by Lucy Wild
“Ghastly weather,” she replied, throwing her coat across to James. “Absolutely dreadful.”
Dinner was to be served an hour later. In the intervening period, Charles sat opposite Clare in the drawing room, listening to her protest about the awful behaviour of her sister. “She isn’t even married to the man, yet off they go to France together. I mean, it isn’t seemly. Mother is furious, of course.”
“What does your father think about it all?”
“She hasn’t told him, doesn’t think his heart will be able to take it. But isn’t it just awful? It reflects so badly on us all. What if, God forbid, she comes back with child?”
“Picks one up from a boulangerie, you mean?”
Clare’s eyes flashed anger. “That is not funny, Charles. You know exactly what I mean.”
“Look,” he said, leaning forwards and taking her hands in his. “I wouldn’t worry about it. From what I have heard about Alan Fryston, he doesn’t even know what kissing is, let alone anything else.”
“Oh, he knows what kissing is, all right. I saw him trying to suck her lips off her face down by the pond. They didn’t know I was sunbathing; thought they were alone.”
“But they weren’t.”
“Well, obviously. Honestly, Charles, what is the matter with you this evening? You look as if you’d rather be anywhere else than here with me.”
“Had a bit of bad news today, that’s all.”
The door to the drawing room opened and James floated in. “Dinner is served, Sir.”
“Excellent. Come on, Clare. I have a feast prepared in honour of your visit.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Nonsense.”
“I am not hungry, Charles. Tell the cook to take the food away.”
James looked at Charles. He nodded back. The manservant left without another word and Charles sank back into his chair. Roast beef gone, his absolute favourite. “We shouldn’t waste food, you know?” he said absently.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I was at the club today. There was a girl there who would have been very grateful for the meal I have prepared for you.”
“Been eying up the maids, have you? If this is an attempt to make me jealous, it will not work.”
“What? No, nothing like that. She was begging, outside the club, looked like she needed a decent meal, that’s all.”
“You are not going to tell me that you gave her money? They’ll be swarming the streets like rats if you do that, give to one today, have ten there tomorrow.”
“She was only asking for a penny.”
“That’s how it starts, Charles. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. If I were you, I’d check you still have your wallet.”
“I hardly think she was a thief.”
“You are too soft for your own good, do you know that? A girl too lazy to work comes begging for handouts and you willingly give them to her. Where is the incentive for her to work if you do?”
“I do not know.” He looked across at her, wondering if he had deliberately or accidentally met someone who sounded exactly like his mother.
“I heard they use their children to help with their schemes. How old was she?”
“I don’t know. She looked around fifteen, perhaps older.”
“Precisely. While she had you distracted, her father was probably dipping in your pocket. Where did she go after you handed over all your money? I’ll wager it was an opium den to send it up in smoke.”
“I didn’t give her any money.”
“Oh, well, that’s something at least.”
“And she was arrested as it happens.”
“Good. A spell in gaol might teach her not to accost decent upstanding citizens. How would you feel if it were me being barraged by all and sundry begging me for money everywhere I went?”
Charles sighed, rubbing his eyes with his hands. “I had no idea you were so cold.”
“Cold? You think I am cold for thinking what all respectable people think?”
Charles didn’t say anything as Clare got to her feet.
“I can see I am wasting my time here. You would be happier with your slut. Why not ask her to move in?”
Charles bit his lip, wondering just what shade of purple she would turn if she knew he was being forced to do just that.
“Have you nothing else to say to me? No apology to make?”
“I suggest we agree to disagree on the matter,” Charles said, motioning towards the chair. “Sit down and calm down, you look rather flustered.”
“I am flustered because I thought you were a good man. Now I see you are nothing but a welcoming committee for, for, well, for scum.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“Am I? You invite me to your home, you mock me when I tell you my worries about my poor dear sister. You call me cold, you sit there with that smirk on your face and you don’t even have the decency to say sorry to me.”
“Sorry? What am I to say sorry for?”
“For upsetting me.”
“Good God, Clare, grow a backbone. Things could be far worse for you. You have money, food, a roof over your head, what do they have? Nothing.”
Her lips seemed to vanish as she answered through gritted teeth. “How dare you.” She spun on her heels, calling out for her coat. “I will be at my house until you decide whether you would rather have the company of a stinking disease ridden pauper or a member of the nobility who would one day marry you despite your white hair.” She flounced off, not looking back. Charles did not get up, listening to her go from his armchair with his eyes closed. So it wasn’t a thread that he’d seen up there. He was turning grey.
“Well, that went well,” he said out loud to the empty room as the front door slammed shut. “Perhaps I’ll go see my cousin in the country, tell him his child is fat and his wife balding. Maybe kick their cats while I’m at it.”
“I would not recommend that, Sir.”
Charles opened his eyes to find James standing in the doorway of the room. “James, you’re a man of the world. What would you do if you saw a beggar asking for a few pennies?”
“It would depend on whether I had a few pennies to spare or not.”
