by Anne Gracie
“But surely—oh, but you’re teasing me, you wicked, wicked man. Of course you know about it—you’re the guest of honor.”
Freddy frowned. “When is this—”
“We’re attending too,” the elder Miss Armthwaite cut in. “I hope you and I will get some hunting in, Freddy.” She had a reputation as a bruising rider to hounds. She’d hinted to Freddy more than once she’d be happy to ride him just as bruisingly.
Whenever this horror-filled house party was, Freddy planned to be a hundred miles in the opposite direction.
“Oh, no, the poor little foxeth,” the younger Miss Armthwaite wailed prettily. “Tho thweet.”
“They’re vermin,” her sister snapped. “Besides, where do you think your fox fur muff comes from, ninny?”
“Don’t you like my muff, Mithter Monkton-Coombth?” Miss Annabelle gave Freddy an appealing look over her fox fur muff and batted her eyes.
Freddy gritted his teeth. A thousand miles in the opposite direction.
“Are you ladies attending?” Miss Blee asked the Chance girls.
“I don’t think so,” Jane said. “Lady Beatrice hasn’t mentioned any house party.”
“I’m not surprised.” Miss Blee simpered and fluttered her lashes at Freddy. “It is a very select guest list, as I understand it.”
He needed to escape. He looked wildly around. “Lady Beatrice is signaling us, ladies,” Freddy said, cutting across the feminine jousting. “’Fraid we have to go. Recovering invalid, you know. Good-bye.” Hooking Damaris and Daisy by the arm and herding Jane before them, he marched them back to the roadway. She’d better stop this time. He’d hurl himself in front of her carriage if necessary.
“Are those ladies good friends of yours?” Jane asked curiously.
“No!” Freddy exclaimed, revolted. “But my mother keeps pushing females of that sort at me, so they think they have a claim on me.” He was aware of Damaris’s gaze on him, quiet and unreadable.
Thankfully the landau drew to a stop without any need for bodily self-sacrifice. Freddy hurried to help Lady Beatrice’s friends down. The sooner they were out, the quicker he could leave.
“Ready?” he asked, and when the girls were aboard Freddy signaled to the driver to move on. He was never going walking in the park again. Nor would he ever hunt foxes; he knew how the poor beasts felt.
He glanced at the old lady. Her eyes twinkled back at him, full of . . . mischief? A trickle of unease slipped down his spine. Max’s warning came to mind. He frowned.
Lady Beatrice gave an airy shrug, then pulled out a tiny bottle of smelling salts. Waving it about six inches from her nose, she said faintly, “I’m exhausted. All this fresh air and exercise, so tiring.” She sank back against the well-padded cushions and closed her eyes, as innocent as a lamb.
Untrustworthy creatures, lambs, Freddy thought.
• • •
The following morning, Daisy and Damaris sat sewing in the upstairs sitting room. They spent a lot of their time there. It was bright, with large windows that let in the light, making it the perfect place to sew. A fire burned cozily in the grate.
Jane had gone shopping with Lady Beatrice to help her choose a pair of evening gloves. Daisy picked up the half-finished pelisse and began to sew the cuffs. Damaris started hemming a chemise.
They sat sewing in silence for a few minutes, the only sound a faint swishing of fabric and the hissing of burning coal in the grate.
Daisy finished the cuff and bit off the thread. “I know you said it’s not because of the brothel that you don’t want to get married, but if it was—”
“It’s not. It’s . . . complicated.” She’d never told anyone about how and why she’d been sold to the brothel and she didn’t intend to start now. Any marriage she made would be doomed to misery—her misery. Like Mama.
Daisy sniffed and knotted a new thread. “But if you ain’t going to nab yourself a bloke, how are you goin’ to support yourself? It ain’t easy on your own, you know.”
“I know.” In the weeks before they’d met Lady Beatrice, the four girls had been trying to support themselves in London and had almost starved, it had been so dreadfully hard to find work. Damaris had been the luckiest, having found a job painting china in a pottery.
