by Laura London
“Tired, child?” Lord Linden asked.
“I think perhaps I am. I was thinking how glad I am to be here with you,” Katie answered naively.
“Dear me,” said Linden drily. “I feel compelled, in all honesty, to point out that I am not ‘goodness itself,’ that I rarely, if ever, do anything without the strongest possible motives of self-interest, and that I am no more a fit companion for someone your age than that baboon who seems intent on delivering the coup de grâce to your svelte little body.”
“What motives of self-interest prompted you to save me from Nasty Ned at The Merry Maidenhead?” asked Katie curiously.
“You were clamped on my dicing arm. And I don’t think you could have been disengaged without some damage to my jacket. Don’t romanticize my actions, chit, I didn’t care what was going to happen to you, I just didn’t want it to happen in front of me.”
“It may not have meant much to you,” said Katie in a small voice, “but it was awfully important to me.”
“Without doubt, chérie, but don’t, for God’s sake, thank me again. You sound as though you might be building up to it.”
The hack took a last lurching turn and came to a jiggling halt at the stucco front of The Merry Maidenhead. Linden handed Katie down, and tossed a coin to the jarvey as Zack came through the door, pulling on a light jacket, followed by an agitated Winnie.
“Mousemeat! Oh, Jesus!” cried Zack. “I was coming to look for you. Winnie got here a minute ago and…” Zack stopped and looked at Linden. “What happened?”
“Nothing!” said Katie. “At least, I was almost killed, but Lord Linden saved me. I ran into the cock pit, you see, and they made the greatest roar, like lions, except that they were chickens. And Nasty Ned came in behind me and was going to hit me but Lord Linden came and…”
“I can figure it out from there, puss,” said Zack, putting a proprietary arm on Katie’s shoulder and hustling her inside. “And if you’re going to stand outside here like a target, then you might as well let me paint a bull’s eye on your chest. Winnie, take her upstairs.”
“Yes, but Zack, I’d like to tell you about…”
“You shall, pet, but later. Upstairs! And no more buts.”
Katie managed a last wistful look at Linden as Winnie dutifully shepherded her toward the stairs and out of sight. Zack turned back toward Linden and motioned to an adjacent table.
“Have one on the house, my lord?” suggested Zack, observing Linden closely.
Lord Linden met and held Zack’s stare and lowered himself leisurely into a chair. He shrugged.
Zack went to the bar and returned bearing a bottle and two glasses. Linden watched with an evident lack of interest as Zack set down the glasses and filled them.
“Well,” said Zack, seating himself opposite Lord Linden, “the girl has reason to be grateful to you.”
“Neat,” observed Linden. “A little abstract, perhaps, but neat.”
Zack held up his hand. “All right. I can be more concrete, if you like. Gratitude can have a material expression.”
“Can it?” A faint amusement glimmered in Linden’s coffee eyes. “Enlighten me.”
Zack paused and took a quick swallow of gin. “I could arrange for her to express her gratitude in a way that you would find… uh… satisfying.”
“And how much would I have to pay for this ‘satisfying’ gratitude?” Linden picked up his glass.
“Fifty pounds?”
“Expensive,” said Linden, raising his eyebrows slightly.
“You think so?” asked Zack. “She’s a virgin.”
Linden smiled. “Of course. They’re all virgins. Do you think virginity makes a woman more appealing to me? Unthink it, friend.”
“Very well,” said Zack cheerfully, “she’s not a virgin.”
“A versatile creature. She loses her virginity in one breath,” said Linden, grinning. “I only wish it had been that easy for me to lose mine.”
“I might as well lie,” retorted Zack, “because you have no way of knowing whether I’m telling the truth or not. Unless you find out for yourself.”
“Very neat,” said Linden, draining his glass and rising to his feet. “If I’m ever in the market for a slum brat of questionable virtue, I’ll contact you. But don’t count the minutes.” He turned toward the door and added, as a disinterested afterthought, “Don’t despair, my pimp friend, with her looks you won’t have any trouble unloading her elsewhere.”
