by Jane Feather
They followed him across a yard, thronged with people. Two small boys darted between the legs of the crowd and cannoned into the gatekeeper, whose hands moved seamlessly, clouting them both around the ears even as he continued to walk. The boys fell to the ground, wailing and rubbing their ears. A woman screamed at them and came running over, waving a rolling pin. The children scrambled to their feet and disappeared so quickly, it was almost as if they’d never been there.
The gatekeeper went through another gate into an internal courtyard, as busy as the other. There were cooking fires there, and women scrubbing clothes at rain butts. The stick-thin bodies were clad in rags, the children half-naked, for the most part. The scene reminded Juliana of the gypsy encampments in the New Forest during her childhood.
But inside the building things were very different. Here there was sickness and despair. Rail-thin, hunched figures sat on the filthy stone stairs, their eyes blank, as the gatekeeper, followed by Juliana and her companions, puffed his way upward. Juliana glimpsed rooms off the landings—rooms without furniture, with unglazed windows and straw on the floor. And in the straw lay huddled bodies, crumpled like pieces of discarded paper. The air reeked of death and desolation. These people were dying there. These were the folk for whom there was no salvation. Who had no one in the world with money either to procure their release or to ensure them at least sufficient bread to keep body and soul together.
Her three companions were silent, looking neither to right nor left, avoiding the sight of the horrors that hovered on the edges of their own lives. The horrors that inevitably came to the old and infirm of Covent Garden if they weren’t clever or lucky enough to provide for the uncertain future.
“She’s in ’ere.” Mr. Cogg stopped at an open doorway at the top of the last staircase. He was breathing heavily, sweat running down his face. “Lucy Tibbet!” he bellowed into the dimly lit attic room. “Lucy Tibbet … show a leg there.”
A faint groan came from the far wall, and Lilly pushed past him and almost ran into the room, her pink skirts swinging gracefully. The others followed, blue and palest green, bending together over a shape on the straw. They looked like summer butterflies in a dungeon, Juliana thought as she crossed the room to join them, her nose wrinkling at the powerful stench emanating from a tin bucket in the corner.
Lucy lay in the straw, her eyes half-closed. She was filthy, her hair matted, shoeless and clad only in a torn chemise. The hectic flush of fever was on her thin cheeks, and a clawlike hand fluttered in Lilly’s palm.
“Sweet heaven, what have they done to you?” Emma cried, dropping to her knees on the dirty straw. “Where are your clothes?”
“Jailer took them,” Lucy croaked. “To pay for bread and water. Until there was nothing left …” She turned her head on the straw, two tears trickling from behind her closed eyelids. “They took my good shift and gave me this one in its place. I suppose I should be thankful they didn’t leave me naked.”
“Oh, how wicked!” Rosamund’s tears fell onto the straw.
“We’ve come to take you out of here,” Juliana said, seeking in brisk action to mask her own appalled distress. “Rosamund, if you lend Lucy your cloak, it will protect her a little until we can get her into the hackney.”
Rosamund eagerly unclasped her cloak. Lilly lifted Lucy from the straw and draped the soft silk garment around her shoulders. The contrast between the shimmering silk and the girl’s filthy, matted hair, thin cheeks, and torn shift was shocking.
“Can you walk?” Juliana half lifted Lucy to her feet and held her as she swayed dizzily.
“My head’s spinning.” Lucy’s voice was weak and shaky. “I haven’t stood up for days.”
“You’ll feel stronger in a minute,” Emma said, stroking Lucy’s emaciated arm. “I could drive a knife into Mother Haddock!” she added ferociously. “We didn’t know you were in here until a few days ago. The bawd told her girls to keep quiet about it if they didn’t want to find themselves joining you.”
“There has to be a way to get even,” Lilly muttered, staring around the attic as if taking it in for the first time. “She intended you should die in this hole.”
“We’ll think about getting even later.” Juliana slipped a supporting arm around Lucy’s waist. “Lilly, you take her other arm.”
The gatekeeper was still in the doorway, watching the scene with scant interest. His little eyes focused sharply, however, when he saw Lucy on her feet. “Eh, you don’t leave ’ere until I gets me money.”