“Good answer. Listen, James, I’m in a bit of a pickle.”
“Indeed, Sir?”
“Yes, but I think there may be a way out of it. The thing is, it’s a bit of a funny one. If I tell you, could you promise to keep it to yourself?”
“Of course, Sir.”
“Excellent, knew I could trust you, James. Well I owe Glossop a bit of money.”
“The sum on the calling card?”
“Exactly. Well he’s offered me a sort of double or nothing on it. If I win, I get to write off the debt—lose and I lose all this.” He waved his arm about him. “Including you, sadly.”
“I am sure you would cope, Sir.”
“I do not want to cope. I want to win. Think you can help me?”
“It might help a little for me to know the details of the wager, Sir.”
“What? Of course, how silly of me. Well, there’s a girl coming here and I have a week to make her submit to me, meek little mouse, all that. Yes, Sir, no, Sir, curtsey and thank you, Sir.”
“Indeed, Sir.”
“Now don’t say it like that. You don’t think I can do it.”
“I couldn’t possibly say.”
“But you did say, you said it between the lines. You don’t think I can do it. But I can, I know I can. There’s only one minor problem.”
“Which is?”
“This little tempest of a girl is currently incarcerated at her Majesty’s pleasure. I need you to give me a hand in getting her out, getting her here and then getting her to submit. What do you say, James? Up for a challenge?”
“Allow me a moment, if you would be so kind, Sir. As I understand it, I can either help you turn a criminal into a meekly submissive little mouse or lose my position and home.”
“T
hat’s it in a nutshell. What’s it to be? Will you assist me?”
“I will, Sir. If I might be so bold, the concept intrigues me rather heartily.”
“Wonderful. Well, first things first, we need to get her out. After that, I’ll have to play the stern master and you my faithful lieutenant. No, gruff sergeant. No, lieutenant. It doesn’t matter. What matters is you enforce my rules. I’ve been doing a bit of reading about this sort of thing and I don’t think it’ll be too tough to get her under my thumb, or over my knee perhaps.”
James raised his eyebrows just enough to bring Charles’s laugh under control. “Sorry, James. Getting a bit naughty for you, am I? Well, if this all works out, you’ll have to put up with hearing a spanking or two, might be what she needs to whip her into shape. Maybe a whip too?”
“Will that be all, Sir?”
“For now, James. You get your best travelling togs on and hasten for the station on Church Street. I was led to believe that’s where she’s being held. Get her out and bring her here and remember, don’t tell her anything about this. If she hears what we’re up to, she’ll run a mile and I’m done for.”
“I will be ready momentarily, Sir.”
Charles dug out his wallet while James prepared himself for the journey. Once his manservant was on his way with his pockets weighed down with enough coins and notes to bribe the most upstanding constable in the land, Charles went to his library, digging out the books he’d first flicked through after getting home from the club.
In the hours before Clare’s arrival, he had delved deep into the new sciences, the whisperings from Europe about the brain, the phrenological experts mingled with the asylum masters, the doctors of repute and ill repute. One thing stood out amongst the morass, the same as it had been for countless generations, perhaps longer. If you wanted someone to submit to you, you had to do two things. One was possess and project power. The other was gain their consent. The first was easy, he could project power as easily as James could fry an egg. Consent was a trickier problem.
It was true, according to one book he read, that you could make a person submit without their permission, forcing them to do things with the threat of violence enough to keep them in their place, just like how the gaols and workhouses were run. But that submission would be fickle, turn your back long enough and there’d be an uprising, a revolt against your rule. Gain their permission to rule over them and they would submit gladly for the rest of time. That was the key, it seemed. It would not be enough to simply dominate her physically. He had to dominate her mind, make her want him to take charge. It was only for a week after all, couldn’t do too much harm. What happened after that was none of his concern. He could be powerful for a week, he could remove his smile for a week, forgo all emotions, get the job done.
Then he would have his house and his estate and he’d never bet on backgammon again, not until he got his own loaded dice, anyway. Corporal punishment if she misbehaved, humiliation to break her down at first, then rewards for good behaviour. Within days she’d be as pliable as if she were a five-foot tall living doll rather than a person. Do it right and he’d only have to click his fingers to make her do his bidding. After all, what was the alternative for her? Life in gaol? Starve on the streets?
He rubbed his hands together as he continued to read. This was going to be easy.
Chapter 7
Voices. People’s voices. Lizzie didn’t open her eyes yet. She didn’t dare.
“Not one of them a decent human being if you ask me.”
“What did it matter to him if he’s down a handkerchief? He’ll have hundreds of the damned things at home.”
“Get yourself a cracker, makes life so much easier when they’ve put it all in a safe.”
“It’s been a mistake. Gaoler, come and let me out, I don’t belong in here with this lot. I’m an innocent woman.”
“Scum. All of them.”
Lizzie honed in on one particular conversation. Two women were talking in low voices near her head.
“You ever had one of them look at you and smile? Pass the time of day? You ask me, I reckon they’re scared of people like us.”
