Whenever there was a vital task to be done, David Wirth could be counted upon to do it. It had been true from David’s earliest childhood, when his hardworking parents handed him the responsibility of keeping his younger siblings out of harm in their rough-and-tumble, working-class neighborhood. It stayed true when his father had earned enough to move them onto a quieter, middle-class square in Belgravia. It had been true all through university as David paid his own way by tutoring his higher-born classmates. And it had been true ten years ago, when he and John Dandie banded together after leaving university to form the law offices of Dandie & Wirth. David was always the man people could count on to make even the most impossible tasks possible. He was a man with something to prove.
That had never been truer than as he walked from table to table in the dining room of Stephen Siddel and Max Hillsboro’s newly-established orphanage in Earl’s Court, interviewing the recently rescued children who had been victims of a kidnapping ring.
“Your name is Jimmy Hollis?” he asked the frightened boy of six who sat on the lap of Annie Ross, a woman who had worked side-by-side with Stephen at the orphanage in its old location and who had relocated, along with her mother, to the new site.
The boy nodded, his eyes wide with fright.
“And you were taken off the street in Limehouse?” David asked on, making his voice as soft as he could and smiling, in spite of the seriousness of his questions.
Again, Jimmy nodded.
“Do you have a mama or papa who is looking for you?”
Jimmy shook his head.
David’s heart squeezed in his chest, and he met Annie’s eyes. “Another orphan?”
“He must be,” Annie said with a sigh. “Or, if not an orphan, his family must be bad enough that he doesn’t want to go back.”
David had heard the same story too many times in the last few days. He and Lionel had been working to reunite the rescued children with their families, but more often than not, the poor things either didn’t have any or didn’t want to go back.
A swell of determination filled David. “We’ll find a place for you, lad.” He rose, ruffling Jimmy’s already messy hair as he did. He had to prove that he was competent and capable of so much more than people assumed a boy from his background, a boy just like Jimmy, was capable of. “Mr. Siddel’s orphanage is for girls, but Sister Constance is willing to take in any boys.”
“And Lord Hillsboro has been pressing Mr. Siddel to start an orphanage for boys across the square,” Annie added.
“That’s a good idea.” David smiled and stepped away, heading to the next table and the next group of rescued children.
The child kidnapping ring had been broken, thanks to the efforts of actor Everett Jewel and Patrick Wrexham, not to mention the weeks of work David himself, and his business partner, Lionel Mercer, had put into tracking down the ringleaders. The work wasn’t over yet, though. Not only were there dozens of children to return to their families or to find homes for, the ringleaders—all three of them noblemen of high rank—had disappeared when the police raided Castleford Estate in Yorkshire. Enough evidence had been secured to arrest Lord Castleford, Lord Eastleigh, and Lord Chisolm for their crimes, but the men were still on the loose. Rage rolled through David’s gut every time he thought about how easily the nobs had gotten away. The same nobs who looked down on men like him simply because of where they were born. They wouldn’t get away entirely, though. Not if he had anything to say about it.
A chorus of light laughter broke the gloom of David’s thoughts, and he turned toward a table of slightly older girls at the other end of the room. Lionel sat among them, reading from a leather-bound book, a pair of spectacles balanced on his nose. His expression was as grave as a minister’s, but the girls all beamed at him as though he were a clown performing magic tricks on a stage.
A hitch formed in David’s chest as he watched Lionel. The man was dressed impeccably, as usual, in a dove grey suit with a lavender cravat. Not a hair on his head was out of place. His pale face was splashed with just enough color to make him seem lively. The way his lips moved as he read to the girls