by Jane Feather
"I don't believe so," Tarquin said, his mouth so thin and tight it was barely visible. "Red hair, green eyes. Tall."
"Aye, I marked her well. A bold-eyed wench," the magistrate opined, stroking his chin. "Now you mention it, she did seem rather out of the common way for strumpets. But why wouldn't she identify herself? How could she get caught up-"
"Forgive me for interrupting." Quentin stepped forward. "I believe it must have had something to do with Juliana's interest in the lives of the street women." He coughed discreetly. "She was much exercised over young Lucy's plight, if you recall, Tarquin. Insisted upon bringing her out of the Marshalsea. I believe it would be in character for her to… to extend her field of operations, if you will."
Tarquin nodded tersely. "It would certainly be in character."
"What's that you mean to say, your lordship?" Sir John looked puzzled. "Don't quite catch your meaning. What interest could a lady have in a whore's life?"
"The inequities of their position, I believe, troubles Lady Edgecombe most powerfully," Quentin explained gravely.
"Well, I'll be damned. Out to reform them, is she?" Sir John took up a dish of coffee and guzzled it with relish.
"Probably not reformation, Sir John," Quentin said, sipping his own coffee. "Juliana is of a practical turn of mind."
"Not when it comes to self-preservation," Tarquin stated grimly.
"Well, if she's been meddling in the profits of the likes of Mitchell and Cocksedge, it's no wonder she aroused the wrath of the demons," Sir John observed. "Devil take it, sir, but His Lordship should keep a tighter rein on his wife."
"Oh, believe me, Sir John, from now on the tightest rein and the heaviest curb," Tarquin promised, setting aside his coffee dish and standing up with an abrupt movement. "If you'll provide me with an order for her release, sir, we'll be about our business."
"Aye, Your Grace. Aye, indeed." The magistrate summoned his somber-suited secretary, who'd been listening with wagging ears to the conference. "Write it up, Hanson. Immediate release of Lady Edgecombe."
"I believe Her Ladyship called herself Juliana Beresford, sir," the secretary reminded. "It's down as that in the register of committal."
"I daresay she thought her real identity might prove an embarrassment for you," Quentin murmured to his brother.
"Juliana is always such a paragon of consideration," Tarquin retorted.
They waited, the duke in visible impatience, for the secretary's laborious penning of the order. Tarquin almost snatched it from the man, thrusting it into his coat pocket, throwing a curt thank-you over his shoulder to Sir John as he strode from the room, Quentin on his heels.
"How long has she been in there, d'ye reckon, Quentin?" Tarquin's voice was taut, his face a mask as he whipped up his horses, setting them at a racing pace through the rapidly crowding streets.
Quentin glanced at his fob watch. It was nine o'clock. "They were at Fielding's just before dawn. Reached Bridewell maybe two hours later."
"Seven o'clock, then. Two hours." A note of relief crept into his voice. It would take a lot longer than that to break Juliana. "Has she talked to you about this obsession she has with the whores?" He kept out of his voice his annoyance that she had not confided in him-an annoyance that was directed more at himself than at Juliana. He hadn't questioned exactly what she'd been doing in Covent Garden on her last excursion, which had led to George's attempted abduction. He'd assumed she'd been simply meeting her friends for her own entertainment. Now it seemed there may have been more to it.
"A little. Usually when we've been sitting with Lucy. Juliana's own experiences, I believe, have made her particularly sensitive to the women's plight. Exploitation, as she calls it."
"Death and damnation!" Tarquin overtook a lumbering dray on the narrow street, so close he shaved the varnish on the phaeton. "Exploitation! Who the hell has exploited her?"
"You have."
Tarquin's expression blackened, and his eyes took on the flat glitter of anger. But he said nothing, and Quentin prudently held his own peace.
The forbidding building of the Tothill Bridewell loomed before them. Tarquin drew his horses to a halt before the massive iron gate. The postern gate swung open and an ill-kempt guard stepped through. He took in the equipage and the haughty impatience of the driver. He tugged his forelock in a halfhearted gesture. "Sure ye 'aven't come to the wrong place, good sirs?"
