“But she said her name was Nanette Craig,” Bianca wailed, then made a furious, frustrated sound and yelled, “Why am I weeping when I’m so furious I could tear you limb from limb?”
Of all things, Nanette laughed and nodded to the damp spot on the carpet. “Must have something to do with that, dove.”
Jack didn’t have the time or the patience to sort the whole thing out. “I am not married to Nanette,” he barked, turning back to Bianca.
“Then why is her name Craig?” Bianca wailed, wiping her eyes with the back of her gloved hand, then growling in fury and stomping. “Stop,” she ordered. “Stop crying, you ninny.” That only made her cry more. But half a second later, she stopped abruptly, bringing a hand to her mouth and one to her stomach and muttering, “Oh, God.”
Jack knew the look of someone who was about to be sick. The carpet and the scent suddenly made sense. He swept up to Bianca’s side, resting an arm gently around her back and steered her to the side of the single-room flat to the chipped porcelain basin that served as both sink and washtub.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said, surprised that his voice came out sounding so tender, as he held her.
Bianca convulsed, but nothing came up. Whether she was furious with him or not, she leaned into him as she breathed slowly through her nose.
“Nanette, what the hell did you say to her to upset her so much?” Jack asked over his shoulder.
Nanette stayed where she was, shrugging. “That mess is your fault, love, not mine.”
Jack hissed an impatient breath, sending Nanette a look that both ordered her to leave and told her he’d deal with her later.
“Fine,” Nanette said as though he’d spoken aloud. “But I only came by to tell you Brickman admitted to leading the attack against Lord O’Shea. I’ll just come back and tell you about it some other time, when your hoity-toity bit of skirt isn’t casting up her accounts ’cuz she’s up the duff.”
Jack’s eyes went wide at her statement and his heart dropped to his gut. He whipped back to Bianca—who was trying once more not to be sick—as Nanette quietly slipped out of the flat. He didn’t feel the least bit better once she was gone, but at least she’d left him and Bianca alone to deal with what felt like an explosion bigger than anything Brickman and Denbigh could plot.
“Is that why you came to see me?” he asked, voice hoarse, rubbing her back.
He wasn’t sure if Bianca heard him. She gripped the edge of the basin, putting all her concentration into steadying herself. It was more than a minute before she sucked in a breath and groaned. She stood straight, pushing him away.
“If she’s not your wife, then why does she have the same surname as you? Why was she flaunting herself in your flat?” Bianca stepped away from the basin, wiping her face with the back of her glove and crossing to sink unsteadily onto his ratty, old sofa. “Is she the reason you’ve always refused to let me come here?”
Jack was too dazed by the massive turn his life had just taken to hold onto even a little anger, but neither did he know what to say or how to address the situation. “Are you married to Rupert because your surname is Marlowe?” he asked, crossing to the sofa but not sitting.
Bianca glanced up at him, miserable at first, but then blinking into surprise. “She’s your sister?”
“As close as I’ve got,” Jack admitted. The storm seemed well on its way to passing, so he took a moment to shrug out of his coat and hang it from one of the pegs by his door. He spotted Bianca’s coat lying in a heap and scooped to hang that as well.
“But…but I thought you were the son of a whore,” Bianca whispered, as though her fine society friends might be lurking behind his small bed in the corner, ready to pop out and accuse her of villainy at any moment.
“I am,” he admitted frankly. “So is Nanette. We were born in the same brothel, along with a dozen other kids over the years, and raised together.”
“So she’s not really your sister,” Bianca said with a puzzled frown.
Jack shrugged. “We could be. Half-siblings, at least. She’s not my mum’s. But Mrs. Farringdon’s had regular clientele, like most places around here.”
“Mrs. Farringdon’s?” Bianca said, barely above a whisper. The sick look returned to her face, as though she’d just taken a big dose of bitter medicine.
