by M. J. Tjia
The sound of a drum roll barrels across the room, silencing the musicians and even hushing most of the clientele. A man snatches off his top hat and waves it in the air, whooping, while two pretty ladybirds near me clap their hands and balance on their toes. Everyone is straining to see the back of the room.
Four women, dressed in ivory frills and silk petticoats, take to the stage. They laugh and bow to the crowd, turn to the men of the band, the closest one indicating with a wave of her hand that it’s time to begin. Without further preamble, the tune bounds upon the air, a rat-tat of feverish melody. The women heave up their skirts, exposing their lean, long legs encased in black stockings. The higher they lift their petticoats, the more milky thigh can be seen above the stockings. They sashay a slippered foot to the right, then to the left. They bow low, poking their pert bottoms to the back of the stage, and the crowd roar and clap with approval.
I haven’t seen cancan dancers since Paris. I squeeze through the crowd so I can watch them more closely, craning up onto my tiptoes to see the women swish and twirl across the stage. If there is one thing I wish I’d learnt at a young age, it’s dancing, so I too could have been a cancan dancer in some Parisian bistro.
The women sail across the stage, peeling back their chemises to shouts of delight from the audience, revealing pert breasts. A man steps in front of me, and I’m crammed in on either side, so I can only really see the dancer on the end, a tall woman with Titian hair. With each hop, the huge ostrich feathers that embellish her hat bounce in time with her full breasts.
The dancers link arms and, with a swivel of their hips, they kick their legs up in unison, and I can feel my eyes widen, even as a woman behind me gasps. I push forward, and then, yes, mid-kick, I see that I wasn’t imagining it—a sliver of red hair flashes at me from between her legs. Confirming their scandalous behaviour, the dancers turn and flip their skirts up to show their bare arses, finishing on an almost deafening crescendo of music. I turn my head and search the crowd for Hatterleigh, and when I catch his eye, I grin. He smiles back at me, salutes me with his hip flask.
Later, in my bedroom, I stand facing the warmth of the fireplace. I’ve shed my crinoline and gown, and I reach my fingertips down and draw my slip up over my thighs, feel the silk feather against my skin. I pause a moment, my slip ruched above my hips, bend forward as if inspecting a blemish on the shiny skin of my shin. I know Hatterleigh’s eyes are on my behind, which I jut out a little, wondering if beneath the apple shape of my bottom he can see some of the core.
I let my slip fall to the floor, but keep on my chemise. The linen is almost translucent, and it’s open at the front so that with each movement my breasts sway, allowing him a fleeting glimpse. I reach for a large tome I’ve left ready on the mantelpiece and take a seat next to him on the chaise longue. I swing my legs over his, nuzzle closer so that my naked quim presses against his thigh. He puts his arm around me, his thumb caressing my back, and asks me what’s in the book.
I open it against my bare thighs and peel back its pages until I come to a gouache print. “A friend of mine sent me these little paintings from India. I keep them safe in the pages of this book.” I lift the picture away from the pages so Hatterleigh can see it better. The paper is fine and brittle, the fresh colours painted upon it giving it weight. Pretty branches with pink buds reach across a wall the colour of lemon, and a hill, celadon green, rests in the background. In the foreground is a man, dark and bejewelled, who stares ahead, while one of his hands holds a naked woman by the waist, her legs parted over his thigh while the fingers of his other hand toy with her nipple. The woman is arched all the way back until her hands and long black hair reach the ground, in ecstasy, in supplication.
“This is a painting depicting the secret pleasures of a famous prince, apparently.” I let Hatterleigh look at the print a little longer before tucking it back into the pages of the book. “My friend is translating a Hindu text. A book of love.”
I flip through to the next print. A woman reclines on cushions, clothed in a little yellow top and a full red skirt, below which her naked limbs are spread, revealing her neat chatte. The prince is poised above her. He has a cloth crown on his head and wears a smart jacket, but he’s without trousers, so that the hood of his long prick is poised against her.
