Without looking at Lady Millhouse, Sally nodded, thus following Daisy as if a siren up Bow Street.
At the last minute, her ladyship called out, “Shall we wait here for you?”
With false gaiety, Sally answered that she would find her way back herself. St. Giles, after all, was within yowling distance of where they stood.
“Tell ’em I got me a carriage,” Daisy whispered. “I don’t wanna be arrested for child-stealin’.”
Sally stifled the urge to argue that she was hardly a child and called back to the Millhouses, saying, “The lady’s my friend and she has a carriage.”
No further proof of gentility was needed than that one kept a carriage. (They were glad to hear from Sally that the undersized person, whom she claimed as her friend, was, indeed, a woman.) Hence, they quit their efforts to keep possession of their young friend. As they watched her go, however, their gazes were fondly apprehensive. Daisy’s expression was a bit perplexed too. She glanced at Sally and frowned uncomprehendingly.
She said, “I wouldn’t have taken ten to one that yer’d turned into a lady.”
Sally retorted, “Yer came up a bit in station yerself.”
Daisy snorted, “We don’t got time fer catchin’ up on each other’s achievements. Seein’s yer here, I got to tell you that yer got trouble.”
“Me?” Sally asked incredulously.
Knowing Daisy was not one to exaggerate, Sally awaited her revelations—but no privacy to speak was at hand.
Indeed, the Millhouses were not the only stares Daisy drew. The opera-goers were dispersing, but rascals and round-heels had just begun their evenings and cast their eyes about for easy prey. Daisy grabbed Sally and made haste to her coach. Sally was well-impressed. It was a fine carriage (two seats, velvet upholstery) and it came with an impeccably-dressed footman, who hastily lowered the steps. Once ensconced and on their way, Daisy was ready to speak openly. It was no surprise that Sally knew what she would say before she uttered the name.
“Wickham.”
Still, Sally protested the name, “No.”
“Yes!” said Daisy.
“No!” Sally insisted, not wanting to believe that he had actually survived.
“Yes,” Daisy announced with finality, thus ending the verbal impasse.
Sally finally admitted the obvious, “He didn’t die. That rat.”
“Nay,” claimed Daisy. “He’s alive and walkin’ the streets with hair white as Lucifer’s and sportin’ a bad limp. He’s called by another name but it’s him fer certain. He’s back to his old tricks too!”
Sally Frances Arbuthnot mused but a moment, before opining, “I guess I shouldn’t have used that pea-shooter. A bigger gun would’a done a better job. Next time, I’ll know. If you want to kill a snake, you chop of its head.”
Turning to Daisy, she bid, “Is he after us?”
“Not that I know of, but you know he won’t leave it. He’s gettin’ bolder by the day.”
“You’da thought he’d take off across the waters—what with him wanted for murder and all. Where’d yer see him?” asked Sally.
Daisy said, “I built me a four-storey house up the way, but business took me to an alehouse called the Fortune of War—it’s a real bucket of blood. Recent years have seen the place taking an even worse turn. Now it’s used as a meeting place for resurrectionists.”
Sally leapt to her own conclusion, “A grave-robber? Him? A brothel bully suits his scruples, but not his mettle.”
Daisy replied, “I heard he was pimpin’ women, so it wasn’t no far jump to brokerin’ bodies. He don’t dirty his hands though. He paid others for that and he worked out the sale. Sold dead folks teeth too, he did.”
Although she should not have been, Sally was confounded.
“Ain’t he ‘fraid of being seen, him being a known murderer? Aren’t you afraid he’d see you? You ain’t exactly easy to miss....”
“He’s the one that needs to be scared,” Daisy said defiantly.
“You ain’t exactly hard to recognise,” insisted Sally.
“So yer said.”
Sally altered the subject, “I thought you took yer leave of town.”
Daisy replied, “Town suits me better now I got some money.”
That was an easy conclusion. Something else came to Sally.
“When I went to pay respects to my grannun’s grave, it was watchers I saw.”
Daisy told her, “Now that our Wickham’s agitatin’ rioters and the like, he’s running with some foul types.”
“Would you expect otherwise?” interrupted Sally.
“You better take care,” advised Daisy. “He’d know me certain as sin, but he may recall you too.”
Sally drew herself up proudly and, sniffing as if she was but one from a baronetcy, she replied, “I can take care of myself.”
Daisy paid that cheek no mind. She laughed mirthlessly at Wickham’s impertinence.
“Can you believe it—he calls himself Alistair Reed Thomas now,” Daisy said. “He calls himself after my dead brother. What bollocks!”
Another worry crossed Sally’s mind.
She said, “We best advise Mr. Darcy of it.”
“He’s up north, idn’t he?” asked Daisy.
“No, he’s meant to be....”
“You keep up wi’ ’em then?”
Lost in other thoughts, Sally did not answer that.
She fretted, “We’d better tell him.”
