by Kitty Curran
Ooh…turn to this page!
“The woman was lovely, but did she need two score mirrors and portraits to prove it?”
You stalk the halls of the great house with the stealthiness of a very intelligent, confident, uniquely beautiful cat. You creep up the stairs, around the bend, down the hall, around the other bend, and up the other stairs and down the other hall and around the other bend until you reach the Forbidden Room, where you once fenced with Master Alexander. Moonlight and terror are your only companions, and an eerie glow is cast upon your decision: to turn the knob on Blanche’s bedroom door, or to run?
You are no ninny. You turn the knob.
You are surprised to be greeted by a whisper of wind, wild and cool, reaching out to loosen a few disobedient strands from your demure coiffure. Someone has recently been in this room. The source of the gust is a mysteriously open window. The room is flooded with moonlight, and the rustle of the sheer curtains resemble a sad woman dancing for her lost love.
You will have no more of this senseless poetry. As you draw the sash of the window, you cast your eye about the room, taking an inventory of potential clues. A sumptuously appointed bed, a handsome wardrobe, more portraits of Blanche. You cannot help but roll your eyes. The woman was lovely, but did she need two score mirrors and portraits to prove it? Your gaze catches on a fine writing desk, boasting many drawers and cubbies.
Drawing near, you notice that one drawer is partially obscured by a lady’s handkerchief. The initials BvB wink at you from a delicate corner. Is this a signal? A clue? A message from Blanche from beyond the grave that this drawer, hidden by the flimsy fabric, contains the truth of her very soul and the nature of her relationship with Craven?
You yank hard on the drawer and reveal…nothing but laundry receipts and used hairbrushes. Damn.
You shut the drawer and cast another look around the room. Fireplace, hearth rug. Bed, wardrobe. You open the topmost drawer of the wardrobe and feel around for clues. Your fingers swim in a sea of silk and retrieve nothing but negligee after negligee. Some are so thin, you can see your hand through the fabric! You curse yourself for blushing and feel the heat of imagined eyes burn a hole in your neck.
Just as you are about to open the next drawer, a little voice, clear and frightening as a funeral bell, calls to you. You spin wildly on your heel to find Alexander in the doorway, staring with saucer-wide eyes and clutching a stuffed toy.
“I know what that is,” he says, his odd voice dropping to an even odder whisper. “Those are Mama’s struggling clothes.”
“Whatever do you mean?” you ask, and suddenly realize you are clutching one of the late Lady Craven’s negligees.
“Those shiny things,” Alexander continues. “Mama wore them when she was struggling with a man.”
“Struggling? Whatever do you mean by—oh.” You realize what the child means. He must have witnessed his mother and Lord Craven…enjoying each other. “Master Alexander, struggling is something your mother and father did to—”
“No!” the boy cries. “Mama never struggled with Papa. It was another man. A dark angel, Mama said, when she was struggling.” He changes tack before you can gather your thoughts. “Do you want to see something?”
Master Alexander shuffles over to the rug before the hearth and pulls it back to reveal a dark scorch mark, the size and shape, your late-night mind thinks, of a beautiful lady.
“I look at this sometimes, when I’m afraid,” he says. “Then I know I can’t be hurt anymore.”
Your mind reels, however sluggishly. The scorch marks. The fireplace. The forbidden room.
There are so many things you don’t know, or don’t know for certain, but now you have stumbled onto at least one fact. You finally realize why Lord Craven didn’t want you to fence with his son in here: this was the very room in which he lost his wife. Likely, you shudder to think, due to some sort of horrific, fiery accident—and possibly due to some sort of affair. Though you know Lord Craven is brooding, his brooding does not seem like that of one pining for a dead lover. Begrudgingly, you realize it is a brooding perhaps more in line with a devoted lover who has been thoughtlessly passed over for another.
Whatever the case, you realize now how Lady Craven died.
You know you must apologize for the wrong you’ve unknowingly done to Craven by fencing with his child on the site of his wife’s death.
