The Thistle and the Rose Read online

  "No. Tonight, in this river, was the first time we met.”

  “It was dangerous for you to come after me. Why did you save me?” Sophy asked.

  “It was not your time.”

  Her questions skipped like pebbles over smooth water. Sophy’s head throbbed. The blanket did little to warm her.

  “You know my name. Can you take me to my people?”

  “No.”

  Where to go? Whom to seek? Was anyone out there who could help her? These questions and so many others were piling up, a mountain of confusion crushing her.

  “We need to go now. Follow me.”

  Her rescuer was backing away. Leaving her. Sophy didn’t know how she was able to find the strength to push herself to her feet, but she somehow managed. Clutching the blanket around her shoulders, she slipped into the shadows behind her guide. Buildings loomed above her. The stones were slick beneath her feet, but her new friend stayed ahead of her. Sophy soon found herself moving through winding alleyways she was certain she had never seen before.

  Dark riverfront warehouses soon gave way to lanes lined with shuttered shop windows and faded signs. As the two women moved farther from the water, Sophy began to see people huddled around doorways and sleeping in corners. No one even looked at them twice.

  Sophy was out of breath and feeling faint by the time her guide paused on the gleaming stone pavement of a wider street. The byway was empty of people, and the upper floors of shops and houses jutted out over the lane. Some had signs hanging above doors, and most were in darkness. The flicker of candlelight glimmered in one window of a house at the corner.

  “Where are we going? To whom are you taking me?” Sophy asked, trying to focus.

  “I’m taking you to a person who can help you and keep you safe.”

  The girl looked untouched by their travels. Her clothes appeared unblemished, in spite of the mud and slime of both river and alley.

  “Who will help me?” Sophy asked, trying hard to believe there could be such a person.

  Then, right before Sophy’s eyes, like a candle suddenly snuffed out, the young woman disappeared.

  Before she could even utter a cry, Sophy heard the clatter of horses. As she turned, the driver’s shout rang out, but it was too late.

  The carriage was upon her.

  *

  “Ho! The devil! Look out there!”

  The shout of the driver was accompanied by the neighing of his horses, and Edward Seymour felt the carriage clattering to a stop.

  “What is it, man?” he called, throwing open the door and climbing out.

  “She went under the blasted horses, Captain.”

  “A woman?”

  “Aye, sir. Is she dead? Can you see her?”

  Edward glanced up the dark street. There was nothing visible on the pavement behind the carriage. The door of a house opened. The light of a candle appeared. Some late night revelers staggered into the street. One was pointing under the carriage. Edward looked and saw her—a heap of blanket, dirty arms and legs sticking out from under it. The blanket had caught on the underside of the carriage and dragged the woman. The restless horses’ hooves stamped inches away from her head.

  Edward yanked the blanket free and pulled the woman clear. He crouched next to her.

  “Like a ghost she came, Captain.” His driver, looking down from the carriage, was still shaken. “She appeared out of nowhere. I couldn’t stop.”

  “She just rolled up outta the dark,” someone chimed in.

  “No one in the street, to be sure, gov, or we’d ’ave seen her.” Everyone had something to share. The crowd around them was growing. Someone held a candle over the body.

  She wasn’t moving. Edward looked at the wet, matted hair and touched her head. His hand came away, covered with blood. He pulled the blanket from her face. An open gash was visible at the edge of her hair, bleeding profusely. Her face was covered with dirt.

  “Don’t!” She tried to lift her head, but it sank again to the stone pavement. “Wait–I–p”

  The driver sighed audibly. “Well, the bloody chit’s alive, at least.”

  “If we’re to keep her that way,” Edward said, “we need to get her to a doctor.”

  “The hospital at Lincoln’s Inn Fields is close enough, sir,” someone standing near was quick to suggest.

  Edward knew the place. That was where medical students of King’s College practiced. That hospital sat squarely in the midst of poverty and disease.

  “Bachao,” she murmured, stirring.

  “She’s addled, Captain,” the driver said darkly. “The chit’s talking nonsense.”

  Weakly, she tried to raise herself off the stone pavement. She didn’t have enough strength, though, and she sank down again.