“Yer do what yer want,” responded Daisy. “I got my own affairs to see to.”
“Oh, yeah?” Sally said.
“Town ain’t like it was. Vagrants don’t go unmolested. Used to, if beggers got too thick they’d be rounded up by the parish constable. Most of the time, if they weren’t hurtin’ no one, he didn’t bother with ’em. Now they went and hired a collector—a failed stay-maker from Highgate they say—who pinches ’em for ten shillings a head. Debtors what owe good money belong in gaol, not poor citizens who ain’t got a hare’s squat.”
After her outburst, Daisy went silent. Sally directed her to the end of the block near the Millhouse mansion. As she leapt from the carriage, they gave no good-byes. Sally looked back once, but all she could see was the mist.
The streetlights gave the damp cobbles an unearthly sheen. A flower seller trundled her cart off down the street. It was very late, or very early. Sally had lost track of time. The bridge between opulence and decay was a short one. In the still air, the stench of the offensive trades wafted around her. The night soil man attended the chamber jars, the sight whereof made Sally wonder why Wickham could not be disposed of as easily. It would have been fair for his body to be laid out for anatomists, but then he would be too far gone to appreciate the irony.
Sally worried whether to tell Darcy about Wickham—and the Millhouses too. Her ladyship knew Wickham, both of them did.
To kill a snake, yer got to cut off his head.
Chapter 84
The Boast
Darcy was aghast!
Wickham was not dead, but alive and well—no doubt living in extravagance at taxpayers’ expense.
He not only walked the streets with impunity, but he had the unmitigated gall to employ the appellation of the man who had kidnapped Elizabeth! The mere thought of that indignation stole Darcy’s breath. He endeavoured to collect himself, for much was at stake.
Had Smeads recognised Wickham? Did Wickham then do murder again? It was certainly feasible. He had killed before to conceal his foul deeds. The pieces of information fit together quite easily. Darcy could certainly perceive of Wickham infiltrating political camps. Such devilry as had passed for statesmanship of late stank of his interference. Moreover, if that cur had attached himself to Lady Howgrave, the acquaintance was not fuelled by altruism. (Wickham spent absolutely no extended amount of time with a woman without reward of some sort.) He held out hope that Juliette was not allowing him liberties. Was she, then she might be in grave danger. She was a woman of the world, but her
troubles might leave her unusually vulnerable.
The missive she sent him still lay on the silver tray. That pricked his conscience.
Darcy considered, and then discarded, the notion of exposing Wickham to Howgrave that very moment. However, he could not be certain of their connection. It was quite probable that Howgrave would not recognise Wickham, for he came into his fortune after Wickham had been banned from Pemberley. There was little doubt, however, that Wickham knew Howgrave. Wickham kept abreast of (and revelled in) all the county gossip. Whatever their association, both men were manipulative scoundrels with accommodating morals. Howgrave might admire a man of Wickham’s particular talents.
After considering all sides, Darcy decided that he would apprise Howgrave of his secretary’s identity through a third party. However, he believed it best to warn Lady Howgrave directly. In this, he meant to be swift and discrete.
It lay undecided whether to confront this Alistair Reed Thomas himself. The man had nine lives.
Darcy could not trust himself not to take a whack at one or two of them.
———
“Word has reached me,” Juliette announced.
Her inflection was soft, even forgiving, but her words were not. Alistair inspected his fingernails as she spoke.
She said, “Information had reached me of your boasts.”
Without hesitation, he said, “Lies! Others envy my place with you.”
Most unpropitously, he made his denial before the specifics of his transgression had been given. In a moment, he realised that and grew silent. Forming a steeple with his fingers, he pursed his lips. She sighed and then continued.
“You have boasted that I have afforded you favours in these chambers.”
She felt as if she were scolding a recalcitrant child. However, it was vital that she persuade him to keep his silence about their affair. She had only deigned to accept him into her bed to salve her wounded ego. They had only been intimate upon a few occasions. He seemed not to care that they could both be killed. They both had reason to be exceedingly wary. Howgrave’s marital rites had plunged into such degradation, she believed he would admire any excuse to smite her, her lover, and the horse upon which he rode.
Her state of affairs had done nothing but deteriorate since allying herself with the likes of Alistair Thomas. One must never allow a braggart privy to one’s concerns. Bed him, perhaps—tell him secrets, never. That can only lead to vexation. (It was a lesson once well-taken—one that loneliness forgot.) Confidences were often exchanged in the somnolent afterglow of sexual congress; hers she yielded all too willingly. Juliette knew she must tread carefully. She had come to understand that Alistair was a man quite capable of the worst kind of betrayal—and a fool as well.
So far as she could determine, his boasts had not seeped beyond her particular circle of woman-friends. Alistair had been quick to infiltrate them.
“If others know, soon Henry shall know....” she fretted.
“I am as silent as the grave,” he lied. “Your husband is a knave who cannot piss without filling his boots. He knows nothing of our attachment—and he never will.”
