Under Ground

by E.S. Thomson

Genres: Historical Thrillers; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

A plague is coming to London. Dreaded more than the Devil himself, cholera - the 'blue death' - spares no one. As fear grows across the city, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain are called to the bedside of a dead man, murdered, and with his throat torn out, in the back room of a brothel. When an innocent man is taken to Newgate, Jem and Will have until execution day to save him. The search for the identity of the corpse, and the killer, takes them to the gates of Blackwater Hall, home to the secretive, and corrupt Mortmain family. With the approach of autumn, no one is safe, for the fog brings with it an evil and poisonous sickness - the perfect shroud for murder.
When family secrets are prised out into the open, people begin dying. But who, or what, is the cause? Searching for answers, Jem and Will are driven underground, to the passages and tunnels beneath the city's teeming streets. Here, their adversary proves to be more elusive, and more deadly, than ever.
'Jem Flockhart books are the best I've read in years' - KIRSTY LOGAN
'A marvel . . . thoroughly engrossing' - MARY PAULSON ELLIS

Release date: October 5, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

I had known Mrs Roseplucker for years. The owner of a notorious brothel on Wicke Street, I had supplied her and her trollops with salves, balms and medicines since I had been apothecary at St Saviour’s Infirmary. But St Saviour’s had closed and moved to new buildings on the other side of the river. When I opened my own apothecary on Fishbait Lane, Mrs Roseplucker turned out to be my most loyal customer. Did I like her? I had a grudging respect for her ability to survive. Did I trust her? I had been forced to do so more than once, though everything has its price. Would I help her? How could I refuse?

And so, when she sent for us before it was even light on that cold October morning, when my question, ‘What in God’s name does she want at this hour?’ was met with no answer, just a wide eyed, ‘Come. You must come,’ from the messenger, what choice did I have?

‘Can’t you tell us anything?’ said Will, as he struggled into his boots and topcoat. The girl, Annie, was Mrs Roseplucker’s most loyal tart. Without her rouge and enamelling she looked to be no more than sixteen years old. She was in her nightgown, a shawl about her shoulders, her hair unbound like a madwoman. She shook her head, and shivered, even though Gabriel, my apprentice, kept the stove burning all night and the apothecary was as hot as a wash house. She drew her shawl tighter. Her pale face grew paler still and she shook her head again.



Wicke Street had once been a fine Georgian terrace. Now, it was a vile thoroughfare of scabrous town houses, their stucco streaked like the walls of a privy. Whatever louche charm the neighbourhood might possess had vanished with the night, the dawn’s grey fingers pointing out the filth and decay that the darkness had mercifully concealed.

The door to Mrs Roseplucker’s opened even before I had put my foot on the step, dragged open by a wan-faced maid I had never seen before. As it closed behind us Mrs Roseplucker herself emerged from the gloom. From the parlour I could hear crying and chattering, and behind this a muffled lowing sound, like the sound of an imprisoned bull.

‘My God, Dr Flockhart, Mr Quartermain,’ the woman said, though I could hardly hear her above the noise. ‘What evil times have come to this house tonight!’ She raised her candle in a theatrical gesture, peering at us through its dim glow. Her face was still daubed with the alum and arsenic mixture she favoured, though the vast horsehair wig she wore in the daytime had been replaced by a mobcap of stained linen. Its lace was torn in parts, the ties that hung down on either side of her face frayed and broken, dangling greasily like the tails of mice. Her nightdress was grey and billowing, her shawl ragged and mothed. A more hideous apparition I hoped never to see.

‘What is it, madam?’ I said. I looked past her. Through the open door of the parlour I could see Annie, her face streaked with tears, her arm around one of the other girls, who was wrapped in a blanket. ‘What reason can you possibly have for summoning us at this hour?’

She put her finger to her lips. I could not think why, as the house was in uproar. But something was wrong. Will sensed it too, and I saw him looking about.

‘Where’s Mr Jobber?’ he said. Mrs Roseplucker’s doorman was usually crammed into a cubby hole beside the stairs. His role was to police the premises, ejecting those who stayed too long, or presumed too much. Now, his cubby hole was empty.

Mrs Roseplucker’s chin quivered. She turned and vanished into the darkness. ‘This way,’ she said over her shoulder.



