“Lady Vernon?” Faith gasped, clenching her fists. “By God, I’ll scratch her eyes out.”
“It was Lady Vernon who came hurrying over just an hour later to say there’d been a new development, and that you were suddenly required by Mrs Gedge to go to the Cotswolds,” Charity said. “Perhaps she only wanted to frighten you.”
“How could Lady Vernon do such a thing? She’s so…old and…poor.”
“She needs money. Exactly. And she’s ruthless, and you are nothing but a means of keeping food in that skinny belly of hers and a roof over her head. So, when you spend your enchanted week with Mr Westaway, I’d be far more distrustful of Lady Vernon than your young man who seems quite harmless.” Charity folded another petticoat and dropped it on top of a pile of folded underwear lying in Faith’s carpetbag. Seeing Faith’s look of concern, she smiled. “Don’t worry, Faith, Mr Westaway will think you’re quite delightful; I’m sure of it. I’ve seen him, and he has a pleasant manner. He’s not the kind who pushes his weight around to prove he’s better than his peers and want to show the likes of us just how important he is. I think he’ll be kind to you.”
“He’s been here?”
“Lord, no!” Charity laughed. “I’ve asked around and he doesn’t frequent establishments such as ours. In fact, he’s not been associated with any young woman whom anyone knows about so perhaps Mrs Gedge will be disappointed in her grand designs by finding his tastes run more to the Greek.”
Faith put her hand to her mouth. “He doesn’t fancy women?”
Charity shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps he likes both. Perhaps he’s a virgin, and you’ll have to be the one to show him what to do.”
Faith stared at her shoes. Her encounter with Lord Harkom, so fresh and horrifying, had made her feel vulnerable and powerless in a way that being Mrs Gedge’s pawn never had. Ever since she’d come under Mrs Gedge’s thumb, Faith had been quietly confident she would one day outwit the older woman. Yet in only a few minutes, Lord Harkom had used his brute strength to subdue her. Not only would he be able to subdue her, physically, any time he wanted, the frightening reality was that in the world in which Faith lived, his money sanctioned any amount of brutality.
“How will I do that when I don’t know what to do?” she asked.
Charity laughed as she sat on the bed beside Faith and hugged her briefly. “What a question when you’ve lived in this place so long,” she said. “You’ve seen the living displays. Besides, haven’t you ever put your eye to a peephole in all these years?”
“Of course not! And I block my ears if I have to.” Faith shuddered, and Charity put her hand to Faith’s chin and turned her head so she could look into her eyes, saying quite seriously now, “Have you really been able to live at London’s most notorious, high-class brothel for three years and block out everything that goes on here?”
“I know what happens…physically. But that’s very different from everything else.”
“Don’t let your encounter with Lord Harkom colour your feelings.” Charity was matter of fact now. “He’s a well-known brute and granted, there are a few like him. But mostly, the men are respectful, even if they’re self-absorbed and think only of their own pleasure.” Her smile broadened. “Sometimes it’s even possible to fall in love with a kind regular. That is, when he brings you gifts, and fills your ears with sweet ones, telling you you’re the only one. Making you believe him when he says that one day he’ll take you away to a new life.”
“Do you really believe that, Charity?” Faith felt sad for her friend. Glad that she could enjoy the brief pleasure of being in love, but sad that her love was doomed.
“Of course, I know not to believe it,” Charity added quickly. “It’s words only. But it makes the act tolerable. No, it makes it a pleasure.”
“A pleasure? For a woman? But what pleasure is there?” Faith was now more troubled by the possibility that she might have some feeling unleashed in her than by the mechanics of what she’d long resigned herself to. Tonight had made everything a sudden, horrible reality.
Charity rose. “You’ll have to leave that to Mr Westaway. Make him desire you, encourage him with your shy but eager responses. You’ve learned how to do that during your apprenticeship here. And those other classes Lady Vernon took you off in your carriage to attend?”
“Philosophy, politics and art and classics with Professor Monk?”
