Bigelow gestured toward the painted board on the corner building. “Are you sure you want to do this, my lady?”
The black parrot on the sign looked more like a vulture to Johna. “What happens to this place if I die?”
Bigelow had his hand on the carriage door, rattling it. “Then it becomes your heir’s property, of course. According to the will you drew up, your sister’s.”
Nothing could have put courage into Johna’s steps faster than being reminded of the threat to Phillipa’s well-being. “Never!” She got down, holding her skirts away from the foulness in the street. She let Bigelow take her arm up the four grimy steps to the black wood door that had a parrot’s head for a knocker.
“Should we knock?” Johna was sure her knees were already knocking. “Is there a footman?” Was there a certain etiquette involved in evicting an unknown, unwanted tenant?
Mr. Bigelow just pushed the door open and led her inside. It took a few moments for Johna’s eyes to adjust from the dismal gray of the street to the more dismal gray of the interior. She almost gagged on the stench of rancid smoke, unwashed bodies, and cheap perfume. “I own this horrible place?”
The Black Parrot had its head tucked under its flea-bitten wing this early in the day. There were very few patrons, a handful of huddled men Johna didn’t recognize, thankfully, looking as if they hadn’t gone home for the night, for many nights. Two or three women sat or sprawled in the corners. One snored. Johna decided she wouldn’t examine the women too closely.
“Dealers,” Mr. Bigelow whispered, mopping his brow, hoping she wouldn’t ask what they dealt in. “I’ll go find Marcel.”
What, and leave her here? “I’ll go with you.”
“You cannot go upstairs!” Bigelow squeaked. “That is, perhaps the man is in his office. We’ll look there first.” He led her down an even darker corridor where damp-stained paintings of nude females hung unevenly on the paneled walls. Thank goodness for mildew, Johna thought for the first time in her tidy life.
The office was better lighted, so Marcel could count the piles of coins in front of him. He looked up with a snarl, a hyena defending its carrion booty. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” He stood when he recognized the lawyer, unfolding to spindly height.
The man was so emaciated, his cooking must be dreadful, Johna thought. And he was so dirty, filth under his nails, oil pasting his hair to his scalp, that she wouldn’t have let him in her kitchen to clean the stove. Bigelow made the introductions.
Marcel turned to Johna with an unctuously ingratiating smile, blackened teeth and all. “Ah, but you find me unprepared. If I had known of your visit, I would have made my specialité mousse a la Marcel.” He kissed his dirty fingertips, then waved them around the nearly empty room. “Instead I do not have even the chore to offer you.”
“He means ‘chair,’” Bigelow interpreted. At Johna’s nod of encouragement, he went on: “And this isn’t a social call. Lady Ogden wants to close down the Black Parrot and sell the building.” Having explained their mission, the solicitor spotted an unfinished glass of wine on Marcel’s desk. If the Frenchman was drinking it, the stuff couldn’t be dangerous. Bigelow gulped it down, almost wishing it were drugged.
Marcel was still being polite, although he did not offer her any of the wine. “Then I am sorry you made this visit for nothing, Madame Ogden. But you cannot close the Black Parrot, n’est-ce-pas? Your husband and I, we have the partnership.”
“My husband is dead. The partnership is dissolved. Besides, I thought it was a lease.”
Marcel shrugged. “Lease, partnership, my Anglais is not so good. Tant pis. Either way, you cannot be throwing me up. Out? Oui, throwing me out. You tell her, Monsieur Bigelow. It is a matter of law, no?”
Bigelow was feeling better. He’d feel better still if Marcel weren’t towering over him, so he backed toward a dark corner of the office, pretending to read the titles on the bookcase shelf. “I tried to explain.”
Johna had faced the Almack’s patronesses. One filthy French felon was not going to faze her. She did take a step backward, though, so she wasn’t having to crane her neck upward, and so she did not have to inhale Marcel’s foul breath. “What Mr. Bigelow tried to explain was that the usual money was not being paid to my account. That sounds very much as if the terms of the agreement are invalidated.”