Daisy went on, “When you start your life by bein’ dumped in a gutter ’cause nobody wants you, you soon learn you gotta look out for yourself.” She glanced up at Damaris. “If you’re useful to people, they’ll want you around. But the minute you’re not, or someone else takes their fancy, or they change their mind—or die—you’re on yer own. So it’s up to you to save yourself, ’cause there ain’t no Prince Bloomin’ Charmin’ gonna come lookin’ for girls like us, Damaris.”
Damaris laughed. “I know. And I’m not expecting anyone to save me. I had a lucky escape from that brothel—if you and Jane hadn’t let me come with you . . .” It didn’t bear thinking of.
“Now, don’t go all misery-guts on me, Damaris, that’s all water under the bridge. But yeah, you and me, we don’t fit here the way Abby and Jane do. You fit better’n me—you’re a lady, at least, with all them pretty manners that come natural to you, brought up wiv ’eathens or not. But them two are real sisters, and blood is thicker than promises—that’s all I know.”
“Don’t you trust them?” Damaris was troubled by the thought. It was the one little piece of security in her whole world, that she and the other three had sworn to be as sisters.
“Now don’t take this the wrong way, mind, it’s not that I don’t trust them—or you—but that I don’t trust anybody, not deep down, not really. Only meself.”
“Oh, Daisy.”
She shrugged. “People change, things change.” She hesitated and said, “You know Mrs. B, who used to be the madam of the brothel before she handed it over to that black-hearted son of hers?”
Damaris nodded. “Mort, yes.”
“Mrs. B found me when I was just eight. I was a right mess, me life was a misery and this had just happened.” She gestured to her crippled foot. “She took me away from the place where I was, took me to see a doctor, spent ’er own money on me—a stranger!—and then she took me home and looked after me. Nobody had before. I was that grateful.” She finished a seam and bit off the thread. “She never once pressed me to work for her as one o’ the girls, neither.”
Damaris nodded. Daisy had worked in the brothel as a maid and a seamstress.
Daisy continued, “I loved Mrs. B, thought of her like a mum—well, I used to pretend she was me mum if you want to know the truth. Thought me and her would be together the rest of our days an’ I’d look after ’er in ’er old age.” She threaded her needle with a different thread. “And then she went off and left me wiv that bastard Mort, din’t she? Chucked me away like a pair of old shoes as if I meant nuffin’ to her at all.”
“It must have hurt you terribly,” Damaris said softly.
Daisy shrugged. “Taught me a lesson I needed to learn, din’t it? You got nobody in this life to look out for you except yourself.” She looked up at Damaris. “And if you ain’t goin’ to get married, you’d better think of some way to support yourself.”
“I know.”
They bent over their sewing, deep in thought.
Daisy’s philosophy might be a grim one but it was true for Damaris as well. She loved Abby and Jane and Daisy as sisters and she loved Lady Beatrice with a mixture of fierce protectiveness and a desperate yearning for her mother.
But she didn’t want to live on Lady Beatrice’s bounty, like a sponge or a charity case, just because she didn’t want to marry. If she’d learned anything in her life, it was that she was strong and could work hard.
“You can work with me, if you like, bein’ a mantua maker. I don’t mean just helping out, like now, but—”
“Thank you, it’s very generous of you, Daisy, but�
��”
“I dunno if there’ll be much money in it for a while, though, even if we do succeed. Any money that comes in is goin’ to be needed for the business. I’ll need to find a place of me own eventually and rent a shop.”
“I know. And though I’ll help you as much as I can at the moment, I have . . . other plans for the future.”
Daisy gave her a shrewd look. “Still hankerin’ after that cottage in the country?”
Damaris nodded. It was her dream to live in a little cottage in the country, with chickens and a vegetable garden, somewhere quiet and peaceful. And safe. Above all, safe.
Daisy wrinkled her nose. “Sounds ’orrible to me. I hate the country, all empty except for mud and cows and trees. What would you do all day?”
Damaris smiled. “I’d be busy growing vegetables and keeping hens. I might even keep bees.”