“Professor Monk!” Charity let out a scream of laughter. “And was he? We girls used to speculate his reception of you was far from monkish.”
“Professor Monk is at least sixty, no, seventy! With hair growing out of his ears and nose and, obviously, no interest in women at all.” Faith considered the gentleman who’d opened her mind to the wonders of the wider world through the uncensored education he’d given her, teaching her the same curriculum he taught all the boys who came to him for similar instruction. “But he was always kind to me.”
“So he taught you nothing about the workings of the body? How to prevent conception, how to feign pleasure?” Charity gave a sly smile. “How to give and receive pleasure?”
Faith imagined her wizened old tutor being involved in any such instruction and laughed for the first time.
“Oh Faith, you are so pretty when you’re not so serious!” Charity exclaimed. “But, of course, Madame has taught you these things? She has, I know it, for all we girls must attend the instruction Madame conducts here.”
“I know the basics,” Faith admitted. “But for you girls, it’s all so real and necessary because it’s all about the things you do every day. For me, I never dreamed the day would come when I really had to…” she swallowed “…sell my body.”
Charity rose with a shrug as she headed towards the door. She had to leave, Faith knew, as she had a customer waiting for her. Daisy, the tweeny, had just called through the keyhole to tell her.
“It’s not so bad when you get used to it,” Charity said bolsteringly, as she let herself into the passage. “As long as you have a plan to escape. Even if that plan is just in your head.”
With quiet resolve, Faith said, “I plan to escape the moment I’ve done all the damage to Mr Westaway that Mrs Gedge wants me to. I’ve signed a contract giving me five hundred pounds if I can get from him an agreement to set me up as his mistress which I will decline. If he makes me an offer of marriage, then she’ll double that.”
“A marriage offer is worth a great deal more than a thousand pounds, Faith! What a strange contract. You surely didn’t sign that, did you? I mean, sign to say you’d reject him and break his heart in order to get yourself a thousand pounds?”
“I did sign it, because when I first came here, the alternative was that or be handed over to the magistrate.” Faith felt uncomfortable. “And then I just did my lessons, and I had a place to live, and I didn’t give it much thought. Now, though…”
“Well, if you can make him fall in love with you, maybe you can fall in love with him, Faith. Maybe, out of all of us, you can be the one to get your marriage offer and live happily ever after.”
Faith saw that although she smiled, she looked worried. “It’s a legal contract,” she said. “I know it is.”
Charity sighed. “I just worry that if Mrs Gedge is anything like Madame, you’ll never be free.”
“But if I can truly make Mr Westaway fall in love with me, then maybe I can be.”
Chapter 9
Faith hadn’t left London since she’d arrived a little over three years before as an innocent country girl from Dorset. Now her transformation was complete, and no one from her village or perhaps even her family, would recognise the poised young woman who swayed from side to side in the train carriage beside her chaperone.
Not that she felt poised. Faith was a jumble of nerves inside.
She and Lady Vernon had not spoken in two hours since their initial brittle greeting before being transported to the station.
Lady Vernon had immediately opened a book once the conductor had
led them to their seats and slammed the door on their compartment.
Faith had tried to read, but after an hour, the anger bubbling inside her could no longer be suppressed. Lady Vernon wasn’t some brutal dominator who could reduce Faith to a quivering mass of tearful powerlessness, and yet that’s what the frail old woman hunched in the corner had effectively done to the ‘goddaughter’ she was supposed to protect.
Finally, she could bear the silence no longer. “How much did Madame pay you to release me to the first high-paying customer who happened to fancy using strength and violence to break in a virgin?”
There! The words should have made the old woman turn from her usual grey parchment colour to a sickly off-white.
Lady Vernon put her book down. She swayed from side to side as the train rounded several bends. “Madame Chambon told me she arrived just in time.” But there was fear in her tone. Obviously, she trusted Madame to tell her the truth as little as Faith did.
