6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

From the time she could toddle, Rosanna had known the church at the far side of the park close to Honeysuckle Street. Old, solid, and unchanging, its grey cement walls were ornamented with sandstone and wrought iron. With a grey slate roof and a spire topped with a simple cross made of two practical bars, the church buttressed the park with quiet confidence. The world around it changed constantly. Trees grew, lost their leaves, and blossomed in the spring. The first home she had known, a small, rented cottage with a large garden, was knocked down, replaced by the row of five townhouses and the tower of rooms which gradually filled with a swathe of siblings and noise. People moved in, then moved away. Some only came for the season. Throughout all the upheavals, even the demolitions, the church had remained a permanent, unchanging fixture of her young life. Every little Hempel babe had their head dipped and blessed by the minister here. Her parents had married here.

And now, she was getting married here too.

To a man she barely knew. Who had spent the past seven years antagonising her father for no obvious reason. Who had somehow secured the best house in the row, even though her parents had paid a deposit. Who looked at her now with no affection, no kindness, not even disdain. Just rationality.

The hectic conversation as he’d directed her back to Number 3 still rung in her ears, a week later. Did you ever see Pennington? Did Lord Richard mention him or borrowing money from him? What is their arrangement? Does he stay at the hotel? Don’t fucking argue, Hempel, this is serious.

People will do things you can’t imagine for money.

He had no solid answers as to why Lord Richard had been accosted, just that they might return and hurt her if they could not find him. If she didn’t marry someone, her reputation would remain shattered. In the closed study, as her father had downed three whiskies in ten minutes, she’d held back tears about her split lip, her swollen cheek, and the screeching accusations from Mrs Crofts. Meanwhile, Babbage had rattled off that he worked not only as a clerk, but something about fraud, and that he’d been looking for a bad man and that man had made a threat against her. He’d said that name over and over, Pennington , and every time he did, her father swallowed a glug, then topped up his glass. Then, almost as an afterthought, Phineas had turned his sharp eyes on her.

‘You work at the hotel.’

She had only been able to nod.

‘After we’re married, you will continue to work there.’

In less than a week, he’d procured a special licence, and this morning, as the sun rose over a tired and smog-soaked London, a small congregation of family and neighbours filled the church. Elise stood beside her, as none of her sisters had debuted yet, so none of them could serve as her maids in waiting. Little Ottile sat on the church floor as a flower girl, picking petals from her basket. She sniffed one, bit it, then scrunched up her face in disgust.

‘It’s ridiculous. Compromised women thinking they must marry to cover it all up. Just be compromised,’ Elise muttered beside her.

Rosanna would give anything to tell her friend the story, but Phineas had sworn her and her parents to secrecy. If we move fast, it will be over before anyone asks too many questions. Draw up whatever paperwork you like, this isn’t a ruse. Hilarious, Hempel, I don’t need her money. You want to wait for Lord Richard to explain? He’s in trouble, and you don’t know Pennington like I do. I don’t need the attention; I need to work. Once I find Pennington, I’ll be out of your life. Out of everyone’s.

‘Flafoo,’ Phineas said, then held out his hand.

Rosanna blinked hard, shook her head, and tried to bring Phineas into focus through the gauze of her veil. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she asked.

‘I do,’ Phineas repeated. ‘I need your hand. For the ring.’

She’d sat in this church twice while waiting for a wedding to take place, but neither had actually happened. Maybe the trend would hold. Maybe, as with Elise’s sister, the church doors would fling open, and Lord Richard would shout his objections and explain that it was a terrible misunderstanding, that he didn’t owe the bad man money. And he would fall to his knees and beg her not to marry someone else.

Light flickered in the antechamber.

An omnibus rumbled by.

The doors remained closed.

Rosanna slapped her palm into his. As he pushed the simple gold band over her knuckle, it pinched the skin. She tried not to flinch. ‘I do,’ she said, not even knowing if it was the right time in the sermon to say the words. ‘For better or worse , I do.’

‘You may kiss the bride.’ The words echoed at a distance in the vicar’s monotone. He snapped his book of common prayer closed.

Phineas twisted a little to face her, his feet shuffling. He pinched the edges of the veil and raised it, and the world cleared as she looked to the man who was to be her husband for the next few weeks. Dark hair, clean shaven, wearing a simple suit with a white flower in the button… What an uncommonly ordinary-looking man. He was not even taller than her, but at least he wasn’t shorter. His lips twitched. Was that a smile? Babbage didn’t smile. A few little creases formed at the edge of his eyes. They fixed her with certainty, their dark brown shade almost black in the diffused church light. He leant in.

‘I don’t want to do this,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to be married to you.’