I could smell blood even before I opened the door. That unforgettable metallic tang, visceral and elemental – it is a smell that we know, in our hearts, to be wrong. No wonder the animals of Smithfield become so afraid as they near the slaughterhouse. As a medical man you’d think I’d be used to it. But I am not. And besides, even if I was, there was nothing that could have prepared me for what we saw next.

Beside me, Will fumbled in his pocket for his salts. I was tempted to ask him for a quick whiff of them myself, for the sight that met us as we pushed the door open would have made a butcher blanch. I strode to the window and pulled open the curtains – thick drapes of calico dyed a rich arsenic green but blotched and stained from years of being pulled open and closed by the greasy hands of maids and doxies. The room was warm, the coals in the grate still smouldering, so that the place was filled with a visceral fug. It was like standing inside a giant organism. And yet beneath the stink there was something else. Something fetid, and rotten. It was faint, almost imperceptible. But before I could place it Will clapped his handkerchief to his face. The silk, impregnated with his favourite scents from my apothecary – lavender, rose, lemon geranium – filled the room with the smell of a countryside summer, fleeting and delicious, and all too brief. I gave in, and pulled out my own handkerchief, holding it to my nose as if I were sniffing at a huge white rose.

On the bed, covered in a bloody sheet, was a body. I flung the sheet aside. A man, perhaps some thirty-five years old, lay on his back. His eyes were closed, his face was twisted into a terrible grin, and his throat had been torn out.

‘Who is he?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Mrs Roseplucker replied. ‘We don’t ask. What use is a name in a house like this?’ I nodded, staring down at the corpse. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Can you help or not?’ She considered me a friend, though as I knew her to be a wily old slattern I was cautious about returning the compliment.

‘My dear lady,’ said Will before I could reply. ‘The fellow is dead. There is little that will help him now.’

The woman glowered. ‘I don’t care two jots about him.’

I stepped close, leaning over that terrible grinning face, that ripped and bloody throat. The marks on the surrounding flesh looked like claw marks from a giant beast. And yet there were no signs of a struggle. I wondered why. ‘What happened?’ I said.

‘Found ’im this way,’ said Mrs Roseplucker. ‘Annie saw to ’im last night. Came late. Last one in. He’s been here before and he ain’t no bother.’

‘And he stayed?’ I said. ‘I thought Mr Jobber ejected the “gentlemen” promptly once their time was up.’

She pulled her ragged shawl closer about her shoulders. ‘Sometimes I lets ’em stay. We’re a hotel now, you know.’ This last she delivered in as refined a voice as she could muster.

‘This place? A hotel?’ Will snorted.

‘Yes, “a hotel”! Don’t take that tone with me, Mr Quartermain!’

‘And Annie left him here? Alone in this room?’

‘Went up to her own room – he was alive then. Well, he was sleeping. Annie found him like this just now. Screamed fit to bring the house down. Woke everyone up, she did. And o’ course Mr Jobber went in and tried to help. The poor lamb got himself all covered in blood.’ Her chin trembled.

‘Annie found him like this?’ I said.

‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Found ’im dead. All that blood. No wonder Mr Jobber slipped. An’ now Mary’s run for the watch though I didn’t tell her to go, and Mr Jobber’s gone and locked himself in the parlour cupboard he’s that upset, so we ain’t got long for you to look around, to work out what ’appened. I can’t ’ave a dead man in my house, Dr Flockhart! It ain’t good for business.’

‘I’m sure,’ I said. There was something she was not telling me. ‘I assume you’ve been through the fellow’s clothes. His pocketbook and so on?’

‘Didn’t have one,’ said Mrs Roseplucker.

I sighed. ‘Madam, if I am to help you, I expect you not to obstruct me.’ I put out my hand. ‘His pocketbook. And all its contents.’

‘I’m tellin’ you, he didn’t ’ave one. See for yourself. His clothes are where ’e left ’em.’

I could see straight away that the coat and hat were of the finest quality, both well brushed and clean, the nap of the hat smooth and shining. The shirt was a thick luxurious cotton, the handkerchief silk, both soft as butter to the touch. I examined the cuffs of the coat and shirt – there was evidence of wear, and of careful maintenance, loose threads had been trimmed with sharp scissors. The shoes were polished, as far as I could tell beneath the dirt of the city, but the leather was well used, the soles worn to a point when most men would consider visiting a cobbler. I rooted through the pockets – nothing. Nothing at all. No pocketbook, no fob watch, no silver snuff box. Only his cufflinks remained – polished silver ovals that told me nothing other than that he had probably not been wearing his best ones.

