by Lily Dalton
“By forfeiting her earnings thus far.” He smiled, flashing yellow teeth. “I won’t ’esitate to throw her kin out on the streets and seize every last one of their belongings, including the contents of that shop, do y’ understand, gel? I know people. Powerful men, and that makes me powerful as well.”
She didn’t like Mr. Bynum or his threatening words, but she knew better than to give him the dressing down that exploded on her tongue. He was a dangerous man, and she was very much at a disadvantage should things go wrong.
“I said do y’ understand?” he repeated lecherously.
“Yes,” she answered through clenched teeth.
He grunted in response and, with a nod, said, “I’ll return to give you your stage instruction.” He paused and touched a hand to her hair…and then her cheek. Daphne flinched and twisted away. “You’re very pretty, you know.” He chuckled, low in his throat. “With hair like that, you and I could make a lot of money together. You like money, don’t you?”
She understood what he suggested. Her eyes flew wide in outrage and her face burned. “I—I don’t—”
A man rushed into view. “Mr. Bynum, please come. One of the patrons has hit a dealer over the head with his walking stick, and the dealer is now quite senseless.”
“Well, get another dealer to take his place. I can’t have a table out of service.”
“I tried, but Charles is nowhere to be found. I think he’s gone upstairs with one of the gels—”
“Damn it, man, must I tend to everything myself?” Bynum shoved past him, but pivoted on his heel to point at Daphne. “You. Five minutes. Be dressed in your costume.”
Daphne grabbed hold of the burlap and yanked it closed, concealing herself as well as she could, though when released the drape sagged several inches from the wall. Still, she exhaled in relief, thankful for a moment in which to collect herself, to gasp for breath and tremble in private. Foremost, she considered escape. She’d paid a kind-eyed, elderly hackney driver to wait for her…but running away wouldn’t help Kate or her family. She couldn’t take the chance. It was too late for any other resolution. She had to carry through.
Fearful that Mr. Bynum would return when she was only half dressed, she frantically changed into the garments, balancing on one foot and pinning the curtain against the wall with her toe as she struggled to don the close-fitting costume.
“Dearie, are you ready?” shouted a female voice through the curtain.
With shaking hands, Daphne tied the black satin bow at her waist.
“I…ah…am ready. You may pass the rest of the costume through the curtain whenever you are ready.”
In a dingy flash, a woman’s hand shoved the burlap partition back to reveal a powdered face and painted lips drawn back in laughter. Three girls stared back at her, each dressed like her, in flesh-colored, near-transparent pantaloons and matching corsets.
“Wot rest of the costume?” said a cat-eyed, black-haired girl with kohl-lined eyes that reminded Daphne of Cleopatra.
“’Ere, let me tighten yer stays,” said the closest, a brown-haired beauty, moving to stand behind her. “We want those lovely bosoms up high, as close to your chin as we can manage wi’out them poppin’ off and blacking some poor bloke’s eye.”
A sudden jerk of the ties left Daphne gasping for breath.
The third, a redhead who wore a mouse-hair beauty mark affixed to her cheek, appeared with powder and rouge, which she set about applying to Daphne’s face.
“Wot happened to the gel from last night?” asked the Beauty, before inflicting another squeeze. Indeed, Daphne felt her breasts had never been quite so near her chin! She pressed a hand to the wall for support, but then thought better of touching anything in this place, and snatched her hand away.
“She’s ill, so I’m taking her place.”
“Don’t she talk funny?” The redhead laughed, holding a kohl pencil high.
Didn’t she talk funny? She could barely understand what any of them were saying.
Cleo—as Daphne silently called her—sidled closer, eyes narrowed. “Why do you talk so funny? Just like that girl last night?” She leaned close, so that her nose was two inches from Daphne’s. “Good thing she didn’t come back, else I was going t’ have t’ cut her.” In a flash, she produced a narrow blade from the center of her corset. “Thought she was better than the rest of us. You don’t think you’re better than the rest of us, do y’, girly?”
