Fair Cyprians of London Boxset

by Beverley Oakley

  Violet didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

  “Your turn to play, Violet.” He waved his hand over the board, then hesitated as he was in the act of leaning back into the cushions. “I say, you’re not offended, are you?” He cleared his throat. “I understand it’s necessary for—”

  She cut him off. “For girls like me to play fast and loose with the truth? There, Lord Belvedere, I just all but decimated you. Careless. You lost three.”

  He didn’t look at the board. “Violet?” Then again, “Violet? Tell me what’s wrong. You were sad in the carriage, and I brought you here to jolly your spirits. I thought I was doing a mighty fine job until just now. I’m sorry if I offended you by making light of what you choose to tell my aunt to elicit her sympathy. Bravo to you, I say. Aunt Euphemia loves a good tragic story”

  “For God’s sake will you stop harping on my storytelling!” Violet threw up her hands. “How many times can a girl take being called a liar and still smile about it? My parents were murdered. Are you satisfied? Yes, I told your aunt, but I spared her the details, and if you value our friendship as you say you do, goodness knows but talk like this is a strange way to go about cultivating it.”

  The temper had crept up upon her before she’d even been aware of it lurking in the shadows. Violet hadn’t displayed temper since she’d been a child, so it took her by surprise. Unless this onslaught of emotion was something else altogether.

  Surely it must be.

  For why were the tears coursing down her cheeks as if she had no control of them?

  Which she didn’t.

  Angrily, she brushed them away as she bent over the board, trying to focus.

  But she couldn’t. And then Max was by her side, holding her in his arms as so many suppressed memories found their outlet in her sobs.

  She buried her face in his chest and breathed him in. Lemon verbena, sweat, horses. It was a good, honest smell that brought back the past even more strongly. “My dear girl, I had no idea. Truly, I am so sorry.”

  She could barely take in what he was saying. The sobbing wouldn’t stop but he let her cry in silence, holding her and stroking her hair.

  When finally she was exhausted from the emotion she leaned back, sighing deeply. “I should go.” She made a move to rise but he wouldn’t release her.

  “Not until you’ve told me.”

  She shrugged. “My parents are dead. So are yours. It’s all the same, in the end. The nature of their deaths is immaterial when you look at it like that. Grandmother ought to know,” she added in a whisper, bitterness flooding her at the memory.

  “My parents weren’t murdered.” He was serious now. “That’s not something most of us have to live with. How did they die, Violet? Don’t think I won’t believe you,” he added quickly.

  “Their throats were cut. We were in Cawnpore—”

  “Dear God!” The spasm of his shock reverberated through him as he held her. “I’m so sorry. And you really were living there? Forgive me, Violet. I thought”

  “That everything I said about my past was a lie?”

  “I supposed I was thrusting you into my lie. I just expected to get more of the same back.” He touched her cheek. “I haven’t really taken the trouble to listen to you properly. I’ve only…”

  After a moment he asked, “Tell me all you want to but nothing you don’t. I’ll not pry, but I do want to help.”

  She chewed on her lip, the comfort of his arms around her transporting her back years to when she’d felt cherished. Safe.

  “Please, Violet?”

  She shivered. Could she bear to? Should she rake up the past? She’d never put any of this into words.

  A tremor ran through her and his arms tightened around her. She rested her head on his chest and began to speak.

  “My family lived in Cawnpore. My parents. Me. My sister.” The thought of her sister made her smile. What he was asking her to remember didn’t. “My father had a lucrative trading business and we lived well. A beautiful house, servants. I wanted for nothing.” She’d been a privileged child, waited upon hand and foot. There’d been beautiful clothes and the lively tea parties her mother had enjoyed hosting.

  It all seemed so long ago.

  Closing her eyes and saying the words as Max stroked her face, felt like a dream. Before she’d even conjured the images, she remembered the smell. The damp earth smell that drifted through the half open window. The smell of the oil lamp on her father’s desk.

