Frost Fair

by Edith Layton

  “There are things I’m trying to forget, though I cannot,” he said with a significant look to Louisa. “But I never get so high in my attitudes that I forget what I did the next day. Now, this chap was not only friendly, but fascinated by what I had to say. He was interested in things even my own mates are bored with. My complaints about my misfortune in love, to be exact.” He scaled another look toward Louisa. She was oblivious, still studying Lucian’s face.

  “Someone murdered the Baron St. Cloud,” the lieutenant went on. “And obviously—I must say it, though I am astonished by it—I am suspect. To my way of thinking, if someone’s trying to murder the viscount or his brother now, I ought to be no longer suspect. But I doubt your mind works that way, does it Mr. Corby?”

  Will smiled. “My mind works, lieutenant. It’s how I earn my bead.”

  “I suppose you want to know my whereabouts last night?” the lieutenant asked stiffly.

  “I suppose I might ask why you think I’m still so interested in you? It’s an interesting conclusion you’ve leapt to,” Will mused. The lieutenant paled. “And I suppose you’ll tell me you were with friends last night. Fellow officers who’ll swear to a man jack of them that it was so?”

  “Just so, for so it was,” the lieutenant said.

  “Give me their names and I’ll talk to them. Again,” Will said wearily. “Though I wonder if we’ll ever nab old Boney, what with the way our troops are sucking up the rum here in London town. Good thing his lads are weaned on wine, evens the score somewhat.”

  No one smiled. The lieutenant pokered up, Lucian looked uncomfortable, mind and body. Lousia was trying to look away from him now, and Maggie’s mind was working furiously.

  Louisa recovered first. “Mrs. Preston,” she said, turning to Maggie, “‘how difficult this must be for you, to find yourself in the midst of such dire doings. And how rude I am not to offer you some tea, at least, for your troubles. Have you the time for a visit? The lieutenant was just leaving.”

  “But was he?” Will wondered aloud when he and Lucian got back into the coach. “Just leaving, I mean? Looked black as a storm cloud when he marched out. But so did the lady when you said you had an appointment and had to go, even though you did promise to be back later to retrieve Mrs. P. No, I take that back. She didn’t look like a storm cloud as much as a rain cloud. Thought she’d commence weeping at the sight of you.”

  “I am not as attractive as usual,” Lucian agreed.

  “Turning a blind eye? Aye, well, I don’t blame you. Ticklish situation, at best. Consider this, though. With the way she obviously feels about you, it would have been the worse for you if your uncle hadn’t got himself topped and she had gone through with the wedding to him.”

  “Indeed,” Lucian said, refusing to think or speak about the revelation the lady’s reactions to him implied. “And we two wouldn’t have met. Now, I don’t know how you could have coped with such a loss, Mr. Corby, and I daresay you don’t even like to think about it.”

  “I don’t need a tree to fall on my, my lord. I’m mum. At least on that head. Now, we’ve time to interview a few buttock brokers before we have to pick up Mrs. P. But it’s your turn to be mum. Just play the grieving nephew and look pained. Leave me to the rest.”

  “I can do no other,” Lucian said.

  But there was nothing he could have said at Auntie Janet’s establishment, the first stop they made. In fact, he wondered if the usually acute runner was mistaken. The woman looked ordinary as any female Lucian had never particularly noticed standing behind a counter anywhere in London. Middle-aged, thickset, her graying hair still in curl papers, she was merely a dowd. The only thing that spoke to her profession was the fact that she wore a wrapper rather than a gown. But that might be because Will had rousted her from bed.

  The house wasn’t as shabby or tawdry as Lucian had imagined a brothel in Spitalfields might be, either. The sitting room was furnished simply. There was a comfortable coal fire, the chairs and carpets were plain, but not threadbare. It didn’t look like a den of vice. But then, he hadn’t seen that many, and those he had were for the upper classes. He’d visited a few after his wife died. They didn’t amuse him, but he’d had to admire how sumptuous they were. Some had bathing pools, some had music rooms and libraries. Many had erotic art on the walls, or coy statues of Venus and Cupid in their well-polished halls.

