Free The Penny Heart by Martine Bailey

to clear a sun-burned complexion and give a spotless white tint, for which purpose nothing is better, or indeed more innocent and safe.
     
A most superior mixture, Mrs Quinn of the Theatre Royal
     
     

 
     
     
    It was drizzling when they reached the Thames. Mary stood at the rail, letting the sooty rain patter across her face, blessing the grey sky and the shiny quay. Though it was afternoon, it felt to her as though she viewed the world through the bottom of a brandy bottle, she had grown so used to the sun, a golden ball in a hot blue sky. Yet even under cloud the port was a lively scene; sailors scurried about their ships, beggars worked the crowd, a gaggle of mudlarks scavenged along the shoreline. It was all quite astonishing after months of flat sea and sky.
    As for the parson, he was still laid low, waiting in his cabin to be carried to a hospital.
    She fingered the coins in her pocket. The crew had made a collection for the orphaned missionary’s daughter. She would have liked more than fifteen bob for that spanking tale of a native kidnap, so maybe some of the crew hadn’t been taken in after all. But none of that mattered now. She had the means to find Charlie and plan the next throw in the game.
    Once off the ship, she felt like a spinning top, rocking on the hard ground. Alone, she made her way up a promising alley, past smoking fires and whining dogs. Hawkers crying their wares clashed with ballad singers and the thumping hammers and creak of heavy wheels. It came back to her, that this was how it was in a noisy crowd, with all the folk distracted you could become anyone you fancied. Patting her pocket, she remembered Flora’s brooch and, after poking free the reverend’s picture, she cajoled another ten bob from a pawnbroker. Pausing to warm her hands at a brazier, she looked quickly over her shoulder, then dropped the tiny portrait into the fire. It burned blue for a moment and then shrivelled blackly into smoke. Fare thee well, Reverend Pilling. And Flora Jean Pilling, and the whole preachifying lot of you.
    On reaching the main street, the crowded mass of it all – people, animals, carriages – was like a hard slap in the face. London was not her territory, and to her eyes it had grown tenfold since she’d last seen it from a prison cart. Exhausted, she stumbled onto the cheapest stage coach just before nightfall, huddling into a corner and settling behind a mask of sleep to avoid her fellow travellers, stinking of wet wool. She dozed there for a night and a day, stirring as the horses were changed, blinking at sudden blazes of light, tossed by jolts, and startled by disembodied yells. There was little conversation, for everyone stood on their rank. England again, she thought sourly, she had forgotten all that codswallop of bowing and curtseying, and kiss my arse.
     
    *
     
    As the coach slowed at Rugby she touched the coins in her skirt, but could not bear to part with what was left of the lovely chink. Catching the eye of a pock-faced man with a gold watch, she made a performance of stretching herself awake so as best to show her bosom. Dismounting, she pretended to stumble and grasped his arm, leaning against him as he fussed over her. Inside the inn, she spun him a yarn of a dying sister and a wicked mistress who owed her a year’s wages. Her reward was a supper of hot tea and salty, slippery butter on white bread. At supper time, he insisted on treating her to hot bacon collops. The smoky, sweet pork was so good she found it hard to listen to Mr Reuben Weetch’s ramblings – he had a dull wife and some unfathomable trade up Preston way. Dreamily, she let him stroke her hand in a corner of the parlour, wondering if he would stretch to currant buns.
    Weetch at least reassured her of her power to pull in a gentleman, for the only mirror aboard the ship had reflected back a sun-blistered stranger, her hair a mixture of copper and straw. How had her bonny flame-haired self turned into