“What do you mean, people like us?”
“People without means, people without capital, paupers.”
“You call yourself a pauper if you like, I ain’t one.”
“Oh, really?”
Lizzie opened her eyes just a sliver and immediately regretted it. Not just because of the pain of waking from her dead faint, intensified by the light outside her eyelids, dim as it was. Worse was the sight of where she was, proof of what she’d feared was the case. She was in gaol. With a groan, she put her hand to her forehead.
“Oh, look. Sleeping Beauty’s awake.”
She felt someone nudge her back with a foot, hard enough to make her sit up, her eyes opening as she did so. The room was spinning slowly, coming to a halt as she fixed her eyes on the bars in front of her, pressing her head to them, refusing to look behind her at her fellow citizens of the world’s smallest country, a country where she did not belong. Three mould covered walls and one set of bars leading out to another country, one without locks or bars, one that she’d left and she’d no idea when she might see it again.
“Where am I?” she asked quietly, not really expecting an answer. “What happened?”
“You came in here dead to the world,” a gruff man called out. “Might have had anything done to you while you slept off whatever it was you drank.”
Lizzie folded her arms across her chest, hoping the man was joking.
“Don’t worry,” a woman said, her hand falling on Lizzie’s shoulder. “We kept an eye on you, look after our own in here. How you feeling?”
“Fine,” Lizzie said, not moving, letting her eyes close again. “Just perfect.”
The conversations continued around her.
“I’m just saying, I never met a decent person who had money. It’s the money that turns ‘em bad.”
“Why’d you steal it from them then?”
“It’s in their genes, not mine. Bred into them to be nasty bastards.”
Lizzie blushed at the language, hearing more curse words in a few minutes than she’d heard in a lifetime. She wondered whether there was some truth in what the person said. She’d always tried to be nice to people, help others when she could. Where had that got her? No home, no money, no hope, locked up in gaol for who knew how long. Was it cruelty and coldness that got you places, got you money? Got you a life worth living? No, it couldn’t be that, something in her bones told her it wasn’t that simple.
The conversations went round and round, never reaching any conclusion. All she could do was sit there, listening, unable to trust her legs to stand yet.
“Christ, I’m bored,” someone said, louder than the others. “What about you, sweetcheeks? You bored?”
Lizzie winced, having a horrible feeling the man was talking to her.
“Oi, you down there. I asked you a question. Think you’re too good for a man like me?”
Lizzie still didn’t answer, hoping he’d turn his attentions to someone else.
“Someone like that could keep us company for a while, what do you reckon, Jonesy?”
“Aye, could keep us warm too.”
A sniggering laugh, then movement. A hand falling onto the top of Lizzie’s head, grabbing at her hair, twisting her round. She opened her eyes as she was forced up to her feet. “Ow, let me go.”
“Oh, you can talk then, was wondering if you’d lost your tongue. Not as much fun without a tongue, though Jonesy here did it once with this Caribbean bit of fluff, came off a sailing ship with no tongue and no way to tell him to stop. That were a good night out, weren’t it, Jonesy?”
“Leave her alone,” a woman said, falling silent as the man turned to snarl at her.
“We could make friends with you instead. No? Didn’t think so.” He turned back to Lizzie. “What do you say, sweetcheeks? Want to keep me company for a little while?�
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“Let me go,” Lizzie said, reaching up and trying to pry his hand away from her hair.
“I will if you’re nice,” he said as his colleague reached out towards Lizzie’s chest, his filthy fingers wriggling horribly. “You going to be nice to us?”
Lizzie took a step back, pressing against the bars behind her, her hair tugging at her scalp as the men closed in. She looked around her in panic for anyone to step in. They all studiously looked away. “Help,” she said, pleading with them all. “Please help me, someone, anyone.”
“Elizabeth Wilkinson,” a loud voice boomed and the two men in front of her were at the other side of the cell in the blink of an eye, talking to each other in low voices as if nothing were happening at all.
Lizzie turned to the sound of the voice and found herself looking at the constable who’d arrested her, his keys dangling as he unlocked the cell door and pulled it open. “I’m Elizabeth Wilkinson,” she said, almost falling in her haste to reach him.
“Out you come,” he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her through the doorway. He shoved her towards the wall. “Stand there and don’t move.”
She watched as he locked the door again. The man who’d grabbed her waved as the constable took her arm again. “We’ll see you soon, Lizzie.”
She shuddered as she was led through the next door and out into a corridor away from the holding cell. She was surprised to find she was only in a small police station, not the gaol she thought she’d been dumped in. Standing by the desk at the front door was a man she did not recognise.
“This gentleman says he’s your uncle, is that right?”
“I’m not sure,” Lizzie said, looking at the man as he nodded almost imperceptibly back at her.
The constable squeezed her arm tightly. “I am telling you, not asking you. That man is your uncle. Now you either go with him or you go back in there. Which would you prefer?”
“Hello, Uncle,” Lizzie said, running across to the man and shaking his hand. “Lovely to see you.”