‘Come along, madam,’ I said. ‘Mrs Roseplucker, I can tell you are keeping something from me.’

‘Not a thing, sir!’ For once, the old slattern looked abashed. ‘He’s a gen’man, that’s all I can say. Look at ’is ’at, look at ’is clothes. But I got no idea who ’e is, and not one of us has ’is pocketbook.’

‘But you looked for it, didn’t you?’ I said.

‘We did, sir. But it weren’t there.’

‘But I assume it was there last night,’ said Will.

‘It was there when the fellow paid.’ Will was right. Mrs Roseplucker always took payment before the gentleman went in to her virgins and ‘energetic girls’.

‘O’ course! No one gets to see my girls without I see their money. No exceptions.’

‘So, whoever did this took the pocketbook – if you’re quite sure it wasn’t you or any of your girls. You know I can’t help you if you keep things from me.’

Mrs Roseplucker drew herself up into a vision of righteous indignation. ‘Would I tell a lie, Dr Flockhart? To you?’

‘Definitely!’ I said. ‘Though on this occasion you are probably telling the truth.’ I rooted in the dead man’s trouser pockets. ‘And you took nothing from him at all?’

‘No, sir.’

I glanced at her. ‘If you are lying it will go badly for Mr Jobber. You know he will be accused? I assume that noise I can hear is coming from him.’

Mrs Roseplucker’s face sagged like a melted cheese. ‘It weren’t him, sir. Cross my heart, sir.’

‘You don’t have a heart,’ muttered Will.

She wrung her hands. ‘Mr Jobber won’t come out. The watch is coming, sir. What’ll they say? What’ll they do to him if they sees him like that? All covered in blood and . . . and . . .’ She sniffed, dabbing at dry eyes with the edge of her shawl. ‘The poor lamb!’

‘What’s this?’ From the watch pocket of the dead man’s waistcoat I drew a fold of stiff yellow paper.

‘Looks like a pawnbroker’s ticket,’ said Will.

‘It is,’ I said, opening it out. ‘William Mowbray, St Saviour’s Street.’

‘Bill Mowbray is a wily old fox,’ said Mrs Roseplucker. ‘You don’t want to trust him.’

‘I’m not sure we have a great deal of choice,’ I said. I turned to Will. ‘Shall we pay him a visit?’ The ticket bore a date from the previous week, and a number noting the item pawned. There was no indication or description of what it was, no mention of the ticket holder’s name. That, we would have to find out for ourselves. But first, I had a corpse to examine.



The room was small and pokey, and I was relieved when Mrs Roseplucker bustled off to try to persuade Mr Jobber out of the cupboard.

‘He might well be a poor lamb,’ muttered Will, ‘but he’ll be off to the slaughter once the magistrate hears of this. Sounds to me as though Mr Jobber went a little too far.’

‘It certainly looks that way, though let’s not jump to conclusions just yet. Mr Jobber isn’t usually violent.’

‘He’s assaulted many of the men who come here.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘We used to get them at the Infirmary. But I wouldn’t say he was the murdering sort, would you? He always seems rather a gentle man, goaded to violence only when those he loves are hurt.’

‘I agree,’ said Will. ‘And yet have you not just provided the perfect explanation? What if he was provoked? And you know how he adores Annie. If this fellow here had hurt her in some way—’

‘Then he would have flung him out into the street, and his clothes after him, not clawed out his throat.’ I stared down at the dead man. ‘No, there is something else going on here, Will, but I don’t yet know what it is. Unfortunately, the magistrate will likely take one look at Mr Jobber and send him to the scaffold. Unless we can provide him with a more convincing perpetrator.’

‘In that case we have until Execution Day. Which gives us less than a week.’ He had gone over to the window and was staring out balefully.