  Whores in those houses were not called that. They were “Demi-reps” or “Cyprians,” “birds of paradise,” “barques of fraility,” “bits of muslin,” “high fliers” and “ladybirds” instead. The gentry had dozens of names for their occupation, all somehow exotic and almost flattering. Most could converse with a man, some with wit. They dressed voluptuously and were scented like expensive flowers. It was hard to tell if they were really pretty, but they were certainly sensuous. Their hair came in astonishing shades of midnight, red or yellow. Paint accentuated eyelashes and lips, filmy gowns showed random hints of forbidden areas, carmined nipples, rounded thighs, rosy bottoms. Eyes and mouths, breasts and buttocks, a man didn’t need more when he hungered to take a body to bed. A look at their painted faces told their occupation, and that fact alone was enough to stir a man’s blood if that was the mood he was in. Decent women didn’t paint—except for some old ladies of the ton who couldn’t forget the habits of the past century, or used it in a misguided attempt to show they were still young.

  The mistresses of those brothels were either still so attractive men vied for the right to buy them for a night, or else resembled nothing so much as Society matrons past their prime. This bawd was nothing like, nor were her women.

  The sleepy girls Will had Auntie Janet turned from their beds looked like shopgirls or females who worked in a manufactory, rather than at pleasuring men. They weren’t even tempting in the secret guilty fashion of whores who lurked in alleys. Lucian doubted any amount of paint could change that. They were ordinary, in every way. Their shifts showed spare bodies, or flabby or awkward ones. They were pale and sometimes spotty, and blinked in the early sunlight like owlets. They were most young, and all confused. Lucian didn’t see one who was seductive, though a few tried artificial smiles that blinked on and off with Will’s scowls.

  Auntie Janet kept complaining. “I don’t know why you come to me, Mr. Corby, I do not! I have no custom amongst the gentry. I run an honest establishment for men who work with hands and backs, not a nob amongst them. Perhaps a clerk, now and again, but no more than that. Isn’t that so, girls?”

  The girls all shook their sleepy heads, looking bemused.

  “Your baron, well, who hasn’t heard of him by now?” Auntie Janet said. “It isn’t often such a nob comes to our part of town, nor to such an end, neither. But never to my establishment, right girls?”

  Lucian wondered if Will had misunderstood. He began to feel uneasy, foolish, as if he’d accused a schoolmistress of pandering. Until she went on.

  “It’s straight in and out work we do, Mr. Corby,” she said with an injured air, “with maybe a French trick like bagpipe work for a fellow who wants it, for there’s many a lad who likes a girl to do the work, and a suck off’s no trouble, to be sure. Or similar for a fellow who can’t get the wind up to go at a real rogering. And a bit of back door work for those who enjoy such. But nothing fancy, no doubles, no pain…though if a chap likes a little horsewhip took to him now and again, we’ll oblige, to be sure. Now, your baron was after some fancier than that. You can bet on it. Otherwise he’d go nearer home, wouldn’t he? But if he came here… Try Mrs. Manion, down the street. Or that Byrant woman. Nothing she won’t do, some things I wouldn’t ask my girls to listen to, much less try!”

  “I wonder what those things were,” Lucian mused when they got back into the coach.

  “You’ll find out, do you make the rounds with me,” Will said. “But I believe old Janet. Not just because she caters to a set of working coves who only like their once a week. But because there was no tension in the room.”

 
“That, I must also leave to your expertise.”

  “No,” Will said, “trust me. When we find it, you’ll feel it.”

  What Lucian found at the next stop was repugnance. Mother Juniper looked a caricaturist’s bawd. At least, he was sure Mr. Rowlandson must have once used her as a model. Obese, unkempt, with small mean eyes that estimated a man from his clothing to his desires, all at one contemptuous glance. Her house was shoddily furnished and filled with cheap gim-cracks.

  The mistress of such a house obviously set the style of it. Because her “girls” were anything but, and more nearly resembled the whores to be seen in the streets in the worst parts of town. They smiled at Will, and stared at Lucian. One licked her lips as Lucian stared back. He forgot his various pains in his chagrin at her imagining he was interested in her.