We laugh at the next one, of a naked couple, he on his back, she balanced above him facing his toes. She has gold bands around her upper arms, and pretty necklaces around her neck and a nose ring. I turn the picture over. The artist has scrawled the words, The Wheel, on the back.
As I leaf through the book for the next print, Hatterleigh’s hand snakes inside the opening of my chemise. He cups my breast, strokes its curve. His thumb rubs my nipple in small swirls, presses its tip. I can feel a loosening in my limbs, between my legs.
“Oh my. I don’t think I could do this one,” I say, peering closely at the picture before us. She’s facing away from him, so he has full access to her breasts, which I like, but her legs are curled right up behind him, tucked beneath his bent legs where he crouches behind her.
“Yes, you would have to be quite the little circus acrobat to perform some of these postures,” he says. He waits for me to find the next one and his eyes trace the position of a couple joined together on a plush carpet, her leg slung over his shoulder.
“Split Bamboo,” I read from the bottom of the picture. I pull at the top of his trousers, feel my way to his cock. He’s hard, becomes more erect the more I stroke.
“This is the one, I think, that we can try.” The woman rests back on a sofa. The prince has his arms about her as he presses his way in between her legs, which are hooked over the crooks of his arms. Her breasts are high and firm as he leans into her. “It’s called The Flower.”
Hatterleigh kneels onto the floor and I straddle him. He brushes back my chemise with his lips and takes my breast in his mouth. He nudges his cock into me and I gaze at the picture of the woman, the flower, who’s draped in chains of gold, who stares patiently into the distance.
His arm weighs heavy across my belly and I fling it off, playfully. “Too sweaty.” We’ve made our way to my bed. My limbs feel syrupy, and my mind billows close to sleep.
I roll onto my side towards him. “When will we leave for Brighton?” I murmur against his arm, and then peck his skin with a kiss. I love going to Brighton. The restaurants, the sea, the people. And Hatterleigh’s always a bit more relaxed there too. It’s our place.
“Ah, yes, about that…” He takes my hand and presses a kiss into my palm. “I don’t think I can make it after all. Why don’t you ask Isobel or that Milly lass to accompany you?”
I open my eyes. “Why can’t you come?”
“My wife. She’s been confined. I’ve had word that I really should head back into the country as soon as possible.”
My insides frost over like a pond’s surface chilling to ice. Although I want to snatch my hand from his, I will my body to stay relaxed. “How domestic,” I drawl. I smile so that my voice is light too. “God, how many brats is that now? Four? Five?”
I know it’s three.
He laughs. “I’m not a rabbit.”
I stay pressed against him for a count of thirty seconds. Then I roll onto my back. I fling my arm over my eyes, like I’m preparing for sleep, but my stomach has that terrible tightness I get when I’m irritated. I hate little reminders like this that our relationship is merely a fleeting amusement for Hatterleigh. I feel that familiar pang of jealousy when I think of his wife. Not that I’m envious of their marriage, but it just makes me want to grit my teeth when I think of how easy her life has been, and always will be. I bet she’s never had to sponge her fanny clean from a bucket that’s already been used by numerous others; or been so hungry she’s eaten someone else’s leftovers. And I sure as hell know she’s never had to worry about money or about what will become of her in old age.
Which is all absolutely ridiculous, because I have accrued enough wealth to not have to
worry either, and I don’t want to be tied down to one blasted man anyway. If I really wanted Hatterleigh to stay by my side, I’m positive I could do it. I could! And not in a sneaky way, like that Tracey Greenfield who trapped Sir Neville with her belly full of arms and legs. I turn onto my side away from him and stare into the shadows. Not that that’s an option for me, anyway.
Don’t be such a sook, I chastise myself as I sit up and swing my legs off the bed.
“Where are you going?” He tries to catch my hand but I snatch it away with a bright smile.
“I have to take these pins out of my hair, or else they’ll stab my head all night and I won’t be able to sleep.”
I drape a linen cloth across the plush seat of my dressing-table stool because I’m damp between the legs. I can see Hatterleigh in the reflection of the mirror as he plumps up the pillows behind himself and sits up against the bedhead.
