A Mother's Trust (47 page)

She had to push past the revellers as they took off their outer garments. Rose was the only one who noticed her and she followed her to the foot of the stairs. ‘What’s the matter, Phoebe? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Perhaps I have,’ Phoebe said tersely. ‘I’m going to make sure that all the noise hasn’t woken Teddy.’ She picked up her skirts and ran upstairs to her room. Teddy was sleeping peacefully and she lay down on her bed, still fully dressed. If she had thought her heart was broken when she parted from Rogue on her wedding day, she realised that it had merely been badly bruised. Now she could feel a physical pain and she was certain that if anyone could look inside her body they would see nothing but tiny shards where once there had been a beating heart. He was unforgiving.
It
was quite obvious that he felt nothing for her, except perhaps disdain for a woman who thought that she had done everything for the best but had only succeeded in wrecking the lives of those she was supposed to love most.

TEDDY WHIMPERED IN
his sleep and she leapt up, rushing over to his cot to make sure that he had not kicked off his coverlet. She tucked it up around his chin, gently stroking his tumbled curls back from his forehead. ‘I’ve been a selfish woman, Teddy,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not the best person to bring you up. I love you with all my heart, little man, but I know now that you belong with Ned and Rose. I’ll always be there for you, but I’m only your sister. You need a mother and a father to raise you to be a good and honest man.’ She dropped a kiss on his forehead and walked slowly back to her own bed.

Next morning she discovered that Ned and Rogue had returned to London on the first train out of Brighton station. Judy and Marcus left later that day for a short wedding trip to Eastbourne, where Marcus was combining business with pleasure as he negotiated a contract with a touring repertory company. Madame Galina and Herbert went off to sign the lease on their new premises and Gussie hastened to her place of employment to hand in her notice. Fred was suffering from a hangover but had loaded his ladder onto a handcart and was preparing to go out on his round. Rose scolded him and told him that it would be his
own
fault if he fell off and broke his neck. He answered with a stoic shrug of his shoulders and lit a cigarette which he held between his teeth as he staggered off down the road. Left alone with Rose and Teddy, Phoebe was about to put on her cloak and bonnet and take him for a walk along the promenade, but Rose waylaid her. ‘What was all that about last night? Why did you run away?’

‘I went to bed because I was tired.’

Rose’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘No. You had a row with Rogue and you went off like a petulant schoolgirl instead of staying and making things right with him.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Phoebe was about to walk away but Rose caught her by the sleeve.

‘Don’t try and fob me off with that nonsense. I know you too well. You’re still in love with him, so why don’t you admit it?’

‘He made it quite clear that he despises me. I thought I was doing the right thing when I married Gino, but everything went wrong. I don’t blame him for hating me. I hate myself for what I did.’

‘That’s utter nonsense. Of course he doesn’t hate you. If he felt like that about you he wouldn’t have come all the way from London especially to see you.’

‘He came to wish Judy and Marcus well. He told me so himself.’

‘And you believed him.’ Rose threw up her hands. ‘You are a stupid pair of idiots. You deserve each other.’

Phoebe shook her head. Suddenly she was too tired even to think. ‘I’m going home to Saffron Hill, Rose.
I’ll
get the house ready for my grandparents. They’ll be returning in a month or so, and I need to find new clients. I can’t expect them to support me for the rest of my life.’

‘If you do that you’re just running away again. You’re not facing up to the truth, Phoebe.’

‘I don’t know what that is any more. All I know is that I can’t stay here, and I must be practical.’

‘And what about Teddy? Surely you aren’t going to drag him back to that awful place?’

Phoebe laid her hand on Rose’s arm. ‘No. I’ve realised that I was wrong there too. Teddy belongs with his father, and you’ll make him a wonderful stepmother. You’ll have babies and he’ll be part of a proper family.’

Rose’s eyes brimmed with tears and she flung her arms around Phoebe’s neck. ‘That’s wonderful. You won’t regret your decision. I’ll love him and take great care of him.’

Phoebe extracted herself from Rose’s affectionate hug. ‘I know you will, and I’ll be a loving big sister. It will be best for everyone.’

