Silverton chuckled. “That’s what he told you?” Nash was more likely concerned at being recognized as one of Mrs. Montgomery’s regular clientele.
“Yes, but you will help me, won’t you?” She brushed aside his ironic chuckle, clearly pretending she did not understand. Or, turning a blind eye. Kitty, he noticed, had a charming way of seeing only the best in a person. She drew herself up. “I’ve been to Maggie Montgomery’s house and watched the gentlemen go in and out.”
Silverton raised an eyebrow. “Gentlemen?”
Kitty blushed. “If I wasn’t so desperate, knowing that Dorcas was a prisoner inside such a...place, and that such shocking, terrible things may be happening to her, I don’t think I could bring myself to even allude to Mrs. Montgomery’s establishment for what it is. But the truth is, I am powerless to get her out of there alone. I’ve asked and asked Nash, and he won’t do anything. So now, between you and me, Lord Silverton, we must be her saviors.”
The grim reality and desperation of her friend’s plight aside, Silverton couldn’t help smiling at Kitty’s earnestness. No, not earnestness so much as faith in him. When he thought of it like that he was warmed by a wonderful glow of satisfaction.
“You know, Kitty, I think saving your friend from vice and iniquity is just the tonic I need. Yes, your arrival has bolstered my mood enormously.”
She looked surprised, and instinctively put up her hand to cup his cheek. “Poor Lord Silverton, yes, I see now that you are tired and perhaps low in spirits. I’m sorry I didn’t notice before. Is there anything I can do to help?”
As there was not—short of suggesting Kitty might like to switch camps and transfer her affections from Nash to Silverton—Silverton shook his head.
“But what has happened? Please tell me.”
Her large, brilliantly blue eyes were so full of sympathy, he had to resist very strongly the urge to take her in his arms and place her head against his chest, just for the catharsis it would be to feel her womanly body pressed against his. Comfort. That’s all he wanted, he told himself, knowing he wanted so much more, in fact.
“A very dear friend of mine took his own life last night.” Silverton reached for a scrap of paper which lay upon the arm of his chair and waved it at her. “This is the reason.”
Kitty took it, was quiet while she scanned its contents, then, with a gasp, handed it back to Silverton. “Poor Lord Calder. But...surely he could have denied it?”
Silverton sighed. “There are sufficient rumors involving his Lordship’s...proclivities...and his association with pretty young men that he’d not be believed. This was the nail in his coffin.”
Kitty shook her head. “Who wrote it?”
“I only wish I knew. A scurrilous, muckraking, pamphleteer. When I last saw Calder, he inferred he was being blackmailed. I told him to hold firm against emptying his pockets, believing the blackguard responsible would find more fertile valleys to plumb. So, you see, in light of what’s happened, I feel responsible.”
“You mustn’t!” Again in that impulsive, familiar manner Kitty adopted toward him, she squeezed his hands. “But...”
“What?”
“I admit, I don’t really understand the love of a man for a man. I mean, it’s not possible to...”
“What?”
“Do more than just say words of love. So the fact that it should be punishable by death seems very extreme.”
Silverton was not about to pursue a topic on which Kitty clearly knew nothing, so he said, “Lord Calder was a kind and gentle soul, and I failed him. But by God, I intend to find out who’s behind the muckraking.”
“Nash knows someone who’s being blackmailed, so there’s a lot of it going about. Quite the fashionable thing to do it would seem.”
Silverton narrowed his eyes to discern if she were being ironic or naïve, and quickly decided it was the latter. With her innocent looks and ingenuous manner, it was hard to envisage her as the defiled and ruined creature society would regard her. She’d been born from sin, and had willingly pursued sin.
Ironically, Silverton thought she was a great deal more refreshingly guileless than many of the debutantes of spotless reputation with whom he was acquainted; Miss Bunting included.
He rose and began to pace. “So it would seem. Well, you let me know who it is Nash knows is being blackmailed and who he thinks is behind it, and we can get a little closer to apprehending the perpetrator...or perhaps I’ll be next.”
“Are you guilty of a terribly serious misdemeanor, Lord Silverton?” Kitty slipped her hand through the crook of his arm, matching her steps to his. “I thought you were the perfect gentleman in every respect. You certainly seem that way to me.”