Faith stared at her. “How long does it take for a big, strong, arrogant man to rip the clothes off a lady and have his way with her? I don’t suppose you know, Lady Vernon, though I see the thought is unpalatable to you. And yet you were willing for that to happen to me as long as you got enough gold coins in your pocket.”
Lady Vernon’s nostrils flared, and the lashes over her rheumy eyes fluttered. “You are…intact, Faith. Madame assured me you were.”
Faith banged her hand onto her book in frustration. “Do you ask because you’re filled with remorse and truly hope I am unscathed out of concern for me? Or because I’m worth more to you if I am… intact?”
“Regardless of what did or didn’t happen, you’d do well to preserve the fiction you’re a virgin if you wish to keep Mrs Gedge as a benefactress.” Lady Vernon sounded bolder now. “If you’re not, and word gets out, then you’re no good to anyone. And if you’re no good to anyone, you’ll starve, my girl, so consider yourself lucky that you’re here with me.”
Faith looked out of the window at the passing countryside. It looked green and lovely, the air fresh and clean now they were out of London. “As if anyone would know or care to wonder if I was a virgin if they knew where I’ve spent the last three years,” she muttered. Lady Vernon looked so harmless, so utterly inconsequential, sitting in the corner like a bundle of rags, except that the gown that covered her bones was silk. Very old silk, now dusty with age. But perhaps she was even more ruthless than Madame. Or Mrs Gedge? Faith would have to remember that as she embarked upon the next part of her journey.
“Now, I understand that you are aware of the requirement that you’re to enslave this young man’s heart, but don’t be too eager,” Lady Vernon said, changing the subject. As if she knew anything about enticing a young man—or any man.
Faith sent her the filthiest look she could but said nothing.
“We both know that your future, and mine, hinge upon your success.”
“How do you know his heart isn’t already engaged?” Faith asked. “How do you know he’ll even like me?”
“His heart is not engaged, and you are just the kind of young lady to appeal to this young man. Appeal to his chivalrous nature; his protective instincts. Don’t be too eager for intimacy or it won’t ring true. Reel him in, slowly.”
“Have you had much success using this strategy yourself, Lady Vernon?” Faith enquired politely and was rewarded with a bitter smile. Good, she’d touched a nerve.
“What if I feel sorry for him and don’t wish to ruin him?” Faith added. “I’m not cruel by nature. Not like you and Mrs Gedge.” She gave a short laugh. “If he falls in love with me, then I may think it more worthwhile to run away with him than accept Mrs Gedge’s fee with my freedom.”
“My dear girl, I certainly don’t think you’re quite so stupid.” Lady Vernon pulled out her wire-rimmed spectacles to examine Faith as if she honestly believed the girl could be mentally deficient. “You surely must realise that Mrs Gedge will reveal everything about you to him if you were to do that. And then what future could there be for you? Do you think his father would allow him to marry a prostitute, even if you both were madly in love with one another? No, break the boy’s heart, wait for further instructions, and when you’ve fulfilled your duty to Mrs Gedge’s satisfaction, you will be given your freedom and assured that your prospects for making a respectable match with some other worthy gentleman will be fostered by the woman who has been so good to you all these years.”
Faith sighed. The prospect of her journey into Mr Westaway’s arms and into his bed didn’t particularly move her, though she supposed anything was preferable to being pounded into submission like Lord Harkom had nearly done.
But at least Mr Westaway seemed pleasant enough.
Though falling in love was not something Faith intended doing for a long time.
Chapter 10
Crispin couldn’t remember the last time he’d whiled away a few hours in a hammock. He should have done this a long time ago—had a few days’ break from London and his father’s scrutiny.
He raised the book resting over his face by a few inches and waved it in the air to shoo away the bee or fly that threatened to settle on his chin. For the moment, the enjoyment of simply doing nothing was almost more enticing than picking up a paintbrush. Perhaps his father’s strictures that he give up his art until he was well entrenched in his new position was not such a bad one.