“I know,” said Zack, making a detailed study of his none-too-pristine fingernails. “Nasty Ned was in this afternoon and offered me twenty-five guineas for her delivery this evening. I’d rather you than him, but if not you, well…”
Linden stopped and turned, looking at Zack, his eyes expressionless. He slowly drew a bill from his pocket between thumb and forefinger, and allowed it to drift to the table like a falling leaf. Zack watched it land.
“She’ll need some time to pack,” Zack said. “I know where you live. I’ll bring her there in an hour. Is that all right with you?”
“Yes,” said Linden quietly. “But you I never want to see again.”
Less than an hour later Katie found herself again riding cross town in a hackney carriage with her cloth traveling bag on her knee and Zack slumped in the seat beside her.
“Zack, are you sure your friend won’t mind me coming to stay? It’s such short notice… you’ll come in with me and explain about Nasty Ned and everything, won’t you?” asked Katie anxiously.
“There’s no need. I sent a message. Don’t start fussing, Mousemeat, this is only a temporary arrangement to keep you safe until I can get things straightened around with Nasty Ned.”
Katie looked at Zack’s silhouette hopefully. “Do you think you’ll be able to do that?”
“It’ll take some doing, but we’ll work it out,” said Zack soothingly.
“And you’ll… oh!” Katie lifted her palms to rub her eyes. “The world began to spin for a moment… but it’s all right now, I think. I feel so tired. But what was I going to say before… oh, yes. You’ll send for me right away when it’s safe to come back? Or if you hear any word of Papa?”
“The very minute,” promised Zack. He sat up and leaned over to Katie. “Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”
Katie scrunched her eyelids together and gingerly presented an upturned palm. “It’s not something horrid, is it? Oh, it’s only paper.” She opened her eyes. “Zack! It’s a note for fifty pounds! Zack, no, you can’t mean me to keep this.”
“I do. It’s your wages.”
“Wages?” asked Katie. “But I’ve hardly worked at all. Zack, where did you get so much money? You haven’t robbed anybody, have you?”
“I don’t know, that remains to be seen. Anyway, whatever happens, I sure as hell don’t want that money. And don’t start asking me what I mean, Katie. I’m not in the mood to start in on a lot of damned difficult explanations,” said Zack irritably.
Katie stared at his shadowed face in amazement. “I shan’t if you don’t like me to, but I must say that you are behaving very mysteriously.”
“Not mysterious,” snapped Zack. “Abstract. And neat.”
And obscure, thought Katie, shifting Zack’s odd words through her mind. The effort was too much for her, though. The dim interior of the hack had blurred and melted into a splotched opalescent screen. She made a concerted attempt to focus her vision and it improved somewhat.
“What a night,” said Katie. “You’re acting strange and I’m feeling strange.”
Zack patted her hand. “Getting dizzy, eh? It’s the laudanum starting to work.”
“Laudanum?” asked Katie, with a sinking sensation. “What laudanum?”
“The laudanum in that milk you drank before we left. I only put in a spoonful, so I don’t think it’ll have too much effect.”
Katie felt her throat tighten. “But Zack, isn’t laudanum to calm people? I was already calm.”
“You don’t look calm
to me. Besides, I thought you might have trouble getting to sleep.”
“I never have trouble getting to sleep.”
“Tonight,” said Zack, “you might.”
The hack stopped before a long row of depressingly well-groomed townhouses. Each was an intimidatingly precise copy of the next: fashionable balconies of cast-iron scrollwork, tall double-hung windows, and immaculate stucco exteriors. Katie looked uncertainly at Zack as she jumped unsteadily onto the clear swept pavement.
“You have a friend who lives here?” asked Katie. “It looks very… respectable.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” said Zack. He ran lightly up the four front steps and banged on a heavily paneled oak outer door. “Come on, Katie. There’s nothing to get yourself worked up about. Just do whatever he says without making a melodramatic, missish pother over the business, and things’ll flow sweet as spring water.”
“He?” cried Katie dazedly. “I thought your friend would be a woman. Oh, Zack, you haven’t done something dreadful, have you?”
“Trust me, Katie. I’ve got your best interest at heart.”
Since Zack’s ideas of what was in her best interest were so different from her own, this was hardly reassuring. Zack was starting back to the coach; she tried to follow him, her eyes wide and pleading.
