A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man

by Celeste Bradley

  I halted with my toast halfway to my lips. “Before or after I’ve had my tea?”

  “I’m quite serious!” She flung her paper down before me. “Read this!”

  The headline declared quite loudly, “Blackbird or Black Widow?”, and then beneath that, “London Ladybird to be Charged With Murder!”

  My toast fell to my plate, forgotten. I grabbed the newssheet up and read quickly. “Notorious woman of pleasure known as the Blackbird is to be formally charged with the ruthless murder of Mr. Eamon Wainwright, who died a fortnight ago under suspicious circumstances. Mr. Wainwright was found in the bed of Ophelia Harrington without a mark on him. The City Coroner suspects poison.”

  I looked up at the Swan. “At the inquest, they said heart failure. How can this be?”

  “Bribery,” the Swan said bitterly. “Or prejudice. There is no law in London for the likes of us.”

  I gazed back down at the paper in my shaking hands. “Survived by his grieving daughter, Miss Alice Wainwright, and her devoted fiancé, well-regarded author, Lord B____, Mr. Eamon Wainwright was a respected citizen of London. Lord B____, in posing the charges on behalf of Miss Wainwright, claims that Ophelia Harrington seduced the unsuspecting Mr. Wainwright into leaving half of Miss Wainwright’s rightful inheritance to the woman he knew only as the Blackbird. ‘She is a conniving harlot,’ says Lord B____. ‘No man is safe from her grasping claws.’”

  “‘On behalf of Miss Wainwright,’” I murmured. “Oh, Alice.” I bit my lip. “She’s a lamb in the grip of the wolf.”

  “She’s a twit,” the Swan said sharply. “She isn’t a child. There is no excuse for her stupidity.”

  I traced a finger over the drawing of the Blackbird, a sketch of a sloe-eyed seductress with long, clawlike fingernails. “I was that stupid once.”

  The Swan snorted. “Yes, for about a week. Alice Wainwright has been stupid for years.”

  “It says the trial is scheduled for two weeks from today.”

  “Which is why you must pack a bag and sail at once. I hear Barcelona is most diverting.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. “You are fortunate that the news sheet arrived before the magistrate’s men.”

  I was not fortunate for long. Scarcely had I dressed and thrown a few belongings into a valise than a hearty pounding came upon the door of my house.

  “Quick!” the Swan urged. “You must flee through the back garden!”

  However, when she towed me to the rear of the house, we saw a burly fellow lurking outside. I backed away from the window. “I will not be dragged screeching from my own house!”

  The Swan followed me as I strode to the front door and flung it open. “Gentlemen, I’ve been expecting you,” I said with dignity.

  The expressions upon the faces of the three watchmen was priceless. I doubt they had ever been in the presence of a woman as beautiful as the Swan and I followed a close second. I smiled regally at them. In less than a second, their hats were in their hands and their feet shuffled on my front step like those of bashful schoolboys. I handed one fellow my valise and took the arm of another. “Won’t you delicious fellows show me the way to Newgate Prison?”

  “Ophelia!” The Swan’s whisper was urgent.

  I turned to my dear friend and lifted my chin. “Could you contact Sir on my behalf?” I had never asked it of her before.

  She bit her lip. “I shall try.”

  I turned back and cast a blinding smile upon my captors. “Shall we go?”

  As I left my home with dignity, I feared I might never see it again.

  * * *

  The Blackbird had been caged at last. I sat on a bench in the ward reserved for female felons in Newgate Prison. The low arched ceiling of stone made me feel as though I were seated in a sewer tunnel, albeit a dry one. A few small high windows opened to the inner courtyard of the women’s quadrangle. These provided enough light to gain a view of my fellow prisoners. All around me, women sat or lay upon pallets that looked to be stuffed with straw. Some of them were grouped together, some sat alone. Some of them had their children with them, sunken-eyed and wary creatures that they were. Was it better to stay with their mothers than to be cast into the streets or warehoused in an overcrowded orphanage? I honestly could not say.