You must apologize to Craven, but properly. Therefore, you need advice concerning the right words to say and the right time to say them. Turn to this page.
You must apologize to Craven immediately. It is unspeakably bold of you, but you know you must seek him in his chambers. Hop to and turn to this page.
Evangeline takes you on a long, twisting camel ride through secret tent towns and hidden passages. Before you know it, you are pulled through a flapping tarp into what you can only describe as a rogues’ watering hole wonderland.
“Welcome to the Wahhat Ranya,” says a graceful, dark-skinned woman, her hair braided in delicate strands tightly to her head. She smiles at you, radiating calm. “A simple tavern, run by our great proprietress, Ranya Abd al-Sayyid.” She points to an older woman standing behind the bar; she has a shock of gray hair and wears an eye patch. The older woman nods at you.
“My name is Damilola Adebisi,” she continues. “And I am leading this band of vagabonds through the desert to our next, shall we say, job?” An audible snicker rises among the women, which Damilola silences expertly with a quick, cool look.
“I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,” you say politely.
“Oh, Jaysis, she’s an Englishwoman! And a posh one at that!” The voice comes from a scowling, youthful face with a turned-up nose and a dusting of freckles, framed by a mass of red curls. Damilola sighs.
“This is Gráinne. She is an expert shot, and not too shabby with a cutlass either.” Gráinne spits and says nothing.
Damilola points to a wiry young woman whose dark hair is pulled back in a long, neat braid. Her large brown eyes sparkle with amusement.
“This is Noor, our master sailor. There is not a vessel around that she cannot work…among other things.” The rest of the women roar with laughter.
You blush as Damilola then points to a pair of heavyset women who had been arm-wrestling in the corner. “This is María José and Amirah. They can best any man in a fight, or any woman for that matter.” You don’t doubt it.
“Lastly, this is my second-in-command, Ming,” Damilola says. Ming is tiny yet gives you the impression of a tightly coiled spring, ready to pounce. “She is the deadliest woman alive when she has a knife. But I have seen her kill men with her bare hands, too.” Ming looks at Damilola with eyes full with pride and love. You gulp.
“We are all of us travelers here, and we have many women from all walks of life,” Damilola continues. “But I think that you are new to this world. Tell me, how did you come to meet Lady Evangeline?”
Before you can answer, Evangeline claps her hands. “Ladies!” she says. “I’m in need of reinforcements! Delphine must pay for what she has done. I have let this go on for too long, accepting what she does, whom she hurts, due to a lingering misspent…affection. But when she also involves those I love within her schemes? Well, then I must take action.”
“Action?” you say and stare into those bright sapphire orbs now burning with righteous fury.
“Yes, my dear,” says Evangeline as she casually rubs your cheek with her thumb. “It will be an extremely dangerous journey, and one that may end in death. I have resigned myself to it, but I do not expect you to join me in it. I ask that you leave.”
“But Lady Evangeline…” you say.
“Listen to me,” she says. “You are still young. Your life is stretched out before you, full of possibilities. I do not expect you to sacrifice yourself for my own mess.”
You have no idea what to say and stare mutel
y at her. She turns her head to the side ruefully.
“Well, my darling?” Evangeline asks. “Are you going to make the sensible choice and return to Cairo like I ask? Or are you going to go see that Delphine gets her just deserts with me?”
Do you venture onward to stop the dastardly Delphine once and for all? Turn to this page.
Or do you leave the adventuring to the adventurers? You know your limits, and rushing headfirst into likely death with no weapons training goes very far beyond them. Turn to this page.
Your slightly blurred vision does not lie. There, bursting through silken curtains, piercing the night as a member would a sex, Benedict breaks through the entrance of Madam Crosby’s chambers. His handsome face is fully flushed with anger and exertion that hasn’t a lick to do with the licks and exertions happening in the sumptuous, scandalous rooms that surround you.
