“Immoral dross,” Lord Spence, the man who’d given him his title, had sneered at him while stripping him of it.
The papers set in on him by evening, crowing of his downfall. Saints & Satyrs took up the mantle of condemning him as merrily as he’d once condemned others from its pages.
Reverend Keeper arrived at the Meeting Rooms in a state of agitation, demanding to read the report for himself. His face tightened as he did so. When he finally finished, he looked at Henry like he might look upon a body at a funeral, and pronounced him thoroughly corrupted by his work.
“You are like a son to me, Henry,” Reverend Keeper said. “I plead with you to renounce this and ask the Lord’s forgiveness.”
When he said that he could not, Reverend Keeper accepted his decision. Together, they said a prayer. And the reverend told him that forming a ministry circuit of his own within their connexion would no longer be possible.
Henry offered to clear out his rooms in the Meeting House. Reverend Keeper accepted.
Within days, most of his close friends had made clear that they must sever their connections to him. The loss of each relationship was like a wall falling down in a house he’d spent a decade building. He understood, of course, though it still hurt.
But the only response he truly couldn’t bear was the one that never came at all. For there was really only one person whose opinion on the report he wanted: Alice Hull. And she had not replied to his letter.
He’d sent the report to her at the whipping house, with a note he’d spent so many hours writing he had it memorized:
Dear Alice,
* * *
When I found myself driving you to Fleetwend, I thought I had been put in your path because God was using me to lead you back to him. Now, I wonder if it was the opposite—that he put you in my path to show me a deficit in my own faith—to remind me that it is better to be humble than to be perfect, and to open one’s heart in compassion than to close it off in judgment.
* * *
I have taken his lesson to heart, and I am grateful for it.
* * *
I see now it was wrong of me to ask you to repent, to hide yourself, to lie. For what is most Christian is to love, and serve our fellow men as best we can, and leave judgment to the Lord.
* * *
I send you this report as a request, one sinner to another: read it, and have faith in me.
* * *
If you cannot love a man like me, I will accept your choice and wish you happiness and grace in whatever path you take. But if you would have me, it would be the highest honor to make a life with you. Openly, without apology, acknowledging the full complexity of you, of me, and of us.
* * *
If you burn as I do, Alice, then please, my love:
Set me as a seal upon thine heart.
* * *
Yours in faith,
Henry Evesham
The final line was from the Song of Solomon, that biblical poem of longing between lovers that he’d always worried he was too fond of. Now, he wondered if he had not been fond enough—if he’d hidden from its expression of pure desire and soul-deep longing, out of fear.
He’d taken to reading it late at night, thinking of Alice.
* * *
Your lips are like a scarlet thread,
and your mouth is lovely.
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
behind your veil.
* * *
He liked to close his eyes and think of Alice as the woman in the scripture, wrapped in scarlet threads, blissfully eating pomegranate seeds, licking their juice from her lips in sensuous delight. He missed her appetite, the pleasure she took in everything from the taste of cake to the taste of rain to the taste of his own body.
He missed her touch. Her laughter. Her humming. Her lurid, awful cursing.
He was determined to give her time, not to rush to her and demand she reconsider her position on their future. But it had been a week of silence, and he was beginning to fear no response would come.
That the problem had not been his views, or hers.
That perhaps his love was simply unrequited.
And then, one morning, the errand boy from Charlotte Street came by his new lodgings with a parcel wrapped in paper just heavy enough that he knew it must contain a key.
It did. But it was not from Alice.
Henry,
* * *
I am writing to commend you on the bravery and compassion of your report. I am saddened that your findings were dismissed, for I know how much good they would have done. I have heard of the consequences you have faced, and wished to say you have a friend in me and my investors, some of whom might be able to be of use to you.
* * *
To that end, we’d like to host you for supper in my private dining room this Friday night at nine o’clock. Present this key to be admitted. I hope to see you there, and shake your hand.
* * *
With compliments,
Elena Brearley
There was no word of Alice. But nevertheless, he sent back an acceptance with shaking hands.
Chapter 34
“Child, we were worried you were dead,” Stoker said, when he opened the door of the whipping house and found that it was Alice standing there.
He dropped his usual forbidding air and wrapped his arms around her, being careful to avoid the sling covering her arm.
“Mistress,” he called over his shoulder. “Look who has returned.”
The sound of Elena’s measured footsteps coming down the stairs was one of loveliest bars of music Alice had heard in her entire life.
“Alice,” Elena murmured, rushing close to inspect her injured arm. “I was worried for you. We all were. Your letter about the accident only arrived yesterday. We had begun to think you would not return to us.”
“I nearly didn’t, though not for lack of trying,” Alice said. She’d been going mad, being treated as an invalid by her mother for a fortnight. She’d left as soon as the physician had given her his blessing to take a mail coach. “I’ve missed you all. I am itching to return to work.”
