No Place for a Dame by Connie Brockway Page A

across from him gauged Mr. Quinn to be a rustic scholar. The scholar part she based on several observations: the pair of glasses perched on his nose, hands thathad certainly never seen manual labor, and the set of books bound with a leather strap he carried. Rustic she judged from his hat, a low-crowned and wide-brimmed felt one fashioned in the country style that shadowed his features, and from his coat which, though made of good, sturdy material, was ill cut and swiftly made. The matron had sewed enough clothing herself to be a fair judge.
    Possibly he was a tutor on his way to his first employer, she thought. For his sake she hoped not. Boys could be so cruel. Especially to someone… different. Like this young man. For though his arms and legs were spindly, his torso had a pronounced spherical contour that began beneath his chin and ended at the tops of his legs, the effect being as if a melon had sprouted limbs.
    A pity, she thought, for he might have been a handsome enough lad otherwise. He had even features and dark eyes from what she could see behind the glasses—though an unfortunate single heavy brow marched straight over the bridge of his nose—and a clean, clipped jawline. Curious creature. He’d spent the entire trip mute as a mummer and for the past half hour had covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, his eyes watering.
    She sympathized. She remembered her first visit to London and her own reaction to its potent reek. “You never been to London afore, have you, Mr. Quinn?” she said.
    “No, ma’am.” He had a soft, raspy voice as if his throat had been injured at some point in time. Perhaps in his childhood. If he’d been invalided as a boy, he would not have the opportunity to pursue those activities that turned baby fat to muscle. It would also account for his lack of manners. He hadn’t even offered her his seat when she’d climbed inside and had even neglected to doff his hat. Mothers always tended to overindulge a sickly child.
    “I been,” she disclosed with the serene satisfaction of the well traveled. “Many a time and always for the same reason, that being tending my brother’s nippers whilst his wife produces another. You get used to the stench and the air being so thick. Be folks expecting you?”
    He nodded. She didn’t think him surly, but rather painfully shy and all her maternal instincts came flying to the fore at the thought of this babe lost in the Sodom and Gomorrah that was London. The stagecoach rocked to a halt.
    “You have a job waiting for you then, Mr. Quinn?”
    He shook his head. “No. That is, not exactly.”
    So, he’d come hoping for a particular job but not yet having secured it. She studied him pityingly. She doubted he’d get it unless he was the only applicant. He hadn’t much to recommend him.
    One of the postboys clambered down from his perch and yanked open the door, revealing the Gloucester Coffee House’s well-tended courtyard.
    “Well, good luck to you, lad,” she said as she accepted the postboy’s hand and climbed down out of the carriage.
    “You’ll need it,” she muttered and then her brother and at least a half dozen of her young nieces and nephews swarmed around her, shouting and laughing, and she forgot all about the unfortunately shaped Mr. Quinn.

    How in the name of heaven did people live here?
    Avery, last to climb down out of the carriage, shivered violently and stood in the courtyard, transfixed. Even though it was just past two o’clock in the afternoon, it was already dark. Well, not dark precisely, but dim, muted, the air coalescing into a thin, freezing mist, the pools of water standing in the courtyard rimed with ice. She pulled her coat closer around her throat and tipped her head back to stare in horrified fascination at the patch of sky revealed overhead. It was dingy and low, the indistinct disc of the sun sunk into it like a tarnished coin at the bottom of a dish of milky tea. It would be impossible to see the