by Eva Devon
A cab rolled up to her doorstep. Patience lingered in the shadows of her foyer, eyeing the surprisingly plain conveyance from the security of her foyer. Her London lodging was simple and not in a fashionable area. It was, instead, in one of those newly made areas by the ever rising middle classes. She’d needed a place to stay where she could be relatively unknown and her middle class neighbors didn’t seem to stay up nearly as late as her titled class.
Early to bed, early to rise was not a maxim of the ton.
It was nearly one o’ clock and the square in which she lived was silent as a church.
Gathering her courage, she pulled her cloak about her, opened her front door herself, and strode down the steps with practiced calm. She would not appear a nervous rabbit to Lord Charles.
His note had been clear. Dress in a simple evening frock. Attractive but not overly so. No jewelry whatsoever. And just a little coin.
Which was interesting because she didn’t carry coin. The nobility didn’t. They lived entirely on credit after all.
She’d had to ask her housekeeper to arrange for coins.
The coach door swung open before the driver could even attempt to descend.
A black-gloved hand appeared.
For a brief moment it felt terribly dramatic and a portent of ill shimmied down her spine.
“Reluctant, are we?”
There it was, Charles’ dark drawl with its twist of humor.
“No, my lord,” she replied brightly. “Merely ensuring you weren’t some jackanape. A woman shouldn’t enter a strange vehicle without knowing who is in it.”
“And yet many do.”
It was impossible not to understand his meaning. She’d seen those ladies whilst she’d been out at night with Mrs. Barton, researching. Ladies who wandered down dark alleys or hopped into hansom cabs to earn their bread. As it happened, she was considering making an unfortunate the heroine of one of her novels. It would cause a scandal, of course. But such things should be brought to light, not swept into the darkness as if it didn’t happen nightly.
She took his strong hand, the hand which had stroked her body just the night before and climbed in.
He eyed her slowly then nodded. “You’ve heeded my advice.”
“It was all very mysterious.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You said you wanted to know the places I go,” he said factually.
“I do. I appreciate the opportunity.”
He smiled. “There’s a price, of course.”
“You don’t frighten me.”
“I didn’t intend to.”
There was such a sad tone running though Lord Charles that she suddenly was certain that if he did wish to frighten her, he could. Easily. Far too easily. And she didn’t frighten easily. But it wouldn’t be a fear of violence by him, but rather of that deep emotion within him.
She sat beside Lord Charles, but apart. It was too soon after their fiery meeting to be taking chances with soft, accidental touches. And that sadness about him made her long to brush his dark hair back from his face and cradle his head in sympathy. A behavior which had never been prevalent in her before.
If anything, Uncle Reginald had always accused her of being rather unfeeling. Cold. Something she didn’t think entirely fair though it was, to a certain degree, accurate.
On the surface, she appeared calm, collected, unfeeling but underneath there was a raging storm. A storm only made tame by the stories she put to page.
And her next was going to be the most dramatic of them all, she felt sure.
Fighting the urge to reach out to him, she cleared her throat. This was business. Even if he might think otherwise.
“Thank you for taking me wherever it is you are taking me,” she said with forced cheer.
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“Why?” She folded her gloved hands. “Will it be so very terrible?”
“It will be different than what you are used to.”
The words how do you know what I am used to danced on the tip of her tongue. But such a comment wouldn’t be productive. Not if she did wish him to open doors which had been heretofore closed to her.
At present, Lord Charles didn’t need to know everything about her or P. Auden. In many ways, it was convenient to allow him to make assumptions.
She’d never even told Mrs. Barton about her sojourns into the East End. . . With a paid guard in disguise. . . And she’d been in disguise as well.
Her ability to walk miles at a time over her country estate had aided her greatly as she wandered some of the more forbidden streets of the greatest city of the greatest country in the world.
What she’d seen had been harrowing and inspiring, all at once.
Perhaps, what Lord Charles would show her would be something veiled to her, but she wasn’t blind like so many ladies of her class.
That was why her next heroine was most certainly going to be a young lady lured away from the safety of her home and brought into the dark underbelly of London by her dashing seducer in slow degrees. There would be the gilded balls and gaming salons Mrs. Barton showed her.
Then, no doubt, the wild, raucous taverns Lord Charles was taking her to this night, and at last there would be the streets.
William Hogarth wasn’t the only one who could show A Harlot’s Progress and, this time, she was proud to say, a woman would be telling the sympathetic tale.
“Lady Patience?”
“Hmmm?”
“I’ve said your name three times,” he said with a hint of a smile.
“Have you? I apologize. It’s a habit of mine.”
“You looked most serious. Who were you lampooning in your dreams? Me perhaps.”
“How very vain,” she replied. “Society, if you must know, and the little recourse given to women.”
Charles made no reply to deny.
“What do you think of fallen women, Lord Charles?”
He looked at her for a very long, hard moment. “I think fallen women didn’t fall at all.”
Oh dear. Here it was. He was going to extoll the glories of the scandalous female.
