Mistress of Scandal

by Sara Bennett

  “I have no intention of saddling myself with a wife. I only have to cast a look at the choices my sisters have made to strengthen my resolve never to wed.”

  “I didn’t know you felt like that,” Amy said, flustered.

  “Well, I do,” William retorted, his eyes flashing. “I won’t have you interfering in my life. I cannot abide interference.”

  “William, you’re behaving like a child. I didn’t mean to interfere. Even though you seem to think it your right to interfere with Helen and me.”

  “I am going to bed!”

  And he was gone, the door slamming behind him.

  “Mama,” Francesca breathed in amazement, “I have never seen him so angry. What did you say?”

  Amy looked shaken. “I don’t know.”

  “I thought he might throw us out into the street.”

  “I underestimated how much work it is going to take to restore ourselves to my brother’s good graces.”

  Francesca rose and slipped an arm about her. “Poor Mama. I don’t envy you.”

  “He is family, I’m afraid, and it is a terrible thing to fall out with one’s family. Speaking of which…Francesca, now don’t bite my head off like William, but you really should visit Aphrodite.”

  Francesca stiffened. “No,” she said. “I will enjoy seeing Aunt Helen again, despite Toby’s awfulness, but I do not wish to see Aphrodite. I have nothing to say to her, nor she to me.”

  Amy patted her hand. “Very well, Francesca, I won’t make you go. But it would be polite to send a note and give her the chance to call on you. She is your mother.”

  “No, she isn’t,” Francesca retorted. “You’re my mother. I don’t need two. I don’t want two. Now I think I will retire. Good night, Mama.”

  Francesca closed the door, relieved to escape further probing and questioning. If Vivianna and Marietta were here, they’d pester her to see Aphrodite, but she was determined to stand firm. From the moment they discovered Aphrodite was their true mother, Francesca refused to have any sort of relationship with her, and over the years nothing had changed.

  Soft footsteps sounded from the head of the staircase. Francesca looked up and saw Lil, cloaked and ready to go out. The maid obviously hadn’t realized she was there, because when she saw Francesca she froze, her expression full of guilt and dismay.

  “Lil? Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere,” Lil said quickly. “I…It’s nothing.”

  There was something odd about her. Beneath the neat, respectable Lil she knew so well, there was a person Francesca had never seen before.

  “What is the matter, Lil?” she said impulsively, climbing the stairs toward her.

  Lil’s blue eyes met her own, and to Francesca’s surprise they filled with tears. The maid looked away and bit her lip.

  “Lil,” Francesca said gently, “do tell me what’s the matter. You know I’ll help you if I can.”

  “Oh, miss,” Lil breathed. “I don’ know what’s wrong with me. Ever since we got here, I’ve been thinkin’ about things.”

  “Things?”

  “It’s like the past has risen up to swallow me whole, and I can’t escape it.”

  “You never speak about your past, Lil,” Francesca said gently. “I know you’re from London, of course I do, but other than that you’ve never confided in me.”

  “They ain’t…aren’t the sort of memories a respectable woman confides in anyone, miss.”

  “Come, Lil, you know me better than that!”

  Lil sighed. “I had a family once. I haven’t seen them in twenty years, miss. I don’t suppose they’re still living in the same street as they was. Perhaps they’re dead. So many folk who die in London are buried in paupers’ graves, without names.”

  “Oh Lil, is that where you’re going now? To find them?”

  Lil nodded, and her tears overflowed. “I—I know it’s stupid, miss. You don’t have to tell me. But ever since Jacob died, and I’ve been alone again, I’ve been thinking of my family and wondering…”

  “It must be difficult, being all alone in the world, Lil. But you know we think of you as part of our family.”

  Lil looked as if she was going to dissolve completely, but then she took a deep breath and gave a sniff, and pulled herself together. “I know that, miss,” she said huskily.

  “But you still need to go and look?”

  “I know it’s not logical, miss, but it’s like I hear their voices in me head, calling out to me.”

  “Emotions are not always logical,” Francesca murmured wryly. “Do you want me to come with you, Lil?”

