Fair Cyprians of London Boxset

by Beverley Oakley

  Lord Delmore worried his lip as he sent a dark look towards his younger friend. “When I look back on my life, I have far more regrets about the things I didn’t do than those I did. Now, it’s true that I don’t know what these letters contain. Nor would it appear, does the, er, fair Cyprian who made the journey to find Miss Montague. She was simply worried enough by the suggestion of damage Lord Harkom hinted they could do to you, that she felt the need to travel a great distance to alert Miss Montague.”

  “I’m sure there’s nothing further about my private life that can be disseminated to the public that would further embarrass me or discredit me,” Crispin ground out.

  His painting career lay in tatters. His personal standing had taken a very great hit. Thank God, he’d been able to remove himself from London almost immediately afterwards while his father had worked hard to pass it off as less than it was.

  Certainly, less than it was to Crispin. Yes, Lord Maxwell’s boy had been caught up in a vile scam that was to have won him a bride from the ranks of the impure through means of a bogus art competition.

  After the shock and outrage, the sniggers had followed. Crispin had left the country at this point.

  Now he’d returned to commiserations and bolstering affirmations that he’d had a lucky escape. He’d been clever enough to have seen through the young lady in time.

  So, Crispin’s reputation was intact, and he’d recovered his social standing.

  But the state of his heart and his sense of trust would never recover.

  “But what if it’s not about your private life, Crispin? What if it’s more than that? Yes, I know that a year on you still are wounded by what you see as Miss Montague’s betrayal. Nevertheless, she was in love with you.”

  “Everything about her was a lie.”

  “Except, as I’ve just said, her love for you, Crispin.” Lord Delmore’s tone was patient. Crispin eyed him suspiciously, staring into the fireplace as he said darkly, “You sound like my father might have sounded if he’d ever chosen persuasion before threats. You are not my father, you know.”

  “But I’m an older man with more experience of matters like these. I have two grown-up sons and a daughter, all of whom are, in fact, older than you. Forgive me if you think I’m patronising you. That certainly was not my intention. But I do sense something sinister at play. I’m not suggesting for a moment that you go in search of Miss Montague. But do, I urge you, find her friend and hear what she has to say. I believe that trouble is afoot. Lord Harkom has an axe to grind. And we both know he’s no friend of yours or your father’s.”

  Chapter 26

  The busyness of the small newspaper office and the professional air of the two young women bent over their desks, writing, took Faith by surprise after she’d been led up two flights of stairs to this unconventional scene in the attic above a barrister’s premises.

  “Can I help you, miss?” The younger woman, who was sitting at a large wooden desk beneath the window, raised her head to look enquiringly at Faith. Clearly, she did not recognise Faith as she halted her work, her pen poised above the paper.

  “You’re a proper lady journalist, now, Miss Eaves? Isn’t that what they call you?” Faith looked at the various newspapers and magazines that were strewn about the tabletops and which lined the walls, some framed. “You achieved your dreams, after all.” She hesitated as her eye was caught by the glaring front page of an issue published on August 15th, 1878. She didn’t need to go any further to confirm the date, for the headline alone clearly depicted Faith’s spectacular fall from grace. Even from a distance, the grainy photograph of Lord Harkom holding Faith in a waltz hold, surrounded by a group of women who were clearly not ladies, made Faith shiver with revulsion. “You’ve achieved your life’s ambition.”

  Two furrows appeared between Miss Eaves’s eyes, but as her gaze followed Faith’s to the newspaper before returning to Faith, it seemed she finally reconciled the demure governess before her with the woman whose life she’d turned upside down.

  Miss Eaves squared her shoulders.

  “Miss Montague, why did you not say you were coming?” She glanced at the older woman who was still working but who was clearly also listening, and said, “Mamie, please would you leave us alone for a few minutes.”

  When Mamie had left the room, Miss Eaves invited Faith to sit, and when Faith said she didn’t have long and would rather stand, Miss Eaves stood too and regarded her, still frowning, from the other side of the room.