  The rank smell of evil, unwashed bodies as men who had no right to be there stole into the house.

  “My parents had returned from dinner with the Governor. I heard them dismissing the servants, downstairs, after they returned. And then I must have fallen asleep for I was awoken by a strange commotion. A muffled cry, I realised afterwards when I hurried downstairs and discovered two bandits had entered the house. They were looking for valuables, I suppose, but my mother must have got in their way. My father, who’d been in his study, came into the drawing room at the same moment I did. When he saw they held a knife to Mother’s throat, he had nothing with which to defend her. Or my sister or me. I’ve never seen a man look so helpless. We were all helpless. But Mother was like a lioness. She had a temper.” Violet smiled. “You should have heard the insults she hurled. No, she didn’t whimper in fright. But then my sister appeared. She’d been woken, too. She was only six and she didn’t understand.” Violet shrugged. “When one of the bandits came towards Emily, it was too much. Emily began to scream and Mother began to claw at her captor’s eyes. That’s when he sliced her throat. In the fight that ensued, I don’t know what happened. It was all over so quickly. The bandits left. They took a few valuables. Only what they could snatch as they ran. And they left our parents dead at our feet.”

  Max’s breathing was soft against the crackle of the fire. A ghostly silence enveloped them as he held her close and stroked her cheek. “My poor Violet. What happened to you, then?”

  “As my mother’s parents had died some years before, we went to live with my father’s mother. She’d never approved of Mother, so her reception was not particularly rapturous.”

  Violet shuddered at the memory; at the flint in her grandmother’s eye as if she blamed Violet and Emily for being alive when her son was not.

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Five, nearly six years ago. I was fifteen.”

  “Was your grandmother kind to you?”

  “She fed and clothed us. She paid for decent clothes, fashionable enough not to invite censure upon her for being a poor guardian.”

  “But…you ran away? That’s why you do what you do? Or is she dead? Did she leave you nothing?”

  Clearly, it was a leap too far for him. And, of course Violet couldn’t expect him to know without being told. She’d come this far; she couldn’t retreat.

  But this was the part she didn’t think she could put into words. Her parents’ deaths had been beyond her control.

  This had everything to do with her own youthful lack of control. She didn’t know if she were ready to admit to her own failings and deficiencies to such an extent.

  “I hesitate to tell you yet I daresay you can’t think worse of me than you do.” She sighed, speaking over his predictable protest. “When I was eighteen, we had guests. We lived in a large house in the village of Ruislip and two distant relatives came to stay. The gentleman was charming. At least, he was charmed by me, and I, who’d had no experience of the ways of men who want something from a woman was naïve enough to believe he found me attractive. I believed I was in love with him and that he’d take me away from my hateful grandmother. I dreamt of a life where I could be free. I imagined how we would take Emily with us and live our lives for one another. Without always feeling grandmother’s dripping disdain for the daughters of the woman who’d lured her son away and been responsible for his death.”

  “But he didn’t ask you to marry him?”

  “He was in no position to
though I didn’t know it at the time.”

  She felt the tension in Max’s grip. “He was married.” He didn’t have to make it a question.

  “And I was despoiled. As it turned out, his wife was a dear friend of my grandmother’s, and she painted me the seductress, though truth be told I’d never even smiled at a man before I met Ralph. Well, grandmother seized the opportunity to send me away to earn my own living.”

  “She cast you out? With nothing? Her own granddaughter had to fend for herself on the streets?”

  “She paid me a small allowance which supplemented my earnings from a position in a drapery. A respectable enough job, I suppose, as long as she didn’t have to be troubled by me anymore. But it was the least she could do. As you pointed out, I was her granddaughter.”

  He didn’t ask her the leading question, but it was implicit. And by her tone, he knew there was more coming, so he waited. Working in a drapery was very different from working at Madame Chambon’s.

  Violet sighed and looked down at her lap. “You will think badly of me when I tell you the next part of my sorry tale.”