With his fine clothes, finer features, and tousled mop of aristocratic curls, you can’t help but imagine him as a passionate patron of the Rose & the Smoke. Perhaps it is the champagne, but you can almost see him rushing into Madam Crosby’s chambers to request—no, beg—the opportunity to run spendthrift with his wild passions in her very boudoir, in front of all watching, with you. He would tear his blouson asunder and urge your elegant, trembling hands to explore his surprisingly thick pelt, before you both teach the finest whores in London a thing or two about making love.
But the flesh-and-blood Benedict before you now speaks through gritted teeth. “Damnable woman!” he seethes, displaying what you know is Benedict’s version of screaming. “Damn, damn, damn your eyes!”
“Damn me later, Benedict!” you cry. “Listen now. Your claim to the Granville name is safe. Your father’s marriage to Mrs. Caddington was the bigamous one, not his marriage to your mother. Cad is no heir but a bastard, a damnable bastard! The Granville name, estate, and fortune are all yours. What we must needs do is acquire some hard proof that the bigamous husband is alive, perhaps from a warden of Bedlam, and all will be well. Here, have a snack. You look peaked.” You toss him the watercress sandwich you were saving for later. He slaps it away as if it were a gnat rather than a valuable and tasty late-night delicacy.
“I would have eaten that!” you say. As you reach to retrieve the sandwich, he catches your wrist in a vicelike grip.
“You are a fool.” Benedict says. He stamps upon the fallen morsel. “You have told me nothing I did not already know.”
“But I do not understand—”
“Of course you do not understand! How could you understand? For ages I have known these facts that you have so expertly detected while you drink and carouse with London’s demimonde.”
“But you did not tell me!” you cry. “Why did you not tell me?”
“Tell you what? That my bastard half brother used my half sister as hostage to steal my name and fortune? That to properly maintain or stake my claim on what is rightly mine, I must subject Henrietta to her true, lowborn fate? The fate of a lovechild of a bigamous marriage, with no fortune or station to save her? To add further insult to her injuries, after having allowed her a taste of the life she will never know, her fate is ruined because a chit like you plays detective and exposes our family’s secrets in some sad attempt to feel important.” With each word he speaks, you feel more dejected. With each angry phrase, you feel the bars of the cage that surrounds your own life, as well as Henrietta’s, should this truth come out.
“Benedict,” you whisper, “I had only wanted to save you—”
“What do I need saving for? Rich or poor, I am a man. It is Henrietta I am concerned for. You know, woman?” he grinds out. Any love light that may have danced in the corners of his cruel silver-gray eyes is snuffed out with each word. “You are extraordinary,” he sneers. “I have managed to keep myself out of scandal—and the Rose & the Smoke—my entire life before meeting you. Now I have managed to become mired in both, merely because someone of low station has mistaken a bit of my kindness and momentary desire as some grand form of intimacy.”
“Benedict, I—” Anger—and tears—shine in your eyes.
“Save it,” he hisses. “Tell it to my aunt the next time you monogram her handkerchiefs.”
You feel your heart torn apart like a rejected proposal letter. There is nothing left for you and Benedict to do now but turn on your heels—in opposite directions.
At a safe distance from his angry gaze, you rest against a wall and sob. Hateful man! And yet the thought of him thinking badly of you pierces your heart in a way you didn’t think possible. How could this be? What is wrong with you?!
No, this is foolish. You shake your head and force yourself to think sensibly. Even lovers who aren’t exactly full-fledged lovers quarrel. You have come to Harlot’s Row with the intention to help, and now all you do is hurt. Perhaps you have done enough. Perhaps Benedict’s words are the harsh reprimands of a man scared of his fortune…and his feelings.
You cannot let things with Benedict end this way. At least not without having the last word. Turn to this page.
If you are entirely over all of this nonsense and ready to get the brot-hell out of here, turn to this page.
The Great North Road to Scotland is long, muddy, and interminably dreary. Fortunately, the orphans don’t seem to mind and treat the cart in which they’re traveling as an impromptu wrestling ring. As Sallie roundhouse-kicks Bert in the face (no doubt giving him another black eye), you sigh and remember when you, too, partook in such innocent childish pleasures.
