Chapter Three
That afternoon Arabella took her maid, Polly, her sketchbook and pencils, and the stolen ruby earrings to Kensington Gardens. “Come back in three hours,” she told the coachman.
She strolled with Polly for ten minutes and then exited the gardens. The carriage, with the Westwick coat of arms glinting within its widow’s lozenge, was nowhere in sight.
Polly hailed a hackney coach. “Rosemary Lane,” she told the jarvey as they climbed inside.
Rosemary Lane was only a few miles from Kensington Gardens, but the slums of Whitechapel were as far from the grand squares of Mayfair as heaven was from hell. Arabella climbed down from the hackney and stepped over an open gutter, while Polly negotiated with the reluctant jarvey to return for them in an hour.
Their destination was just o
