The child shuffled out from hiding. She smiled shyly, a lass three or four years of age, her eyes, her hair . . . James’s chest constricted. The child was so like Amelia—nearly the same size, the same golden curls, blue eyes. In a day or so, the girl would be motherless too. Just like his daughter.
An impulse opened James’s mouth to say hello, but he couldn’t get the word to come out. Not when he could hardly breathe. Pulse tripping, he nodded to the girl and made a hasty escape.
A good man.
Dearest Lord. Help me believe it’s still true.
“Here we are, dearie.” Mrs. O’Rourke brandished a hand in the air above the steamer’s railing, the thunk of the gangway upon the stone pier nearly drowning out her words. “Londontown.”
Rachel stared at the masses of people churning on the wharf like chickens fighting over a fresh throw of feed. “Oh my heavens.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” concurred Mrs. O’Rourke.
They had steamed up the Thames for several hours, the city approaching like an advancing storm cloud. Buildings pressed against the riverbanks in such quantity they blocked out the view of the alleyways beyond, so thick Rachel could imagine their steamer was chugging through a tunnel of brick and stone. A tunnel jammed with drifting barges and scuttling wherries and blackened colliers, thick as fallen branches choking a weir.
And now this.
St. Katherine’s Docks were the greatest collection of buildings and masted ships Rachel had ever seen in her life. Ever dreamed she would see. She’d tried to count the boats, tucked so tightly against each other it seemed a man could jump from one deck to the next without fear of getting wet, and lost track after two hundred and forty. At the water’s edge, yellow brick warehouses six stories high surrounded the basin, bristling with pulleys at open windows, bales and barrels and wine casks stacked to the vaulted ceilings. Men and boys clambered everywhere, thousands of them. They scrabbled for space between loaded carts and wagons, crates of chickens waiting to be loaded onto the next boat out, sacks of flour and coffee. Deafening shouts bested the rattle of boat chains and the squeals of pigs being toted off ships, the clang of ships’ bells and a band on a foreign steamer heartily blowing unfamiliar tunes. All of it a noisy sea of flesh and commerce writhing beneath a hazy, reeking, smoke-heavy sky.
And not a blade of grass or patch of heather to relieve the oppression.
“It is not like home, is it?” asked Rachel, her heart hammering. London will completely consume me. But wasn’t that what she wanted it to do? Let it hide her from her past?
“Nothing is like home.” Mrs. O’Rourke sniffled, wiping a coarse woolen sleeve beneath her nose. “Arra, you’ll make me cry, you will. And here I’ve held it back all this while.”
“I am sorry. I did not mean to upset you.” Rachel tucked her carpetbag with its cracking leather handles against her hip and took her companion’s arm. “Shall we go?”
Mrs. O’Rourke nodded. “’Tis nothing else for it.”
Stiff-legged from three days spent in the cramped confines of steerage, they pushed their way into the throng tramping down the gangway and onto the teeming wharf. A dockworker knocked against Rachel and continued up the plank to become part of the stream of people moving on and off the steamer. If they didn’t move speedily, they would either be run over or shoved into the oil-slicked water like so much garbage.
Mrs. O’Rourke found her bearings and Rachel followed the other woman in single file, their destination a set of rooms for departing and arriving passengers.
“Ho!” Mrs. O’Rourke cried out before they reached the dubious security of the grimy-windowed space carved out of a corner building. “Look then! Me sister sent her eldest to meet me, and there he is now, to be sure.”
She made to move off toward a young man waving frantically over the heads of a hundred others.
Rachel grabbed Mrs. O’Rourke’s elbow. “Are you not going to wait with me?”
“See all the guards? There be nothing to be affrighted of.”
“I own I think there is.”
“You’ll be fine, Rachel. ’Tis a fearsome city, it is, but God watches over the least of His sparrows, does He not?” She patted Rachel on the cheek with dry fingertips. “Rath Dé ort, lass. You’ve had a stroke of bad luck, you have, but the good Lord will see you through.”