  A woman approached me. She was tall and thickly proportioned, but her broad face had once been pretty. Now she sported only a few teeth as she smiled cynically at me. “Fine lady,” she rasped, then cackled. “What did ye do to get in ’ere? Did ye drown yer brats like old Bertha over there?” She pointed at a woman who crouched in a corner and scratched mindlessly at her tangled gray head.

  I gazed at the woman without fear. “I am Ophelia,” I told her. “What is your name?”

  The woman’s bravado faltered. “Me?”

  I smiled. “You.”

  “I be Hettie.”

  I held out my hand. “It is very nice to meet you, Hettie.”

  Forced to either shake my hand or leave me with my arm thrust into the air, Hettie gave my hand a quick fumble. Then she backed warily away.

  I kept smiling. “In answer to your question, Hettie, I am here because I managed to upset a man enough to make him want to destroy me.”

  Hettie grunted, “That ain’t hard.”

  “Indeed,” I said regretfully.

  Hettie lifted her chin. “Don’t ye want to know what I done?”

  I tilted my head. “Only if you wish to tell me.”

  “I kilt my husband. With a butcher knife. Cut his throat, I did.”

  I took this horrifying news calmly. “I don’t know much about husbands,” I told her. “I have never married. But I hear they can be a handful sometimes.”

  Hettie stared at me for a long moment. Then a harsh bark of laughter broke from her lips. “That be the truth, milady!” She turned away, chuckling. “A handful! Ha!”

  After Hettie left, I noticed another woman eyeing me warily from a nearby pallet. I smiled at her in a friendly way. She edged closer.

  “I never heard Hettie laugh afore,” she said with wonder. “And she didn’t beat you or nothin’.”

  I folded my hands in my lap. “I found Miss Hettie to be a scintillating conversationalist.”

  The woman frowned. “Who did ye piss on what got ye in irons?”

  I translated. Whom did you anger enough to be put in prison? I have always been clever with languages.

  I let out a sigh. “He is known as Lord B____. We were once friends, but he betrayed my trust. Now he feels he must destroy me in order to gain great wealth.” She gazed at me without much comprehension, but I went on. “I am accused of killing my lover. If I am hanged, then I will not inherit the money he bestowed upon me. Lord B____ will be free to marry my lover’s daughter and gain all the wealth for himself.”

  The woman blinked. “That sounds a mess, all right.”

  “A mess indeed.” I rubbed at my aching head. “The ironic thing is that I have recently come to see that the life I have chosen has become unrewarding. I was beginning to form a plan to change it. A shallow existence, based on sex and money and fame, is a thin sheet of ice on which to skate. Everything that is happening now had its beginnings in the past. I have made choices, you see. These choices had insured that I have no powerful friends on which to depend. I have no iron-clad reputation with which to armor myself. The very freedom I have always cherished is the very thing that now makes me vulnerable.”

  I gazed through the filthy windows at the fading sky. “My chickens, I fear, have truly come home to roost.” Then I let out a breath and turned to more practical matters. “I can see by the sky outside that night is coming. How does one obtain a pallet?”

  The woman frowned. “Ye take it.”

  “Oh.” I gazed about the room but it looked as if all the pallets were occupied. “Are there spare ones?”

  The woman shook her head. “Ye could sneak Bertha’s away from ’er, for she’s right crazy and won’t notice for hours.” She scratched meditat
ively at her dirt-creased neck. “She might kill ye in the wee hours for it, though.”

  I inhaled. “Perhaps I shall simply lie on this bench. I have my valise as a pillow.”

  The woman’s fingers twitched. “What ye got in there?”

  I smiled at her. “These are my things. They belong to me. Bertha’s not the only one who can sneak up on someone in the wee hours.” I allowed my smile to turn a tiny bit sinister.

  The woman drew back. “Aye, that’s true enough.” She scuttled back to her pallet and sat there, eyeing me with surprised respect. As well she ought. One does not climb to the top of the demimonde without tending toward the competitive. I might be in prison, but I could still rise to the top.

  The top of the dungheap.

  I wanted my own bed. I wanted my freedom.

  I wanted Sir to come and tell me everything was going to be all right.