  Hope shone in her eyes, mingled with a tremendous relief. “Oh, would you, miss? I don’t think I can do it on me own.”

  “Of course I’ll come. Just let me fetch my cloak.”

  “The places I’ll be going to aren’t very nice,” Lil warned anxiously.

  “Then no one will recognize me, will they? Not that I would care if they did.”

  “You don’t want to cause a scandal, miss,” Lil warned, with something of her old self.

  Francesca laughed a little wildly. If only Lil knew. Scandal seemed to be her middle name!

  Sebastian threaded his way through the crowd. Even this late at night, the streets in the poorer parts of London were awash with the homeless, the unemployed, the drunkards and the urchins, as well as the gents out for a good time and the thieves who preyed upon them.

  He’d been watching the house in Mallory Street Hal had told him about. Knowing that Jed might well have been warned, Sebastian exercised caution. Mrs. Slater’s bully boys might be waiting for him to show up so they could finish him off once and for all.

  Mallory Street was a busy thoroughfare, all the more so since many of London’s slums had been demolished to make way for train lines and new stations. The poor and the dispossessed had to go somewhere, and Mallory Street was better than some of the other areas. He proceeded along at a leisurely pace, dawdling outside the gin palaces and the drinking dens, ogling the tarts as if he were enjoying himself mightily. He’d dressed himself up as just another inebriated toff, slumming it, with his top hat askew, cane swinging erratically, and cigar planted firmly between his lips. He was playing a part.

  “You make a good toff.” Martin, his valet, had grinned at him as he set out.

  “Nothing good about this toff,” Sebastian had said.

  “Do you still want me to watch over Miss Greentree?”

  “Yes, Martin, I do.”

  “I thought maybe I could come along with you instead. Keep a lookout for suspicious characters.”

  “That’s what you’ll be doing in Wensted Square.”

  “Right you are, sir.”

  Martin could be a little overenthusiastic, but he was good in a crisis and Sebastian knew he was loyal and honest, at least where his master was concerned. But it was Martin’s unfailing cheerfulness and optimism that always impressed Sebastian the most, even while it drove him to distraction.

  He paused across the street from number 44, and while pretending to stagger drunkenly, adjusted his hat brim so that his features were all but hidden by the shadow it cast. All London streets were lit by gas lamps now, even Mallory Street, but many of the courtyards and alleyways were still as dark as ever. Unfortunately for Sebastian there was a lamp right next to where he was standing, opposite the house.

  A passerby bumped against him, and he felt the questing hand of a pickpocket. Quick as a flash he caught the nimble fingers, bending them back, saying gruffly, “Keep away from me if you know what’s good for you.”

  There was a grunt of pain, and the fingers fluttered in his grip.

  “It’s me, guv’ner. Dipper.”

  Sebastian turned to face his captive. A thin man who looked about fifty but was probably at least twenty years younger, his face lined and drawn from a lifetime of poverty and graft, his eyes sly and watchful from a lifetime of staying one step in front of the law.

  “Yer asked me to meet
yer, an’ ’ere I am.”

  “So I see. What have you to tell me?”

  Dipper was busy pulling thick woolen gloves onto his hands. “Got to look after ’em,” he explained, wriggling his fingers. “They’s me tools of trade, Mr. Thorne.”

  “Dipper…”

  “All right, I know, yer always in a rush. Here’s what I’ve got for yer, sir…”

  Sebastian listened carefully. Dipper had asked, but no one had heard of Mrs. Slater. The house across the street was taken by a man called Jed Holmes, and he paid for the use of other premises, too, dotted throughout London. He had a reputation for dealing in the darker areas of prostitution.”

  “Jed Holmes,” Sebastian said. “No mention of a woman’s involvement at all?”

  “Well.” Dipper gave him a sly look. “I did hear somethin’.”

  “Come on, Dipper. I don’t have all night.”

  “There’s a woman been seen off and on, but she’s a cripple. Gets carried about in a chair. Might be Jed’s mother, the way he treats her, awful polite.”

  “You don’t know who she is or where she lives?”