And now he smiled properly. A small dimple indented each cheek, an incongruent softness to his hard demeanour. ‘The feeling is more than mutual, Hempel.’ His lips barely skimmed hers before he squeezed her hand and they turned towards the congregation. A smattering of applause followed them as they left the church. Outside, pigeons scattered along the path, taking flight with a flustered coo.

Rosanna clomped down the stairs, indignation filling her chest. ‘What do you mean, more than mutual? I am a fine bride for someone like you. Your social standing will not suffer.’ She hadn’t broken her fast, and her stomach grumbled.

Phineas grabbed her elbow and spun her to face him. He took a few strained breaths. ‘You think this is about your blasted reputation?’

Rosanna met his glare. ‘Where is the carriage?’ she asked, accentuating each word.

‘The street is there.’ He gestured towards the wall of Number 1 and the stark white of Odette’s palatial villa that formed the bright entrance to the street. ‘It’s a sunny day. We can walk. You can show off your fancy dress.’

‘Fancy? There was no time for a fancy dress. And no modiste would even consider an urgent appointment once they found out who the groom was. This is the dress I debuted in, three years ago. I will not walk from the church and become a spectacle for ridicule.’

‘Sorry to inform you, Mrs Babbage, but your husband does not own a carriage. But if you will not walk, perhaps I can offer a solution.’

He was only her height, but he moved fast and was strong. Before Rosanna could swat him and turn away, Phineas had grasped her around the middle and thrown her over his shoulder. Rosanna squawked and screeched, and as he spun, the horrified faces of the congregation flashed in and out of view.

‘Hungry?’ he asked, then set off across the park. ‘I believe the wedding breakfast is at Number 3.’

She pounded, she grumbled, she hollered. Still, Phineas did not relent. He only gripped her tighter, and when she began to screech, he slapped her bottom before calling out to some walkers in the park, ‘It’s a family tradition. From up north.’

As he jogged across the road, his shoulders dug into her stomach, and each lurch up the front stairs of Number 3 jolted her head against his back. Here, he deposited her on the landing. ‘How was the carriage ride, milady?’ he asked with an exaggerated curtsy. ‘Would you like me to carry you over the threshold?’

Rosanna floundered to find her footing and stumbled, bumping hard against the door. Fury, black and ugly, coursed through every vein. ‘How dare you make a spectacle of me.’ She flung the front door open and stomped through the entrance. ‘How dare you mock me and treat me so terribly.’

It felt incongruous to have undertaken a momentous event—marriage—only to then step over the threshold of her childhood home. The house breathed with familiar freshness and warmth. Tempting tendrils of the scent of bacon, bread, coffee, and tea curled in the air in the entrance. She paused before the mirror. Curse him—a pin had loosened, and a thick lock of hair bulged on one side. She would not sit at her wedding breakfast with her hair such a fright. Of all her dreams, this one she would salvage. Where were her brushes, her combs? Rosanna scanned the line of trunks and cases that filled the hallway, then crouched and slid the leather strap from a buckle.

‘What’s all this?’ Phineas flicked his fingers, then turned to glower at her. ‘Three cases, four trunks… And what is in all these boxes?’

‘My things,’ she replied. ‘You can send over one of your staff to collect them while we are at breakfast.’

‘You can bring one case.’ He raised a finger in demonstration. ‘Anything more is superfluous.’

Rosanna raised herself to standing. ‘I am not repacking.’

‘This isn’t a pleasure jaunt, and it is in no way permanent. You don’t need all of this. If you forget anything, you can just walk over and get it.’

She stamped her foot. ‘I do need them, and I will have them, and you will not presume to tell me otherwise!’

A racket of voices and little feet banged up the front stairs, and a noisy stream of her smaller siblings filled the entrance. Nova and Amadeus skipped inside with barely a glance at them, while Ottile, always in a world of her own creation, danced over the tiles as she sang a song about pikelets and scattered petals over the floor. Frozen with an icy resolve, Phineas’s hard stare did not shift.

Beatrice paused in the doorway. Elliot and Johannes stopped behind her. All of them stared, mouths slightly agape.

Phineas took two steady steps, not once breaking eye contact until he stood before her. The edges of his mouth set firm, and his nostrils flared.

From his light brown hair, parted to the side, to his simple black suit and smooth chin, Phineas Babbage was the most mundane of men. Even his eyes were a grey the same shade as a slate roof. Despite his ordinariness, she recognised a callousness in him, like the man who’d struck her in the park had displayed. And with a tumble of realisation, she understood his speed and his insistence.

Her new husband wasn’t a counter to those men.

He was like them.

And he understood them in a way that, perhaps, she didn’t.

‘I’m going home,’ he said flatly.

Her brothers and sister, still in the doorway, stepped aside to flank his exit. Phineas walked between them, nodding once as he passed her father. Silence fell.

‘Rosie.’ Her father spoke gently but firmly. ‘You have to go with him.’