  He did not come.

  Thirty-one

  Boston

  The knock was so soft that Piper almost didn’t hear it.

  “What?” she barked, struggling with the ankle strap of her left shoe and hopping around on her right foot, looking at the workroom clock. She had exactly five minutes to get upstairs to greet the board of directors. Her navy blazer was covered in lint. She couldn’t find her earrings.

  The knock came again.

  “Come in! God!”

  The door opened just a crack and Mick poked his head inside. Suddenly, Piper’s irritation melted away.

  “Is this a bad time?” He gave her a tentative smile.

  “I’m so glad it’s you. Sorry I snapped at you. Hurry. Close the door.” Piper rifled through her large bag again, almost certain that she’d thrown the earrings in there that morning, along with her shoes, a value-sized Excedrin, and a bottle of pinot grigio. She didn’t find the earrings, but she did recover the little gift she’d planned to give Mick later that night. She might as well give it to him now.

  “Here,” she said, holding it out with one hand while ratting around in her purse for her earrings with the other. Maybe she should forget them. Tonight was just a walk-through of the exhibit for the staff and board members. Who cared if she sported earrings? “I wanted you to have this.” Piper looked up at him and smiled.

  Mick had moved into the workroom and around the desk. “Why, thank you,” he said. “Should I open it now?”

  “Maybe later tonight. I want to see your face when you get a look at it, but I’m running so late.”

  Mick laughed. “No problem.” He tucked the playing card–sized box in a trouser pocket.

  Piper took a swig from the wine bottle. “Want some?”

  “Maybe later.”

  Mick came up behind her. He flipped her hair off to the side and gently rolled one of her earlobes in his fingers. Piper then felt his warm breath tickle the nape of her neck as he slipped the gold post through her pierced ear. “I’m assuming this was what you were looking for?”

  She giggled and automatically straightened to lean against him, eyes closed. She took a second to sense him solid against her back.

  “Where did you find them, Mick?”

  “Right here on your desktop,” he said, flipping her hair to the other side and slipping the other earring in place.

  “Thank you so much. I’m a mess.” She spun around to face him, and although he had a pleasant smile on his face and looked drop-dead handsome in his open-necked dress shirt and dress slacks, she sensed something was off-kilter. His lovely blue eyes were clouded.

  “Mick?”

  “I know you’re running late. I just wanted to tell you good luck with the walk-through.” He ran his hands along the slope of her hips, but Piper wasn’t buying it.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Ah, Jaysus H.,” he said, rubbing his chin and looking away. “I heard from the Compass people again, love.”

  She gasped. “You didn’t get the show?”

  “Here. Sit with me just a moment.”

  Mick situated himself in Piper’s desk chair and pulled her down into his lap. He tilted his head back and gazed up into her face. He looked exhausted. With reason, she knew—she’d run the poor man ragged the last two weeks. Right then Piper told herself she’d make it up to him. Spoil him a bit. Or a lot. God knows she’d have plenty of time on her hands once she was fired.

  “I need to go to L.A. right away.”

  It was almost like Piper’s brain refused to accept what he was saying. “You mean, like in a few days? Next week?”

  He shook his head. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  Piper tried to stand up but he held her firm in his grip. “I tried to get them to wait, but they’re being bastards about it—tomorrow or never, they said. But my agent—”

  “I have to go.” Piper used all her strength to get free. Her head suddenly felt like it weighed a ton. Like it was going to explode. She walked toward the door, knowing she was forgetting something but not caring anymore.

  “Piper, please let me explain.”

  She spun around. She had no idea where all this drama was coming from. Maybe it was the stress. Or the wine. But she felt on the verge of screaming and stomping her feet because Mick had just told her he wouldn’t be at the gala tomorrow night.

  How could he do this? How could he choose a reality show over her? She needed him! She needed him here with her tomorrow for the big reveal!

  He promised me.

  Piper felt her gut drop with the weight of the sadness. Here we go again, she told herself. He’s going to walk out on me. He’s going to break my heart.