“Why, thank you, Kitty. I could kiss you for expressing such a beautiful and generous sentiment.”
“But of course, you can’t for that would make Nash terribly jealous.”
He slanted a look at her. “Undoubtedly, it would make Nash jealous. Is that the greatest of your concerns?” He stopped and grinned.
He was expecting some lighthearted response, and was surprised at the way she colored up, turning her head away. Dear Lord, perhaps she truly did harbor feelings for him. The thought was more bolstering than he’d believed possible. Pressing his advantage, he went on, “And, of course, Nash could only be jealous if he knew, besides which, he hasn’t exactly shown himself to be the faithful type.”
Instantly, he realized he’d gone too far. She dropped her hand from his arm, and her voice was gruff. “I thought you were my friend, Lord Silverton.”
Cross with himself, he tried to rectify the situation. “I’m sorry, Kitty. Please, forgive me. I shall be more careful in future.”
“I shall forgive you, but it hurts me to think that you believe Nash a lesser man because he succumbed to Jennie’s lures. Surely it’s no different to your Miss Bunting succumbing to the offer of marriage from another gentleman after she’d given you reason to believe she favored you? Yet you’d forgive her if she changed her mind and begged you to marry her after all.”
“There is more than a little difference in the two examples, Kitty.” Silverton led her to the fireplace where she rested against the mantelpiece, staring at the decorative plaster ceiling while he lounged as close as he dared, pretending a more lighthearted demeanor than he felt. “Let us drop all talk of Nash, for I do not like to hear how wonderful he is when it only makes me want what he has.”
Kitty laughed, immediately animated. “It’s very nice to hear such flattery, but you’re only saying it because you’ve not found someone to replace Miss Bunting, and you want to feel loved and manly. Just know that you can’t win me from Nash if you’re not about to make me a marriage offer. There,” she challenged, “after what you’ve been telling me, that should make you turn tail and run.”
“I could make you very happy notwithstanding.” The trouble was, he would be very happy with a wife like Miss La Bijou.
“Hmmm...” She truly appeared to be considering the matter, and when she suddenly let out a gurgle of laughter, he was surprised at the degree of his disappointment. “I’m sorry, Lord Silverton, but I want a man who loves me enough to make me an honest offer.”
“Lord Nash hasn’t.”
“I believe I can persuade Nash to see how very valuable a wife like me would be to him.”
“Really, Kitty, holy matrimony is not a prerequisite for happiness.”
This time, she didn’t laugh. “It is when one’s grown up, shamed and reviled, because of the lack of it. Now, are you going to help me rescue Dorcas or not?”
***
Kitty had been acutely conscious all her life that the local villagers reviled her as a lesser creature on account of her illegitimacy. Therefore, her decision to enter the demimondaine by becoming the mistress of a member of the aristocracy did not fill her with moral angst.
Lissa had chosen the virtuous path...hard work.
But Dorcas would view her own road to ruin in an entirely
different way, Kitty realized...as entirely her fault, with earthly torment the only consequence to be followed by eternal damnation. Not just purgatory, but the eternal fire and brimstone meted out to true sinners.
But, however badly Dorcas was damaged, Kitty first had to get her out of Mrs. Montgomery’s clutches.
“Stay quiet and obedient and do as I say,” Lord Silverton ordered Kitty in a whisper as they stood opposite the brothel. “I’ll not risk you entering that terrible house, where Mrs. Montgomery would snatch you up as if you were manna from Heaven, but I will want you here when, hopefully, I get Dorcas out.”
“You’re very commanding when you’ve embarked upon a matter of great urgency. Though if you were my mother speaking, I’d consider you insufferably bossy for telling me what to do like that.” Despite the gravity of the occasion and a certain nervousness—a great deal of nervousness—Kitty giggled. Or perhaps that’s why she giggled. Nevertheless, she thought it true. The commanding part. Dressed in evening clothes with a very expertly tied stock of snowy linen, Lord Silverton cut a most impressive figure. A sartorial figure, the height of fashion, his lovely brown hair short at the sides with the natural wave allowed a little longer on top, he did not look like some of the dandies or fops who took fashion to ridiculous extremes. Nor did he look like the Corinthians who Kitty thought seemed more interested in themselves and their athletic physiques. Lord Silverton looked simply like a very handsome aristocrat who exuded confidence in a most commanding manner. Really, he was quite devastatingly affecting when the serious cast of his features relaxed into a smile. If she’d considered him a contender for her affections, he’d have quite made her legs turn to jelly.