  She was dressed in a man’s shirt and ragged breeches with no stockings or shoes. She had the distinct smell of the river to her.

  “Open the carriage door. We’re taking her to a doctor,” Edward ordered.

  He tucked the wet wool blanket around the woman and lifted her off the ground. Even soaking wet, she was no heavyweight.

  The crowd separated, and someone held the door as Edward settled the injured creature inside the carriage on the seat across from him. She mumbled words under her breath as if she were carrying on a conversation. Edward couldn’t make them out. She was mixing a language he couldn’t identify with English words.

  “Where are we taking her, Captain?”

  “Urania Cottage in Shepherd’s Bush,” Edward ordered.

  He’d learned about the home for destitute young women a fortnight ago. Set up as charity by his friends Charles Dickens and the heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts, the place was intended to be a refuge for young fallen women wishing to improve their sordid lot in life. Edward had stopped there and shown his missing niece’s miniature to the matron this past week.

  For weeks now, searching for the sixteen year old Amelia had been occupying every minute of Edward's time.

  “Kotaai,” she moaned.

  “Go!” Edward shouted to his driver. Settling into his seat, he peered through the darkness at the pile of rags across from him. He could smell the muck of the river from here. What she was and why she was dressed in sailor’s rags was not difficult to guess. He wondered if she’d intentionally put herself in front of his horses.

  The coach started with a jolt. The shouts of the driver rang out through the street. Her head lifted off the seat, and through a blanket of tangled hair she stared around the darkened carriage.

  “Where is she?” She appeared to be conscious for the first time.

  “Who?” he asked, leaning forward. “Who is it you're looking for?”

  “The girl. Please . . . what happened? Where is . . . ?” She pushed herself up straight. She was shivering violently.

  In spite of the foreign words she’d muttered, there was no trace of an accent now. In fact, the refinement of her speech startled him. He removed his cloak and draped it around her shoulders. From the little he could see of her face, it was obvious she was young. Her fingers pulled the edges of the cloak around her. She was burrowing into the newfound warmth.

  As the carriage swung up onto the Strand, the dim light coming in the windows afforded Edward a better view of the wounds on her head. He could see she was still bleeding.

  “I need to –” she whispered, looking up.” I cannot lose her.”

  “Who?”

  “The girl.” She looked around as if trying to find her phantom friend. “The girl I was following.”

  “You were the only one on the street.” “She saved me from the river. Dragged me out. She didn’t have to, but she . . . she was there.” She wasn’t listening to him. Her words were slurring, and her head began to sink back onto the seat. She caught herself and looked up at him. “She knew my name. She asked me to follow. I need to get out.”

  “What is your name?”

  Her fingers clutched the cloak around her, and her head sank back.


  “Your name?” he asked.

  “She called me Sophy.” The blood was oozing from the cuts on her head. He reached over and pressed a handkerchief against the wounds that he could see.

  “Bachao.”

  After more than a dozen years of sailing the seas with the British Navy, he had encountered many tongues. This one was vaguely familiar. Perhaps Java. Or one of the dialects of India. But he wasn't sure. “Where does your friend live? Perhaps I can take you to her.”

  Her head was nodding. She was losing the battle to stay awake. Whatever strength she had in her was quickly ebbing. She did not respond.

  He studied the battered woman. Faceless, wretched creatures that had only been a nuisance to toss a coin to before were now real human beings to him since his niece had gone missing. Imagining the poverty, the violence, the troubled lives, and bad decisions they’d made—all the circumstances that had pushed them into this miserable situation in life—only fueled his fears of what had happened to Amelia. He felt sick whenever he thought of what her disappearance might have led her to.

  And that thought was with him all the time. It was why he could not give up the search.

  The carriage rolled to a stop in front of Urania Cottage. The woman seemed to have fallen sleep. The house was dark. Edward stepped out as the driver climbed down and tied the horses to a post.

  “Knock at the door and rouse the matron,” he directed. “Have the woman decide which room I can carry this one to. Also, have them send for a doctor.”

  Edward started to climb back into the carriage and stopped short. The barrel of his own pistol was pointed directly at his chest.

  “I want you to take me back to where you found me,” Sophy said. “Now.”

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue