by Kitty Curran
“Well, my darling,” he says after you finally come up for air, “I’m not sure where this road will take us next. But wherever it does…”
You nod at him and finish his sentence.
“I had best remove my stockings first.”
Ollie’s eyes sparkle with mischief, and with that you make passionate love in the carriage, on your way to a new life of adventure and intrigue as spies.
The End
Benedict can fend for himself.
“I—I should very much like to see Egypt for myself,” you say, your voice sounding as though it comes from a distance. Can this really be happening?
“Wonderful!” exclaims Lady Evangeline. “I say we make our move as soon as possible. We can fetch supplies on the journey.”
You nod enthusiastically. The two of you laugh, link arms, and head straightaway for the main entrance of the house. On your way, you see that the dowager is dozing upon a settee, her head tilted back, snoring full blast. You smile to yourself incredulously. Finally, you are having an adventure…who knows what it may bring?
Turn to this page.
That night, you retire to your chamber with the mysterious diary. Holding the journal of Craven’s dead wife sends a dark thrill through you. A woman’s diary may contain intimacies so private that she would wish to keep them even from herself, locked safely away in a prison of ink and page. You know whatever is contained in these pages, Blanche surely wished it never to be known by another…unless something untoward were to happen to her.
You arrange yourself comfortably (and attractively) in your bedclothes. You consider, for a moment, never reading a word of the thing. Surely there will be descriptions of certain adventures that Blanche had with Lord Craven. While your skin instantly turns hot as you envision him standing above you and stripping down to the beastly and powerful naked state you now associate with the mere mention of his name, your blood is chilled at the idea of him being so stripped by her.
You glance up at the painting of Blanche and swear you see a challenging smile twisting the corner of that perfect, bitten-nipple-red mouth.
Blast! You will read it. The damn portrait knows you will, and the devil does, too. You flash a knowing glance at the canvas. A challenging smile plays in the corner of your own mouth, as you remember how just a short time ago it made Lord Craven howl with pleasure.
It may be the wine you’ve been sipping, that wild moonlight playing on the painting, or something else, but Blanche’s portrait seems the slightest bit rebuffed. Good. You smirk, then crack the gilt-edged volume, whose cover is the color of spilled merlot.
A most splendid morning. Played hoop and stick with Alexander-my-Wonder. Picked flowers! Skipped, and rang a festive bell.
You choke a bit on the wine. This was not what you expected to find. You read on.
I used to think loving Garraway was my life’s greatest joy. After that I thought, of course, my life’s greatest joy is being mother to the most wonderful, sweet, thoughtful child in all of England and surely the world, Alexander! I then wondered how this joy compared to the joy of being Garraway’s truest love and wondered if I was being unfair by weighing my joys. I cried a fair deal, and was sick with worry. But then I had the realization that love need not be measured, if that love is as endless and true as mine for my boys!
You glance at Blanche’s portrait once more. Your cups might be thinking for you, but she looks positively smug. You continue.
I feel low for even thinking it, Diary, but Garraway has changed since Alexander has come, hasn’t he! He is cruel now, and always angry, and ever so resentful of any happiness I share with the child. Sometimes he is so fearsome I worry what will become of us if we were to rile him to the brink. I do not think him an evil man, but he does not know his own strength. Sometimes, Diary…sometimes I fear his anger will be the end of us all!
You throw the book from your bed. The dead woman’s words do not align with what you already know—or think you know—about her. Alexander regards his mother in horrified tones, but this book paints their relationship as happy and healthy. Lord Craven’s eyes flash like lightning if his dead wife is so much as mentioned, yet here, in her own hand, she writes rather sickeningly of their joy together. You don’t know if what you smell is a rat, or smoke from a distant fire.
This dubious text merits further investigation.
If you decide to confront your fears, as well as the late Lady Blanche Craven’s, head directly to the forbidden room in the forbidden wing in the dead of night. Turn to this page.
If you wish to gather your thoughts and some intelligence by interrogating—er, interviewing—the staff of Hopesend Manor, turn to this page.
You stagger back with the wounded Kamal from the marketplace and throw open the doors to the museum.
“L-Lady Evangeline,” you stammer. She looks up from her work and fixes her lustrous eyes upon you before they widen in horror.
“What happened?!”
“Oh, Lady Evangeline! It was Farouk! He has been working for another and attacked us and—”
“Delphine!” hisses Evangeline. You nod at her, eyes wide, as you cradle the unconscious Kamal’s head in your lap. To your intense relief, his soulful brown eyes flicker open.
“An angel…am I dead?” he says dreamily. You blush.
“Oh, Kamal, I do commend you for managing to be charming even after being knocked unconscious,” Evangeline quips. “But we still need to get you medical assistance immediately. Are there any other servants here who are not secretly nefarious villains?”
“My lady, I am so sorry, I had no idea Farouk was…” says the still-dazed Kamal. Lady Evangeline wipes his face with a handkerchief she has retrieved from her heaving bosom.
“Hush now, Kamal. You need to rest.” She gestures to a distinctly not-villainous manservant who has rushed into the room to fetch help.
As the manservant hurries out, Lady Evangeline whispers to you in urgent tones.
“This is again Delphine’s work. She must be stopped!” Her eyes are afire with righteous anger, so much that you half fancy her to be Sekhmet, ancient Egyptian goddess of war, in her ferocity and loveliness.
“Oh no, my lady!” gasps Kamal from your lap. “Delphine St. Croix is dangerous, and the road to her is fraught with peril!”
“Exactly. My favorite type of road.” Evangeline smirks. “Still, I would have been content to leave the foolish woman in peace had she not come after my friends.” With that, her spine straightens, and a beam from a nearby window, as if sent from heaven, suddenly illuminates her fierce golden beauty. Your jaw drops with desire and admiration.
She turns to you, at once serious and businesslike.
“However, my dear, Kamal is right. I don’t expect you to follow me into danger, peril, and possible dismemberment. Please, feel free to rest here with him. I have adventured solo before, and it is no matter for me to do so again.”
She reaches out and strokes your cheek gently. You thrill to her touch, and also the thought of danger the likes of which you have never faced before.
It’s decision time.
Do you throw caution, decorum, and all other respectable nouns to the wind in order to follow Lady Evangeline into the unknown? If so, turn to this page.
Or do you value your limbs still being attached to your body and decide to sit this one out? If so, turn to this page.
The journey to London is long. Outside the carriage, the darkening sky is already filling with stars.
You, however, are grateful that the ride has gone some way toward calming your frazzled nerves. By the time you are nearly there, you almost feel like yourself again.
Lady Evangeline laughs. “I cannot believe I’m heading all the way back to London, in secret, in my own carriage, with my aunt’s companion—”
“And a half-full flask of brandy,” you interrupt. “Don’t forget tha
t.”
“How could I? The half that’s missing is half of the reason we’re here. How much longer, Hugo?” Lady Evangeline calls up to her driver.
“The rest o’ the evening, my lady,” Hugo answers in a booming but warm voice that somehow softens the edges of this clandestine adventure.
“Where in London are we headed, Lady Evangeline?” you ask politely. “Drury Lane?”
“Not exactly,” Lady Evangeline says. “Suffice to say, I do find many other houses of ill repute more welcoming than Drury Lane. And since we are far gone now, I may as well fling the rest of the skeletons out of the closet and into the danse, as it were.”
“Oh?” You raise a limber brow.
“It is improper to say,” Lady Evangeline titters, “but I do know that after her scandalous affaire with the late Sir Granville, Mrs. Caddington made many associates not precisely befitting a respectable woman. She was part of a fast set who knew they couldn’t act as they wished in open, proper society, so they carved out their own sort of…secret one.”
“You speak as though you were a member of this secret society yourself,” you say with a smile.
“I am a member of my own society, you devil,” Lady Evangeline says, smiling in turn. You note that technically she hasn’t said yes or no. Fine woman.
“Anyway,” she continues, “I do know that the company she kept still keeps its company. I think they are a better target for your inquiry, if you don’t mind advice from the lady in the carriage.”
“As it is your carriage,” you reply, “I welcome it! Let us go to this haven you speak of. Wheresoever is it located? Must we wait till morning?”
“Oh, no!” Lady Evangeline falls to giggles. “Where we are going is open around the clock. In fact, should we arrive to them at half past three in the morning, we will find it livelier than that same hour of the afternoon.”
“Tell me!” you beg, and for a moment you are nothing more than two young ladies on the ride of your lives. “Where are we going?”
Lady Evangeline’s smile is knowing and slow. “Hugo!” she calls to the driver. “Set your course for the Rose & the Smoke.”
* * *
You feel as though a devil’s age has passed since you first fled the soirée at Manberley and set out for London. You are rocked gently awake by the hubbub of the carriage, pulling into whatever street the Rose & the Smoke must be located on. While you slept, you dreamed of handsome men and lovely women, snakes cutting a path through high grass, and castle walls being held by great teams of faceless defenders working together to weave a pattern of protection. You also dreamed of Benedict’s gaze burning into your own.
The carriage hits its final lurch, and you wipe the dreams—and Benedict—from your eyes.
“Here we are.” Lady Evangeline smiles, pats her hair into place, and exits the carriage with an expression of barely concealed glee.
You expected the Rose & the Smoke to be, perhaps, a secret dining hall by a well-known restaurant. Maybe a clandestine meeting space within a progressive dressmaker’s boutique. A salon in a wineshop, even. But you never expected this. You never expected—
“Gin Lane!” you hear yourself shout. Lady Evangeline glares back at you. “Gin Lane!” you repeat, quieter this time, but no less shocked.
“You are not in Gin Lane!” Lady Evangeline shoots a hoarse whisper your way like a huntress would an arrow. “Gin Lane is one street over. You are in Harlot’s Row.”
Your eyes widen. To call the street down-at-the-heels would be an insult to heels everywhere. A strong breath exhorted in pleasure could knock over most of the ramshackle structures, which makes it all the more wondrous that the symphony of sin being conducted all around you in houses of ill repute (and doorways of ill repute, and street corners of ill repute, and, from what you can tell, at least one lamppost of ill repute) does not topple the whole of Harlot’s Row.