‘And you’re still determined to return to London?’

‘Yes, but I want you to promise that you won’t tell Rogue. It’s better for both of us if we don’t see each other again. He was so angry with me, Rose. I can’t begin to tell you how much that hurt. I’m not going through that again, ever.’

A week later, amidst tears and fond farewells, Phoebe left Brighton and returned to London. It was the middle
of
March and winter was just losing its icy grip on the city. She spent her time cleaning the house in Saffron Hill and making it ready to receive her family when they returned from Stresa. She put cards in shop windows advertising the fact that she was ready to recommence séances and available for telling fortunes. She put a small advertisement in
The Times
in an attempt to encourage a more upper class clientele to brave the squalor of the East End, which some of them might consider an adventure akin to a safari where they could view wild species in their natural habitat. She had few takers, but she had the comfort of knowing that she had tried. Some of her old clients began to trickle back, and just as her money from Gino ran out she began to earn enough to keep herself in food and candles. She had nothing left to spend on coal or kindling, but she managed to combat the chill in the old house by putting on extra layers of clothes. She had written to her grandparents and informed them of her decision to return to London, and she had explained her reasons for leaving Teddy in Brighton. Fond as they were of the little boy, she knew that they would respect her wishes that he be raised by his father. They might even forgive Ned Paxman now that he was a reformed character and intent on setting up home with Rose and his son. There would be no question of vendetta.

She settled down to await their return and soon fell into a daily routine of getting up early and going out to market before the crowds had time to congregate. She avoided going to places where she might come
across
Rogue, although she occasionally gave way to temptation and paid a visit to Wilderness Row, convincing herself that it was simply to discover whether or not he was still in London. Without his gang to organise she could not imagine how he would keep himself occupied or how he would earn his living. She wondered if he had opted to join his brother in Kent and become a gentleman farmer. Somehow she did not see him in that particular role. She told herself that she did not care what happened to him and that it did not matter what he thought of her, but in her heart she knew she was lying. She did care very much. She hated the idea that he had a bad opinion of her, if he even thought of her at all.

The weeks passed and Phoebe received a letter from Ivy telling her that the family would be returning at the beginning of May, although she and Nenzo would remain in Stresa until after the birth of their baby. Rose and Ned were to be married at the end of April and Phoebe had promised faithfully to return to Brighton to attend their wedding. She had trimmed an old bonnet and altered one of her gowns so that it fitted her slender frame. Although she knew she was painfully thin, she had little or no appetite, but it did not seem to matter. Nothing much mattered now. She struggled through each day, a mere shadow of her former self. Her one pleasure was to walk to Charterhouse gardens and sit on a bench beneath the trees as they burst into leaf. Golden daffodils waved their trumpets in the breeze and she could almost imagine she was back in the country. She could see
the
houses in Wilderness Row clearly from her vantage point, and although she told herself she had just come to this green oasis in the city for a breath of fresh air, she knew that she was deceiving herself. Her reason for coming was simple: she hoped to catch a glimpse of Rogue Paxman. She had no intention of making herself known to him, but she needed to know that he was alive and well. Such information would make it easier for her to sleep at night, and put a stop to the nightmares in which she saw him walking out with a beautiful woman on his arm, or even worse confined in a small, dark prison cell living on bread and water.

She promised herself that this would be her last such visit to the gardens. She was due to travel to Brighton next day, and if Rogue was there, as he almost certainly would be, she would behave impeccably. No one would guess that beneath her serene exterior there was a maelstrom of emotion that threatened to choke the life from her.

She put aside her black mourning clothes and dressed in the gown that she intended to wear to the wedding. She put on the bonnet that she had renovated with such care and tied the blue ribbon at a jaunty angle. If, by chance, she should happen to meet Rogue, she did not want to look like a downtrodden drab. She walked to the park and took her usual seat, shooing away a few importunate pigeons. She sat for an hour or perhaps more; she had lost track of time. The sun had been shining but it disappeared suddenly behind a bank of clouds and it began to rain. She rose hastily
and
hurried towards a large plane tree for shelter, but before she reached it her attention was drawn to a commotion outside Rogue’s house. She stopped, disregarding the rain that soaked through her thin shawl and dripped off the brim of her straw bonnet. A small noisy crowd had gathered and she could hear a man’s voice raised in anger. Two police constables were in the middle of the fracas and one of them climbed the steps to knock on the door, which was opened almost immediately. Phoebe’s hand flew to her mouth as she saw Rogue standing on the threshold. She moved closer, leaving the gardens and stopping on the opposite side of the street where she could get a better view of the house.