Reality sat heavily in Jack’s gut. He glanced around his flat, it’s bare walls, its simple furniture, and now its stained carpet. It was small, cramped, and miles away from the finery Bianca was used to. She thought they were roughing it at the St. John’s Wood flat, but compared to what he’d known his whole life, even that small space was a palace.
“I’m not quite such a catch when you see the truth behind the pretty face, eh?” he asked, pain radiating from his heart. He knew what happened next. He knew damn well what happened when pretty illusions were shattered.
Bianca glanced up at him with mournful, streaming eyes. A second later, her anger returned. “Why was she so mean to me and so…so inappropriate with you if she’s your sister?”
“Because Nanette likes to tease,” he said with a helpless gesture of defeat. “Ask the blokes at Scotland Yard. She’s a flirt and a minx.”
“Scotland Yard?” Bianca arched a suspicious brow.
“She’s also one of my best informants. Always has been. But you’re the one I love, Bianca. You’re the only one I love.” He sat on the sofa at last, twisting to face her. He even tried to take her hands, but she pulled them out of reach, turning away from him.
“What if I don’t believe you?” she asked.
“Then you’re a damned fool who’s trying to throw everything between us back in my face because you’re in a snit,” Jack said, pulling no punches.
Bianca yelped and pivoted to face him one more. “How dare you?”
“I dare because you’re acting like a child,” he told her flatly. “And you’re no child, Bianca. Especially not now.” He nodded to her midsection.
“And how did you expect me to react to finding a half-dressed woman in your flat?” she demanded, ignoring his nod. “A flat you’ve refused to so much as give me the address of for all these years. How do you think that looks to me?”
Jack let out a breath, rubbing a hand over his face. It looked bad. It would look bad in any circumstance. “I would expect you to trust me,” he said, knowing full well he might not trust her if he ever showed up at the St. John’s Wood flat unexpectedly and found another man lounging on her sofa in just his shirt and trousers.
Bianca pursed her lips and stared flatly at him. “Do you have any tea?” she asked at last in clipped tones.
“No,” he said honestly, sitting straighter and gesturing at his flat. “This isn’t some grand house full of servants that can bring you tea whenever you need it. I barely have a stove.” He gestured to the tiny thing in the corner that provided warmth in the winter and hot water in small quantities when he boiled the miniscule kettle. He let his accent slip into cockney as he went on. “I’m no nob, Bianca. If not for the whores that raised me, I’d probably be a thief or a pimp, if I’d managed to live this long without having my throat slit over some stupid gang war.”
“You wouldn’t,” Bianca said, shaking her head. “You’re too noble.”
Jack laughed at her choice of words. “But I’m not, love. I never was. I’m not just one of your nob friends pretending to be middle class. I’m a nobody from nowhere pretending to be better than I am.”
“But you’re a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard,” she argued. “You’ll be more one day too.”
“With any luck,” he said, growing more frustrated with her blindness by the moment. “But I’ll always be that boy in the gutter too. I’ll always be the fatherless wretch who ran errands for the whores while they were fucking for money. I’ll always be the brat trying to fight off the bastards who hurt the women who raised me and getting the shit kicked out of me for it.”
Bianca blinked, her eyes going wide. “You fought the men who hurt tho
se ladies?”
“They aren’t ladies, Bianca. Not like you are. Not like everyone you know is,” he said, praying that she’d drop the last of the veils she’d always seen him through and wake up to the reality of what she’d shackled herself to. “They weren’t ladies when they thanked me for protecting them in their own special way and they aren’t ladies now.”
Bianca flashed from awe to fury in a heartbeat. “Do they still thank you that way?” she said, her voice rising to a high-pitched squeak.
Jack huffed in frustration. He adored Bianca’s innocence as much as he hated it. “I’ve spent a lot of time in my life with the women around here, yes,” he said. “This isn’t polite society with its dainty rules and priggish manners. It’s Clerkenwell. It’s what we do for entertainment on a slow night. It’s how we cheer each other up when the shittiness of life gets us down.”