  Faith straightened. “I was hardly assured of a warm welcome in view of what you’d said about me in the past, so I thought the element of surprise might play in my favour.” She moved to the window embrasure and found that she was suddenly far more nervous than she’d expected to be. She fiddled with the curtain tassel but kept her eyes on Miss Eaves, who straightened and said calmly but with a note of defensiveness, “It’s the job of the journalist to tell the truth. The facts. I’m sorry if my article revealed you for what you are, or were, Miss Montague. I was seeking the truth and I laid it out for the public, as they deserved. It was nothing personal.”

  “But for me, it was deeply personal, Miss Eaves. For me, it was the ruin of my life.” She swallowed, finding this even harder with every word, which was strange when she’d spent so many of the last months existing in a state of semiconsciousness; unable to properly feel anything, really. “You fed my dreams and ambitions into the furnace to feed your own.”

  “Why, Miss Montague, what a lovely way you have with words. Surely, you are in the wrong calling.” She glanced pointedly at Faith’s demure clothing and said, “Or have you seen the error of your ways and turned to another means of earning your living.”

  This was not going the way Faith had hoped it would. Miss Eaves, for all her emancipation, knew nothing of the desperate choices a woman had to make, daily, when she had no resources.

  “You are very fierce in your determination to forge your own way in the world, Miss Eaves. I see you have your own office. And a secretary, even.” She nodded, approvingly. “You must be paid well for your writing to manage the rent and wages since I know your uncle was very much against his niece working.”

  Miss Eaves pushed back a lock of chestnut-brown hair and her pert nose twitched. “I do work hard, Miss Montague. And the provision of a bit of space in a building that my uncle has no use for accounts for very little, and is only temporary until such time as I can properly establish myself and be completely independent.”

  Faith nodded. “That is generous of your uncle to give you such patronage. You must have won him around with the excellent reporting you did on last year’s art prize. I daresay, after your hard work at the office—in space supplied by your uncle—that you go home to sleep in a bed and eat food that is supplied purely through your own endeavours. Or, is your food and lodgings supplemented too?” Faith couldn’t seem to stop fiddling with the curtain tassel, but she glanced up to see Miss Eaves’s reaction as she added, “Well, at least, only until such time as you make sufficient earnings through your writing to completely support yourself.”

  Miss Eaves flushed, but she kept her composure. “I resent the criticism, Miss Montague, though I understand your feelings at having been exposed for living a lie. I am a fierce advocate for furthering the opportunities of the fairer sex, but women will only ever be taken seriously, especially as newspaper reporters, if we are not afraid to speak the truth, however unpalatable.”

  Faith closed her eyes. “I don’t disagree with you. But I cannot begin to explain the risk you run in ruining reputations, not least your own, if the truth as you see it, is only the partial truth.”

  Miss Eaves leaned against the table, and her fingers drummed an agitated tattoo. “Photographs don’t lie. There was the truth, Miss Montague, and I told it. I’m sorry if it destroyed your marital chances, but the whole of society can breathe a sigh of relief that you did not insinuate yourself into their ranks once you were shown to be—”

  “To be…
what, Miss Eaves? The mistress of Lord Harkom, because that’s what was suggested by the photograph? To be a prostitute, because the camera showed me standing in a room surrounded by women who certainly weren’t dressed like ladies and so that was the assumption?” Faith shook her head. “That photograph was taken minutes before Lord Harkom attacked me, wanting what I refused to give since I had never traded my body for money or anything else—and I never have or will, which is why I work as a governess.” She indicated her clothing.

  “Please, Miss Montague; it is very easy to don a garment and pretend to be what you are not.”

  “It is, Miss Eaves. And that is what I did for three years as I was groomed to entice Mr Westaway to fall in love with me once I became his muse for the art prize which a wealthy woman—also American—established in order to wreak her own warped vengeance. I lived at Madame Chambon’s, but I was not one of her girls. And I have never traded my body for money or material gain. Not with Lord Harkom or anyone else.”

