“I do, my lady. He and Lord Landsbury have gone up the street, to the Sisters of Perpetual Sorrow.”
“Then you will take us there,” Diana insisted.
Burt’s face split into a grin. “Right you are, my lady.”
Diana marched out of the hall without so much as a goodbye for Mr. Siddel. Bea waved to him, but that was all she could manage. They headed for the outside door, but before they could reach it, Annie dashed up the hall from the kitchen, something small in her hand.
“If you please, my lady,” she called, catching up to Bea as Diana burst through the door and out into the street, led by Burt. “I have something for Lord Landsbury.”
Bea blinked at the young woman in surprise. “You do?”
“Yes.” Annie nodded and presented Bea with a small, linen sack that had something solid and square inside. “It was with the donations that were brought to us yesterday,” Annie explained. “I heard Lord Landsbury talking to his friend earlier about how he’d misplaced something with the donations. I felt it was my duty to return it, but with so much going on today, I didn’t get a chance. Will you take it to him?”
“Certainly,” Bea said, accepting the parcel with a gracious smile.
“Bea!” Diana called from the doorway. “Time is wasting. We need to catch the bastards in the act.”
Bea gasped at her friend’s harsh language and tucked the linen sack and its contents into the coat of her thick, wool coat. “Oh dear,” she told Annie. “I mustn’t delay.”
Annie grinned and bobbed a curtsy as Bea turned to rush after Diana and whatever new madness awaited them.
Chapter 6
“The boxes from yesterday have been taken to the sanctuary for sorting,” Sister Constance informed Harrison almost as soon as he and John arrived at the orphanage run by the Sisters of Perpetual Sorrow. “You are welcome to search there, but I’m not sure you’ll have any luck,” the stony-faced sister informed them.
“We have to try,” Harrison said, doing his best to be as deferential to the middle-aged nun as possible. “The ring has great value to my family, not to mention being of vital importance to my own endeavors.”
“Vital importance,” Burt repeated, as though he were the one with all the importance.
Harrison grinned at the lad. He’d been of great help in taking him and John where they needed to go. Harrison suspected the lad had grand ideas about himself and where he might end up in the world.
Sister Constance didn’t seem as certain. “That’s enough cheek out of you, young man.”
“I’m not cheeky.” Burt bristled, assuming an air of superiority that he’d probably learned through observing all of the well-born helpers Bianca had enlisted.
“You are so,” John said, ruffling the boy’s hair.
Burt laughed. “Well, if I am, it’s because it’s fun.”
“Christmas is not a time for fun,” Sister Constance insisted. “It is a time for reflection about the redemption of the world.”
“It is?” Burt blinked, as though it was news to him.
“Scamp,” John laughed.
“Go on with you, boy.” Sister Constance sniffed. “You’ve led these gentlemen to our door, and now you can go on your way.”
“Could I have a bit of a pop into the kitchens before I go, sister?” Burt asked.
Sister Constance sighed, shook her head, and gestured for Burt to head on deeper into the orphanage. She shook her head again once he was gone.
Harrison couldn’t help but smile and wonder if Sister Constance’s bad humor was all for show. “We cannot thank you enough for letting us drop in like this,” he said. “This is our last hope for finding the ring I’ve lost.”
Sister Constance hummed and crossed her arms, staring down her nose at him as though he had been woefully irresponsible to lose something so valuable. Harrison had the feeling his grandmother would look at him the same way if she knew.
“I’m afraid the sanctuary is a bit of a jumble at the moment,” Sister Constance said as she led them down a long and drafty hall. “Between the wealth of donations we receive at this time of year and preparations for our own, solemn observations of Christ’s birth, things are a bit up in the air.”
Harrison wondered what the nun’s definition of up in the air was. As far as he could see, the building that housed the Sisters of Perpetual Sorrow and their charges lived up to its name in every way. The walls were drab stone with very little adornment. The rooms that he and John passed and were able to look into had only the most meager fires in their grates. Boys and girls in grey uniforms hunched over their schoolwork, even though it was the day before Christmas Eve, or stood reciting bits of scriptures to the young novices who had been put in charge of them. There were very few glimpses of color, which depressed Harrison’s spirits more than they were already depressed. All in all, Sister Constance’s orphanage was a stark contrast to the warmth and happiness of Mr. Siddel’s establishment.
“Here you are, my lords.” Sister Constance stopped just inside of a mid-sized chapel at the end of the long hallway. It looked as though the chapel were a much earlier structure than the rest of the building, as if the orphanage had been tacked onto a centuries-old church. “You are more than welcome to search for your ring here.”
“Thank you, sister,” John said with a solemn bow. As soon as Sister Constance left them to their search, John cracked into a grin. “Can you imagine the sort of life a child would have in a place like this?”
“At least the ones we saw looked well-fed and warm,” Harrison replied with a sigh, glancing around.
The chapel was as much of a jumble as Sister Constance implied it would be. Several of the pews at the back of the room were stacked with crates and baskets of donations that looked like those that had been given at the hall in Clerkenwell. But there were other boxes and sacks of things piled at the front of the room. In addition to that, several movable racks of clothing lined the edges of the room where various alcoves for stations of the cross stood. Beyond that, there were building supplies in one corner of the room, and a rather rickety scaffolding appeared to be holding up a section of the roof.
“Well, I suppose the only way to find the ring is to start looking,” Harrison said with a sigh.
They headed to the first row of pews holding donations and started their search. As impressed as Harrison was with the generosity of those who had given to Bianca’s cause, shifting through crates of books and old clothes left him with even more of a sense of urgency.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t find it,” he said, half to himself.
“You’ll do what you have to do,” John told him from the pew across the aisle as he searched himself. “You’ll do what any man does when they find themselves in a particular situation like this.”
Harrison glanced up from the basket he was rifling through to find John grinning at him like a fool. He matched that grin with a wry look of his own. “And I suppose you would do the same thing if you found yourself in a similar position?”
“Ah,” John replied. “But I would never find myself in that position, because I would never be so silly as to find myself in love.”