I’ll be lucky if I can get the smell out of my clothes or the taste out of my throat. And I don’t think I’ll ever completely lose the picture of their misery. I can see their faces every time I close my eyes as if they were painted on the inside of my eyelids.” He looked around the huge hallway with its flagged floor, oak-paneled walls, the sweeping staircase up to a gallery, the paintings, the vases laden with flowers two and three feet tall, the huge carved furniture with gleaming wood and the umbrella stand with five silver- and horn-handled sticks.
Emily knew what he was thinking; the same thoughts had passed through her head more than once. But it was George’s house, Ashworth heritage, and belonged to her son Edward, not to her except as a trust until he was of age. Jack knew that too, but they both still felt a taste of guilt that they enjoyed its luxury as easily as if it had been theirs, which in all practical ways it was.
“Come into the withdrawing room and sit down,” she said gently. “Albert can draw you a bath. Tell me what you learned.”
Taking her arm he went with her and in a quiet, very grave voice he described where Anton had taken him. He chose few words, not wanting to harass her nor to relive the horror and the helpless pity he had felt himself, not the nauseating disgust. He told her of rat-and-lice-infected tenements where the walls dripped and hung with mold, of open sewers and drains and piles of refuse. Many rooms were occupied by fifteen or twenty people, all ages and both sexes, without privacy or sanitation of any kind, without water or drainage. In some the roofs or windows were in such disrepair the rain came in; and yet the rent was collected every week without fail. Some desperate people sublet even the few square yards they had, in