Tarquin jumped from the phaeton. "Take the reins," he instructed, thrusting them into the astonished guard's hands. "Where will I find the keeper of this place?"
"Eh, Yer 'Onor, at 'is breakfast, I don't doubt." The guard looked in alarm at the two pawing horses that had become his charge. "In 'is 'ouse," he added helpfully.
"And where might that be?" Quentin asked swiftly, sensing Tarquin was within an inch of throttling the guard.
" 'Cross the yard, on the left. 'Ouse that stands alone."
"Thank you." Quentin fished out a sovereign. "For your trouble. There'll be another when we return." Then he set off after Tarquin, who had already disappeared through the postern gate.
The yard was surrounded by high walls. A whipping post stood prominently in the middle, stocks and a pillory beside it. To one side a massive treadmill turned, groaning with each revolution. A team of women, petticoats kilted to their knees, feet bare, wearily trod its circumference, a jailer with a long-lashed whip exhorting them to greater effort as he paced around them.
One quick glance told both men that Juliana had not been harnessed to that barbarous toil. Tarquin banged on the door of a squat cottage standing apart from the long, narrow, low-pitched building that housed the Bridewell.
"All right… all right… I'm a-comin'." The door opened and a woman poked her head out. She would once have been pretty, smooth-cheeked, with merry blue eyes and golden hair. But her face now was pitted with smallpox, her eyes shadowed with spite and the barren acceptance of a barren existence, her gray-streaked hair hanging in lank ringlets to her scrawny shoulders. Her eyes widened as she took in the visitors.
"I wish to have speech with the keeper of this place," Tarquin stated brusquely. "Fetch him, my good woman."
" 'E's at 'is breakfast, my lord." She bobbed a curtsy. "But if'n ye'd care to step this way." She gestured behind her into a dingy, smelly passageway.
Tarquin took the invitation, Quentin on his heels. The passage gave onto a square room, reeking of stale fried onions and boiling cods' heads. A man in a filthy waistcoat, collar unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, was scooping boiled tripe into his mouth with the blade of his knife.
He looked up as the door opened. "Agnes, I told you I weren't to be disturbed..,." Then his voice faded as he saw his visitors. A sly look came into his eyes. He wiped his dripping chin with the back of his hand and said in a fawning tone, "Well, what can Jeremiah Bloggs do fer ye, good sirs?"
Tarquin could see he was already calculating how much of a bribe he could squeeze out of whatever this situation was. Keepers of the prisons earned no salary, but they were free to extort and "fee" both prisoners and their visitors for anything they could come up with.
"I have an order for the release of a woman brought in here by mistake this morning," he said, laying the document on a corner of the dirt-encrusted table. "If you'd be so good as to have her fetched."
The sly look intensified. Bloggs stroked a loose-flapping lower lip with a thumb tip. "Well, it ain't quite that easy, 'onored sir."
"Of course it is," snapped the duke. "This document states that the prisoner Juliana Beresford is to be released immediately. Without let or hindrance. If you have difficulty performing your duties, my good man, I shall ensure that you are replaced by someone who does not."
The sly look became a malevolent glare. "I don't know where she might be 'eld, Yer 'Onor," he whined. "There's a dozen or so wards, includin' the lunatic ones. Per'aps ye'd like to look fer 'er yerselves. Might be quicker, like."
"Certainly. But you are accompanying us."
Muttering under his breath, the keeper abandoned his tripe, drained his mug of blue ruin, picked up a massive ring of keys, and stomped ahead of them out to the court.
The stench of excreta overwhelmed them the minute the door was opened onto the building. Quentin choked. Tarquin pulled out his handkerchief and held it to his nose, his expression even grimmer than before. The keeper was unaffected by the reek. He maneuvered his large bulk down the passage, stopping at each barred ward, unlocking the door and gesturing sullenly that they should look in.
Thin, dull-eyed women looked back at them without pausing in the rhythmic pounding of their mallets. Rats rustled through the filthy straw at their feet; their jailers sat taking their ease on stools against the walls, occasionally swinging their rods when they judged someone was slacking.