“Nuffin’ but bees and chickens for company? Won’t you be lonely?”
“If I am, I’ll get a dog. Or a cat. Or both.” She’d been lonely most of her life. She was used to it. And animals didn’t judge you; their love was unquestioning. It would be good to have Daisy and the others close by, but it was much more expensive to live in the city where you couldn’t even grow your own food.
“Don’t you want kids, Damaris?”
Damaris swallowed. She did, of course she did. “I looked after some little girls in China.”
“Foundlings?” Daisy was a foundling herself.
Damaris nodded. The unwanted ones. “The babies and toddlers were my special charge. They were so sweet. . . .” Her voice cracked as she remembered how she’d last seen them. She swallowed again and said in what she hoped was a light tone, “But children are a lot of work.” And loving them made you so vulnerable. There had been enough grief in her life. . . .
“You didn’t want to leave them behind, did you?”
Damaris shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “But there was no . . . no choice.” She rose and busied herself putting coal on the fire and stirring up the embers. She didn’t want to dwell on the past. It was too painful. She had to think about the future.
If she were to get her cottage in the country, she would have to earn money for the rent. And the sooner she started the better. On that thought she said abruptly, “Daisy, I’m sorry but I need to go out. There’s something I need to do.”
Daisy gave her a thoughtful look, then nodded. “Off you go, then.”
“You don’t mind?” Damaris gestured to the unfinished sewing.
Daisy grinned. “Nah, go ahead, do what you gotta do. I got me own plans, you got yours.” She hadn’t asked what Damaris intended or where she was going. Daisy had learned young to mind her own business. “Just be back in time for the literary society. Lady Bea will have a fit if you’re not there to read.”
“I’ll be there.”
Chapter Three
“What! would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person, or of any person I may say?”
—JANE AUSTEN, PERSUASION
The dawn of another day. Mist swirled in ghostly shreds, caressing the lampposts and softening the stark outlines of the bare winter trees in the park. The hoofbeats of the nag pulling the cab echoed on the cobblestones. Inside the cab, Freddy lounged against the grimy seat back, tired and faintly blue-deviled. He’d just bidden a final and quite energetic farewell to his mistress but his mood had little to do with that; truth to tell, they’d wearied of each other, and her decision to marry again was both timely and convenient.
The truth was, he was beginning to tire of this way of life; having to leave a warm, comfortable bed in the dark, making a discreet exit by the back door, braving the cold, predawn streets.
He yawned. For once he’d like to take a woman to his own bed. And stay there as long as they wanted to. Perhaps it was time to employ a mistress, set her up in a house so he wouldn’t have to sneak out before dawn. He’d never fancied the idea of paying for it, but . . . these cold morning risings were killing him. Or perhaps he was getting old. He’d be thirty soon.
He gazed sleepily out of the carriage window. London was stirring, men and women trundling their goods along in handcarts—everything from cabbages to rags and bones—street sweepers, maidservants scurrying along the street, some with baskets heading to the market, others carrying jugs to purchase fresh milk from the herd of cows kept in Green Park.
Freddy shivered and pulled his coat tighter about him. Better them than him. He was a few moments from home and a warm, comfortable bed. Through half-closed eyes he watched a woman walking briskly along the footpath ahead of him. There was something about her . . . the way she walked. . . . She was swathed in a plain gray cloak, but he thought she was slender, and perhaps young. Possibly pretty. She was moving in the opposite direction, away from Mayfair, toward a much less salubrious district.
His cab passed her just as she was walking under a lamp and out of idle curiosity Freddy turned to look, just to see whether she was pretty or not.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed and rapped on the ceiling of the cab. “Stop here!”
“Thought you wanted Mayfair, sir,” the cabbie grumbled.
“Changed my mind.” Freddy tossed him a coin, jumped down and ran after the girl, who’d turned a corner and disappeared down a side street.
At the corner he spotted her, a slender gray shadow swirling through the mist, insubstantial, but walking briskly and with purpose, seeming to know exactly where she was going.