Daphne didn’t cower or break away. She hadn’t done anything to provoke such a threat, and she found Cleo’s manner and words offensive. The only experience she had with brawling were a few angry, hair-pulling tussles with her sisters when their governess wasn’t looking, but that had been years ago. Still, the girl wasn’t all that large, and if matters took a turn for the worse, she thought she just might be able to take her.
But Beauty wedged between them and shoved Cleo away.
“Don’t mind Cat.” Ah, so her name was Cat. Beauty continued, “Ain’t a one of us that ’aven’t been cut by ’er at one time or another, and we’ve all lived to see another day.” She pointed to a narrow scar near her shoulder.
Daphne looked toward Cat, who flashed a dangerous smile and winked. Just then, a crash sounded from the room next door, sounding something like a table overturned. Voices shouted curses and laughter.
The redhead reappeared with a bottle in her hand. “We’re all good friends ’ere and look out for each other. You’ll see!” Her grin revealed a rotten tooth, the only flaw in an otherwise pretty face. “Care for a nip o’ gin?”
Daphne stared at the offered bottle for a moment before answering, “Why yes, I think I would.”
*
Cormack stepped back as another insensible man was carried past, in the direction of the street.
Just then, the musicians struck up a tune. Beside them, curtains jerked apart on ropes to reveal a makeshift stage made out of wooden shipping crates, a common sight on the nearby quay. On each of the four corners stood a young lady, frozen in a dramatic pose. Elaborate gold Carnival masks, studded with paste jewels and feathers, concealed their faces above their painted lips. Close-fitting, flesh-toned costumes conveyed the illusion of nudity. Those men not otherwise engaged at the gaming tables surged forward to jostle for position along the edges of the stage, shouting out expressions of vulgar admiration. The stage rocked and several of the girls wavered from their poses.
A bulldog-faced man in an ill-fitted great coat and top hat strutted to the center of the stage and bellowed, “Gentlemen, gentlemen. Do control yourselves!”
Hands held high for quiet, he waited for the clamor to subside.
“We have assembled here, for your personal erudition and viewing pleasure, four of the foremost actresses of Drury Lane presenting the finest in tableaux vivant.” He gestured toward the young women. “For your eyes only they will enact the most memorable scenes of the classics, the first being the story of Electra and the grievous murder of her father, the king Agamemnon.”
Cormack chuckled. Actresses, indeed. Though he could not claim to be an expert on strumpets, these four were clearly of a higher quality than the others who crowded the room. Young and pretty, at least from this distance, they had bodies to match with high breasts, pinched waists, and flared hips. Having studied the classics, he could not discern what any of the poses had to do with Electra or Agamemnon, but he supposed that wasn’t the point.
His attention lingered on one of the dancers in particular, one with starlight-blonde hair and luminous skin. Something about her commanded his attention. Perhaps it was the blue flash of temper in her eyes, or the quarrelsome set of her pretty mouth. He felt as if he’d caught sight of an angel masquerading amongst lesser mortals, who’d become entangled in mankind’s sin and was now helpless to escape.
Apparently he wasn’t the only one who noticed her, for suddenly the young woman yelped and smacked the hand of the patron closest to her, a man who, after being so rebuffed, snatched his hand a
way from the girl’s well-turned ankle. The collective thunder of male laughter shook the floor beneath Cormack’s boots.
Cormack did not laugh. Instead, he maneuvered closer to the stage, fixated. Inexplicably smitten. A bright flush moved up the girl’s throat, into her cheeks, to disappear beneath her mask. She resumed her pose, and yet…her hands trembled.
He realized instantly that she didn’t belong in this place.
With each step forward, a tangle of memories and regrets welled up inside him along with a sudden impulse to protect her, to make right whatever had gone wrong. Something he’d been helpless to do for Laura.
So distracted was he by the girl that he almost…almost…missed the man ducking down the back corridor, dressed in the clothes of a gentleman, his top hat tilted so as to conceal his silk-obscured face.
*
Daphne glared at the filthy creature who had grabbed her leg, and resumed her pose. Was it only her imagination, or did her skin now itch where he had touched her? Ugh. A shiver of revulsion rippled through her.