She recognised the man who was causing the disturbance, and the hairs prickled on the back of her neck. Snape was shouting accusations and a torrent of abuse aimed at Rogue, who seemed to be in imminent danger of arrest. She ran blindly across the road, narrowly avoiding being trampled by a drayman’s horse.

‘Stop,’ she cried, as one of the constables laid his hand on Rogue’s arm. ‘Stop. You don’t know what you’re doing. Snape is a liar.’

There was a moment of silence as the crowd parted to let her through, and Snape stared at her with his eyes bulging and a vein throbbing at his temple. He shook his fist at her. ‘Don’t listen to that trollop. She’s his woman and she’ll say anything to protect her lover.’

Before Phoebe had a chance to retaliate, Rogue had taken the steps in one great leap and grasped Snape
by
the throat, shaking him like a terrier with a rat. ‘You lying little worm,’ he hissed. ‘You’ll take back that slur on a lady’s reputation.’

‘A lady.’ Snape spat the word in his face. ‘She’s no lady. Her ma was a whore and she’s one of a kind.’ He turned purple as Rogue’s fingers closed around his windpipe. ‘Stop him, constable. He’s trying to kill me.’

The more senior of the two police officers moved swiftly to tap Rogue on the shoulder. ‘It’s all right, guv. We’ll take it from here.’

Phoebe leaned against the area railings for support as her knees buckled. She had thought that Rogue was about to be arrested, but it seemed that she had made a terrible mistake. It was Snape whom the police were after and not Rogue. She could tell by the amused glances of the passers-by that she had made a complete fool of herself, and she wished that the ground would open up and swallow her.

‘All right, ladies and gents,’ the younger constable said, opening his arms and shooing the crowd away. ‘The show’s over.’ He turned to Rogue, tipping his helmet. ‘Sorry to have bothered you, sir. This chap’s well known to us. He’ll be up before the beak in the morning.’

‘Thank you, constable. I’ll be prepared to give evidence if required. You know where to find me.’ Rogue took off his jacket and slipped it around Phoebe’s shoulders. ‘Come inside. You’re soaked to the skin.’

Her teeth were chattering with shock. The dampness seeped through her clothes to chill her skin and there was little she could do except allow him to help her
up
the steps into the house. She leaned on him, trying to keep her mind on anything other than the familiar scent of his body and the thrill of his touch. The young housemaid who had been in attendance the last time Phoebe was in the house bobbed a curtsey, her face puckered with concern.

‘Can I do anything, master? Is the young lady ill?’

‘She’s had a shock. A cup of tea would probably be just the thing, Lizzie. And perhaps something to eat.’

‘Yes, master. Poor lady, she looks done in.’

She hurried off to do his bidding and Rogue led Phoebe into the front parlour. ‘You’re as thin as a sparrow, Madonna,’ he said, setting her down on the sofa. ‘I could pick you up with one hand. What have you been doing to yourself?’

His face was close to hers and his eyes were warm with genuine concern. Phoebe choked back tears. It was easier to cope with her emotions when he was angry with her. His kindness would be her undoing. ‘I thought they were arresting you,’ she murmured.

He grasped her hands, chafing them gently. ‘As you can see it was all a mistake. Snape has been trying to make trouble for me for a long time, but he’s gone too far now. He won’t be bothering either of us again.’

‘I don’t understand. What could he have against you?’

Rogue sat down beside her. She could feel the warmth of his body leaching into hers, and she did not protest when he slipped his arm around her waist. ‘He was an informer. He hung around the pubs where the gangs met and then passed on information to the police, but he became greedy and tried to blackmail
me
. I would have none of it, and he didn’t understand that I was already working with the police and had been for many years.’