I got back. Whoever they were, they knew where to find the money. It’s gone. All of it.’
Venetia glanced at the surrounding devastation. The door creaked as the wind played against it and pushed within. The room was freezing, the grate black and dead with burnt-out ashes.
‘Is anyone hurt?’
‘Sadie. She was the only one here. The rest of the girls were out. Still are.’
‘Where is Sadie now?’
‘Upstairs in her room.’ Lily’s mouth tightened.
‘How bad is it?’ Venetia felt her stomach tighten with dread.
Lily’s eyes slid to Linwood, as if only noticing him standing in the background for the first time, and then back to Venetia. Venetia saw the question in them and felt a frisson of guilt that she had brought him into this place of safety.
‘He is trustworthy.’ Her eyes met Linwood’s across the room and, contrary to everything that she knew of him, it felt like the truth. Her heart gave a little spur at the admission, before she turned back to Lily.
Lily did not look persuaded, but she gave Venetia a nod. ‘The animals took the goods by force and without paying, if you catch my drift. All four of them.’
Venetia felt herself blanch. ‘Have you called the doctor?’
Lily shook her head. ‘She won’t see one.’
Venetia struggled to mask the horror from her face and the nausea that was swimming in her stomach. And then Linwood was by her side, his hand upon her arm, both reassuring and strengthening. ‘Go to her. I will do what needs to be done down here.’
She hesitated, uneasy at leaving him down here alone, and afraid of what she would find upstairs.
‘She needs you, Venetia,’ he said.
She nodded, knowing he was right, and with a glance at Lily slipped away.
Sadie’s physical hurts were minor, but Venetia knew that, however much Sadie told her she was all right, the mental scars of what had happened tonight would never leave her. It was the risk that every woman who sold herself ran, the nightmare which they all feared. But even though the nightmare had become a reality for Sadie, Venetia knew it would not stop the girl from selling herself again at some point in the future. It was why this house existed. It was the little she could do. She stayed with Sadie until there was a knock at the door and Lily appeared with a doctor.
‘Your gentleman friend insisted upon it. Supplied the geld up front, too.’
* * *
It was the start of a very long night. Looking back at it, Venetia wondered how she could have got through it without Linwood by her side. They worked together, side by side with the women who returned, wearing their skirts short enough to show the red-flannel petticoats beneath. Sweeping up glass and destruction, fixing what they could. Linwood left and when he returned he had a team of joiners in tow, although God only knew where he had found them at this time at night. And in the lateness of the night they boarded the windows and patched up the front door.
* * *
Dawn was crawling across the sky, diluting the inky darkness in ever-lightening hues by the time Venetia and Linwood eventually left. The streets were empty, the rumble and roll of her carriage wheels loud in the silence.
She looked across the carriage at him. His waistcoat and shirt were marked. There was a rip beneath the arm of his fine dark green tailcoat, where he had been lugging furniture, and his boots were coated in dust and scuffs. The pale silk of her skirt was grubby, and the threads pulled, where she had been kneeling on floorboards. Her hair was dangling free from half of its pins. She scraped it back, feeling tired and dirty, angry and sad with what had happened at the refuge house in Whitechapel.
‘How long have you been supporting them?’ His voice was quiet and held nothing of judgement.
‘A few years,’ she said and hoped he would ask nothing further. She was so tired she doubted she could guard her answers carefully enough. ‘It is a charity that helps women and their children should they wish a means of survival other than that of the oldest profession. And the house we have just left, a place that they may stay however long they choose.’
‘A worthwhile cause.’
‘I am glad you agree. There are many that do not.’
‘How was the woman they...hurt?’ She heard the slight catch in his voice. He sounded as concerned as Venetia felt.
‘Her physical