“How dare you expose me to any number of lurid diseases by treating me the same as any of your whores?” Bianca shouted, rising and glowering at him.
“Those whores are my family,” Jack shouted just as vehemently, standing and stepping closer to her. “They are my friends. They keep themselves clean as much as they can. I’ve paid for doctors when they’ve fallen ill, and provided them with other things in an attempt to keep them healthy.”
“Is that why you live in a cheap flat like this on a Chief Inspector’s salary?” Bianca demanded. “Because you spend the rest of your money on them?”
“No,” he bellowed. “I live in a cheap flat like this because I’ve been saving every penny I can to buy a suitable house for you when we can finally marry. It’s all in the bank, every pound of it.”
“And do you expect me to share you with your friends and family once we’re married?” Bianca hissed.
“I haven’t been with anyone but you for years now,” Jack shouted, near the end of his rope. “I don’t want to be with anyone but you for the rest of my life. And if you’re so prejudiced against the working-class that you don’t believe me, if you can’t believe that any man born into that kind of life would set high standards for himself to live up to, that he wouldn’t cherish real love more than cheap fucking, then go out in the street and ask any of the girls you come across whether I’ve been anything but true to you for years now. They’ll tell you what your poisoned, upper-class mind refuses to hear.”
Jack wasn’t sure what to expect after his impassioned speech, but it was not for Bianca to burst into tears again.
“Don’t shout at me,” she wept, hiding her face in her hands. “I’ve never been good enough for Mama. I’ve never been as good as Cece or Natalia. You’re the only one who ever thought I was good enough, and now you’re shouting at me. It breaks my heart, and I can’t—”
She didn’t finish her sentence. She burst into a sob and bolted for the door. She wrenched it open and shot into the hall.
“Bianca, wait,” Rupert called after her. He dashed to the pegs, grabbing her coat and his, and followed her into the hall and down the stairs.
Chapter 10
Bianca wasn’t sure if it was her heart or her stomach that twisted up in knots and wanted to leap out of her body in misery as she tore down the stairs of Jack’s shabby building and into the street. She hadn’t known it was possible to be so miserable, body and soul, particularly not after feeling lighter than air through the past several weeks.
Of course, she’d been a fool if she’d imagined Jack hadn’t enjoyed a hundred other women before her. The curious faces watching her from the windows of run-down buildings and the women who stood straight from where they had been idling near the steps leading to buildings hung with faded red curtains seemed to be laughing at her ignorance as she stumbled past. And yet, she’d known all along that Jack came from a scandalous background. She’d known he was the son of God only knew who. She’d known, and yet she hadn’t known until now.
“Bianca, stop!” Jack’s shout was angry as he rushed up behind her, and yet, she couldn’t deny the note of concern buried under the frustration. “Stop.”
She had no intention of stopping, but he gave her no choice. He grabbed her arm and tugged her to a halt, stepping around to block her from going on. He held her coat in his free hand and wore an expression of soul-deep irritation.
“Let go of me, Jack,” she demanded. Only, her words came out sounding more pitiful than insistent. The soggy quality to her voice as tears continued to fall didn’t help the picture. “Just let me go.”
“I’m not letting you go anywhere,” he said, standing too close, his tone both tender and warning.
Bianca jerked but couldn’t break away from him. She yanked, twisted, and did everything she could think of to wrench free of him. And then she did something entirely unexpected that did the job far better than any struggle. She gagged, then doubled over, heaving what little was left in her stomach onto the pavement by Jack’s feet. He had to dodge out of the way, letting go of her in the process, to avoid being splattered.
“Ooh,” one of the young whores watching the scene unfold winced in sympathy. The two girls standing with her did the same.
“You alright, love?” a fourth woman, dressed only slightly less provocatively than the other three, called from across the street.
“She’s fine, Ruby,” Jack called to the woman, raising a hand to her.
Bianca spit, sniffled, and straightened, staring bloody murder at Jack. “Ruby?” she squeaked, feeling weak enough to spill to the ground in a pile. “So you know them all by name, do you?”