“I think she either leaped blindly and there was nothing to catch her or she was given a good hard shove.” Charles’ face hardened. “Most probably by a man.”
She gaped. “I beg your pardon?”
“Who is hard of hearing now?”
She cleared her throat. “Given your reputation, I thought. . .”
He arched a dark brow, his face a mask of shadows in the faint cab light.
“I thought wrongly.”
“For a woman of such good brains, you do make a habit of assuming the worst about people and deciding their characters for them.”
She pressed her lips together. He’d already mentioned this propensity in her. It was difficult not to assume all rakes were painted with the same brush. But she’d seen the cruel streak that ran through the certain kind of man that discarded women as quickly as they could be corrupted.
“It is hard not to think badly of a man who delights in ruining women,” she said simply.
“I have never ruined anyone,” he said with a surprising degree of passion.
“Not even men like my uncle?”
Once again, he stared at her, made no reply then looked to the window.
His silence pained her. A vehement denial would have been easy to cast aside. The lady doth protest too much and all that. She’d have known him to be a cad. But his cool dismissal of her accusation was somehow. . . Well, shaming as if she’d tainted him with her words.
After several moments of silence, the only noises being the street outside and the bumping of the coach, he whispered, “I know the darkness of men’s souls. Most need no assistance from me in blackening their hearts further. . . And in my experience, when a man casts himself into darkness nothing and no one can pull him out if that is where he is determined to be.”
The ache in his voice stabbed her straight to the
heart. It was so vital, so intense, it took her breath away.
She realized that she had struck far too close to home and, once again, she recalled what he had said, alluding to someone close having committed self-slaughter.
Had that person dwelled in darkness before they’d taken their own life? Had Lord Charles tried to extract them?
Before she could make voice to any other questions, the cab rolled to a stop.
She glanced outside and spotted a palatial townhome. “Are we here?” she asked incredulously.
“No.”
“Then why—”
“I’m not taking a lady where we’re going without the assistance of a friend.
“That’s not truly necessary is—”
His look, which begged to know if she had any sense at all, silenced her.
Suddenly, she began to feel a certain sort of excitement which was the type that combined fear and anticipation. At least she didn’t have to worry about Lord Charles making any advances. Not with another person present and certainly not if they were going to such a hell.
Or at least, she hoped she didn’t. Assumptions had not been her friend as of late.
She glanced out the window and spotted a very large man, a man who looked like he was built like a brick wall coming towards them.
“There’s not room,” she whispered.
“What the devil are you saying?”
“How will we all fit in here?” she asked. The approaching man was massive. Lord Charles was massive. She wasn’t a delicate flower.
“Dear girl, all three of us will fit a treat.”
Her own eyebrows shot up. A treat? “There will be no nonsense—”
Charles snorted. “None. Firstly, because I’m not sharing you with anyone else. Secondly, he’s a married man.”
“Oh.” Though marriage, as she was sure Lord Charles was aware, was no guarantee of fidelity, it did make her feel a trifle better.
The cab door swung open.
It quickly became clear the man had also been carrying his hat. A massive, peacock green affair.
“Did you kill another bird, old man?” Lord Charles asked.
The other man, his dark hair a little too long for society’s taste, winked. “Do not disparage my tavern hat.” He eyed the thing which looked as if it had a life of its own. “Well, one of my tavern hats. Former tavern hats. Don’t go to taverns anymore without the wife’s say so.”
The newcomer pulled himself up into the hansom and without much concern, jostled her between himself and Charles. It was like being surrounded by two towers of exceptionally beautiful men.
She could barely move a muscle without feeling completely compressed by the two. It was a most fascinating experience of masculine sinew.
Charles pounded on the roof and they were off.
Turning her head, she glanced up at Lord Charles’ friend. “And she said so?” she piped, unable to resist.
He nodded, placing his peacock befeathered hat on his lap. The silver buckle at the front winked in the moonlight. “The old boy there said there was a lady who needed assistance, and my wife is happy to send me off to assist damsels in distress.”
“I am not in distress,” she pointed out. “If a trifle crushed.”
“So, I see,” he observed.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“The Duke of Aston.” He narrowed his gorgeous eyes. “Who the devil are you?”
Her mouth dried. She’d met him. She’d met him before. He was impossible to forget. One night, she’d been at a club and he, much like Lord Charles the other evening, had been involved in a brawl.
They’d spoken that night. He might have drawn the conclusion she was seeking business.
And as if he, too, had had the thought he narrowed his eyes. “Charles, what are you doing involving me with one of your doxies? Rosamund is understanding, but not that understanding.” The Duke of Aston swung his gaze from Charles then back to her, a decidedly sympathetic look softening his stare. “Unless you truly are in distress. If you’re running from your pimp, I’m happy to assist madam. Or if a customer is making your life—”
Charles let out a strangled sound. “She is not a doxy.”
“She is,” the duke countered easily.
“She is not,” Charles declared emphatically.
“She is.”