My skin glistens in the lamplight and I can feel his eyes on my naked back as I pull my hair loose. I think of when I saw Bethany Bird earlier in the afternoon, after I’d tracked her down in Finsbury. She really did look happy as she fed that fat little baby. It was many years ago we were tails together, but when Bethany had become pregnant, she’d been talked into a life of good by the missionary who took her in. She wasn’t allowed to keep her child, but she managed to find a new vocation as a nursemaid. And sometimes, between engagements, she helped me out with Sir Thomas’s cases.
“But how do you still have milk, Beth? Have you had another child?” I watched the baby’s pink lips suck at her nipple and knead her full breast with its plump fist.
She laughed at me as she rocked in the wooden chair by the kitchen fire. Apart from her snaggled bottom teeth, she looked like a Raphael Madonna. Always did. Sometimes that’s exactly what the punters liked, especially those bastard God-bothering ones. “No, Heloise. But by keeping up this work, near babies, I can keep my milk in stock.”
“But when you’re away from babies?”
“Well then I have to milk myself. Something like a cow. It’s nothing different from a Charlie giving them a good tug, though,” she whispered to me, looking around to make sure the other servants couldn’t overhear.
“So you can take on the Lovejoy position, after all?” I urged her. “The money is good, Beth. Probably the same as you’d make here in six months.”
She looked doubtful. “But I like my place here, Heloise. I’m not sure I’m up to a bit of your carousing for Sir Thomas again. I nearly lost my hair that last time we tricked those fellows at that dance hall.”
I cast my mind back. Ah, that’s right. The amorous adventures of a gentleman we were watching on behalf of his wife. He’d become suspicious, and drunkenly fallen upon Bethany, ripping the wig from her head, along with a substantial amount of her hair. I pulled a face. “Well, it grew back, didn’t it?” I teased.
I badgered her until she capitulated, and she promised that in the morning she would tell her mistress that her mother had become terribly ill and that she had to return to her home for a week.
But now, as I stare into the mirror, I think about how this is no longer necessary. I’ll send Taff around first thing, to deliver Beth the message that she will not be needed at the Lovejoys’ anymore. I will go.
Let Hatterleigh gallivant off into the countryside to be by his stupid wife’s side. I might as well keep busy with what I enjoy.
I brush my hair, and with each stroke my breasts lift and jiggle. I catch Hatterleigh’s eye as he watches. “That actually works out well, you going into Yorkshire. Sir Thomas came by today and offered me some interesting work. I won’t need to turn him down, after all.”
Hatterleigh frowns. “What work?”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? He came around here earlier today with the Detective Inspector who’s investigating the Lovejoy murders. They want my help.”
Hatterleigh’s frown deepens. “But that’s absurd. You’d be better to take one of your friends to Brighton.”
I pout as I braid my hair into a loose plait. “No. That sounds just too boring. I will definitely take up Sir Thomas’s offer.”
Hatterleigh climbs out of bed and pulls on his trousers. My lips curl into a slight smile. He doesn’t want to argue without his breeches on.
“But, Heloise, dear, there’s a murderer at work. It will be far more dangerous than you are used to.”
I twist in my chair and stare at him. What the hell does he know of what I’m used to? But then, I am a bit mollified that he’s worried about my welfare too.
“And what do they expect you to do?” He sits down on the side of the bed again to pull on his shirt.
“I’m to pose as the nursemaid.”
Hatterleigh’s eyebrows could not rise any higher. “Nursemaid! No, Heloise. I forbid it. I can’t have you doing menial work in another gentleman’s house. What if people were to find out?”
I glare at him for a couple of seconds, then turn slowly back to the mirror. So, being in the vicinity of a murderer is slightly worrying, but the fact that I’ll be posing as a servant seriously offends his senses. The sooner he rushes to his damned wife’s side, the better.
I dab some cream across my face and rub it vigorously into my skin. “Sir, you needn’t worry about your name or my welfare. I have always, and will always, take fine care of both.”