“Where is this? Zack, please don’t leave me here alone.”
He propelled her back to the door, his hand on her elbow. “It’s all right. Do you think I’m delivering you to a brothel? There’s nothing in there that will hurt you, pet. It’s not like you to be so ruffled. Listen. Someone’s coming to answer the door. Keep your chin high, Mousemeat.” Then he was gone. She heard the horse’s hooves clapping away into the night as a muffled rattling came from the other side, and the door was opened by a middle-aged, gray-templed gentleman dressed in funereal black.
“Come this way, miss,” said the gentleman, looking through her. He allowed her to enter a small candlelit hall with a magnificent sweeping stair leading up to another floor. She followed him up the stair, afraid to touch the banister for fear of leaving a hand print.
“Were you expecting me, sir?” she said, her voice shaking. She felt like a small, furry, miserable creature padding behind this imposing personage, as if her ears had become long and pink and she had sprouted a hairless tail.
He paused and half turned, “Yes, miss. If you’ll follow me, miss.”
There was a long hallway at the top of the stairs, and she padded after him to a tall black walnut door. A feminine voice was speaking on the other side of the door in shrill staccato bursts. The distinguished gentleman paused for a fraction of a second, knocked quietly, and pushed the door open, motioning for her to precede him into the room.
“Your guest has arrived, my lord. If it is convenient for you, sir, I shall depart for my holiday. I shall return Monday morning.”
“By all means, depart, Roger. I envy you.”
Lesley Robert Emmett Byrne, Lord Linden, was draped across a low couch covered in cocoa plush, his long legs stretched in front of him. A half-empty wine glass dangled from his left hand. He waved the butler on his way. The room itself was high-ceilinged and airy, the walls lined with bookshelves on two sides. Between the books were many small exotic statues quite removed from Katie’s limited experience. She felt a forceful impression of an impeccable taste in decoration supported by ample wealth. There was a third person in the room; a fine-boned creamy-complected woman, dressed in a gown of beige watered silk, the décolletage barely concealing a small but beautifully rounded bosom. She was far more than merely attractive, but her best feature was her hair, which fell in wheaten hills down her bare back. She held the center of the room, standing in front of Lord Linden, tapping her foot, with hands on curving waist, her full rosy lips open in astonishment. “How utterly bizarre!” exclaimed the woman, gesturing at Katie. “Is this a taste you acquired in France?”
Linden smiled maliciously at the blonde girl, and then studied the remaining wine in his glass. “You think it’s a boy? It claims to be a girl, but I haven’t confirmed that yet. Would you like to stay and assist me in determining its gender?”
“Thank you, no,” said the woman, tossing her head. “I’ll leave you to enjoy your perversions in peace. Find your little heaven wherever you please.”
“I will, Laurel, I will,” he said. “But really, my dear, you are well served for coming here unbidden.”
“Go to the devil,” she hurled at him. “Though I doubt he’d have you.” She stormed out past the paralyzed Katie, slamming the door behind her. Her steps receded down the hallway, and a few seconds later, the door to the street was slammed as well. Linden glanced at Katie and then leaned his head back against the wide cushions, closing his eyes.
“Poor child. You look scared out of your wits.” He drained the wine glass.
“My lord, I have to tell you…” began Katie urgently.
“Not now, blue eyes,” said Linden. “I’ve spent the better part of a quarter hour listening to Laurel shrilling, and I’m in need of five minutes of golden silence. Sit down and shut up.”
It suddenly occurred to Katie that Lord Linden had been drinking heavily. She had noticed in the cock pit that he wasn’t sober. Linden hadn’t slurred his words; his step had been steady and graceful; but Katie had seen her father in every possible stage of intoxication and could recognize its signs as surely as she knew mare’s-tail clouds meant rain. And Linden, it was clear, had drunk more since she’d seen him last. Katie sat down.
