Wicked Earl Seeks Proper Heiress (The Husband Hunters Club 5)

Averil felt herself flush. “I’m sorry if I’m too fat to be carried. I did tell you to put me down.”

He looked surprised, and then he grinned in a way that suddenly made him look much younger. And, if Averil hadn’t been so cross and mortified, she would have thought him even more handsome.

“My dear young lady, you are beautifully formed, and far from being too fat, I find your proportions exactly to my taste.”

Averil knew her face was on fire as they climbed the stairs, and she couldn’t think of anything to say. It seemed best just to let the subject drop, which she did. As they climbed she was careful to keep her hands away from the greasy-looking banister, and when the earl reached the passage that led from the landing, she made a mental note that he didn’t seem too much out of breath.

The door they wanted was at the end but there were other doors. Murmurings were coming from behind them, and once a sharp shriek of laughter. “Whatever is afoot is none of our business,” the earl informed her calmly. “When you are in the East End, Lady Averil, it is best to keep your eyes down and to mind your own business. Take my advice and you will be relatively safe.”

When they reached the door, Averil knocked on it.

Sally Jakes was waiting. She answered immediately, and when Averil opened it she saw across the comfortably furnished room a seated woman in a neat and unremarkable dress, her flame-colored hair carefully arranged beneath a flutter of lace pinned to the top. The lamp cast a warm glow over the woman and her desk, where she had several heavy-looking ledgers opened out before her.

“Sit down,” Sally said, without looking up. “I just ’ave to finish this.”

Averil glanced up at Lord Southbrook and he cleared his throat.

Sally’s eyes flew upward and she stared a moment in astonishment. And then she smiled. “Lord Southbrook,” she said, with a familiarity Averil found disconcerting. “An unexpected pleasure.”

Lord Southbrook came forward and deposited Averil in the chair set opposite Sally. “I shall leave Lady Averil with you, Sally. I believe she wishes to speak to you on a private matter and I have some business of my own. Downstairs.”

Sally put down her pen and wiped her inky fingers carefully on a cloth. “I understand the ’onorable James Blainey is downstairs, my lord. With a young companion.”

The earl’s face darkened. “Yes.”

“When I ’eard I was most strict in my instructions concerning the boy.”

“My thanks.” Lord Southbrook bowed, and with a brief press of his fingers on Averil’s shoulder, left her alone with Sally. As the door closed, the other woman said, in a businesslike voice, “You’ve come about Anna, then?”

Lady Anastasia Martindale.

“Yes. She was my mother.”

This didn’t seem to surprise Sally. “You don’t look much like her,” she said without emotion. Evidently all her smiles had been used up on Lord Southbrook.

“I hardly remember what she looked like,” Averil answered honestly. “There was no portrait of her. At least, if there was, my father got rid of it.” Her father had been a bitter man after her mother left, and seemed full of regrets.

Sally nodded. “I remember your ma well from those days. She was beautiful, but a bad picker when it came to men.” She pulled a face. “I worked ’ere then, but I’ve never been one to let my ’eart rule my ’ead, and now I own the place.”

“You’ve done well.”

Sally bowed her head in acknowledgment. “I ’ave.”

Averil chose her words carefully. “I know my mother died not long after she was here . . .”

“Aye, she did. She was at the

end of her rope by then. The man she’d run off with, he was gone or dead or something. I forget. Anyway she was on ’er own, ’er and the little ’un.”

“My sister.” Averil leaned forward a little. “I only saw her once. I wondered if you knew what happened to her?”

She tried not to hold her breath as she waited, tried not to let hope overwhelm her.

Sally nodded matter-of-factly. “She went to the orphanage at St.Thomas’s. Nowhere else for her to go, no one would take her, poor little mite.”

Averil took a moment to calm herself. The images in her head were almost too poignant for her to bear but this was not a time to break down. “Do you know her name?”

“Pansy? Rose? Something like that. Anna called ’er ‘petit coeur’.” Sally smiled, then shrugged. “Sorry, it was a long time ago an’ I try not to think about the old days too much.”