Faith squeezed her eyes shut and forced her body to go slack. If a struggle was what he wanted, then she wasn’t going to humour this man in any way. She opened her eyes, and it was the devil staring down at her.
It galvanised her to action. Meekly taking what was coming to her so as to lessen the pain was not how she’d play things. She’d not spent three years being turned into a lady only to be cast to the wolves and consumed like a sacrificial lamb the moment she fell short of Mrs Gedge’s expectations of her.
She’d kill him. That’s what she’d do. And then she’d run. She might have to jump out of the window first, but she’d not whore herself out to any man off the street willing to pay for her. She’d not whore herself for anyone except…
Yes, there was one exception. She could do it for Mr Westaway. With Mr Westaway. One man. Mrs Gedge’s revenge. That was the mission for which Faith had been groomed, and she’d been prepared to compromise herself with only one man in order to earn her freedom.
“Lord Harkom!”
A furious pounding on the door was met by his lordship’s horror.
“What is the meaning of this?” he shouted as Madame burst into the room.
“You’ve not spoiled her?” Madame demanded breathlessly. “Thank God!” she added as she ran her gaze across his still-buttoned breeches. With heaving bosom, and heels clicking across the floorboards, she arrived at Faith’s side and, seizing her arm, yanked her to her feet. “Beg pardon but there’s been a terrible mistake, my lord. Naturally, you’ll be adequately compensated. I’ve any number…”
But Madame did not finish, for as Lord Harkom straightened his clothing as he stalked to the door, he was well into his threats against her house, issued from the threshold, that her business would suffer for the terrible insult he’d just endured.
Dazed, Faith stumbled into the passage as Madame led her past young women lounging with or without gentlemen consorts, who all eyed her curiously as she was pushed into Madame’s private sitting room.
“You’re to say nothing of this, do you hear?” Madame’s voice was a low hiss, her body trembling with suppressed emotion as she pointed to the red-velvet upholstered sofa, indicating for Faith to sit.
To Faith’s astonishment, a brandy was thrust into her hand with the order that she drink it all.
Madame sat down opposite her and fixed her with a beady stare.
“Nothing! Do you hear?”
Faith was trembling so much she could barely manage a reply. She nodded dumbly. What choice did she have but to agree? She’d been spared, and she had a roof over her head. She could count herself lucky.
Madame’s fingers shook as she fixed the squirrel pelt with a pin to her coiffure. “Tomorrow, I’ll see to your wardrobe, and the next day you’ll be heading north to spend a week in a cottage in the country.”
“With Lord Harkom?” It was all Faith could think to say.
“Don’t be ridiculous. What do you suppose all that business just now was about? No, you’re going to the Cotswolds.”
* * *
True to her word, it was Madame herself who, the next day, personally oversaw the petticoats, stockings, shoes, bonnets, and gowns Faith would take with her to her unusual destination.
And, all brand new.
“Am I going to see Mr Westaway?” Faith asked. “Did he request that I come?”
“Mrs Gedge will tell you what you need to know.”
Madame did not speak with her usual aplomb, and Faith suspected the previous evening’s events had discomposed her, too.
Her friend Charity confirmed it as she took over the more menial task of folding ribbons and seeing that Faith’s jewellery, simple pieces, were properly secured in their velvet boxes.
“Serves her ladyship right for selling you to the biggest brute that’s ever crossed this threshold. And for your first time, too!” Her scorn was apparent, and when Faith stared, open-mouthed, she went on, “There’s nothing that woman won’t do if enough coin crosses her palm. It wasn’t just Anastasia he hurt, though I couldn’t say it to you last night. Lydia and Ruby had bruises for days after their sessions with the beast, and while Madame banned him for a month, I suppose she couldn’t refuse him when he offered her such a bounty for supposedly the newest and loveliest virgin in town.”
Faith sat heavily on the bed. “He must have come offering just moments after Mrs Gedge said she no longer wanted me.”
“Oh, it was Lady Vernon who told Madame that you were no longer any use to Mrs Gedge. I think the old cat thought she could make a pretty penny on the side by selling you out.”
“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. Mak
ing 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 smil
e. 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.
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