Quentin couldn't keep the horror from his face. He had always known these places existed and, indeed, had assumed that houses of correction were necessary for the smooth running of society. But in the face of this unutterable reeking misery, he began to question his assumptions. He glanced at his brother. Tarquin's countenance was utterly impassive-a sure sign of turmoil within.
At the sixth ward they stopped outside an iron-bound door. Mr. Bloggs inserted the key. "If she ain't in 'ere, sirs, I can't think where she'd be. Less'n she be lunatic already; or they've put 'er on the treadmill. Which it's to be 'oped they 'aven't. Seein' as 'ow it's all a mistake, like." He grunted with what could almost have been a chuckle at the thought of an innocent suffering from such an error. "Can't think what Sir John could be a-doin', makin' such a mistake." He swung the door open and stood aside.
Juliana was lost in the rhythm of the mallet. She allowed her eyes to see only the hemp in front of her. As the fibers began to separate, a grim satisfaction tilled her. She thought of nothing more than the disintegration of the hemp. The pounding was in her ears, in her blood, the condition of her hands a distant agony that she knew instinctively she mustn't focus upon. Beside her Lilly pounded away. Without exchanging a glance they flipped Rosamund's pathetic work from one stump to another. But despite their efforts Rosamund's hands were bleeding and mangled within the first hour, as Maggie had gleefully foreseen, and her tears mingled with the blood dripping onto the hemp.
There had to be a way out of this nightmare. But Juliana's brain was deadened by the numbing, repetitive noise and the creeping dullness of fatigue. She'd had no sleep for twenty-four hours, and this work would presumably continue until nightfall. It wasn't possible to think, to do anything, but force her body through the motions and watch the hemp.
At the moment the door opened, Rosamund cried out. The mallet dropped, bouncing on the tree stump. She stared with fixed intensity at her hands, her eyes widening in horror. She raised her eyes to gaze wildly around the room, as if coming to a realization of her surroundings for the first time; then, with another cry of despair, she crumpled to the filthy straw.
Juliana dropped to her knees, Lilly beside her. They ignored the commotion at the door. Lilly lifted Rosamund's head, laying it in her lap. Juliana wanted to chafe her hands but didn't dare to touch them. Her own stung unmercifully now that her concentration had been broken, but she stroked Rosamund's deathly white cheek.
"Fetch some hartshorn and water, man!" She threw the instruction over her shoulder in the direction of where she'd last seen the jailer.
Maggie cackled. " 'Arts'orn and water. And would m'lady like 'er smellin' salts, then? Or a burned feather, per'aps?"
Juliana was on her feet in one bound. She turned on the grinning woman, her eyes spitting rage, her bloody hands raised. Maggie took a step backward as the flaming-haired Fury advanced on her.
'"Juliana! Don't make matters worse than they are."
She whirled toward the door as the quiet voice crashed through her crimson rage. His voice was quiet but his eyes were hot as lava, and there was a white shade around his taut mouth, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Juliana saw only anger-no indication of his agonies of the last hour, not a hint of the glorious rush of relief as he saw her unbroken and not seriously harmed.
"What are you doing here?" She couldn't believe the petulant words even as they emerged from her lips. She wanted to rush to his arms, to be folded in the power of his body, secure in the knowledge of his protection. She wanted to be soothed and cuddled, to hear the soft words of love on his lips. She'd chosen to believe that if he came for her, it would be because it suited his purposes, not because he wished to. But as he stood there, such fearsome rage in every taut muscle, she felt a deeper disappointment than she'd ever known.
Her eyes flew to Quentin standing behind the duke, his expression a rictus of horror. Quentin would understand what had brought her to this. He would see, where his brother didn't, her weakness and her unimaginable relief that the ordeal was over.
"I might ask the same of you," the duke replied, coining toward her.
He took her hands, his own warm and strong, and turned them over. His rage knew no bounds at what he saw, and it was all he could do to keep himself from cradling the torn, bruised flesh, soothing the hurts with the balm of his kisses. But this was not the time. She was safe, and he had to get her out of this filthy place of terror before he did anything else.
"Come," he said, his voice curt with anxiety. He turned to the door.
Juliana snatched her hands from his grasp, their pain as nothing compared to the surge of angry disbelief. Did he really expect her to walk out with him, abandoning her friends?