“She is not—” Lord Charles’ stunned gaze suddenly swung to hers. “Are you?”
“No,” she replied calmly. “But you two, do go on. This is most fascinating.”
“Madam,” said the Duke of Aston with all seriousness, “whilst I have no issue with your chosen profession, it is one of the only available to your sex, I do protest you deceiving my friend. While he may seem as jaded as they come, he is quite a nice fellow—”
“Nice,” choked Lord Charles.
“Nice, “Aston repeated.
“Your Grace!” she fairly shouted before the two could go off again.
Aston smiled down at her. “Yes?”
“You two are enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Immeasurably,” Aston replied.
“You’ve been spending too much time at home that this entertains you,” Charles said.
“My wife is at home and she is all the entertainment I need. Now, I’ve hauled myself out in the dead of night when I could be entertaining her further. A private entertainment, if you understand my meaning.”
“I understand!” Patience protested, suddenly realizing she had met his wife this very night at the opera and she didn’t wish to have details of their married, entertaining life.
“Let us just say,” she began, “That I am in no danger of corrupting Lord Charles.”
“One cannot corrupt the already corrupted,” Aston replied. “But now that I look at you, I see you’re quite the bossy type. You remind me of his sister-in-law Duchess Cordelia.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.
“Do you know her?” asked Charles suddenly.
She coughed. “Yes.”
“How odd this all is,” Aston put in. “You’ve acted the doxy but know a duchess. I say, are you one of her projects? Cordelia does like a project.”
That stopped her because, given the meeting at the opera, she could agree that, yes, in all actuality she was one of Duchess Cordelia’s projects. And she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that except the kindness of those ladies and solidarity with them had been remarkably welcome.
“Ah.” Aston nodded to himself “I see the truth of it then. You are in reformation. Cordelia is assisting you to leave your profession and Charles and I have been called upon to help you extricate yourself from any entanglements.”
“Yes. That’s exactly it,” she declared with as much gratified enthusiasm as she could manage.
“Patience,” Charles began.
“Charles, do not try to convince his grace differently. He is too clever for us.”
“Damned true,” agreed Aston.
Charles opened and closed his mouth, a cod fish on dry land, before he humphed and turned to the window. “This is a tale you’ll not be able to keep up,” he said.
“Do not be so negative, Charles,” Aston said. “If the lady wishes to reform, we will aid her. After all, look at me. The perfect picture of reform.”
Patience bit back a laugh. He was the perfect picture of reform? Oh dear.
“I see your doubts, madam,” Aston said. “But I am proof that one can walk the straight and narrow and still have a devil of a good time.”
“The world is less kind to ladies, Your Grace,” she replied softly.
“Well, that’s deuced true,” Aston replied with a great deal of sympathy.
Just as it seemed that the Duke of Aston was about to pontificate about said subject, the cab rolled to a halt.
Aston narrowed his eyes. “Bit of a rough spot, old man.”
“That’s why you’re here,” Charles declared.
Aston let out a breath.
“Dear lady, you did descend from the last time I saw you.”
“She didn’t—”
“Lord Charles, I’m not afraid of the duke knowing of my shame.” If she had to, she’d play this game. It might even prove amusing.
“Nothing to be ashamed of, dear girl. Nothing at all,” assured Aston. “We all do what we must.”
There was a wicked gleam in the duke’s eyes and suddenly she wondered if Aston was having her on. He couldn’t know the truth. Could he?
No.
The duke was a fascinating and bombastic fellow. That was all. There was no way he could know she was lying through her fortunately white teeth.
The sounds of a screeching fiddle and the shouts of drunken men penetrated the cab.
Aston jumped down and offered his gloved hand.
She took it.
“Mind your step,” he said. “All sorts on the ground.”
Luckily, she was familiar with the horrific states of the streets in lesser parts of London. . . And the smell.
Unwashed bodies, perfume, liquor, rot, stew, and even cake wafted about. The scent was London. London at its ugliest and most magnificent. For it was here that the back of the Empire was formed, not the drawing rooms of the West End.
These were the people that made England great with their never say die spirit.
It was as terrifying as it was awe inspiring.
As she stepped into the mud, she glanced about.
If she had to guess, they’d gone dockside.
Charles descended behind her and the men moved her between them, as if they could be her sentinels of defense.
“The Hangman?” Aston asked.
“The Hangman,” Charles agreed.
As they headed down the choked street, she spotted a man and a brightly dressed woman heading into an alley. This was the sort of descent that Aston was speaking of. Many women went from the gilded hall to the street. And then. . . Well, the grave.
A few ladies made it to the hallowed halls of wealth and stayed there. But most? Most ended up here.
Forgotten.
Well, she was going to make people remember. She was going to tell their story.
As they entered through the paint-chipped door and headed into the smoky room, her eyes widened.
This was a walk of life she was not entirely familiar with. While she had walked into certain parts of East London, she’d never had the ability to traverse into such rough parts, even with a guard. She was good at disguises, but even so, she still stood out in such places.