Suddenly, his serious air was displaced by a disarming smile. “You have no idea how much pleasure it would give me to tell you exactly what I’d like you to do,” he said with raised eyebrow. “Unfortunately, that’s Lord Nash’s prerogative. However, if I succeed in my mission, you might want to reconsider my earlier offer.”
“To look after me, and enjoy me, but not to marry me? I think that’s what you offered, if I’m not mistaken?” She tossed her head, smiling nevertheless. “No, thank you, Lord Silverton. However, I do believe that if we are to be successful, I should go indoors and speak to Dorcas myself, though we’ve argued it a hundred times.” She pulled her hood up over her bright hair. “I can go in through the scullery. There would be strangers coming and going all the time, I’d wager, in a house that size.”
Finally, she persuaded him. “Have faith in me, my Lord.” She squeezed Lord Silverton’s wrist. “Now, you go and request to see Dorcas, and I’ll wait in the street until I get a sign of which room you’re in before I head on around to the servant’s entrance.”
When, ten minutes later, Kitty saw the sash window go up on the second room on the east side, she hurried off to do her part.
Despite her cavalier words of earlier, she was afraid. However, that was nothing compared with her terror when the door to the kitchen was opened, and a young tweeny let her into its surprising warmth. An enormous fire was burning while two small boys sat on either end of a spit, turning it to ensure the even roasting of several chickens and a pig.
“Where is Mrs. Montgomery?” she asked. The girl, who looked to be only about twelve or thirteen, pointed upstairs. Her face was pinched and dirty, and she looked a cowed, overworked young thing. “In ‘er room, restin’. Yer can’t see ‘er.”
Kitty put her head close to her ear. “Can you keep a secret?” she whispered, slipping a coin into the child’s hand.
With a gasp, the girl dropped the coin into the pocket of her hessian apron, nodding furiously.
“It’s not really Mrs. Montgomery I want to see; it’s Dorcas. I need to get a message to her that her ma is proper poorly. Mrs. Montgomery won’t let her go, I understand that. I only want to tell Dorcas what she should know.”
The girl bit her lip and didn’t move, but Kitty was prepared for intractability. She suspected the tight rein Mrs. Montgomery would keep over her employees.
She patted the girl’s shoulder. “Mrs. Montgomery would be very angry if she knew you’d let anyone inside, or told them that sort of information, wouldn’t she?”
The girl nodded.
“But you’d want to know if your ma was poorly, wouldn’t you? In fact, you’d be heartbroken if you heard the news after it was too late. That’s all I want to do. Tell Dorcas. She can stay right where she is, and I’ll leave, and no one will be the wiser. I tell you what.” Kitty fished around in her reticule and pulled out her hand, brandishing another coin. “I’d give this to you when I return, only I’m afraid I might have to leave another way in order to avoid being seen by Mrs. Montgomery, so I’ll give it to you now because I trust you. Now, where did you say Dorcas entertains?”
Within a minute, Kitty was hurrying up the back steps, armed with the necessary information. She had a good sense of direction, so it wasn’t a difficulty locating the room.
Thrusting it open triumphantly, she gasped in horror as she found herself face-to-face with a couple in the throes of fornicating on a large four-poster bed.
“What the deuce!” came the angry cry of the black-haired gentleman, whose dark glower was enough to send Kitty back the way she’d come like a cannonball.
Her heart was hammering, but she could not lose courage. She was more circumspect the next time she quietly turned the doorknob. To her relief, when she put one eye to the crack, it was to see Silverton raising his eyebrows at Kitty as he faced a slender, brown-haired girl. Certainly too slender to be Dorcas, thought Kitty with disappointment. But then the girl spoke, her soft Welsh accent making it quite clear that her old friend had lost a great deal of weight—and much more besides —in the few weeks since Kitty had last seen her.
“Jest leave me be, m’lord,” Dorcas was saying on a sob, hunched over with her hands over her face. She was being half supported by the dresser against the wall while Lord Silverton towered over her, his expression concerned and patient. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere wiv yer or anyone else. Damned is wot I am.”