CHAPTER 14
Squeezing through the omnibus door, I wonder if this is going to be the first of many times I regret taking on this case. If only I hadn’t bloody quarrelled with Hatterleigh! But Hatch was right. The new nursemaid cannot be seen to arrive in a hansom cab or, heaven forbid, her own carriage.
I wedge myself between a pretty mother who has a little boy dressed top to toe in royal blue velvet draped across her lap, and a young man whose top hat is so tall it almost brushes the ceiling. Luckily my skirts are not as voluminous as usual, as I’ve dressed more in accordance with what is due of a nursemaid. I think.
As the omnibus trundles along, I can only see outside through the window behind the old woman seated opposite me. The window has been reduced to a sliver of glass because it’s pasted over with advertisements for silverware, whisky, matches. With each sway of the coach, the old lady’s basket inches across the floor against my toes and a peculiar stench wafts from her red coat. I spear her basket with my umbrella and nudge it back towards her.
I curse Hatterleigh again. I’d much rather be at home, or shopping for ribbons and pretty knick-knacks. I’d especially prefer to be in Brighton. Maybe I should’ve just gone there with Milly or Isobel after all. I cross my arms and stare balefully ahead as two more passengers cram themselves amongst us.
Last night, Hatterleigh left in a bit of a humph, but it’s not the first time, or last, we’ve had words. He’ll be back.
But Amah… my hands drop to my lap and I fiddle with the seams of my gloves as I think of her. She’s so preoccupied with something, I don’t know what. She’s been staying out til late, forgets to dress my hair, and she didn’t even make one rude remark about my purple dress. When I’d told her of this latest caper, I’d expected her to cavil, perhaps be a little scornful, as she usually is. However, she’d just paused in her embroidery, and nodded slowly. “That might be best.”
As she helped me pack a small valise, I asked her, “Why do you say that? That it might be for the best?”
She folded my Spanish shawl—although made from the finest wool, it’s of a sober hue, suited to a nanny—over and over until it was a tight little square. “I wonder if it might be a bit unsafe here, after… you know…”
“You mean McBride’s death?”
She nodded as her hand hovered, undecided, over my glove drawer.
Maybe she didn’t hear me properly before. “But, Amah, I’m going to the Lovejoys’ house. Where there have been two murders.”
She sucked her tongue against her teeth, waved her hand. “I have a feeling whoever is doing this murdering, is finished with that household.” Placing two warm
nightdresses onto the bed, she asked, “How will you explain your presence there?”
“I’m to be the new nursemaid.”
Amah gaped at me, her eyes almost as round as when she’s furious. And then she’d laughed, holding her sides, until she was reduced to a series of coughs. “You’re going to look after children?”
Even now, I smile at the memory. I mean, at the time I pretended to be offended at her mockery, but really, I can see why she was so amused. It is laughable. Heloise Chancey, paon de nuit, reduced to wiping the nose of a brat named Cyril.
“Your stop, miss,” calls the conductor from behind the coach as it lurches to a halt. “Stoke Newington. Just before the toll gate, we are, just like you said.”
As he pulls free my valise, I ask, “Which direction is Lordship Road?”
He nods to the road that branches from the one we are standing on. “That’s it there, miss.”
I walk towards the street, lugging that heavy valise so that it bumps against my skirts with each step, making my crinoline swing like a pendulum. The air is so cold my breath puffs out before me, reminding me of how much I’d savour a cigarette.
The dwellings along Lordship Rd are more spacious than what I am used to seeing so close into town. Large houses, slick with modernity, are surrounded by expansive gardens peppered with oak and elm trees.
“Excuse me.” I stop by a woman who holds a tray of puddings slung from her neck. Her apron is filthy, and she has a jaunty ostrich feather sticking out from her bonnet. “Can you direct me to St Chad’s Lodge?”
“Over there, it be,” she says, pointing down the road, to the right. “The house near the corner, under that there walnut tree.”
I thank her and walk in the direction she’s indicated. Along the left-hand side of the road, new terrace houses are going up and, as I pass a group of four men who are puffing away on their pipes as they stir up barrows of cement, I hear a low whistle. I act as though I didn’t hear it, but not before I see one of them murmur something to the others with a smirk.