She turned another corner and disappeared. He hurried after her and found himself in a narrow street. The gaslights didn’t extend this far. In the dim, predawn light he could make out a few dilapidated houses with boarded-up windows, a couple of warehouses, narrow yards enclosed by high walls topped with shards of glass, and the occasional chimney of a manufactory. What the hell could she want in such a district?
He followed quietly, burning with curiosity, but when she turned into a dark and narrow alley he could hang back no longer. Didn’t she realize the danger a lone woman could face in these parts?
He caught up with her, grabbed her by the arm and swung her around to face him—then ducked as she lashed out at him with—good God!—a cosh? He caught her forearm in his hand and forced it down. The cosh, a small leather bag filled with gravel or some such thing, dangled limply from her fingers, attached by a looped string.
“Wh—Mr. Monkton-Coombes?” Damaris Chance gave him a wide-eyed look of amazement, glanced behind him to see if he was alone, then returned her gaze to his face.
For a moment they stood staring at each other, breathing heavily, small visible puffs in the chill, still air. Her skin was milk pale, luminous with mist, her eyes huge and dark in the dim light. They looked almost black; Freddy knew they were a soft brown like the velvet of pansies. That was in the dark. In the sun, they sparkled like topaz.
Under the drab gray cloak she wore an even drabber gray gown, like some dowdy, down-at-heels governess. In some obscure way it offended him. She always dressed with elegance and style. As befitted her beauty.
And she was carrying a cosh, a weapon of the wharves and backstreets. That roused him to further anger.
He shook her by the arm. “What the devil are you doing out here, alone, at this hour, in this godforsaken neighborhood?”
“What are you doing here?” Her voice was cool, low and composed, smoky honey in the chill, bleak surrounds. She tried to pull her arm out of his grip.
His fingers tightened. “I asked you first—and what the dev—deuce are you doing carrying a cosh?” He was not composed at all.
This—this!—was why he should have refused Max’s request, this feeling he got whenever she looked at him this way, with silky sable brows arching over fathomless dark eyes. He had no idea what she was thinking, dammit. A ma
n could drown in that liquid gaze. And the way she pursed those full, wild-rose lips . . . they scrambled his brain.
“Defending myself from unwanted attentions, of course.” She glanced pointedly at the hand that held her. “Let go of my arm, please.”
He ignored her. “If you were where you’re supposed to be you wouldn’t need to defend yourself at all. What are you doing out here?”
“Walking.”
“Don’t try that flummery with me. What are you doing here?”
She gave him a look that might have been apologetic if she hadn’t answered coolly, “That’s my business.”
“It’s my business too.”
She put up her brows in a way that was no doubt meant to make him feel abashed. Trying to look governessy, he supposed, in her drab gray garb.
Freddy had never had a governess—that he knew of—and he didn’t feel abashed in the slightest. The contrast between her fine, moon-pale beauty and the dreary clothing buttoned tightly, swathing her slenderness in drabness, only made her look . . . enticing. The thought flashed across his mind that it might be quite entertaining to have a governess. . . .
Not that he was allowing himself to be enticed. Or distracted. She was very much out-of-bounds to him; a duty only. “Max made me promise that I’d keep an eye on you girls while he’s away—and a blasted nuisance it’s turning out to be.”
She glanced again at his hand, which was still clamped around her forearm. “I quite agree.”
“Well, it’s a good thing he did,” he said crossly. “What do you think he’d say to you wandering about in such an area at this time of night?”
“It’s not night, it’s morning,” she corrected him. “And I’m not wandering, I know exactly where I’m going. It’s nothing for you or anyone else to be concerned about, so I thank you for your interest and bid you good day.” She tugged at her arm.
Interest? It wasn’t interest he felt, it was . . . dammit, he didn’t know what it was. Annoyance, probably. He could be home in bed by now, and instead he was down some filthy alley arguing with a mule-headed chit who seemed to have no idea of the trouble she could be in. “Does Lady Beatrice know you are here? Does Featherby?”