She remained perfectly still for a while, her eyes tracing the mystically swirling pattern of the oversized oriental carpet, her thoughts seeming to twist and circle into themselves like the design, in willful rhythmic disorder. What had Zack told Lord Linden about her? That she was willing to become his mistress? She knew that she should never have followed the butler inside; that had been mistake number one. No, trusting Zack had been mistake number one. Her next mistake had been not turning and running away down the stairs as soon as she saw Lord Linden—surely it now looked as though she had planned to stay. Katie could feel the laudanum tightening its languorous chains around her mind until thinking became as hard as trying to slice through a forest of sinuous vines. How clever Zack had been and how cruelly unscrupulous. Katie stared at a small Roque clock, intent on marking off five minutes. She blinked her eyes, and when she opened them again, eight minutes had passed. How could the hand of the clock jump like that? She realized she had been asleep.
Of all the awkward moments to nod off, thought Katie, and rose to her feet, rubbing her numbed cheeks. Linden, she could see, hadn’t moved from the couch and didn’t appear any more amenable to hearing any explanations from her than he had eight minutes earlier. Trying to blink the sleep from her eyes, she moved across the room to the wide statue-lined bookcase. She looked, in drowsy fascination, at a tiny bronze figurine of a cloaked dancer.
“How did it get broken?” Katie wondered aloud as she frowningly regarded a hairline crack in the dancer’s flowing robe.
Katie heard a movement behind her and then
Lord Linden’s voice. “I don’t know, child. It happened a long time ago.”
“How long ago?” asked Katie rather sleepily.
“Mm-m, a thousand years, perhaps.”
Katie had been stroking the statue’s smooth contours with one loving finger but at his words she drew back her hand quickly, aghast that she had touched an object of such value.
“A thousand years I Is it from Egypt, then?” Katie’s knowledge of antiquities was sketchy.
“Greece,” said Lord Linden. He walked to Katie, who was investigating the mysteries of another statuette. This time it was the elaborate ivory portrait of a young prince.
“Is this from Greece, too?”
“No, my dear. India. Turn around.” She obeyed him without thinking and he lifted his hands to rest them lightly on her shoulders. A curious, sweet smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Do you know that
I would like very much to remove your hat?”
Katie’s eyes grew very wide. “W-would you, my lord? I daresay that my hair is sadly rumpled beneath it.” But he pulled it off anyway and tossed it carelessly on a nearby library table.
He stared at Katie, and something in his look brought the blood to her cheeks with an almost blistering intensity. Linden reached Out to thread one of Katie’s warm pliant curls through his fingers, his gaze caressing her. Her mouth felt strangely swollen, as if her lips had become suddenly conspicuous, and she parted them slightly. Katie felt his hands touch her hips; there was no physical pressure, he was only resting them there, yet her muscles tightened involuntarily, became taut and rounded. He was running the side of one long finger down her cheek, and she felt it skim the surface of the silken hair. She wanted to lean backwards, against the hard hand that was cradling her hips, and relax, to lift her face to the warmth of him. She was floating and lost, her swollen lips aching to be touched and soothed and opened.
She felt a slight pressure, cool and dry, on her lips; she felt relieved. Then it was gone, and she was searching for it blindly. She found it again, and yearned to trap it and hold it. But then she was the one trapped and held, by the pressure of Linden’s steady hand against the back of her neck, and her breath was caught and aching deep in her throat as his lips marauded the softness of her tender mouth. His fingers played in the velvet curls at her neck, and then slipped gently around to open the top button of her shirt He removed his mouth from hers to place a soft kiss on the translucent skin above her collarbone, and moved his lips down the swelling mound of her breast.
Katie reached her hands up to push shakily against Linden’s hard chest. He stepped back, supporting her with his hands on her shoulders, and watched her silently, enjoying the delicately flushed contours of her face, the fantastic auburn stream of her hair and the slender graceful line of her hips. Then because she didn’t seem to know what to do next, he lifted Katie gently into his arms and carried her to his bedroom. The bedclothes were drawn back and he placed Katie on the smooth white sheets, her glorious hair spreading into satin bunches on his pillow. He sat beside her then, and gathered her near him so that he could bury his face in the shimmering silk that framed her face. Katie, almost faint with shock, tried to turn her face from him but he caught her curls with one hand and placed the other underneath her chin. He lifted her face to his and touched his lips once more to hers, tenderly at first, then firmly and urgently.