I bent over the body, my magnifying glass in my hand. The head was to one side, as if sleeping. There was blood everywhere – pooled beneath him on the bed, slathered about his neck and chest. I saw that the shoulders bore the marks of bloody handprints, as if someone had shaken the fellow. Bloody handprints were also on the door, and the doorknob – though whether these were from the assailant, or from Mr Jobber as he ‘tried to help’, we would never know. The bedding was neatly arranged, and there were no indications that the man had struggled. It was as if he had died in his sleep. Had he been dead before his throat was ripped out? The blood loss was copious, sprayed against the bedclothes as if it had pumped out of a living body rather than seeped out of a dead one. I moved his arms and legs, looking for the tell-tale discolouration of the skin that would show me whether he had lain in that position since death. His limbs were cold and stiff, rigor mortis well established.

‘Four hours,’ I said. ‘Or thereabouts. He has lain here ever since.’ I bent close to his hideously grinning mouth and sniffed at his lips. Beside his face, a length of sticky black cotton thread had adhered to the pillow. I plucked it up between finger and thumb and sniffed at that too. I wrapped it in a fold of paper and put it into my pocketbook.

The dead man’s face was handsome, despite that terrible frozen smile. He had thick dark hair, and there was a degree of hauteur to the arch of his nose, even in death. His nails were trimmed and polished, his hair neatly cut, his chin clean shaven.

‘Anything?’ said Will. He still had not looked at the corpse. I could hardly blame him, for it was a hideous vision, and Will was known to faint at the sight of blood. Since we had become friends – some four years ago now, when he had arrived at old St Saviour’s Infirmary as a newly qualified architect tasked with the horrifying job of emptying the infirmary graveyard – he had become adept with the smelling salts. Now, we shared accommodation in my apothecary on Fishbait Lane and a better friend I knew I would never find. His company, and his opinion, were invaluable to me and I loved him more than I ever let on.

‘What about a weapon?’ he said now. He pulled his salts from his pocket once more, wafting them gently beneath his nostrils. ‘A knife, or whatever?’

‘It was no knife that did this,’ I replied. I had looked everywhere and found nothing. ‘These are claw marks. A frenzied attack too by the looks of it. Definitely claws. Possibly teeth. I will know more when I can see it in the light, when Dr Graves conducts the post-mortem. But there’s no implement here that might account for this . . . this almost animal attack.’

‘Perhaps there was no weapon,’ said Will. ‘Perhaps it was an animal.’

The sun sent a ray of pink light through the filthy windowpane. I looked up at an angry, blood-coloured sky, and then down at a yard full of black, oily-looking weeds and an overflowing midden. A pool of dark water glistened at its lip. Footsteps tip-toed across the dirt, from the kitchen door to the midden, from the yard gate to the kitchen door and back again. At the far end of the yard a small arch of crooked bricks framed a semicircular hole in the wall. Beneath it ran the common sewer, a tributary to the River Fleet.

The Fleet bubbled up optimistically to the north of the city, far away on Hampstead Heath. Once, a long time ago, my father had taken me there. He said hemlock grew on the banks of the stream, and he wished to collect some. He used the stuff for lockjaw, for those with epilepsy, or mania. An inhalation of hemlock was, he said, good for bronchitis, toothache or whooping-cough. I was perhaps ten years old when my father made me walk all the way from St Saviour’s Infirmary to Hampstead. At Ludgate he stopped and pointed out a vile stretch of trickling mud that ran beside the road. Blocked with offal and effluent, the waste from the tanneries, the dyers, the vinegar works and the emptyings of middens and drains, it was black and stinking.

‘This is the Fleet ditch,’ he said. ‘And a nastier, filthier sewer cannot be found anywhere in the city.’

I followed him as he trudged onward, my handkerchief to my nose. Occasionally he would stop and point out a drain or a gully hole in the road or between the houses. ‘It’s down there. Beneath us. Trapped, poisoned, kept in the dark, but still going. Can you hear it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, listening to its solemn gurgle. I could smell it too, a putrid, eye-watering assault.

At last, we left the metropolis behind and walked up the grassy slope of Hampstead Heath. The light lost the sickly yellowish hue it always held in the city. I could hear birdsong, rather than the rattle of cabs, the rumble of drays and the shouts of street hawkers. And, at length, I could hear water too. Not the sluggish sickly gurgle of sewage and effluent but a bright, clear, joyful sound. He showed me the place where the hemlock grew, there on banks sprinkled with buttercups and marigolds and overhanging with redcurrant. Below, the Fleet ran in a silver stream. We sat on the grass, our linen bags filled with calendula and watercress, our feet lazily paddling the cool water. We ate some bread and cheese and an apple each. We dozed in the warm sun. Neither of us spoke. And then, as the day bled into a hazy twilight, we walked back to the apothecary. As we passed back over the Fleet ditch at Ludgate, I could not bring myself to look at it.