  “This is sounding more and more like a Penny Dreadful novel, Miss Montague.” Miss Eaves swatted at a fly and began to pace. “You can’t expect me to believe a word of what you say.”

  “Of course, because words can twist the truth, yet photographs can’t? That photograph was staged. So much of what you inferred was untrue.”

  “My inferences were endorsed and expanded by someone who knew very well the lie you lived.”

  “Indeed? And who was that? A woman who was jealous? A man whom I’d refused? Whoever it was, was certainly no friend of mine, though I might begin to guess.”

  “Lady Vernon came to see me. Yes, the dowager duchess. She’d discovered your true identity, and was incensed that someone like you should become the darling of the town when she knew what you really were.”

  “And had done since the moment she deposited me at Madame Chambon’s three years before, and on every occasion she escorted me to my tutor in Bethnal Green, or to take tea at the Claridges Hotel with Mrs Gedge who established the art prize with just this outcome in mind. Yes, the millionaire American woman who wanted to kill the joy in Mr Westaway, the man whom she held responsible for her daughter’s suicide, but she wanted to destroy me in the process because she couldn’t bear that I was alive and beautiful, while her daughter was cold in the ground. An eager, gullible female reporter played very nicely into her hands.”

  Miss Eaves raised her chin and looked squarely at Faith. “I’m sorry I’m unable to offer you tea, Miss Montague.”

  “No matter, since I would not have accepted.” She sent a pointed look at the newspaper in its frame upon the wall that had dissected her life as its front-page story. “It’s so easy to believe that what one sees constitutes the truth. So much more so when you choose to believe that higher rank constitutes a greater propensity for delivering the truth. I’m afraid I have to go now.” She ran her hands down the sides of her serviceable gown. “It’s time for me to change into something more appropriate for this evening.”

  “Well, I’m glad you still have such evenings to look forward to then, Miss Montague, though I daresay I won’t be seeing you at Lady Ridgeway’s Masked Ball tonight. You had quite convinced me that I was the architect of the ruin of your entire life.” She sniffed.

  Faith faced her proudly. “I would never lay that at anyone’s door, Miss Eaves. And nor do I look forward to this evening in the slightest. I simply hope that the risk I take will advance the safety of those nearest and dearest to me.” She narrowed her eyes. “Unlike you, I like to do a little more research to ensure that the facts disseminated to the world are based entirely on truth.”

  Chapter 27

  The looking glass was very complimentary. Or perhaps it was the dim lighting. Or the pale pink ruffled gown that clung to Faith’s curves, accentuating her slim hips, flat belly, and generous breasts. The fashions of the day could be most suggestive, and a young lady who wore them as well as Faith did, was sure to come in for a great deal of generous praise.

  Which was why it was important that Faith make her exit from Madame Chambon’s without having been noticed.

  She’d dressed in Charity’s room, helped by her friend who’d acted as lady’s maid, pulling in her corset until Faith could barely breathe. Charity was slighter than she was, and Faith had not worn fashionable, constricting corsets for a year.

  When her coiffure was complete, a riot of curls rippling down her back, secured by a braid that held her fringe back, and a pair of sapphire earrings dangling beneath her ears, Charity’s gasp of admiration was the first step needed to bolster the confidence that was fast being eroded by fear.

  She’d always feared Lord Harkom. Right from the moment she’d noticed the wild gleam in his eyes when drinking with the other girls when she was a fifteen-year-old and made to peek from the top of the stairs to observe how the ladies used their attractions to lure a man into spending more. There was not a trick Madame Chambon missed and even though the gentlemen complained, they still tipped handsomely for their drinks as a prelude to the other pleasures they’d come to enjoy.

  “I’m sorry you had to entertain Lord Harkom,” Faith said, turning in a slow circle to ensure she’d not missed anything that could be improved upon. How different from the usual routine of dressing merely in order to bring a little learning to two little boys at the Heathcotes.

