Rough Justice Read Online Free Page B

a good talking-to, teach them some firm lessons about keeping themselves to themselves. She would make sure she instructed them in how to avoid any kind of unpleasantness with men, and so stop them breeding more of their type. It was the only answer. If she could have caught them early enough, that was what she would have done – drilled into them the unquestionable necessity of keeping themselves pure and, as she liked to think of it, unopened.
    Just as she herself had done.
    Although the child weighed barely more than a basket of vegetables, Clara puffed from the effort of lifting the still silent Nell into the bath. From the expression on the little girl’s face, it was probably the first time she had ever been immersed in hot water. She looked terrified.
    ‘I’m Matron, Matron Sully.’ Clara filled an enamel jug full of bathwater, ready to pour over the child’s hair. ‘Now, are you going to tell me your name? You’ll be living here with us now, and I have to know what to call you. The,’ she hesitated over the next word, ‘
lady
who brought you here said you were called Nell. Is that correct?’
    Nell said nothing; she just nodded, kept her eyes wide open and her mouth tightly closed.
    ‘Is your tongue sore? Or your teeth?’
    The matron was beginning to feel that she might come to regret accepting the child into the home, because it looked as if she might have some sort of deformity of the mouth, and that wouldn’t go down well with the charitable ladies, they liked their orphans to be pretty and presentable. It certainly wouldn’t be unusual for an unwanted child to have a defect. But she had to look on the bright side, maybe she hadn’t learned to speak yet. As she was so scrawny, it was difficult to judge just how old she was. She could be anything from perhaps as young as eighteen months to as much as four years old.
    Clara pulled an elbow-length gauntlet onto herhand and up her bulging forearm. ‘Let’s have a look in there, shall we?’
    She poked a thick rubber-clad finger at the child’s mouth.
    Nell shook her head.
    Clara wasn’t impressed. She was showing the child kindness and concern and how was she being repaid? With blatant disobedience, that’s how.
    She shoved her glasses up to the bridge of her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Come on, open up you little madam. Let me see if there’s anything nasty or catching in there, or I’ll have to tan your hide for you.’
    The matron had no actual interest in anything the child might have to say for herself, or even if she had the ability to speak, but she had to exert her authority over her. She had seen children – especially the pretty ones – probably even younger than Nell, running rings around less disciplined members of staff.
    Following a surprisingly difficult struggle, Clara got her finger into Nell’s mouth, but, astonished, she immediately pulled it out again.
    ‘Did you try to bite me?’
    Clara pulled off the glove; on her finger was a single ruby bead of blood. She frowned. It was like a pinprick.
    ‘Show me, child. What have you got in there?’
    The matron was going to get to the bottom of this. With her determination sharpened by anger, she forced open Nell’s mouth.
    Clara let out a little laugh of surprise as she hooked out a gold and pearl brooch fashioned in the shape of a capital N.
    ‘So that’s why you’ve had nothing to say for yourself. You were hiding this.’ Clara Sully shook her head. ‘So, you’re a little thief as well as being someone’s unwanted brat then, are you? I’ll never cease to be amazed by the ways of you gutter-prowlers from the slums.’
    Nell struggled to get to her feet in the slippery bath. ‘Mine,’ she pleaded. ‘Mine. Mummy said.’
    ‘Mummy?’ The matron’s piggy eyes narrowed until they were little more than slits. Surely that Jenkins woman was too old to be her mother, and anyway it was hardly likely that her sort would have something as fine as a pearl brooch – or