But being on the stage meant her time at the Blue Swan was almost done. In just a matter of moments, she’d be in the carriage on her way home.
She kept telling herself that, but another, increasingly hysterical voice continued to break in, emphatically demanding: What have you done?
It had been easy to imagine doing “the right thing,” but it was completely different now that she was here on the stage, surrounded by a hundred men with lust in their eyes. The peril of her situation closed in on her like a thick fog until she found it difficult to breathe.
Stop it! It was too late for fear. Hysterics would only draw attention and increase her danger. She had to push through, not only for herself but for Kate. According to Mr. Bynum, that foul-mouthed bully of a stage master, they would perform their rotations on the stage ten times before taking their leave of the stage. Only then would Kate’s debt be satisfied, at least for the night. Given a day or two, Daphne was certain she could come up with some other solution for satisfying the remainder of the Fickett family’s debt.
She simply had to be home tonight by the time Clarissa and her mother returned from the Heseldons’, else her intricate tangle of not-necessarily untruths would fall to pieces. If Lady Harwick ever learned the truth of this night, Daphne feared the viscountess would expire on the spot.
“Pirouette.”
Mr. Bynum’s command jerked Daphne into the present. She mimicked the movements of the young woman on the stage beside her, and twirled like a ballerina. More like a drunken ballerina. Her throat still burned from that single gulp of gin. While spirits no doubt took the edge off her present humiliation, she hadn’t anticipated its strength. To her good fortune, no one seemed concerned about talent or proper form, only that they prance around under the pretense of being actresses, wearing unseemly costumes for the illicit pleasure of the men salivating at their feet. Coming to a stop, she sashayed to the next corner and took the place of the girl who had just vacated the spot.
Mr. Bynum shouted a French command. “Parader!”
Truly, he had the most appalling accent. Yet she complied and executed a different “classical” pose, her arms thrown wide.
He blathered on, this time about Helen and the Spartans. In that moment, she desperately tried to forget where she was at the moment and mentally transport herself a thousand miles away. She imagined herself as Helen, the face that had launched a thousand ships. She had always had a flair for the dramatic. She and her sisters had always put on productions for the family, and in secret she had dreamed of a life onstage, of a life of adventure. In some ways, tonight’s daring excursion had been exceedingly exciting, and she might actually enjoy herself if not—
If not for the fact that she, Daphne Bevington, the Earl of Wolverton’s granddaughter, was at this moment standing on a stage in London’s most notorious bawdy house, half foxed, half naked, and making a naughty spectacle of her jiggly bits for the entertainment of strangers.
Daphne bit down a gasp. Not all strangers, for there, having just come through the back doorway, was—oh, of all people—Lord Rackmorton. She’d sensed he was a rat. Now, at the earliest opportunity she could rebuff him without the slightest guilty conscience. Look how he laughed, with a salacious turn of his lips, and greeted the ladies, all the while appearing so at ease.
A sudden terror struck her. What if, even though her face was half-concealed by the mask, he saw her and recognized her? For the first time, a different terror struck her—the realization that not only her family might discover her secret, but the entire ton as well.
Yet in a blink, two women plastered themselves to His Lordship’s side and escorted him off, laughing, into the shadows, past another gentleman who, strangely, had concealed his face with a dark hood—
“Pirouette!”
Just then, a big hand smacked her buttocks, latched there, and squeezed.
Daphne squawked and jumped. A glance over her shoulder confirmed her assailant to be the same cretin as before, looking rather pleased at getting such a solid handful of her. Indeed, in the next moment, with the help of a friend’s knee, he hurled himself half on the stage, reaching for her, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like a hound on the street. “Come on, sweet, how about a little ballum-rankum? Just tell me how much?”
Lunging away, she somehow managed to twirl with one leg raised—
Only to crash into Cleopatra the Cat. The room erupted in laughter. In her discomposure, she’d gone the wrong way. The girl shouted a vulgarity a lady ought not to even know, and gave Daphne a shove in the opposite direction—
Just in time for her to see the most attractive gentleman plant his fist in the face of the man who had affronted her.