Lilly, at a nod from Juliana, withdrew the two crisp notes from her muff. “This is the sum of her debt.” Mr. Cogg stretched out a hand for them, but she held on to the notes.
“However did you—”
“Hush, dear, don’t talk until we’re safely outside,” Rosamund said, patting Lucy’s hand. “We’ll explain everything then.”
“Give it ’ere, then.” Mr. Cogg snapped his fingers.
“It has to be paid to Mistress Haddock,” Juliana said. “I’m not giving it to you until you give me a receipt for it.”
Mr. Cogg shot her a look of intense dislike. “Fer such a young thing, you knows yer way around,” he grumbled, turning back to the stairs. “Where was you brung up, then? In a moneylender’s?”
It was intended to be a deep insult, but Juliana merely laughed, thinking that Sir Brian Forsett’s example when it came to money dealings could as well have been set in a moneylender’s.
She wrote out the receipt herself and stood over Mr. Cogg as he put his mark to it. Then she laid the forty pounds on the rickety table in his hut. “I have only a twenty-pound note. Does anyone have a guinea to give to this kind gentleman?”
Rosamund produced the required coin and they left the Marshalsea, Lucy hobbling on her bare feet between Juliana and Lilly. The footman and the hackney carriage were waiting where they’d left them; of Lucien there was no sign.
“Fetch Viscount Edgecombe from the tavern, if you please,” Juliana instructed the servant, who was staring with unabashed curiosity at the pathetic scarecrow they were lifting into the hackney.
Lucy sank onto the cracked leather squabs with a groan. “Are you hungry, dear?” Emma inquired tenderly, sitting beside her and chafing her hands.
“I don’t feel it anymore,” Lucy told her, her voice still low and weak. “It was painful for the first week, but now I feel nothing.”
“Where are we to take her?” Lilly sat opposite, a frown drawing her plucked eyebrows together. “We can’t take her back to Mother Haddock.”
“What about Mistress Dennison?” Juliana was looking out of the window, watching for her husband.
“No,” Rosamund said. “She’s already said she won’t help Lucy.”
“Lucy refused a wealthy patron that Mistress Dennison presented to her,” Emma explained.
“He was a filthy pervert,” Lucy said with more strength than she’d shown hitherto. “And I didn’t need him or his money then.”
“She was in the keeping of Lord Amhurst,” Lilly said. “Mistress Dennison had arranged the contract and thought Lucy owed her a favor. It was only for one night, apparently.”
“One night with that piece of gutter filth!” Lucy fell back, exhausted, and closed her eyes.
“Anyway, that’s why Mistress Dennison won’t help her,” Rosamund stated.
“She can come back with me,” Juliana declared with rather more confidence than she felt. The duke was not going to be best pleased with her as it was. Asking him to house the indigent Lucy in her present condition was a favor no one would blame him for refusing even in his most charitable frame of mind.
“Well, that’s settled.” Lilly sounded relieved as she set the seal on Juliana’s offer. “And while you’re getting better, Lucy, we’ll try to persuade Mistress Dennison to take you in when you’re ready to work again.”
“She’s quite good-hearted, really,” Emma put in. “In fact they both are if you keep on the right side of them.”
A discu
ssion began on the likelihood of the Dennisons’ relenting, but Juliana continued to peer out of the window toward the tavern. The footman finally reemerged and trotted back to the hackney. He was alone.
“Beggin’ your pardon, m’lady, but his lordship says as how he’s not ready to leave just yet and you should go on without him.”
“Damn,” Juliana muttered. The viscount was not a reliable partner in crime. Without him at her side things would go harder for her when they got back to Albermarle Street, and she wouldn’t be able to refer Tarquin’s complaints to her husband, as she’d intended doing. She debated going in after Lucien herself, then decided against it. If he was far gone in cognac, she’d achieve only her own discomfort.
“Very well. Tell the jarvey to return to Albermarle Street,” she instructed, withdrawing her head from the window. Lucy was huddled between Lilly and Rosamund, a tiny, frail figure in her thin shift against the butterfly richness of the other women. She didn’t look more than twenty. What kind of life had she led so far that she could have been condemned so young to such a hideous death?