Elena raised a brow at the sling over her arm. “We’ll not be able to resume your training if you’re missing your flogging hand, my dear. But I’m sure we can find a use for you. I’m glad to have you back. From your letter, it sounded like you had quite the journey.”
“Well, I was trapped in the snow with Henry Evesham, my mother staged her own death to try to force me to marry, and I nearly died in a carriage accident. I don’t think I shall be leaving London again any time soon. Perhaps not ever.”
Stoker laughed. “It’s good to have you back, Alice.”
“Yes,” Elena said. “And if it is any consolation for your troubles, you must have had an impact on our dear friend Henry.”
“Oh?” She tried not to reveal by her expression that any mention of Henry’s name was like a food that she had been craving for a fortnight.
Elena nodded. “Indeed.” She stepped over to the small desk in the alcove where they kept the keys and post, and rifled through a pile of letters.
“Here. He sent this for you.” She held out a thick envelope.
“Is that his report? Is it out?” Alice’s stomach clenched. She wondered what Henry had decided to do.
“Oh, the first page should give you an idea,” Elena said, with a smile that implied it was something unexpected.
Alice ripped open the document with her teeth.
* * *
A Proposal for the Reform of Vice
1—Preface to the Recommendations Herein
Though it is tempting to impose one’s moral views upon society, at times the practical result would be counter to the higher duty of Government to support the health and safety of the citizens the Crown protects. Such is the case in considering the trade of prostitution. In the following pages I therefore propose, after careful study, the following enumerated acts to improve public health and sa
fety; reduce costs incurred by disease and criminality; safeguard public decency; and establish a code of protections for prostitutes such as those upheld by guilds of other trades.
Alice read these words three times, scarcely believing Henry could have written them. She could not have hoped for a more auspicious prelude if Elena Brearley had authored the report herself.
“Remarkable,” Alice whispered, wondering how Henry had found it in himself to write such a thing.
Elena laughed softly. “Indeed. Whatever you said to the man, it must have worked. He’s calling for nearly everything we suggested. Licenses, guilds, physicians.”
Alice was stunned. “I hoped he might hear some of our arguments and soften his positions, but I never imagined he would propose something so radical. Won’t he be pilloried for it?”
Elena sighed. “He was dismissed by Spence. The papers are making a mockery of him. The debate he’s started may well lead to reform once the outrage dissipates, but I’d venture the reverend won’t be asked to perform christenings any time soon. But then he, of anyone, would have known there’d be a price.”
Yes. He’d known it, and he’d done it anyway.
“There was also this letter for you,” Elena said, holding out another envelope.
Unlike the printed report, it was written in his hand. His writing, just the look of it, turned her chest into a muddle. She fumbled it open, and the words inside did nothing to ease her. She felt like she was back in the grips of laudanum.
She had to sit down on the stairs so she would not fall over.
“Oh dear, what does it say?” Elena asked, dropping to her knees in concern as though Alice might be injured.
Alice read it again. “It says,” she whispered, “‘If you burn as I do, Alice, then please, my love: set me as a seal upon thine heart.”
Elena’s eyes widened. “It must have been quite a carriage ride you had with him.”
“I need to see him,” Alice said.
Elena smiled oddly, looking stunned for the first time since Alice had known her. “Well, you’re in luck. He’s coming to supper this evening.”
Chapter 35
As he had done a fortnight before on a dreary winter morning that changed his life irrevocably, Henry flicked his knuckle against a discreet door marked twenty-three, tense at who might open it. This time, when the footman answered instead of the dove-eyed woman, he felt the opposite of relief.
Where is she, he wanted to cry. Please, just let me see her.
“Your key?” Stoker drawled.
Henry handed over the new one he’d been sent. Instead of his previous sigil, with the cross, this one bore the emblem of the scales of justice.
A compliment, he imagined.
“Mistress Brearley awaits you in her dining room with her guests. I’ll show you in,” Stoker said.
He led Henry past the staircase and into a suite of rooms that had not been part of Alice’s tour. They were less austere, more comfortably furnished, and slightly better lit, though they still had a rather dark and brooding quality. The walls were upholstered in black silk, and the tables were adorned with vases of dark tulips, as though the house lived in permanent mourning.
“Mistress Brearley’s private apartment,” Stoker murmured. “The dining room is just this way.”
As they neared the door a tiny dog came bolting forward, chased by what at first appeared to be a cloud of pale pink ruffles. The dog landed at Henry’s feet and began to bark at him ferociously, as though convinced Henry had come to steal the silver.
“Shrimpy!” the ruffles—or rather the woman who was bedecked in them—cried. “Oh, Shrimpy, it is just your old friend, Mr. Evesham! Do behave.”
Lady Apthorp lifted the growling dog into her arms and, with a wink at Henry, showered his ears in kisses. “You remember Shrimpy, of course,” she said.
“Little devil,” Stoker muttered under his breath.
Henry did not disagree. The previous Christmas the benighted creature had become so thoroughly riled during an outdoor nativity pageant at the Apthorps’ that he’d caused a small child to fall into a pond. A frozen pond. Which had required Henry, who had been officiating the festivities, to jump into the icy water and save the little boy.