“Ah, the money. Now I see. Marcel has a bad month, and madame grows impatient to buy another trumpet.”
“Trinket? No, you don’t see. I would not keep this…this insult to decency open for any amount of money, and there is nothing you can do about it. Are you going to take me to court? Do you think your operations will stand the light of day?”
“Bah, you will not make me try. You would not want your connection here to be made public.”
Bigelow choked. For once Johna didn’t care, she was so angry. Let the man suffocate on his own guilt. “Are you threatening to expose me? I’d rather it be known that I was trying to rid myself of this hellhole than that I condoned it! The club is closed as of immediately. You and your slime will be gone by the end of the week. The building is now for sale. Le Parrot Noir c’est fini.”
“Your accent, feh! And your demands, they are like cockroaches in the kitchen. You sweep them away or step on them”—he made a damp, sucking sound—“or you add them to the stew.”
Johna’s stomach turned at the thought. “No wonder you couldn’t make a go of this place as a supper club.”
“Tiens, now you insult Marcel’s cooking?”
Bigelow groaned.
“I don’t care if you cook bat blood for Beelzebub! You will not do it here!”
With a guttural roar, Marcel lunged. Before Johna could step back, his hands were at her throat, squeezing. “What, do you think Marcel takes orders from some murdering English whore? I’ll teach you to stick your nose in my business, chérie. I cut it off, eh, so you don’t have to smell Marcel’s bad breast. Close my rooms? I close your mouth—for good.”
Johna was struggling mightily, kicking out at his legs, trying to connect her flailing fists with the Frenchman’s head. The dastard’s arms were so wretchedly long, though, that she wasn’t reaching. A red haze was beginning to cloud her eyes, and she could barely hear Mr. Bigelow’s hysterical shouting. She started clawing at Marcel’s hands at her throat, digging her nails into his fingers.
“Chien! I’ll see you in hell. When you get there, say bonjour to your murdered—”
Marcel’s next words were abbreviated, stoppered by the fist in his mouth.
Merle didn’t know why Johna was here. He couldn’t begin to imagine, but he’d shake that out of her later, after he took apart this ape who dared to lay his foul hands on her.
Marcel shoved Johna away from him, into a wall, so he could face this new challenger. “Mon Dieu, the Black Widow has a new chevalier. You chose better this time, chérie, but this one won’t stick his fork in the wall so easily. Marcel will help, no?”
“No!” Johna croaked. “He’s not my—”
The men were trading punches. Selcrest had the strength and the science, but Marcel had the reach.
One of the viscount’s eyes was swelling shut, but Marcel kept spitting blood and teeth out of his mouth. When Selcrest’s next punch connected with the Frenchman’s nose and flattened it against his face, Marcel had enough.
The cook was cadaverously thin but he was strong, and he was a dirty fighter. A knife appeared in his hand. Johna screamed. Selcrest backed out of range. Hadn’t he played this role before, the day he met the impossible female? He shook his head to clear it.
“Que mal you didn’t get a ring from this one,” Marcel mumbled through battered lips. “You’d be a richer widow tomorrow.”
Mr. Bigelow peeked over the desk he was hiding behind to see what was happening. He saw Marcel’s back and he saw Marcel’s knife shifting from the Frenchman’s right hand to his left. So he picked up the desk chair—the only chair in the room—and brought it down on Marce
l’s head. The fight was over.
Johna snatched up the knife and waved it under Marcel’s streaming nose where he lay on the stained carpet. “If you’re not gone by tomorrow morning, or if you ever bother us again, his lordship will…will have your guts for garters.”
Selcrest raised his eyebrows but he nodded, taking the knife from her hand. “Count on it, you miserable scum.” He turned toward Bigelow. “I don’t know your name, sir, but I am in your debt.” They shook hands, then the viscount softly inquired, “Are you quite finished here, my lady?”
Johna ignored the dripping sarcasm. “I do believe that I have made my position clear to Monsieur Marcel. Mr. Bigelow, I shall be leaving with his lordship. You shall find a buyer for this hellish place tomorrow or you shall find a new client. I do not care what pittance you accept, just get rid of it.”