Chapter 15
The carriage drew up on Albermarle Street and Juliana alighted, reaching up to help Lucy as her friends half lifted her down.
“Should we come in with you?”
Juliana, after a moment’s reflection, shook her head. “No, I think I’d better do this alone, Emma. It could be a little awkward. I can manage to get Lucy up the steps without help.”
“If you’re sure,” Rosamund said, trying to conceal her relief but not quite succeeding.
“You would be better employed persuading the Dennisons to shelter Lucy when she’s recovered her strength,” Juliana said, supporting Lucy with a strong arm at her waist. “I’ll come to Russell Street tomorrow and tell you how she is. Also,” she added with an intent frown, “I have an idea that I want to talk over with you all. And the other girls, too, if they’d be interested.”
“Interested in what?” Lilly leaned forward, her eyes sharp.
“I can’t explain here. I have to think it through myself first, anyway.” She smiled and raised a hand in farewell. “Until tomorrow.”
There was a chorus of good-byes as she supported Lucy up the steps to the front door. Catlett opened it before she could knock, and for once his impassive expression cracked when he saw her companion. Juliana couldn’t blame him. Lucy was a dreadful sight. Rosamund’s incongruous, delicate, muslin-frilled cloak only accentuated her half-naked condition. However, Juliana merely nodded to Catlett as she helped the girl into a chair in the hall.
Lucy fell back, her face whiter than milk, her eyes closed, her heart racing with the effort of getting from the carriage to the chair. Juliana stood looking at her, for the moment nonplussed. What orders should she give? There must be spare bedchambers in the house, but did she have the right to dispose of one without the duke’s leave? Probably not, she decided, but there didn’t really seem to be much option.
“Catlett, would you ask the housekeeper to show me to—”
“What in the devil’s name is going on here?”
Juliana spun round at the duke’s voice. So he hadn’t recovered his good humor in her absence—not that she’d expected that he would have. She glimpsed Quentin behind him, overshadowed by his brother, not so much by height as by Tarquin’s sheer presence.
She cleared her throat and began, “My lord duke, this is the woman we brought from the Marshalsea, and—”
“Catlett, you may leave.” The duke interrupted her with this curt order to the servant, who was staring at the pale, crumpled figure of Lucy, as fascinated as if she were a two-headed woman at the fair.
“Now you may continue,” Tarquin said as Catlett melted away into the shadows behind the stairs.
Juliana took a deep breath. “If you please, sir—”
Lucy moaned faintly, and Quentin, with a muttered exclamation, pushed past his brother and bent over her.
Juliana tried again. “She’s been starved,” she said, her voice stronger as she thought of Lucy’s plight. “Tortured with starvation and left to die in that filthy place. She needs to be looked after, and I said she could come here.”
“Indeed, Tarquin, the girl has been shockingly mistreated.” Quentin straightened, his expression stricken. “We should send for the physician as soon as she’s put to bed.”
The duke looked over at Lucy and his expression softened for a minute, but when he turned his eyes back to Juliana, they cooled again. “For the time being you may take her upstairs and hand her over to Henny. She will know what to do for her. But then I would like to speak with you in my book room.”
Juliana stepped back from him and dropped a curtsy. “Thank you, my lord duke. I am yours to command.” She lowered her eyes in feigned submission and thus missed the spark of reluctant amusement that flared in his eyes. When she looked up, it was extinguished. He gave her a curt nod and stalked off to his book room.
“Come, Juliana, I’ll help you get the poor girl upstairs. She’s barely conscious.” Quentin lifted Lucy into his arms, seeming unaware of her filthy clothes and hair pressed to his immaculate white shirt and gray silk coat. He carried her to the stairs, Juliana following.
“I’ll put her in the yellow bedchamber,” Quentin said almost to himself, turning right at the head of the stairs. “Then we’ll ring for Henny.”