But on the corner of this street of sin stands a structure as grand and handsome as any you have ever seen in the better addresses of London. It drips with gold filigree that, you are shocked to notice, has not been chipped off and traded by the lowlier denizens of the street.
“It is the prize of Harlot’s Row,” Lady Evangeline whispers, as if in answer to your silent thoughts. “It is sought after by the profanely refined, honored by the downtrodden and vice-working, and thoroughly reviled by the members of high society—”
“—when they aren’t in attendance?” you finish for her.
Lady Evangeline smiles in reply. “Welcome to the Rose & the Smoke,” she says, before turning her attention to her driver. “Hugo, do tell Madam Crosby that I am here.”
“Hugo does not need to,” says a voice smooth as blue silk.
Forgetting your sense of decorum, even on Harlot’s Row, you take in the owner of the voice: a woman so timelessly handsome and disarmingly calm that she looks as though she is standing in front of Buckingham Palace instead of a house of wantonness. “News of your carriage travels well before you, Lady Evangeline,” the silken voice continues.
“Madam Crosby!” Lady Evangeline beams.
“It has been too long, Evangeline,” Madam Crosby says, smiling in kind.
You shiver. The night has a strange quality, one that you are no longer entirely certain of. Still, you like it. You think.
Lady Evangeline links her arm in yours. Together, you ascend the staircase into the den of sin.
Off you go to this page.
You are unsure how to broach this subject without looking like a fool…but broach it you must.
“L-Lady Evangeline,” you stammer, “I think something might be wrong. I can’t exactly say why, I just have a bad feeling.”
She nods sagely. “Quite right. Always trust your instincts. Doing so has saved my skin on several occasions.”
With that Lady Evangeline places a foot on the desk and swings up her skirts, revealing a shapely leg with a most well-turned ankle and…a small gold pistol tucked in her garter. She pulls out the pistol, straightens her skirts, and beckons you to follow her out of the room. You creep behind as quietly as possible.
The eerie silence persists as you make your way down the corridor. At the doorway to the main hall, she pauses, puts a finger over her mouth, and strides into the room with pistol aimed.
“Oh, hello, gentlemen,” you hear her say to the sound of desperate scrambling. “I do hope I haven’t disturbed you. Farouk, is it?”
Your eyes widen, your heart races, yet somehow you find yourself walking through the doorway as if in a trance.
There, in the great hall, Farouk and three other heavyset men you don’t recognize are backing out the main entrance, their own weapons pointed at Lady Evangeline.
“To some, yes,” snarls Farouk, his scarf now pulled back to reveal a face as beautiful and harshly unforgiving as the Sahara. “But my true name is Fabien. Fabien de Mangepoussey.”
Lady Evangeline scoffs. “And what exactly are you playing at, Fabien?”
He smiles mirthlessly. “The imbécile was too preoccupied with his foolish antiques to notice I have been working for another this whole time.”
To your horror, you see Kamal slumped lifelessly on the floor.
After what feels like a time period that could have spanned the Middle Kingdom, the ruffians leave. Lady Evangeline rushes to the door as you run to aid poor Kamal.
“Please don’t be dead, oh please don’t be dead,” you whisper under your breath as you lift his bleeding head onto your lap.
To your intense relief, Kamal’s soulful brown eyes flicker open.
“An angel…am I dead?” he says dreamily. You blush.
“Oh Kamal, I do commend you for managing to be charming even after being knocked unconscious,” Lady Evangeline quips. “But we still need to get you medical assistance immediately. Are there any servants here who are not secretly nefarious villains?”
“
My lady, I am so sorry, I had no idea he was…,” Kamal’s voice trails off.
Lady Evangeline wipes his face with a handkerchief retrieved from her heaving bosom. “This is Delphine’s work again. She must be stopped!”
“Oh no, my lady!” gasps Kamal from your lap. “Delphine St. Croix is dangerous, and the road to her is fraught with peril!”
“Exactly. My favorite type of road.” Evangeline smirks. “Still, I would have been content to leave the foolish woman in peace had she not come after my friends.” At that her spine straightens, and a beam from a nearby window, as if sent from heaven, suddenly illuminates her fierce golden beauty. Your jaw drops in desire and admiration.
She turns to you, at once serious and businesslike.
“However, my dear, Kamal is right. I don’t expect you to follow me into danger, peril, and possible dismemberment. Please, feel free to rest here with Kamal. I have adventured solo before, and it is no matter for me to do so again.”
She reaches out and gently strokes your cheek. You thrill to her touch, and also to the thought of danger the likes of which you have never faced before.
It’s decision time.
Do you throw caution, decorum, and all other respectable nouns to the wind in order to follow Lady Evangeline into the unknown? If so, turn to this page.
Or do you value your limbs still being attached to your body and decide to sit this one out? If so, turn to this page.
“What are you doing, lass?” Mac asks, desire sparking in the depths of his voice. You ache for him, the shape of him so impossibly long and large and near you. His eyes wish to be taken. His eyes wish to be taking.