Silverton spoke softly, and Kitty was struck by his kindness as he tilted the girl’s chin with his forefinger. “Please just agree to see Kitty once, at least, Dorcas. She’s been so worried for you. She knows you’re here, and she wants to help you.”
“Ain’t no one can ‘elp me now,” Dorcas said sadly. “I’m destined for ’ell, whereva I go. I’ve always bin the sort to land in trouble, but it don’t get much worse than this. No, I won’t bring shame ter Miss Kitty. Not now she’s a famous actress, an all.”
“It’s not your shame; it’s the shame of those who have ill-used you, Dorcas,” Silverton tried to explain. “Mrs. Montgomery tricked you, and then you were ill-used by all the...men who frequent this place. You’re not the one who is shamed. They are.”
“It’s true!” Kitty cried, rushing into the room and taking Dorcas into a hug. “Oh Dorcas, you must come with us.”
Dorcas’s eyes grew as wide as saucers, and she gasped, returning Kitty’s hug with energy, before dropping her hands and shaking her head. “No, miss, ain’t no way I can go. I jest told ‘is Lordship why not. ‘Sides, ‘ow can I jest walk through that door? I’m always unda guard, ain’t neva allowed ter leave this place.”
“What if I said I needed you?” Kitty tried her most appealing voice. “You’d come if I needed you, wouldn’t you?”
Dorcas looked uncertain, so Kitty pressed her advantage. “I’m all alone, Kitty, and the only person I consider my true friend is you.”
“Oh miss, if only it were possible!” Dorcas wailed, close to tears. “But yer know it jest ain’t.”
“Do you never leave this place?”
“Never...’cept on Monday mornin’s when I go ter the apothecary ter get the necessaries fer Mrs. Montgomery. An’ then there’s always someone wiv me.”
“The apothecary around the corner? Since you will not come with me now, Dorcas, I shall try again. On Mo
nday,” Kitty said firmly, indicating to Lord Silverton that he should depart ahead of her, for what she had to say was between ladies only. “And if anyone was asking, I came here on the pretext of getting a message to you that your ma was poorly, but don’t be concerned for it’s not the truth.”
“I’m dead to ma, or might as well be, so it makes no diff’rence, miss.” Dorcas’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “Now go. Please. I ‘ave ‘nuvver gennulman to see. Thankfully it ain’t that awful Lord Debenham wot sparks terror in me chest. I ‘eard Mrs. Montgomery singin’ me praises to ‘im, but he only likes ter see Daisy.”
“Lord Debenham comes here?” Kitty gasped, as she was struck by memories of her recent encounter with his wife. Her half-sister, though she hated to acknowledge this, even to herself. “Why, he’s married!”
Dorcas gave a lopsided smile. “If you’s bin livin’ the ‘igh life in the theater an’ ‘bout town with yer gennulman wot were ’ere wiv yer, yer’d know that the married ones are worse than all the rest.”
“Yes, I do.” Kitty sighed, adding suddenly, “But Lord Silverton who was here just now and tried to persuade you, earlier also, to come away, is not my gentleman. He’s my friend.”
“Don’t tell me a gennulman like that don’t want more than bein’ jest friends wiv a lady like yerself, Miss.” Dorcas sent her a skeptical look. “They’s all the same, wantin’ only ter pleasure ‘emselves, treatin’ us like nuffink. I’ll wager ‘e’s the same as all the rest, so beware, m’lady. ‘E’s only pretendin’ ter ‘elp yer so’s ‘e can get ‘is way wiv yer in the end. Now that’s all I have ter say on the subject. Yer got ter jest leave me be fer I’ve made me bed, an’ I thank yer fer wantin’ to ‘elp but—”
“You’re wrong!” Kitty gripped Dorcas’s wrist. “Not all men are bad, like you’ve experienced. Lord Silverton has looked after me with care and kindness since my ...”
Dorcas’s eyes widened expectantly, and Kitty swallowed and plunged on, trying a new tack. “Another very handsome gentleman, Lord Nash, has set me up very nicely in a little house and given me lots of presents.” She extended her arm, and the ruby and diamond bracelet she always wore twinkled in the light of the candle on the dresser.
Beyond Rubies (Daughters of Sin Book 4) Page 14