All About Seduction(116)
It wasn’t charity. Then again he wasn’t being paid in coin either. But this time he wasn’t going to be so foolish as to turn down an offer of help, even though the offer cost the barkeep nothing.
Jack stood on the train platform and thrust out the leaky pewter tankard he’d filched from the tavern. It had taken him the better part of three hours to thoroughly clean the taproom. Sweeping one-handed was a nightmare, not to mention it looked as though the corners hadn’t seen the broom bristles in ages. He’d hoped when the barkeep saw how thoroughly clean the room was, he might offer a coin or breakfast, but he hadn’t.
As it was, Jack had no choice but to beg for enough money to get home. He consoled himself with the knowledge that the only reason he had to beg was because Martha and his father had stolen his money, but he felt lower than a worm.
He’d resorted to stealing the leaky mug to beg with. The splitting seam wouldn’t leak coins, if he got any. All the cadgers he’d seen in London had hats, baskets, or containers of a kind for the money to go into. He’d even seen one hunchback with a hollow wooden statue.
A man in a bowler with an ebony cane stared at him.
Jack lifted the mug.
The man stepped to the side.
Jack lowered the tankard. A few farthings and a penny or two had been dropped inside, but at this rate it would take him days to get enough to get back to Manchester. Sooner or later he’d have to eat. There were more than enough beggars around, ones who had no problem calling out for money. The best of them searched the faces of the crowd and seemed to know just which people to approach. Jack didn’t even want to look anyone in the eye.
A blow against his cast blasted pain through his body. He bit back the agonized shriek that threatened, but a yelp still left him. A black cane had struck the blow. Dear God, were there men who had nothing better to do than torment him. He crutched forward, spilling a few coins from the tankard. Helplessly, he stared at them as a small boy darted over to pick them up. Bending down and getting back up wasn’t a move Jack had mastered. It was hard enough to get up from a chair one-legged.
“Put ’em back in the cup, boy. They aren’t yours.”
Jack twisted around to see the man in the bowler with his ebony cane hooked over his arm.
The boy put a few coins in the cup, but kept at least half of them as he darted away.
Puzzled why the man would hit his leg, then come to his aid, Jack asked, “Why did you hit me?”
The man pulled out his purse from his vest pocket. “Just making sure you hadn’t put a plaster splint on a healthy leg. You had a guilty look about you.”
Furious at the idea that he’d fake his injury, Jack lifted his leg and yanked down his sock, revealing the angry red lines of his scars that disappeared under the cast. “My ankle was crushed.”
The man blanched.
Jack closed his eyes and heaved a deep breath. “Look, I’m just trying to get home.”
The man dropped the coin he had between his finger and thumb back into his purse.
The clink made Jack sag. He pulled up his sock. “I’m not a beggar.”
Only he was. He was just a very bad beggar. He wanted the coin, and he hated that he wanted it.
“You’ve family to take care of you at home?”
His hackles rising, Jack turned toward the train. “I have a job there.”
A ping in the tankard made him start.
Jack lifted it to find Queen Victoria’s profile on a half-inch gold coin. A sovereign?
He twisted.
The man in the bowler was walking away.
“This is more than I need,” Jack shouted.
The man turned, gave a wave and the ghost of a smile, then sidled between two people and was lost in the crowd.
Carefully, Jack emptied the coins into his palm and then put them in his pocket.
If he didn’t spend a lot of the money on food, he might be able to go to the Royal College of Physicians and see if they could give him any help with regaining feeling and the use of his foot before he returned to Manchester.
And as much as he wanted to see Caroline again, he didn’t know how he could face her with his disappointing results.
Caroline woke with an uneasy feeling in her stomach, not quite enough to claim sickness but enough so she would have preferred to roll over and go back to sleep rather than face the inevitable day.
She missed Jack, missed him in a way that went deep and bled the colors out of the world. He’d only been gone a fortnight, but it was if it had been years. If she had failed to conceive, they could try again. Wanting to have failed to conceive was a betrayal of her deepest wishes. Yet, there it was, a hope that bloomed in her every morning and was dashed every evening when her courses didn’t come. She was more than two weeks late. Almost three.