  “He keeps her hidden away, I reckon.”

  “Ask, will you? Try and find her. There’s money in it for you, Dipper.”

  The little man gave him a toothless smile, taking the coins Sebastian handed him. “Thank you muchly, guv’ner.”

  “And tell Polly I may have some work for her, too. She needs to look respectable, mind. A lady.”

  Dipper chortled. “I’ll tell her.”

  “And don’t get caught with your hand in anyone else’s pocket. I mightn’t bail you out of Newgate next time.”

  Dipper chuckled and vanished into the crowd.

  Sebastian leaned back against a brick wall, pretending to warm himself beside a smoky brazier. Across the street, the shabby house looked innocent enough. But God knew what went on behind that door…

  Just then the door opened, and a short, thickset man came into view. He was speaking to someone just out of sight, but by moving closer to the brazier, Sebastian was able to get a glimpse inside the house.

  A woman, soberly dressed, holding on to the hand of a child. The little girl was around nine or ten years of age. She, too, was neatly dressed, but the very fact that she was there, in such a place, boded ill for her. Sebastian felt his heart sink. He didn’t like this; he didn’t like it at all.

  Chapter 11

  Francesca huddled deeper into her cloak. Lil had told her that the trick to not seeming out of place was to pretend you were at home, but she didn’t feel at home. This part of London was beyond squalid, and the shadows had a sinister air to them that she’d never felt on the moor. And there before her was another of those horrible narrow gateways to another horrible dark courtyard where who knew what was waiting.

  But this was the place where Lil had been born and lived as a child. Francesca knew that Lil had worked hard to become what she was, but she hadn’t realized quite the depths from which she’d sprung. And now it seemed that Lil was being haunted by a past she’d tried to hide from for twenty years.

  Was there a warning in that for Francesca? Perhaps the cold, hard truth was that no one could escape her past.

  “The smell of this place,” Lil whispered. “I remember it. I feel like a prisoner, miss, struggling to breathe. I feel like I’m a child again, frightened and hungry. That awful gnawing hunger that used to eat away at my very bones, until I’d do anything to sate it. Thieving, lying, selling whatever I had to sell…”

  She glanced sideways at Francesca and bit her lip, as if worried she’d said too much. Francesca wrapped an arm about her and held her tight, not commenting, just listening.

  “Do you know the sad thing? This part of London used to be respectable. Toffs built these houses and lived here, but as time went on, they moved away and their big houses were carved up for cheap lodgings.”

  “Lil…”

  “When I left here I went as far away as I could, and I always promised meself I’d never come back.”

  Just then something scuttled across the ground in front of them and they both jumped and squealed. Francesca covered her mouth with her hand, staring at Lil with wide eyes, and saw the maid’s own lips quiver. She giggled.

  “Big and tough we are, miss, afraid of a mouse.”

  “It looked too big to be a mouse,” Francesca said with a shudder.

  “You should see the rats. Around here they use them to pull carts, they do.”

  They both dissolved into slightly hysterical laughter.

  “I never expected to find my family,” Lil admitted as they made their way back through crowded Mallory Street. “But I had to look, miss. I’m glad we came.”

  Garish light from a gin palace shone out as the doors opened on reeling patrons. Francesca tried not to stare.

  “Don’t give up hope, Lil.”

  “They probably wouldn’t want to know me anyway,” Lil muttered.

  “Whyever not!”

  “I was a poor wretch when Miss Vivianna found me, different to what I am now.” She flicked a glance at Francesca. “You won’t judge me, miss?”

  “Of course not. Who am I to judge you? You know my story, Lil, and it’s hardly a moral example to hold up to others.”

  “I was sold,” Lil said stiffly.

  Francesca was too overwhelmed to speak.

  “To one o’ them places that men go to.”

  “Oh Lil, that’s awful. That such a thing could happen in England!”