How you wish you had their youthful exuberance, stripped as it was from you after a series of tragedies that left you forever marked. Alas, it does no good to dwell, so you huddle in your cape, water dripping from your bonnet, and watch Mac’s firm hands with fascination as he expertly takes the reins of the coach. Imagining what else those hands could do helps the journey go a little faster.
“My sweet Sassenach, I wish to ken what entices ye so about these hands o’ mine,” Mac says. “Are ye fixing to chop ’em off and use them as ingredients in yer witch’s brew?” A somewhat sad smile plays on his broad, fine lips. You burn at having been caught staring, but you hold your head high and return his smile in kind.
“Your hands would not be good for magic, dear Mac,” you say as primly as you can. “They have too much work in them, and not enough playfulness. Magic is work, to be sure, but it needs lightness. Deftness.”
“Wildness,” Mac agrees with a nod, his voice almost a groan. You are momentarily shocked by the desire you hear in it. You share a look that says you want to share more. You imagine his hands working your wildness. Now more than your face burns for him.
You remedy the situation by resolving to stare at your shoes for the remainder of the journey. Mac clears his throat and focuses his attention entirely on the road.
It is a long and arduous day’s travel before you find a suitable inn that can fully house the mob you are traveling with. As Mac sees to the cart and horses, you make sleeping arrangements with the innkeeper.
“The young ‘uns can probably just about fit in the great room, miss,” he says in his flat East Anglian whine. “It will be a tight squeeze for sure, but there is room for them and maybe one or both of the ladies. We also have a small room to the side that you and your husband can take.”
“Husband?” Mac half chokes, half laughs as he walks in from the freezing cold. His shirt clings to him as he shakes droplets from his red hair, which has been darkened by rain.
The innkeeper raises an eyebrow. “Unless your husband prefers to sleep in the stables?”
“Och, the stables will do me fine!” Mac says quickly, and he turns on his heel as if about to run to them. “I’ve slept in much worse, believe me!”
You don’t doubt it, but it doesn’t seem right that the man who has worked so hard and so long should spend the night in a freezing stable instead of a cozy bed. It also infuriates you that he would make such a show
of being virtuous, although propriety (and the fact that you don’t trust your quivering loins to behave themselves) demands that you do not sleep in the same room together under any circumstances. You bite your lip as you gaze at his muscular back and consider what the devil you are going to do—when you aren’t lost in thoughts of what you would love to do.
If you let him sleep in the stable on his freezing ownsome for propriety’s sake, turn to this page.
If you decide to give the martyr a run for his self-righteous money, turn to this page.
“Nigel,” you say, still in disbelief of how things have turned out, “I don’t know how to say this, but—”
“You need to marry me so your life is not in ruin?” Nigel says hopefully.
“Ah…yes.” The words are barely out of your mouth before he drops to one knee and slips a ring onto your finger.
“Marry me! Please! If you please! My darling!”
“Yes…fine. Sure. Nigel, have you just been carrying a ring around—”
“On the off chance that you might ever be inclined to marry me? Yes, my love, I have! Let us away so you may meet Mama!”
You journey to the country in a swift carriage while Nigel excitedly describes all his relations and how much you will like his country home. You cannot much focus on his talk, but when you do, you are surprised to find yourself laughing at his good-natured sense of humor. When the carriage finds itself caught behind a simple farmer’s cart, stuck in a muddy track, you are impressed by how helpful and kind Nigel is in response. Instead of feeling inconvenienced, he strips off his fine shirt to reveal a pleasing, surprisingly muscular body and then proceeds to deftly free the cart from the mud, sending the happy farmer on his way to market.
Once you arrive at his country home, you are fussed over by his sweet mama, who is delighted to meet you and puts you up in their house while you plan a hasty wedding. His family is entirely delightful, and you think that being a parson’s wife might not be such a terrible fate. Your heart warms as you realize that you shall help the poor and make some small difference in the world.