*
“Is your throat very sore, Jo?” Somewhere between the Black Parrot and her place by his side on the curricle’s seat she’d become Jo to him.
“N-not terribly, Merle.”
“That’s good. And it’s also good that my hands are busy with the reins.”
“It is?”
“Oh, yes, or I’d strangle you too.”
6
“How could you be so blasted stupid?” Selcrest yelled as soon as they were alone in Johna’s drawing room. He’d held as tight a rein on his temper as on the horses during the drive back to Albemarle Street. Then came the interminable wait for the servants to bring tea—with honey for her bruised throat—and brandy for his bruised nerves. Selcrest’s mood wasn’t improved by the sideways glances he received from the footmen and maidservants. Nor by the niffy-naffy butler’s inquiry: “Another steak, milord, for your eye?”
He couldn’t see out of it, so the thing must be deuced ugly. He’d worry later how the devil he was going to get past his mother and Higbee this time. Right now his swollen phiz couldn’t be half as ugly as the red welts he could see on Johna’s slender neck. Ugly? Those marks turned his stomach inside out. Hell and damnation, he should have butchered the bastard who did this to her. Merle kept pacing, trying to keep his blood from boiling. “Dash it all, woman, what were you thinking, going to a place like that? And going alone?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Johna managed to whisper through trembling lips. Turning her head to watch him walk from her sofa to the mantel to the window and back was making her neck ache even more. “And Mr. Bigelow was with me.”
“The pinchbeck pettifogger who got you into the mess in the first place? The man’s a tosspot if I ever saw one.” Merle took another sip, frowning into his glass of spirits as he remembered the solicitor’s quaking hand. He slammed the glass down onto the mantel and resumed his circuit. “And a scurvy lot of help he was, hiding under the desk. I didn’t even know he was there until he crowned that maniac. And you tell me what’s right about a lady traipsing through London’s worst stews. Nothing, that’s what! If you had a problem, why the hell didn’t you come to me, Johna? My mother is looking out for you. That makes you my responsibility!”
“No, your mother has done a world of good for my sister and myself. That’s enough. You are not obliged to do anything more, certainly not act as guardian to us, or trustee. And I suppose I didn’t think my actions through,” she conceded. “I was so disgusted, I just wanted to get the deed done.” Johna was close to tears from the pain, from the shock, from the anger she read in his one-eyed scowl and relentless pacing.
“I know you are furious with me for landing you in such a hobble. And I know I broke our agreement that there would be no scandalous behavior. So what now? Will you wash your hands of us or denounce me to your mother’s friends? I’ve blotted my copybook, but poor Phillipa doesn’t deserve to be ostracized. That’s what will happen, you know, if you…if you turn your back on us.”
Merle strode over to the sofa and bent down so he could look her in the eye. Hers were damp; one of his was swollen shut. “Are you that big a peagoose, or do you think me that much a snob? Can’t you see that I don’t give a rap about the scandal, Jo? My God, you could have been killed.”
“Oh, and you too, coming to save me. I’d never have forgiven myself. And your poor eye.” She was crying in earnest now, so it was only natural for Merle to take her in his arms for comforting. She fit so perfectly, it was only natural for him to kiss away her tears. And then her fears. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Everyone is safe now. Nothing is going to happen to you or your sister. I won’t let it.”
Amazing how a kiss could cure a sore throat and a stiff neck and shattered composure. Johna sighed.
“What, did I hurt you?” He jumped back. “I never meant—Lud, only a ham-handed cad would paw at you at a time like this. I beg your pardon, my lady.”
Johna sighed again, in contentment. “You do care.”
“Care? I…” It was obviously a new and troubling concept for the viscount. He tried to fix Johna’s disarranged hair, tucking a black lock behind her ear. It felt like silk running through his fingers. Care? Oh, Lud. “I care that my mother would be devastated if anything befell her protégée.”
Johna touched his cheek and smiled. “You care. I know you do.”
Merle turned his head and kissed her palm. “I care enough that if you ever give me such a fright again, I’ll thrash you within an inch of your life.”