  “It happens all the time, miss. Even now. Look around you and you’ll see what I mean. Look, over there…”

  Francesca looked in the direction Lil was pointing. The scene before her didn’t really register, not at first. There were lots of people and noise, and then she saw the young girl, a child really, standing on the steps of a house. The door to the house was open and there was a man inside. The child stood, hands clasped before her, eyes downcast, while a soberly dressed woman bent to speak to her. She was small, probably nine years old, with her fair hair brushed out over her shoulders. She was wearing a pinafore over a cotton dress, and petticoats with lace edging that reached to mid-calf, and on her feet were ankle boots. Someone had dressed her up in her best clothes.

  Someone must love her, Francesca thought. Then why did she feel such a sense of dread?

  The man came out of the house and seemed to be saying something to the woman. He gestured at her, telling her to go. She backed away, down the stairs toward the street. The child went after her, but the man grabbed at her, to stop her. The little girl began to cry.

  “Oh dear Lord,” Francesca breathed.

  “She’s sold her,” Lil said woodenly, “that’s what she’s done.”

  Francesca saw then that the girl’s lips had been colored with rouge, and there were circles of it upon her cheeks, so that she looked like a little doll—or a caricature of the unfortunates who were shrieking outside the inn farther down the road.

  “She knows no one’s gonna help her.” Lil sounded outraged and sick. “No one cares.”

  The sober woman was gesturing, too, now. She looked frantic. She was shaking her head. Then she snatched something she’d tucked into the bosom of her dress and threw it at the man. Coins rattled on the stairs, rolling and tumbling. As if it was a signal, street urchins came running from all sides, a melee of desperate, shoving bodies.

  Francesca didn’t remember making any conscious decision, but suddenly she was moving forward, pushing through the crowd that had gathered from nowhere to watch the fun. The little girl was jammed against the wooden stair railing, and Francesca slipped in beside her, grasped her around the waist, and swung her up and over the railing and the backs of the squabbling urchins. The next moment she was running, the child clasped in her arms.

  Behind her someone began to shout. Francesca ran faster. The girl was clinging around her neck, her arms squeezing so tightly, her body pressed so close, that Francesca could feel her heart’s rapid b
eating.

  “They’ll catch us,” Lil gasped, and that was when Francesca realized the maid was running beside her.

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Where we going with her?” Lil cried, wild-eyed. “What’s your plan, miss?”

  “I don’t have a plan.”

  “Then Gawd help us!”

  The raised voices were a little distance behind them, mixed with the heavy pounding of boots. A woman was screaming, “Run, run!” Was it the child’s mother? Had she changed her mind?

  “They’re coming, they’re coming!” the child shrilled in Francesca’s ear, staring behind them. “Don’t let him have me, please.”

  “I won’t,” she panted, and tightened her grip on the girl, telling herself that only brute force would separate them.

  “Look out!” Lil shouted a warning. “He’s just behind you, miss!”

  Francesca had time for a quick look over her shoulder. Lil was right, he was there. She tried to run faster, but her skirts clung to her legs, trying to trip her, and there was a stitch in her side. With a sob of despair she realized it was already too late. Her pursuer was only inches away from capturing her and returning the child to her new owner.

  Wildly she twisted and turned, attempting to evade his outstretched hand, but he anticipated her movement. His fingers fastened painfully onto her shoulder.

  “Let me go!” she screamed, spinning around, prepared to fight.

  He was tall, big, and she was so frightened that it was a moment before his words registered. “Damn and blast you, Francesca, I’m on your side!”

  She knew that voice; it was his voice.

  “Sebastian?” she gasped. “What—”

  “Do you want to get away or not?” He grasped her arm and gave her a shake. She could see his eyes, black and gleaming, just as they’d been during their last adventure. It really was he.

  “I want to get away,” she said.

  “Then let’s run!” He set off, propelling her with him.

  Suddenly she wanted to laugh for joy, but she didn’t have any breath to spare. They rounded a corner and then another, and it was dark and smelly. To their left was one of those horrible narrow gateways, and when he said, “This way!” she followed, and instantly found herself in the stygian black of a courtyard. Tall buildings surrounded them, but they were either unoccupied or the occupants were asleep, because there wasn’t any light or sound. Apart, that is, from her breath rasping in her throat and her heart pounding in her ears.