The Button Box: Gripping historical romance from the Sunday Times Bestseller
The new heartwarming novel from Sunday Times bestselling author, Dilly Court.Clara held onto the precious button, glimmering like a jewel in the dark alleyways of London’s notorious Seven Dials. She needed to save her family… but who was going to save her?There was a time when the Carter sisters’ father was their hero. Now he’s a drunk who’s gambled away everything they had and put them all in peril. It's on Clara's shoulders to save the four sisters from destitution. Clutching her precious button box, the only thing of value they have left, Clara dreams of starting a shop that could put a roof over their heads and keep them safe…But in debt to the terrifying Patches Braggs, leader of one of the East End's roughest gangs, Clara is in fear for her life. When a mysterious benefactor seems to offer an escape, Clara realizes too late that it comes at a terrible price…Cheated, abandoned and alone – can Clara save her family and hold onto her dreams?
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Dilly Court 2017
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photographs: Portrait © Gordon Crabb/Alison Eldred, Background © Alamy
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: 9780008137410
Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008137427
Version: 2018-01-18
For Xavier James Evans with love.
Table of Contents
Drury Lane, London 1872
It all started with a single button. Clara Carter smiled to herself as she locked the door of Miss Silver’s drapery shop in Drury Lane, and set off for home. That button was still her pride and joy, secreted away amongst the rest of her collection in the wooden button box that her grandfather had made for her tenth birthday. Grandfather Carter had understood her fascination for small things, beautifully crafted, and the button that had fired her imagination had all those qualities. She had spotted it lying in the snow outside St Mary le Strand church one Christmas Eve. Sparkling like the evening star, the whorls of tiny French paste stones imitated diamonds to perfection. Nine-year-old Clara had snatched it up and hidden it inside her fur muff, hoping that no one had seen. Surely something so lovely must be valuable and the person whose clothing it had adorned would be searching for it. Her conscience had bothered her during Midnight Mass, but not enough to make her give up her prize. At home, in the comfort of her bedroom at the top of the four-storey house in Wych Street, Clara had hidden the button beneath the feather mattress, away from the prying eyes of her younger sisters, Lizzie, Betsy and Jane.
That was ten years ago, and since then things had changed drastically for the Carter family. Clara wrapped her cloak around her as an icy blast of wind from the north brought the first flakes of snow floating down from an ink-black sky. It was dark now and the lamplighter was finishing his rounds, leaving islands of yellow light in his wake like a good fairy illuminating a wicked world – Clara had never quite grown out of her romantic childhood fantasies. Her button collection had filled Grandpa’s box long ago: each one held a special memory for her and they were all precious. Now she was forced to work in the draper’s shop out of necessity, but it was no hardship. The long hours and poor pay were compensated for by the pleasure she derived from handling the merchandise. The rainbow colours of the ribbons and the feel of silks and satins as she measured out lengths of fabric were a sensual delight. One day she would own such a shop, but it would not be a tiny, one-room establishment like Miss Silver’s. Clara had ambition, fired by a visit to Peter Robinson’s in Oxford Street, and, in the not-too-distant future, she was certain that the busy thoroughfare would be filled with large department stores and one of them would belong to her.
She quickened her pace as she headed for Wych Street. Despite the comforting glow from the gaslights, she was well aware that the darkness of the underworld lurked in the narrow alleyways and courts of Seven Dials and the area around Clare Market: St Giles Rookery to the north was a place to be avoided even in the daytime. She hurried homeward to the house her family had once owned, but due to her father’s addiction to the gaming tables and the enforced sale of the property, they now occupied two rooms on the ground floor, paying an exorbitant rent for the privilege of living in damp, draughty accommodation.