‘It smells strange in here,’ said Will. ‘Not just blood and stink, but . . . something else.’

‘Rotten and fetid?’ I said. ‘Somewhat mousy? That’ll be the hemlock. Water hemlock dropwort, to be precise.’

‘He was poisoned?’

‘Oh yes. Poisoned and then, as he died, his throat was set upon.’ I could not tear my eyes from that dark arched hole in the wall at the end of the yard. As I looked, I saw shadows move within – rats perhaps? There was one mincing across the yard. All at once I saw a face – eyes blinking beneath a low oily hood that seemed a part of the dark, a part of the dank black shadows. And then just as it appeared it was gone. Had I imagined it? But I knew I had not. I felt a hand upon my arm.

‘What is it, Jem?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. I looked again at that dark slippery hole. ‘It’s nothing.’



Suddenly there came a furious hammering on the door. The watch had arrived, a trio of burly constables shouldering their way into the house without waiting for anyone to let them in. They barged into the parlour. At the sight of them pandemonium erupted. Annie and Mrs Roseplucker started screeching and crying; three of the other girls launched themselves at the men, one of them clinging to the back of the smallest constable, beating him about the head and shoulders with her fists and knocking his tall hat to the ground. Will and I found ourselves pressed against the parlour wall while the girls, the policemen, and Old Mother Roseplucker screamed and fought. Inside the parlour cupboard, Mr Jobber began bellowing. The constables flung the women aside as if they were rag dolls. One of them produced a jemmy and levered the cupboard door open.

And there was Mr Jobber, backed away against the shelves inside the cupboard as far as he could go. His face was streaked with tears. He was dressed in a pair of long woollen combinations, and these, along with his hands, were covered in blood. He looked terrified. He tried to rush out into the room, to burst past the constables, but they were ready for him. They wrestled him into a large canvas sheet they had brought with them for that very purpose, and while he was discombobulated, they dragged his hands behind his back. In no time at all he was immobile upon the floor, wrapped in canvas like a huge pupa, his face pressed against the rug. Irons were clamped to his wrists, and he was hauled to his feet. And then he was gone, pitched into the Black Mariah, and driven away before anything could be said or done. One constable remained. He went through to the bedroom to view the body. I heard him vomiting into the chamber pot at the sight.

Next to arrive was Dr Graves. I heard the rumbling wheels of his corpse wagon even before it appeared outside the door, and then all at once he too was inside.

‘Ah, Flockhart,’ he said, conversationally. ‘And you too, Quartermain. What on earth are you two doing here?’ He leered at me and gave a theatrical wink. ‘Need I ask?’

‘Mrs Roseplucker asked us to help,’ I said, my cheeks flushing at the suggestion that we had been there for our own purposes. ‘The body—’

‘Yes, yes,’ he waved a hand, not really the slightest bit interested in why we were there. ‘Where is it? Where’s the corpse? Bloxham? Bloxham! Bring the winding sheet!’ Dr Graves’s assistant among the dead appeared carrying a shroud of grubby cream-coloured canvas. The reek of formaldehyde and decay seemed to follow Dr Graves and Bloxham wherever they went, and I saw Will clap his hand over his mouth and nose in revulsion as the two men pushed past him into Mrs Roseplucker’s back room. The swathed corpse was carried out of the house feet first, like a rolled-up rug. And all the while Mrs Roseplucker and her girls were screaming and wailing, clawing at my arms, my hands, begging me to save Mr Jobber.

‘I have some students this morning, but they’ll be gone by midday,’ Dr Graves bellowed over the noise. He sprang onto his corpse wagon and seized the reins. ‘Come along to the mortuary when you’re ready, Flockhart, and we can do this one together. Perhaps a spot of lunch while we work?’