  “Piper, listen.” Mick moved toward her slowly, his hands out in front as if he were approaching a skittish wild animal. “I’ll be here all tonight and tomorrow morning. I’ll do whatever needs to be done to get the exhibit ready, just as I promised. I’m on a ten A.M. flight with a stop in Chicago, but I found a nonstop red-eye back to Boston. I won’t even have to spend the night out there.”

  “It’s okay,” she heard herself say. Piper raised her chin and brushed lint from her blazer. “I understand. I’ve got to get upstairs.”

  He started to touch her but she backed away. “Look, I’m upset. I know I shouldn’t be. You have your thing, Mick. This is my thing. They’re separate. I shouldn’t have dragged you into my mess like I have. It wasn’t fair.”

  “Piper, that’s not—”

  “We’ll talk later. I need to go.”

  She left Mick in the workroom. Her brain had already been packed with millions of little details she would need to successfully navigate the long night that lay ahead, and now there were giant, swelling waves of emotion crashing into her that she didn’t have time for.

  Damn you, Mick Malloy, she thought, hitting the elevator button.

  Once inside, Piper leaned her forehead against the cool metal wall of the elevator. Ophelia’s words ran through her head, from a letter she’d written to a friend soon after her son, William, died at the battle of Antietam. Ophelia had spoken from a place of utter despair in that letter.

  There are times we are asked to bear the unbearable, to reach down within and discover a solid core of strength we didn’t know we possessed. In the end, courage is a lonely pursuit of the soul. Another person can never be brave for us.

  Piper squared her shoulders. Surely, if Ophelia had found the courage to go on living after losing her son, Piper could face tomorrow night’s Fall Gala crowd without falling apart.

  The elevator opened onto the lobby. She headed toward the south gallery, noting the small knot of museum employees and the trustees gathered around the closed double doors. Frosty Forsythe was there, but he could barely look at her, and his wife, Paulette, offered only a wan smile.

  “Thank you, everyone, for stopping by this evening,” she told the crowd. “I do hope you enjoy the exhibit.”

  Piper opened the doors. There were a few “hmms” and murmurs of approval as people began to gather in a circle around the five-foot-wide pedestal display. They stared up
at the scrim held in place with chains from the ceiling, and Piper watched as many began to frown. The scrim featured projected scenes of prosperous mid-nineteenth-century Boston life, superimposed with images of slaves in the field, on the auction block, and lynched bodies hanging from trees.

  Once the shocked whispers began, Piper reached behind her and hit the wall switch and the scrim vanished up into the ceiling, uncovering a revolving mannequin display. As it slowly turned, people gasped in appreciation. A few even laughed in surprise. It was two human forms back-to-back, one a female slave in chains and one of the matronly Ophelia Harrington, fist raised and mouth open as if in mid-oration. The audio portion kicked in as designed, and a strong female voice proclaimed, “To ‘own’ a human being is to annihilate a human life.”

  Piper flipped another switch and a lighted walkway directed staff and board members into the display. LaPaglia stayed behind.

  “Quite a statement, Piper,” he said. He fiddled with his necktie. “Er, ah, I have to say this is a little more elaborate than I’d been led to believe. Far more politically charged.”

  Piper smiled at him, thinking, You have no idea just how elaborate and charged things are going to get. “I didn’t spend one penny of museum money that wasn’t budgeted.”

  “Fine. Fine. Anyway, I’ll head into the installation and we’ll talk later.” He patted her on her bare arm. “Oh, by the way—love the type font.”

  The second LaPaglia strolled away, Linc sidled up to Piper. He gave her a sideways glance. “Looking forward to tomorrow night?” he asked.

  She tipped her head and stared at him. “Absolutely.”

  “I know I am.”

  Piper gestured toward the exhibit. “Why don’t you mosey on in?”

  “No, thanks,” Linc said, clasping his hands behind his back and tipping on his heels. “I think I’ll wait to be surprised tomorrow evening along with everyone else. Best of luck to you.”

  As she watched him walk away, Piper had no doubt—Linc knew her plan. He’d probably known for a while, though she had no idea how he’d figured it out or what he planned to do with the information.