  Chapter 9

  Max blinked and wished he hadn’t. Whatever else she misread in his expression indicated that he already thought the worst of her. And he certainly didn’t.

  “Yet, Max, it gets worse. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t already sealed my fate. As if I hadn’t already cast myself into the ranks of the impure. The fallen. I just hoped no one would discover my shame.”

  “I don’t think you need to be so harsh on yourself. You were very young.” Max stroked her heavy dark hair. It was soft and smooth and carefully coiled in the fashion of the day. Violet was an exquisite-looking woman. She’d have enjoyed a great deal of male interest, surely. Yet she’d had no guiding influence. Nor had Max, but he was a man. Mabel had reminded him of this often enough, teasing him about the way he muddled through life oblivious of the niceties sometimes, and that she wasn’t sure she wanted to devote her life to teasing out his potential. She’d said it playfully during the past couple of years of their betrothal. Lord, they’d been on the verge of getting married so many times, but an untimely death or something else had always pushed back the date.

  He stroked Violet’s cheek. She was the one who needed guidance, and he didn’t want to think about Mabel. “Obviously, you’d been taken advantage of by your grandmother’s acquaintance. Your grandmother would hardly have spoken of it. I’m sure you needn’t have worried.”

  Violet sent him a wry look. She continued, “It was heavy work and long hours. I didn’t enjoy it. But there was one bright spot.” She sighed but didn’t smile. “A gentleman who seemed kind used to stop by the shop, first to buy ribbons for his nieces and then, after a while, he paid me compliments. When I’d known him for several weeks, he crossed my path on my way home and, as we were both heading into the same tearooms, he bought me tea and buns.”

  She squeezed her hands together and sent Max an imploring look. “You must understand how lonely I was. Apart from my weekly letter from Emily, I had nothing to look forward to. No other family and no friends, for Grandmother had discouraged friendships since we’d returned from India. Besides, I’d grown up in India, not England. I’d not gone to school here. Grandmother kept us isolated. I had no one.”

  “I understand, Violet. I shan’t judge you harshly.” He suspected he knew where her story was going and wished he didn’t.

  “One evening, when I’d known Cedric about two months, he invited me to the theatre. He bought me supper afterwards, and we had wine. He told me he loved me and kissed me. I thought I loved him too. It wasn’t too hard to persuade me, when he was walking me back to my boarding house, to stop by his own lodgings. I hadn’t had anyone tell me I meant anything to them in so long.”

  She stiffened in his arms as she brought the back of her hand across her face. Max held her tighter. “I went with him to his bedroom. He hadn’t made me drunk. I went of my own free will. I wanted human contact. I wanted to feel loved.”

  Her eyes were large and imploring. As if she really did want Max’s exoneration. “Afterwards, as I lay in his arms, feeling happiness like a glow throughout my body, he said, “My sister told me you were a whore. And now I’ve proved it.”

  Max gasped. He’d not expected this. Unsure what to say, he held her as she stared over his shoulder and recounted her tale in a soft, unemotional voice.

  “I cried as I put on my clothes and didn’t stop as I ran all the way home, alone, in the dark. Two days later, my grandmother wrote to say she was cutting off my allowance. She’d heard about my loose character from too many quarters, and it was clear I could survive well enough selling the commodity that only the virtuous quarantined for marriage. Those were her very words. I’ll never forget them.”

  Max studied her pale, drawn, beautiful face. She was honest and she’d been badly used. He didn’t know what to say, but he had to offer what comfort he could. “Then you were forced into this work. You had no choice.” He wanted to exonerate her, but she wouldn’t have it.