I had an errand to run on the way to William Mowbray’s pawnshop and before I went to help Dr Graves. I had work to do at my apothecary too, and I hoped Gabriel and Jenny, my apprentices, were getting on with their tasks and not lolling about reading penny dreadfuls in front of the stove. All at once the day seemed to have become very busy. Will too had work to do, though as the mortuary was near Blackfriars he would surely be able to check on his men while I attended to the post-mortem. To add to all this, I had been meaning to drop in on my solicitor, Mr Josiah Byrd of Water Lane, for some days now. As we had to pass the place on the way to the pawnshop it made sense to call in. Mr Byrd had been a good friend of my father’s and I trusted him implicitly. I had asked him to draw up a will for me. I was more concerned by the reappearance of the cholera in the city than I let on, and I wanted to make sure that Jenny and Gabriel, as well as Will, were looked after should anything happen to me. My affairs were simple to arrange – I would leave everything to the three of them.

I sank back into my corner of the hansom with my coat pulled up about my ears and considered my apprentices. They both concerned me, but in different ways. Jenny was almost as competent as I, and I was hoping she would be able to take the examinations at Apothecaries’ Hall in a few years’ time. In contrast to Jenny’s extraordinary ability and curiosity, Gabriel was slow and clumsy, and gaining his licentiate seemed as far away as ever. I wondered whether his lack of progress had something to do with me. Should I work him harder? Should I beat him for his lack of diligence and progress, the way other masters did? But the lad was a dolt through and through. No amount of beating was ever going to sort that out.

Beside me, Will had pulled out a small vial of brown glass and uncorked the lid. He sprinkled some of the contents onto his hands and dabbed it onto his face and neck.

‘You smell like a courtesan’s boudoir,’ I remarked, as the cab rattled over the uneven setts outside the bakery on Brass Street. ‘I detect citrus, bergamot, jasmine and violet. Do you hope to impress Mr Byrd?’

‘I hope to cover the stink of the city,’ he replied. ‘If I travel with my own fragrant nimbus I can deflect the worst of it and, I hope, offer some relief to those lucky enough to be in my immediate proximity.’

‘Your nimbus is getting up my nose,’ I said. ‘The violet is far too pungent. I hope you don’t plan to douse yourself from head to foot with the stuff?’

‘More than that, Jem. And I carry fresh supplies, just in case.’ He pulled out a handkerchief and buried his face in it. ‘It’s an improvement, I think?’ He breathed in deeply. ‘And yet, I cannot deny that it’s giving me a headache.’

I could not disagree. It was an improvement. But it was making my head pound too. The weather had been cold, and this usually dampened down the stench of the city. But not today, and the stink from the refuse in the streets and the sewers was inescapable. I took a small muslin pouch from my satchel and gave it a few squeezes before holding it to my nose.

‘Lavender and attar of roses,’ I said. ‘Do you like it?’

‘I can’t say,’ he replied. ‘I am overwhelmed by my own mixture.’

‘Do you take the stuff with you when you’re with Mr Basilisk?’ I asked. Will was a skilled architect, surveyor and draughtsman and had recently taken up a post with Mr Joseph Basilisk, the assistant engineer to the Metropolitan Sewer Commission. Will had a longstanding interest in drainage, though his attention to it so far had been theoretical rather than practical. Mr Basilisk, however, took a more applied approach.

‘No,’ Will said now. ‘At least, not underground.’ He shuddered. ‘What’s the point?’ He turned to look out of the window. He had told me almost nothing about his work for the Commission, nothing about where he went and what he did. Clearly, he would not be drawn to speak about it now either.

It was hardly eight o’clock when we arrived at Mr Byrd’s. Outside, against the kerb, a highly polished ebony brougham was parked. Its windows were curtained with black ruched silk, its door bearing a stylised animal of some sort along with a cluster of heraldic motifs, all in gold. The four horses – three more than necessary – were black and gleaming, with polished brass bells to their harnesses. I was just about to pay the cabby to wait when the door to Mr Byrd’s chambers was flung open. I saw the office boy bow as a woman emerged to stand on the threshold. She looked up and down the lane to make sure she was being watched and admired, pulling on a pair of kidskin riding gloves as she did so. Her face was pale and proud, her red lips pressed together irritably. She swept down the steps, her blue-black silk skirt swirling about her ankles like the inky waves of a stormy sea. A coachman leaped down from the box to open the door to the carriage, but she brushed him away with a gesture of impatience.

‘I’ll drive, Philip,’ she snapped. She readjusted her millinery – a riding hat of black velvet with a net to capture her dark hair – as the driver scuttled around to cling onto the back. A long slim leg clad in a white silk stocking flashed into view as she stepped onto the footplate and dragged herself into position. The junio. . .