Looking up, he glared at her, rather ferociously, something that ought to have frightened her but instead inspired everything inside her to tingling. In that moment, everything inside her arrested completely, and the churning crowd seemed to disappear, leaving just the two of them for one crystalline moment in time. He looked so very fine with his cravat so perfectly tied, and his dark blond hair so neatly cut, somewhere between short and longish, the ideal frame for his broad cheekbones and astonishing gray eyes.
“Thank you,” she shouted, though she knew he couldn’t hear her for the din of the room.
The gleam in his gray eyes intensified, but with a different sort of appreciation than what she saw in the eyes of the degenerates crowded at her feet, one that didn’t send revulsion down her spine, but instead something…wonderful.
“You’re welcome.” Or at least that’s what his mouth appeared to say. She couldn’t hear him, either.
A large crash sounded from the direction of the entrance. A woman screamed. The music trailed off into a discordant snarl. An enormous man in a black suit and top hat appeared on the threshold. Patrons scrambled away from him, pushing and shoving.
Bracing his legs wide, he bellowed, “Under His Majesty’s authority, this bawdy house is hereby closed for the crimes of lewdness and common nuisance.” Lifting both hands high he displayed what appeared to be a constable’s blazon and a piece of paper that could only be a warrant. “You are all under arrest.”
A swarm of men rushed in behind him, wielding batons.
Daphne stood paralyzed for a long moment. She? Daphne Bevington, under arrest?
Like everyone else, she dashed for the door.
Pulse racing, she leapt from the stage into a tumult of shoulders, hats, and feathers. After that, she had no choice in the path of her escape. The crowd pushed…jostled…and carried her to the street where a frigid rain pounded onto her skin and soaked her costume through. All she could think was that she’d left her cloak inside, but behind her came shouts and screams and glimpses of batons raised. She couldn’t go back. She ran for the hackney, praying the driver still waited, as she’d paid him handsomely to do.
There, at the corner. He had waited. Thank God. His pale face peered over the roof from where he
stood on his driver’s perch, wide-eyed and dismayed at the scene unfolding before him. She ran toward him, arms flailing, wanting nothing more than to be inside, safe and far away from this terrible place. She’d been such a fool! She would go to her grandfather tomorrow and beg on her knees for the money to pay Kate’s debt, and pretend that this night had never happened. She should never have come.
“Hurry, girl.” The driver reached his hand to assist her up.
“Thank you, sir,” she cried, almost in tears—
A fierce tug pulled her backward, out of his grasp. Splash. Her teeth clicked at the sudden jolt of her buttocks against the cold pavement. It took a moment for her mind and vision to clear, to realize what had happened.
Mr. Bynum, Cat, and the redhead crowded into the hackney. The vehicle swayed and creaked beneath their sudden weight.
“You get out,” bellowed the old man, his hands raised to force them out. The horse, startled, danced in its harness and the vehicle rolled forward a few feet.
“That’s my hackney.” Daphne leapt to her feet, and grasped the handle. “You can’t leave me here.”
“Oh, let her in,” insisted the redhead.
“There’s no more room,” Cat screeched, giving her a shove. The jewels on her mask sparkled darkly. The dark red rouge on her lips had smudged across her cheek. With another hard shove, she broke Daphne’s grip. A gun appeared in Mr. Bynum’s hand, and he pointed it at the old man’s head.
“Drive,” he bellowed.
“Oh, miss,” shouted the driver. “Forgive me. I’ve eight grandchildren to feed—”
The vehicle clattered into the darkness. Mr. Bynum’s laughter echoed against the walls of the warehouse buildings.
“Selfish cowards,” Daphne shouted after them, meaning Mr. Bynum and the girls, of course, not the poor driver. Whistles sounded shrilly. Footsteps pounded past, patrons running toward the side streets, with constables in pursuit. Panic electrified her blood. She’d been abandoned to the city’s roughest streets, without as much as a cloak for protection. Now what? How would she get home?