“Everyone ’round here knows Jack,” the whore who had winced in sympathy said.
“Thank you, Ida, but now is not the time,” Jack told her with a stern frown.
“How many of them know you in the Biblical sense?” Bianca asked, nose running, eyes streaming, not even feeling half as pretty as one or two of the harlots that inched closer to watch the drama unfold.
“Bianca,” Jack told her in a warning tone, glancing anxiously from side to side at their audience.
“Ha,” one of the whores laughed. “Us? Keepin’ company with Jack?”
“He don’t want nuthin’ to do with any of us since you come along, my lady,” Ida said, far more wistfully than Bianca would have liked.
“Oh,” Ruby said, rushing across the street to stand with the others. “Is this Lady Bianca?”
“Lady Bianca?” The call rang down the street, and as if someone had clanged a bell, women of all ages, in various forms of undress, dropped what they were doing or looked out the window to stare at her.
“Law, but she’s fine,” someone said from a window above her.
“That dress,” another sighed. Her sigh was echoed by others.
“Good work, Jackie boy,” a matronly woman with half of her teeth missing called from a few more windows down.
Bianca wanted to sink into the ground with several varieties of mortification. The feeling was not helped at all when a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen, dressed as skimpily as the rest of the whores, rushed out of one of the houses to hand her a glass containing some sort of liquid and a damp rag. She burst into tears at the embarrassingly kind gesture and took the rag, wiping her mouth, then raised the glass to her lips.
A heartbeat later, she spit out the gin that filled her mouth and nearly vomited again, coughing at the nasty surprise.
“Sorry,” the girl said, looking as mortified as Bianca felt. “Only, we ain’t sure ’bout the water most days.”
“Thank you,” Bianca said with a watery sniffle, handing the rag and glass back to the girl.
Her fury had been interrupted so thoroughly that she didn’t know what to do. All that seemed possible was to drag her eyes up to Jack, who had remained suspiciously silent through the whole episode.
He was staring at her, studying her with arms crossed, jaw hard, and expression unreadable. His silence made her feel small. It also made her feel safe in the most paradoxical of ways.
“You see?” he said at last,
moving his head a mere fraction of an inch but seeming to take in everything around them in the process.
He didn’t elaborate. It forced Bianca to glance furtively around, taking in the depressed buildings, the kind but dirty faces looking on with curiosity and concern, and the puddle of sick she’d left on the pavement. She saw. She saw far too much. She saw all the reasons why everyone from her mother to Henrietta said it would be impossible for her to marry Jack. She saw what social class really meant. And she saw how wretchedly spoiled she’d been her whole life.
Jack glanced to the women standing behind Bianca. He didn’t say a word, but somehow they must have received a command. The women watching them from the windows pulled their heads back inside. Ruby rushed back across the street and went about her business. Ida and her friends backed away, walking down to the corner of the street, murmuring to each other. Within seconds, the space around Jack and Bianca was completely cleared of onlookers.
Bianca kept her shoulders stooped, wondering if the women and men of society that she knew would have been so quick to afford them the same sort of privacy. She writhed with discomfort at the answer that came to her.
“They know who I am,” she said at last, keeping her voice low.
“Of course they know who you are,” Jack said, seemingly less angry. “And did you hear them? Did you listen to them?”
She lowered her head again, knowing exactly what he was talking about. Just as he’d said in his flat, she could ask any whore on the street and they would tell her that he had been faithful to her for years. The truth, the way she’d behaved, made her feel lower than a worm.
Jack let out a breath at last and rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll stand by you, of course. Every step of the way. I don’t care what your mother or Lord Malcolm says, I’ll not forsake you. The baby is mine, of course, and I’ll be a good father to it. This whole thing is my fault in the first place. How could I have been so bloody stupid not to—”
“What?” Bianca cut him off, the single word coming out strangled as ice and acid ran through her veins.
It’s Only a Scandal if You’re Caught Page 11