  “No, your baron din’t come here, redbreast,” Mother Juniper laughed. “Not that he mightn’t of. We do gets the gentry, from time to time. Well, some like to slum, and some like to get even with their wives, thinking nothing could be lower than bedding one of my trollops. But we ain’t had once in a while. Y’might recommend us to your friends, my lord,” she said, winking at Lucian.

  “Be quiet!” Will snarled. “Or speak truth. I heard you get lambs, from time to time, for those gents.”

  The old procuress’s amusement abruptly faded. She looked outraged. “Not I!” she shouted. “Who says it is a liar! Never. Ask anyone. There’s a few’d like to see their Mother swing, there’s truth. But no one can lay that at my door. Not that I wouldn’t like the coin, but I was once such myself—and that I will not have! Prove it or leave me, redbreast, is all’s I’ll say.”

  “For now,” Will muttered, and walked out the door.

  Lucian’s raised eyebrow said it all. Will explained in the coach. “She denied supplying virgins. Little girls for men with clap or pox. I told you some think it cures it. It infected Mother Juniper with poison, that’s sure. I knew her history, but thought an accusation of worse might make her admit to less. Well, time to pick up our fishmonger. I’ll wager she seems more like a lady to you every minute, eh?”

  “Not only because of how we spent the last hour.”

  “Still, you’ll meet many a whore who acts like a lady,” Will said moodily. “Men like to think whores are in it for the pleasure. Some may be, but they’re few and half-crazed at that. At least, so I’ve found it to be. It’s just work for most of them, the pleasure comes after, with their pimps or woman friends. Many are lazy sluts who’d rather lift their skirts than turn their hands at honest labor. But too many are just hungry. Times are hard and sometimes that’s all a female can sell. Freeze to death in a doorway these nights, or stay warm beneath strange men and make it until morning. Some choice. Mrs. P. is lucky, for all she had a hard master in that husband of hers. When he died he left her freedom, in more ways than one.”

  They were silent until they called for Maggie. They refused Louisa’s offer of tea, and watched as Maggie bid her hostess a sad farewell. When she returned to the coach she took a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. She sniffed, “Forgive me. It’s just so sad. She’s so lonely. She was so pleased to see me. We talked without let-up. We spoke about the baron and she confessed… Oh. No! Don’t look like that! She didn’t confess to that. She only said she felt dreadfully because though she was shocked and saddened by his death, she confessed she was horrified to discover she was also relieved. She had no hand in it.”

  “That’s as may be,” Will rumbled.

  “Well, I believe her,” Maggie sighed. “I’d love to see her again. But of course, I can’t.”

  “Of course you can,” Lucian said. “Perhaps there’s more to be learned, perhaps not. I’ll take you again, if you wish.”

  “But I said I was going back to Maidstone, as we agreed.”

  “A woman is entitled to change her mind,” Lucian said.

  “If she tells us what’s on it first,” Will said impatiently. “What else did she say?”

  “She don’t want to marry the lieutenant. She wishes he’d leave her alone because she’s tempted, even so. Because she’s so lonely, you see, and knows she’ll never get a better offer. Because…” she glanced up at Lucian and then away. “…she’s lonely,” she concluded weakly, having obviously changed her mind about what she was going to say. “I’d swear she knows nothing about the baron’s death—but you know?” she added on an inspiration, “I got the impression she was worried that Lieutenant Pascal’s love for her might have made him do something rash. Didn’t he even say he worried you thought just that? If we could take her into our confidence, I’m sure she’d find out everything you want to know about the lieutenant!”

  “I think not, Mrs. P.,” Will said, amused. “Not all females are as prudent as you are.”

  They rode in silence for a while. Maggie, savoring the unexpected compliment. Lucian, in too much pain to speak. And Will, because he was thinking.

  “We’ve more calls to make before we’re done today,” Will said as the coach rolled up in front of Maggie’s shop. “Send to me if you think of anything else.”

  “We will meet again?” she asked, pausing at the coach door.