He laid Lucy on the bed and drew the coverlet over her with all the tenderness of a skilled nurse. Juliana rang for Henny and then sat on the edge of the bed beside Lucy. “How dare they?” she said with soft ferocity. “Look at her! And that place was full of skeletons … little children…. Oh, it’s disgusting!”
“I wish it were possible to change such things,” Quentin said uncomfortably.
“But you could!” Juliana sprang to her feet, her eyes flashing with a zealot’s enthusiasm. “You and people like you. You’re powerful and rich. You could make things happen. You know you could.”
Quentin was saved from a reply by the arrival of Henny, who took charge with smooth efficiency, showing no apparent surprise at the condition of her patient.
“Come, let’s leave Henny to tend her.” Quentin drew Juliana toward the door. “And you must go to Tarquin.”
Juliana grimaced. “He seems very vexed.”
“You could say that.” A smile touched his mouth. “But if you play your cards right, he won’t remain so. Believe it or not, he’s really a very fair man. He was easygoing as a boy … except in the face of injustice or deliberate provocation.” Quentin’s smile broadened as he recollected certain incidents of their shared boyhood. “At those times we all learned to keep out of his way.”
“I don’t seem to be able to stay out of his way,” she said with a helpless shrug. “If I’d been able to do that, I wouldn’t be living here now.”
Tarquin had been trying to recapture a sense of control over events. He couldn’t understand how a chit of a girl could have such a profoundly disturbing effect on the smooth running of his life. But ever since he’d seen her through the peephole, naked in the candlelight, she’d exerted some power over him … a power that had intensified as he’d introduced her to the ways of passion. He was moved by her. He no longer knew what to expect—from her, from himself. It was not a pleasant sensation; indeed, he found it almost frightening.
When Juliana tapped at the door, he flung himself into the chair behind the massive mahogany desk and picked up a sheaf of papers. “Enter.” He didn’t look up from the documents as the door opened.
Juliana stood in the doorway, waiting for him to acknowledge her. Instead he said, still without looking up, “Close the door.”
Juliana did so and stepped into the room. Her chin went up. If he was intending to humiliate her by this insulting treatment, he would find it didn’t work. Without invitation she sat down casually on a chair, her wide skirts flowing gracefully around her, and picked up a copy of the Morning Post from a side table.
Tarquin glanced up, and tha
t same glimmer of reluctant laughter sprang to his eyes as he surveyed the red head bent over the newspaper, the graceful curve of her neck, the absolute resistance radiating from the still figure. Viscountess Edgecombe wasn’t yielding an inch.
He put the papers aside and said, “Let’s not beat around the bush, mignonne. As I understand it, you intend to form an alliance with Lucien. Is that correct?”
Juliana’s eyebrows lifted. “I don’t know what you mean, sir. The viscount is my husband. I am absolutely allied with him in the eyes of the Church and the law.”
Tarquin’s lips thinned. “I tell you straight, Juliana, that I will not tolerate it. Also, as of now, you will have nothing further to do with Mistress Dennison’s girls. They will not visit you here, and you will not visit them. You mustn’t be tainted with the whorehouse.”
“But am I not already tainted? What am I but your whore, bought under contract to a bawd?”
“You are my mistress, Juliana. That doesn’t make you a whore.”
“Oh, come now, my lord duke,” she said scornfully. “You bought me for three thousand pounds, as I recall. Or was it guineas? I’m flattered that I should be worth so much to you, but I suppose the breeding aspect to this arrangement makes me more valuable. I may be naive, but I do know that men don’t buy their mistresses. They buy whores.”
“I think you’ve said all there is to say on that subject,” the duke said coldly. “Repeatedly, I might add. I will now repeat myself. You will have no further contact with the girls on Russell Street. Henny will take care of that unfortunate creature upstairs until she’s well enough to leave, at which point I’ll give her a sum of money that will enable her to establish herself without a protector.”
Quentin had said the duke was generous to a fault. It seemed he hadn’t exaggerated, and this liberal benevolence toward a girl he didn’t know from Eve rather took the edge off Juliana’s hostility. However, since it didn’t suit her plans to be cut off from Russell Street, the battle must continue.