So she sent for him that night, when Marcel tried to burn down the Black Parrot.
*
If Marcel was going to lose his investment, so was Ogden’s widow. He waited till early evening, before the club was officially open for business, then tossed some Blue Ruin at the heavy, faded draperies that kept the gaming parlor shielded from the street. But the pervading dampness and years of leaks made the fabric hard to burn. That and Marcel had used the watered gin. So he went back to the kitchen.
There was so much grease on every surface, so many dirty rags, he had no trouble getting a good fire going, before he got going. Marcel left a message on the front door, right under the parrot’s beak: “Ogden’s widow owns these asses.”
So the constables knew right where to come, to report the fire. “He must have meant ashes, ma’am.” Johna sent a note to Bigelow, another to the viscount. Merle was easily found at Selcrest House, at home like Johna was, hiding his bruises. She could cover the marks with a high-necked gown or scarf, not unreasonable with the November chill. There wasn’t much Selcrest could do with a swollen, empurpled orb, except lie. He’d already told his mother and Higbee that a sparring partner at Jackson’s had landed a flush hit, but he couldn’t tell that to the chaps who’d been at the boxing parlor that morning. A riding accident? Footpads? Neither reflected well on Lord Selcrest, so he stayed in, waiting for the morrow when the swelling would go down and cosmetics should cover most of the violent colors. Perhaps by then he’d come to his senses, too. He arrived within minutes of receiving Johna’s message. “You are not going, period.”
“It’s my business. I have to go.”
“You called on me for help, dash it, now let me help.”
“I asked for your help, as you demanded this afternoon. Help, not supervision. The constables said some of the occupants in the building were injured, although there were no fatalities, thank goodness. I couldn’t have borne that, someone dying because Marcel hated me so much. But I own the building, therefore it is my duty to see that the people in it get care. I can make sure they are taken to the hospital if they need it, or found a place to spend the night.”
“What, you are worried about the dregs of humanity who live and work at a place like the Black Parrot? I admire your sense of duty, but that rabble can find their own way around the back alleys and gin mills. It’s too dangerous for you to go. Didn’t you learn anything this afternoon?”
“The constables said Marcel was likely halfway to France by now. His note was practically a confession of guilt, so he wouldn’t chance being caught and hung.”
“One cockle-headed cook isn�
��t half as dangerous as the rest of the neighborhood. You saw it at its best, by daylight. By night every kind of slime crawls out from under their rocks to prey on unwary strays. You’re not going, and that’s final.”
*
The fire wasn’t even smoldering when they arrived. Most of the crowds dispersed when the constables from the sheriff’s office joined the Watch, the fire inspector, and two runners from Bow Street. A small knot of women surrounding Mr. Bigelow were passing a bottle of rum, for their tiny coal-filled brazier wasn’t putting out nearly enough heat in the raw night.
Bigelow separated himself from the group when he recognized the viscount’s curricle. He carried a lantern over to the open carriage, where Selcrest’s tiger had gone to the horses’ heads to keep them calm amid the threatening cloud of smoke. Bigelow waited for the viscount to help Lady Johna down. “According to the fire inspector, the structure appears sound. He won’t know for sure until daylight, of course, but the interior is pretty well demolished.” He shook his head. “No one will buy the place now. Costs too much to renovate these old buildings.”
Johna was staring at the handful of women who were inching closer. The shape of one in particular caught her eye. “That’s fine, I’m not selling. I’ll turn it into a home for unwed mothers instead. It will be a memorial to my husband.”
“But…but Sir Otis would have hated the idea!”
“Yes, I know. That must mean it’s a worthy cause. The Otis Ogden Hospital and Foundling Home.”
Selcrest patted her hand, which he was holding firmly by his side. “And I’ll help finance the renovations.”
One of the women, the one who had put the idea in Johna’s head in the first place, called out, “That’s the ticket, lovey, then I’ll have somewheres to go.”
“That’s all right for Mimi, for later,” the oldest of the drooping females said, “but what about the rest of us, lady, for tonight?”
Greetings of the Season and Other Stories Page 11