“Attachment?” Juliette repeated incredulously before reclaiming herself. “I thought we agreed, Mon ami, we share nothing more than a flirtation. Each warms the other’s body.”
“If I recall correctly, we have a mission—that of impregnation,” he simpered.
In listening to him, the folly of the entire gambit was obvious. She would have said as much, but Alistair was not listening. He was busy grousing about her husband.
“Two stone underweight, he is. I do not fear him! He is nothing but a pudding-headed son of a chambermaid! I am an superior marksman!”
Upon that assertion, Alistair flung himself into a chair and slung his leg over the arm, kicking his foot with exaggerated insouciance. Sighing, Juliette resigned herself to living out her days foisted between a fool’s fodder and a laughing ass. Dashed was her faint hope that she might not need Darcy and his fertile loins. It had been an unmitigated disaster. For all his poking about, Alistair had not had any greater luck impregnating her than had her husband. She pondered the oft told caution that if one did not take pleasure in the act, one would not fall with child. She had always discounted that premise. An undue number of children were born of rape and indifference. She had come to believe, however, that coital exhilaration was a great advantage to beget a babe.
Although he went to near acrobatic lengths to hide it, Alistair’s ball-sack was half-empty. That was quite obvious to a woman of her... experience. Due to her wellspring of lovers, she was quite witting of all sorts of genital abnormalities. His state could be attributed simply to a case of an undescended testicle. Perhaps, it caused his limp. Nonetheless, Alistair’s procreative abilities were compromised by half.
The only advantage to abandoning her schemes was that she would not have to gird herself to betray Darcy.
Had he come to her just once, she would have asked nothing more of him. That one concession would have been triumph enough. It would have gone a long way towards healing the sting of his first rejection. Her recollection of that long past night was still fresh. She had employed every measure known to her (and her ways were many) to tempt him to her bed, but he had refused her. Once was a humiliation; twice an abomination.
When Alistair proposed the complicated deception, injuring Darcy’s standing seemed the surest way to enjoy vengeance.
It was all nonsense, of course.
As it became ever more obvious that Darcy would not rescue her from her very present hell, rather than finding solace in Alistair’s schemes, she forsook them altogether. Plucking through her bijoutier for bits of jewellery to sell, she vowed to fund her own way. There were many pieces that she abhorred. The gold letter-knife was vulgar—a gift from Lord Orloff. It would not be missed. Indeed, her plans were coalescing quite nicely. An old beau had offered her a villa in Venice. There, she would lick her wounds, happy to leave England and its satyrs and rogues behind.
Nothing exposed the truth of that observation more than the recumbent form of Alistair Reed. One by one, he was decimating the grapes from a delectable tray of fruit. Just as he tossed one into the air, she abruptly stood.
“My husband is come.”
Startled, Alistair’s mouth popped shut and the grape bounced off his forehead.
Her call was a ruse, one designed to watch how hastily Alistair could scramble away when he thought he might be caught where he ought not to be. Her husband would not return for hours. Soon Alistair would realise that, but at that moment he claimed his hat and walking stick with the same scurrying pace as a rat disturbed in the pantry. Before he took his leave, he made an attempt to engage her in a wet, tongue-probing kiss. She tuned her cheek, wincing at the thought of it. He seemed not to notice when she wiped his saliva away. Perhaps even then, he had designs upon another woman’s bed. Good riddance.
Through the same door Alistair departed, came her chamber-maid. In her hand she held a card. It was offered with such reverence that Juliette rather hastily snatched it from her proffered fingers.
As she read it, she exulted, “Fortune shines! God in heaven has heeded my prayers—and me, a soul so rarely to church. Never again shall I question....”
Tucking the card into her bodice, she began to pace about the room. She stopped, placing her hand across her racing heart in an attempt at becalming herself. It was all she could do to catch her breath, for it had abandoned her the moment she recognised Darcy’s hand.
At last he had come.
Had she time to change her frock? No, just a fresh petticoat. With great dispatch, she rid herself of her pantalets. (They were lined with lace and frills, but she wanted no impediment should passions be inflamed.) Pinching her cheeks, she called to her maid to help re-pin her hair. Always a wisp or two was left to trail down her neck to assure that there was nothing rangé about her coiffure. A daub of perfume and she was prepared for what ever might come to pass.
At last he had come. He had come for her.
Chapter 85
Flux and Femininity
Long, delicate fingers snaking through his thick, dark hair; naked legs entwined, writhing. His manhood, engorged by desire, lay thick and wanting against her white thigh. She rolled the flat of her hand across it admiringly. Against his ear, her plump, cherry-coloured lips whispered provocations.
“Take me, mount me! I beg for the nectar of your loins! I am yours!”
Fleshly treason pardoned by wet lips and urgent moans.
A breathless, feminine voice, proclaimed, “Once lovers have lain as one, it can never be forgotten.”
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