  “Of course,” Will said. When she left he gazed at Lucian, silent in his corner of the coach. “I can go on alone if you like.”

  “I do not like,” Lucian said. “I must find the man who killed my uncle. It’s the only way I can feel easy anymore.”

  “Then let’s go. We’ll find you some more terrifying thoughts to change that,” Will promised as they drove to Spitalfields again.

  They spoke to two more bawds, and learned nothing except that whoremongers were eager to implicate others of their trade. And that men must be blind when lust was upon them.

  “I think you’ll find this next place more to your taste,” Will commented.

  Lucian was too dispirited to answer. His energy was flagging and he knew he wouldn’t be able to disguise it from the runner much longer. His spirits were lowering too. It wasn’t just that they were interrogating the dregs of society, or that the tawdry locale and desperate women they spoke with were darkening even his dim view of his fellow man. Nor was it even the increasing physical discomfort he felt. His ribs ached, his leg throbbed. Even the plaster on his cheek was chafing, because as the day wore on his beard was growing and rubbing at it. But worst of all was the growing suspicion that this was a cold trail and a fruitless endeavor.

  The light was slate and the cobbles rang with cold. There were few street vendors and fewer passersby every hour because of it. The coach stopped in front of a row of townhouses that had once been grand. The quiet of the afternoon gave them the false appearance of being quality again. The street was deserted except for two little girls, wrapped to their ears, playing with a shaggy white puppy on the steps of one of the houses. One girl was fair and one was dark, and for a moment the innocence of their laughter struck Lucian to the heart. It didn’t seem fair that they had to grow up in a world that would try to degrade them. He’d heard too many ways mankind degraded their women today.

  The children looked up as the two gentlemen descended from the elegant coach. One of the girls essayed a smile at them, but the other pulled at her, aghast. In a moment, they raced away, disappearing down the nearest alleyway, the white puppy at their heels.

  Will nodded approval. “Their mothers taught them well. They’d have done better to keep them off this street entirely. It’s quiet now. It won’t be by dusk. Auntie Jane does a brisk business. She’s a shrewd old sow. Runs a better house than you’ve seen today, almost too good for this district. She’s cold and cunning. I’ve dealt with her before.”

  They were let in by a monster of a man who took Will’s name and shambled into the house to get his mistress for him. Will and Lucian stood patiently, hearing voices, hearing laughter.

  The giant returned. “Auntie says as to how you should come in,” he said carefully. “This way please, sirs.”

  They followed him in
to a dim parlor, where two women were sitting near the hearth, talking. One was obviously “Auntie Jane.” She was rouged and bejeweled, and wore a sly and curling smile. But she might only have been laughing at their expressions.

  Because the other woman was Mrs. Maggie Pushkin.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Spanish Will glowered at Maggie. The viscount’s good eye gazed at her with suspicion too.

  She’d been wondering who it was at the door. Auntie Jane had looked too pleased when Flea bent to whisper in her ear after he’d gone to see who was there. Maggie was in a fever of anxiety, fearing Auntie’s customers had begun to come round. She’d thought men didn’t conduct their vile business at this hour. It was why she was here now. Flea had even said so when she’d asked. He’d been visiting and had walked back to Auntie Jane’s with her.

  It wasn’t a man bent on vice. It was two men determined to find a murderer. Now they looked at her as though she was one.

  “But you asked me to ask questions everywhere,” Maggie said nervously, though neither of the men spoke.

  “Indeed,” the viscount said, and there was a world of distrust and disdain in the one word.

  “Well, indeed, to be sure,” Maggie sputtered. “Where was I to ask, I ask you? The House of Lords? I heard a rumor that your uncle had been to a…place like this, and since I’m a friend of Flea’s and know Auntie Jane…in a manner of speaking, I came to ask her what she knew. Who better to ask? You’re here. …Unless, you’ve come for other reasons?”

  Well, that made them blink. She knew this last was terribly unfair and untrue. But they seemed to suspect her motives and she wanted to give them some of their own back. Auntie Jane laughed, even if they didn’t. But the laugh had an unpleasant sound.