“I beg your pardon, miss,” she said as she caught up to Bertie. Then the woman gave Bertie a quick once-over, taking in her well-worn clothes and straw hat, realized she wasn’t an upper-class miss, and changed her tone. “You ought to keep out of the way,” she snapped. “What are you thinking? Master Andrew!” she called again, and loped away after the boy.
A little girl walked down the path after the woman. The girl was about eleven, Bertie would judge, but she was dressed like a fashion plate. She wore a fur jacket over a dark blue dress that had a little bustle in back and a skirt with many flounces reaching just below her knees. She wore fine white stockings, a bit too thin for running around the park in this cold, Bertie would have thought. Completing the ensemble was a pair of ivory-colored button-up shoes and a fur hat that looked silky soft. From under the hat cascaded thick dark hair, wonderfully curled.
The girl walked slowly, almost primly, and she hugged a large doll with dark curls to her chest. The girl could be a porcelain doll herself with her pink cheeks, blue eyes, and elegant clothes.
The girl didn’t acknowledge Bertie at all but simply walked along after the nanny or whatever she was. The emptiness in her eyes struck Bertie—not only was the girl far too young for that kind of bleakness, but Bertie had seen the same emptiness in another pair of eyes recently—those of the handsome Mr. McBride.
She also remembered Mr. McBride reclining in her secret hideaway, his hand wonderfully warm in hers, as he spoke to her with ease. No one in the wide world had known where they were. In the passage before he’d left her, he’d told her about his children, Cat and Andrew.
“Andrew, no!”
Bertie saw why Mr. McBride had said his children were lively. Andrew ceased running in a straight line and dodged left, out through another gate and into the traffic of Park Lane.
The nanny ran after him, screeching as she wove past horses, carts, and carriages. Drivers pulled up, swearing at her. “Are you daft, woman?” “Can’t you keep your charge better than that?” “You want to get the lad killed?”
The girl, Cat, stopped at the gate, as though uncertain whether to cross the road or wait for Andrew and the nanny to return. Bertie caught up to Cat and gave her a friendly nod.
“We’d best go after them, I think,” Bertie said. “Your nanny will likely fall over dead if she has to hunt you down too.”
Cat turned a scornful look up to Bertie, worthy of the judge who’d scowled down at Mr. McBride at Ruthie’s trial. “She’s our governess. I’m too old for a nanny.” She looked Bertie up and down. “Who are you?”
“Me name’s Bertie. Traffic’s cleared a little. Come on.”
Bertie caught Cat by the hand and pulled her quickly across the street. The girl kept up, not dragging, her doll held firmly in her arm.
“Bertie’s a boy’s name,” Cat said with certainty.
“I know, but it’s what me mates call me. My real name’s Roberta. Here we are.”
Andrew had disappeared down another street. Halfway along was a house covered in scaffolding—the house was being pulled down, or put up, or painted, or some such. In any case, no one seemed to be working on it at the moment.Andrew took the opportunity to scramble up a short ladder, grab the scaffolding, and start climbing it like a monkey. The little girl shook off Bertie, ran to the ladder, and went right up after him.
Chapter 5
“Come down!” the governess implored. “Please, come down.”
Andrew and Cat blissfully ignored her. They’d climbed nearly to the top floor, just below the last set of windows, when Andrew sat down on a board, swinging his legs in the empty air. His sister, with more dignity, sat down beside him and twined her leather-clad ankles.
The governess tried to be stern. “Master Andrew, Miss Caitriona, you climb down here this instant!”
Andrew looked over the side and stuck out his tongue. Caitriona said nothing, only stared straight ahead of her.
A crowd had gathered. “You treed them, no doubt, missus,” a man said, and guffawed.
“Cheeky beggars,” a clerk who’d emerged from a shop said. “You need to take a strap to them.”
Another man was more kind. “Wait for the workmen to come back. They’ll shift them. No one’s in that house, or someone could go inside and get them through the window.”
“Where are the workmen?” the governess demanded. “Lazy layabouts. They’ve nipped off for tea, or something stronger, I’d wager. Haven’t they?”
“They won’t be long,” the kinder man said.
“Master Andrew, come down.” The governess was near to tears.
“Let me.” Bertie pushed past the governess, who smelled strangely of fish, and gave the ladder and scaffolding a calculating eye. “The workmen might frighten them anyway.”
The governess’s look of chill disapproval evaporated with her desperation. “If you believe you can fetch them down, young woman, you’re welcome to try.”
Bertie pulled off her gloves and tucked them into her pocket. She spit on both palms, rubbed them together, jumped, and caught a horizontal pole of the scaffolding.
She used her feet and legs to carry her onto the first board, then started climbing the bars, moving upward quickly. Such things had been easier when she’d been ten, she reflected as she pulled herself up, but she’d kept herself limber.
“You in the circus?” one of the men yelled from below.