  “I had a choice. I could have worked my fingers to the bone and perhaps, with time, I’d have managed to win the affections of a man who’d have me as an honest woman.” She grimaced. “Lord knows, it’s not possible to survive on the wage of a draper’s assistant without learning the necessary economies that must support such a position. And even then, an unforeseen need for a doctor or pharmacist often meant there was not enough left of my wage to both put food on the table for the week and keep a roof over my head. What little I knew about money was that there was never enough of it. I was always late with the rent and constantly threatened with eviction. But you’re wrong. I did have a choice. And I chose to present myself on Madame Chambon’s doorstep the very next day because I’d heard her name spoken with the utmost contempt because she traded in Cyprians. Lightskirts. Barques of Frailty. Prostitutes. And that’s what Cedric had said I was. Not only had he said it, but he’d proved it. I knew it in my heart, and now my grandmother knew it. I can’t change my past. I am destined for hell and damnation; however, I still have some years on Earth which I would like to spend as pleasantly as possible. I have no intention of going to a nunnery to repent or throwing myself into thankless hard labour just to keep from starving. Women don’t earn enough to keep themselves, and I’ll not sell my body on a street corner for a few shillings just to keep ahead of the creditors. Lord Bainbridge is going to set me up. The arrangements have almost been finalised. Two weeks from now, after I have fulfilled my obligations to you, I shall leave Madame Chambon’s to become Lord Bainbridge’s mistress.”

  Max felt unaccountably discomposed. There was such bleakness in her tone. Her judgement of herself was so harsh and cold.

  “Surely you could go back home? Your grandmother could not be so unfeeling as to refuse to take you in. And there’s your sister. You need to think of her.”

  “My sister is dead.”

  She said it so flatly, yet the pain that flashed across her face was greater than that which she’d shown when recounting her own miserable situation.

  He wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Emily died of typhoid last year. She’s buried in the village of Ruislip which is where my grandmother lives and where I have no intention of ever returning. So, you see, I have no one to be good for.” She smiled and touched his face. “And I am certainly not here to be good, Max.” She rose, her delicate, long-fingered hands hovering at the buttons at her throat. “Please Max, I know you invited me here to prove you have scruples. But you didn’t have to prove that for I already knew it, just as I know that in less than a week, there will be nothing more between us.”

  Max closed his eyes and tried to subdue the violent impulses that were warring within his breast and, quite as uncontrollably, in his groin. His whole being ached for this woman. For her touch, light and delicate upon his bare skin, that never failed to whip him into the most exquisite delight, a precursor to a myriad of intense sensations and
ultimately devastating satisfaction that was the inevitable culmination.

  She wanted this. It wasn’t an act. He wasn’t paying her extra. This was no additional bargain. It was simply a coming together through want and need.

  And he needed it as much as she did. For she satisfied his need for closeness with a woman like no woman ever had. Being in her arms made him feel a sense of freedom and fulfilment he’d not felt before.

  Chapter 10

  Noon was far too early for Max to present himself to anyone. Certainly after the excesses of the night before. So, to discover that not only his grandfather, but his grandfather’s old friend and neighbour, Lord Camberwell were awaiting him in his drawing room was a shock of the highest order.

  Hesitating before the door, he wondered if he should make an ignominious exit through the scullery. Perhaps he could pay Violet a call.

  Immediately he realised Violet was not available to him for such spontaneous visits. He’d have to gird his loins and face what he must without her.

  Feeling unaccountably forlorn at the thought, he turned the doorknob and opened the door, pushing back his shoulders to face the occupants of the light and elegant, high-ceilinged room, who were currently engaged in drinking tea but who would soon focus their frighteningly incisive scrutiny upon himself.

  “Hello Mabel,” he said with commendable lack of irony as he stepped forward to greet his errant would-be-bride. “This is a surprise.”

  She nodded her neatly coiffured head and fixed him with her intense green eyes, the most surprising feature in her pleasant, serene face, though there was nothing he could see that was precisely wrong with her mouth, which was turning up at the corners. Except that it completely failed to move him as did the full, soft, rosebud lips that belonged to Violet Lilywhite.

  And as an image flashed through his mind of the violent sensations Miss Violet Lilywhite had evoked upon him during the three notable occasions this past fortnight that had changed his life, he reflected that he’d never actually kissed Mabel’s lips.