The dog stuck out his tongue with a smile and barked cheerfully under his mother’s affection, as though he had no recollection of attempting infanticide.
“Charmed to be reacquainted,” Henry said.
“I’ll take Mr. Evesham inside, Stoker,” Lady Apthorp said. Stoker nodded and walked away, with a parting glare at the dog.
“Come, come,” Lady Constance said, nodding at him to follow her. “Everyone is looking forward to seeing you. We’ve all read with great relish the delightfully terrible things they’re saying about you in the papers.” Her eyes twinkled.
She and her husband, Lord Apthorp, had been among the figures vilified in Saints & Satyrs during his tenure as its editor. Oddly enough, the experience had caused the Apthorps to fall in love, and they now counted Henry as a friend. It was Lord Apthorp, who had once been a master here, who’d introduced Henry to Mistress Brearley.
“I suppose I deserve a bit of reciprocity,” Henry said, matching Lady Apthorp’s dry tone.
Lady Apthorp laughed. “Oh, I’m only jesting. I humbly welcome you to the society of we who are ennobled by scurrilous gossip. You may find the first weeks trying but the notoriety becomes emboldening.” She smiled at her dog. “One can do anything when one is already a villain, can’t one, Shrimpy?”
“Not quite anything,” Henry quipped, not entirely without self-pity.
“Ah, but that is why we wanted to celebrate you. I wrote to Elena and said we must see Evesham at once, for he’ll need an entirely new life, and I’m just the person to arrange it for him. You know how I love to meddle.”
“You are too kind,” he said. And he meant it. He’d always liked Lady Apthorp.
“Our guest of honor has arrived,” Lady Apthorp sang as she led him into the dining room.
“Ah, Henry,” Elena said, rising from the head of her table. “Forgive us, we sat without you to escape the incessant barking of Constance’s insufferable dog.”
“Shrimpy is not insufferable,” Lady Apthorp rejoined. “He is outspoken. Like our dear Mr. Evesham. Now then, who needs an introduction?”
The room held a small party of people who were all exquisitely dressed and intimidatingly attractive. None of them, to his profound disappointment, was Alice.
Mistress Brearley gestured at a tall, hawkish man dressed in black and a willowy woman with striking green eyes. “Henry, this is Archer and Poppy. As you know, I don’t use titles here, but for the sake of clarity they are better known as the Duke and Duchess of Westmead. They are investors in the club.”
Henry bowed. The duke, he knew, was Lady Apthorp’s elder brother. Henry’d heard rumors of his affiliation with this place many years ago, but had never quite believed them. Both Westmeads smiled at him pleasantly, belying their public reputation for being terrifying.
“And you know Julian and Constance, of course,” Elena continued, gesturing at the Apthorps.
“Of course, a pleasure.”
“And I’m always the last to be introduced,” an elaborately wigged man at the end of the table drawled, eyeing Elena with a petulant smile. Beneath his resplendent headpiece of black curls his face possessed the kind of devilish features—a split chin, slashing cheekbones, diabolical eyebrows—that would have made Henry figure him for a rogue even if he had not already recognized him as the notorious Marquess of Avondale.
“Oh, Henry knows who you are, Christian,” Elena said in a tone of acute boredom. “He’s familiar with all the worst men in town.” She shifted her eyes to Henry. “It will surprise you not at all to learn Lord Avondale is the founding investor in my club.”
“And a most avid member,” Avondale supplied. “I’m a bit offended you never exposed me, Evesham. ’Twas certainly not owing to subtlety on my pa
rt.”
Mistress Brearley shot him a withering look. “Behave.”
“You’re here, beside me,” Elena said, pointing at an open place setting. Henry noticed there was a second open seat at the table, and tried not to lose his self-possession obsessing over whether it was for Alice. Surely not, for if she were attending this meal she would have already arrived, given she lived in the house.
He tried not to appear crushed as he sat down. “Thank you for the invitation.”
Apthorp, looking so impossibly beautiful that, as ever, it almost hurt to look at him, shot Henry one of his beguiling smiles. “Getting by, Lord Lieutenant?” His eyes were bright with sympathy.
“No longer my title, I’m afraid. In the spirit of Mistress Brearley’s etiquette, call me Henry.”
“Well then, dear Henry, let me be the first to say I am utterly shocked at what you published.”
Henry smiled. “You and the rest of London.”
“It’s brave, what you wrote,” the duke chimed in. “Futile, I expect, but brave.”
“Not futile,” Apthorp replied. “The ideas are being discussed, and that’s a start.”
“I hope so,” Henry sighed. “I plan to publish a longer work presenting more evidence, once the furor settles.”
“It will settle,” Apthorp assured him. “And while I’m sure life is not overly pleasant for you just at present, I have found that public acts of wanton foolishness have a way of working out.” He smiled fondly at his wife.
The Lord I Left Page 23