"I'll not leave here without Lilly and Rosamund." She picked up her mallet again. "They're here because of me. They have no more business being here than I do. Those spawn of a gutter bitch betrayed us, and I'll not leave my friends in this hell. I neither need nor want your intervention." She raised the mallet with both bloody hands and brought it down again, fighting with every muscle the screaming agony of her torn flesh.
Tarquin swung back to her with an incredulous "What?" Quentin suppressed a smile at the sight of his unflappable brother so completely confounded.
Juliana ignored the question, and Tarquin, frowning fiercely, looked at the pathetic, crumpled body of the girl on the floor, the white-faced desperation of the other girl, and he suddenly felt ashamed.
It was not an emotion to which he was accustomed. Impatiently, he snatched the mallet from Juliana, throwing it to the floor. "Quentin, take her out of here while I arrange about the others." He seized her in his arms and spun her across to his brother, who caught her against him.
"I'm not leaving without them!" Juliana's protest was muffled against Quentin's black waistcoat.
"Juliana, for once in your short life do as you're bid," Tarquin declared dangerously.
"Come," Quentin murmured. "Tarquin will negotiate their release."
Juliana looked from one brother to the other and saw only truth and confidence in their eyes. "Rosamund will need to be carried," she said matter-of-factly. "We must find a litter for her."
"You may leave that with me. Now, get out of this foul air. There's no knowing what infection lurks in it… Bloggs, a word with you." He jerked his head at the keeper, whose eyes now glittered. Unless he'd misunderstood, he was about to receive a substantial bribe. He oiled his way over to the duke, who'd withdrawn to the far corner of the ward.
Juliana allowed Quentin to draw her away. When they reached the sunshine of the courtyard, she took the air in great gulps. "Did you know such places existed, Quentin?"
"Yes." he said shortly. "But I'd never been inside one before." The horror of what he'd seen still lingered in his eyes. He drew her toward the postern gate, anxious to leave the last vestiges of this hell behind.
"I won't be defeated," she said with low-voiced determination, stepping out into the street beside him. "I won't let those evil women get the better of me."
"In God's name, Juliana! You can't possibly take on the world of vice all on your own." He took the horses from the relieved guard, handing him another coin.
"I won't
do it alone." she said fiercely. "People like you will help me. People like you with the power to challenge the exploitation and the misery. Then things would change."
Touched by her fervency, Quentin was unwilling to spoil her dreams with his own cynicism.
"Here's Tarquin," he said with relief. The duke, carrying Rosamund in his arms, Lilly a pace or two behind, appeared at the gate, Jeremiah Bloggs at his side, a beatific smile on his face as he counted again the wad of notes that had bought the women's release. The duke hadn't even haggled over the terms, just peeled off the bills with an expression of disgust and contempt that ran off the keeper like water on a greased hide.
Juliana hurried over to them. "We must get Rosamund to the physician… but no, Henny will be able to look after her as well as any physician. They can't go back to the Dennisons' until we discover whether Mistress Dennison had anything to do with the plot."
Once again Juliana was turning his house into a rescue mission and convalescent home for ill-used strumpets. Tarquin surprised himself with a wry grin. He lifted Rosamund into the phaeton and refrained from comment. He had one interest, and only one. He intended to have Juliana stripped, scrubbed, and in bed without a moment's delay.
Quentin climbed up and took Rosamund on his lap, cradling her tightly. Lilly, silent, white-faced, and shivering violently in the aftermath of this sudden escape from hell, took her seat beside him.
"There's not enough room for me," Juliana said. "I'll take a hackney… Oh, but I don't have any money. My lord duke, could you…?"
"No, I could not!" he snapped. "If you think I'm going to let you out of my sight again, you are vastly mistaken, my child." He half lifted her onto the step, put a hand under her backside with his customary familiarity, and shoved her upward. "You'll have to squash up."
"I would, but the hoop's in the way." Juliana struggled to sit down on the inch of bench available between Lilly and the driver's seat.
"Then take it off."
"Here?" She looked askance at the open street.
"Yes, here," he affirmed flatly. "Get down again." He reached up and pulled her to the ground. "Turn around and lift up your skirts."