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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Dilly Court 2018
Cover photographs: Front © Gordon Crabb/Alison Eldred (Girl); Background © Shutterstock (ships/harbour)
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Dilly Court asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008199609
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008199616
Version: 2017-12-06
Contents
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Limehouse Hole, London, 1854
Essie Chapman pulled hard on the sculls as she rowed her father’s boat towards Duke Shore Dock. It was dark and the lantern on the stern of the small, clinker-built craft bobbed up and down, shedding its light on the turbulent waters of the River Thames. Essie fought against the tide and the treacherous undercurrents, but she was cold, wet and close to exhaustion. Her mysterious passenger had not spoken a word since she had collected him from the foreign vessel moored downriver. The task would normally have fallen to her father, Jacob, but he was laid up, having slipped on the watermen’s steps the previous evening. He had fallen badly and had been carried home to White’s Rents on an old door, the only form of stretcher available to the wharfinger’s men at the time. He had lain on the sofa like a dead man for twenty-four hours and when he awakened he could barely move a muscle.
‘You’ll have to do my next job for me, Essie, love. It’s a matter of life and death.’
His words echoed in her mind as she battled against the elements. By day Jacob’s small craft scurried up and down the river doing errands considered too small by the lightermen and watermen, but by night things were different. Sometimes it was the odd barrel or two of brandy that had to be sneaked