He wondered now at the wisdom of asking Miss Montague to be his model for the painting he intended entering into the prestigious art competition that had so stirred his blood a few short days ago.
For today, languid in the sun, he had no urge to do anything very much except rest completely. His brain was tired; his body was tired. In the three short weeks before he was due to board a packet to France and begin his journey to the country that would be his home for the next few years, perhaps he should simply rest.
He’d have to compensate Miss Montague for her time, of course. He’d been fired up by the idea of furthering her acquaintance, but over the past few days, her image had dimmed. And over the past day and a half spent lazing in the lovely cottage garden of the small manor house that had been given over to his use by his aunt and uncle, all his desires and ambitions had quite drained away.
He was drifting off when he heard a clear voice say, “The History of a Crime. I enjoyed Victor Hugo’s essay about Napoleon III's takeover of France, though I did find it heavy in parts.”
He opened his eyes, astonished to find himself staring at Miss Montague, dressed simply in white and flanked by the funereal-looking Lady Vernon.
“When did you read that?” he was startled into asking, before good manners came to the fore, and he removed himself from the hammock and ushered the ladies to a garden bench nearby.
“As soon as it was published. I love anything by Victor Hugo though my papa feels he’s unsuitable.”
“Unsuitable?”
“Yes. Do you think it’s unsuitable for a young lady to read Victor Hugo? And if so, why?”
He hadn’t expected she’d be so direct when given the chance to converse with her beyond the confines of the ballroom.
“Unexpected, perhaps, is a better term. It was recommended reading by my papa in view of my imminent posting. I must admit I find it heavy going too. If you gleaned anything from it, you’ll have to impart your insights when you pose for me.” He studied her covertly while pretending to arrange the cushions in the chair upon which he sat opposite her. Her hair had the look of newly threshed corn. There was a golden glow about the rippling tresses that immediately had him envisioning his palette of oils.
“It would be a pleasure. I’m very good at keeping still, but the time passes more quickly if we’re discussing something interesting. That’s if your concentration is up to it.”
Crispin smiled. Her transformation was astonishing. She looked much more at home in the colourful summer garden in the country discussing an intellectual topic than when she’d been so obviously on disp
lay in a public arena.
And, the more he thought about it, the way the sun glistened on her beautiful hair made him long to run his fingers through the ringlets that fell over her right shoulder in preference to painting it.
The thought startled him, and he made a mental note to beware of any similar urges.
Miss Montague was a penniless girl sent here to model for him, and he was off to the Continent in just under a month for a posting of many years. He had a career that couldn’t include dowerless potential brides, no matter how entertaining and easy on the eye, while she was on the lookout for a husband. Her godmother had already admitted that Miss Montague could not afford to be discerning if she were to escape her fate as a governess.
No, Crispin was expected to do much better than Miss Montague when the time came.
Nevertheless, the interested way she was looking at him now was having a rather tumultuous effect on him.
“I’ll enjoy testing your knowledge and reporting back to your tutor,” Crispin said with a levity he did not feel for, in truth, his fingers were just itching to seize a paintbrush and stand in front of a canvas while his senses directed him from there.
That’s what he loved so much about being a painter. The ability to let his mind wander at will. It was something his father had deplored in his dreamy young son, insisting that learning and application led to a future based on merit.
Lady Vernon cleared her throat. “We are putting up at the White Swan for this week. It’s convenient as it’s only a short walk, and the weather looks set to be good for the next few days. When will you want Faith for her first sitting? And what should she wear?”
Crispin laughed and immediately apologised. He was not used to being asked for his advice on a lady’s attire. Suddenly, the situation in which he’d been thrust seemed ludicrous. And yes, as the sun fell across Miss Montague’s sweet, smiling face, quite delicious.
At his hesitation, Lady Vernon went on, “The title of the work that is to be painted is Lady at Sunset, if you recall, Mr Westaway. How would you like to direct Faith? Do you have a location in mind? Or will you paint her in a studio and do the setting later?”
Keeping Faith Page 6