  “There’s far worse than him, but he isn’t a…generous lover.” Charity shrugged. “Still, he didn’t hurt me as he’s hurt some of the other girls. Maybe he wasn’t as drunk—though he was drunk enough to be surprisingly free with his speech. Oh Faith, I hope I haven’t done wrong in telling you something which now has the potential to see you in grave danger. I know I can’t talk you out of this, but you will be careful, won’t you? Don’t let him…” Her words trailed off as if she didn’t know what to say, ending finally, “You’ve never been one of us. I can’t bear to think of you being used like a common—”

  “Don’t say it!” Faith turned upon her almost angrily. “You do what you have to do to save yourself from starving in the gutter. What man wouldn’t do the same if the roles were reversed and women ruled the world?” Putting a hand to her forehead, she willed herself to be calm. She needed a clear head, and her corset was decidedly constricting when it came to growing emotional.

  Drawing back her shoulders, she said quietly, “I will be careful. I have planned this well. I will never give myself to a man I do not love, and I would rather die than allow Lord Harkom to take that which I would only willingly give.” She tapped the pendant around her neck. Upon it hung a tiny silver vial, hollowed out with a tiny stopper. “When Lord Harkom invites me to drink champagne, half the contents in this will see him lose consciousness, while I help myself to the information I’m sure he can’t help boasting about.”

  “But Faith, that is far too dangerous! If he catches you, he’ll punish you dreadfully!” Charity looked like she was going to cry. “He’ll torture you! He did that to Anastasia, and it took her three weeks before her face was healed. Imagine what he’ll do to you!”

  Coldly, Faith said, “I won’t let him. The entire contents of this vial are enough to kill someone my size. I’m prepared to take my chances, Charity.” She smiled suddenly. “But I won’t fail. I won’t let Lord Harkom be the cause of my destruction for a second time.”

  * * *

  She did not feel so bold by the time she was admitted to Mistress Kate’s dancing rooms later that evening. Faith had it on good authority that Lord Harkom was going to be in attendance, having spoken to the ageing courtesan earlier in the afternoon to ensure she’d be received.

  Once she’d made it clear that she was not here to poach any of Mistress Kate’s long-term, favoured Cyprians, there’d been no opposition.

  “Lord Harkom, is it? You’re welcome to him,” Mistress Kate had said with a curl of her lip. “I should pay you for the service you’ll be rendering me this evening if you take him off my hands.”

  Her words did nothing to increas
e Faith’s enthusiasm in her venture, though it did firm her resolve. Lord Harkom was a man who’d traded with impunity on his lineage for far too long. The fact that Faith intended ruining his reputation in a professional rather than private capacity gave her far greater satisfaction.

  Now, Faith arranged herself on a chaise longue beneath a window in one of the smaller reception rooms, with the agreement that Mistress Kate would ensure that Lord Harkom came upon her at some stage during the evening.

  A chance meeting would be far more effective to her plan than otherwise.

  Of course, she’d also be vulnerable to other visitors, but she’d have to navigate those complications as they arose.

  The room was thick was the scent of perfume and powder, and overwarm from the fire and the many people who occupied it. Faith gazed around her and wondered at the fact that Mistress Kate’s had remained so popular for so long. It had been established by Kate in her youth, but even as she’d aged, she’d retained the loyalty of the many gentlemen she’d pleased during her career while ensuring an eager turnover of girls.

  No, not eager. What girl would wish for a life so uncertain?

  Nervously, Faith ran her finger around her low neckline. Lord, but it was difficult to play a role so alien to her natural inclination, but she had no choice if she were to achieve anything of value in her short, worthless life.

  The room was growing even warmer as it filled with more perfumed, heated bodies. Behind her fan, Faith recognised several regulars from Madame Chambon’s. But they were men she’d only seen from afar. Other than the night she’d been photographed, she’d never been on display. And surely a grainy photograph in a newspaper, and a painting that had briefly titillated society a year ago, would not reveal her tonight.