Twice Tempted (32 page)

Chapter 19

F
iona had thought that there couldn’t be a worse place than Betty the Badger’s. She had been wrong. After spending the last few days trudging from one end of Seven Dials and Soho to the other, she could honestly say that Betty had been fairly successful. Some of the madams along these streets were successful as well. Tight-fisted, sharp-eyed women who kept closer watch over their girls than a schoolroom nanny and never saw a loose ha’penny leave the building. But those weren’t the women who really needed Fiona’s help. The unsuccessful ones did. Too flamboyant, too wasteful, too unaware of all the schemes and cons that could siphon their money away, and too uneducated to know how to keep books.

Fiona would have worked anywhere but a brothel if only she could have found a business that would have accepted a female bookkeeper. Butchers, chandlers, cent-per-centers. But long experience had taught her that she wouldn’t merely be shown the door, she would be remembered for her bold request. Whorehouses made a practice of forgetting inconvenient problems.

Her approach to the brothels was made easier by the acquaintance of her new landlady. A costumer for theater, Mrs. Tolliver also helped with stage makeup and kept her own paints. So the once-statuesque, redheaded Fiona was now a stooped spinster of middle age with hair scraped into a gray-dusted brown bun, dark glasses, and skin that bore a rather unhealthy yellow tint. Her bosom was compressed beneath muslin wrappings and her posterior increased by the judicious use of theatrical padding. She was, if the people who passed her in the street were anything to judge by, completely forgettable. If she had but known it, she had already avoided the attention of at least three searchers who had been told to keep an eye out for a Scottish queen.

She snuck in and out of fetid alleys and back doors, trying her best to block out the noises and smells and sights, and she spent her time hunched over a variety of desks, tables, and upended crates going over the jumbled, often indecipherable accounts of whores. And then every evening she returned to the room Lennie had found them on the top floor of what would loosely be described as Mrs. Tolliver’s boardinghouse.

Exiting Miss Fancy’s Parlor into the cold late afternoon, she reached up beneath her brown coal scuttle bonnet and scratched at the wig she wore, irrationally sure that she had brought bedbugs out with her. It would only be for a while longer, she kept telling herself day after day as she trudged from Miss Fancy’s to Madame Trixy’s to The Cat House to Seven Sins, all vetted by both Lennie and Mrs. Tolliver. Only until Alex and his father were safe, she kept assuring herself. Only until she could earn enough to get Mairead and her back to Edinburgh.

Where she would probably be forced to do the same thing.

How could she already be so tired?

“Ya think you’d like to add one more place, miss?” Lennie asked alongside her.

Startled out of her reverie, Fiona looked around at the fading light and then down at the smudged, smiling face of her cohort. “Do you have something in mind?”

The girl nodded and shoved her disreputable hat back on her short blond curls. “I ’eard as ’ow Nan Blessing ’as set up shop. Knew ’er when I was a littlun. On stage in the pants parts.”

“When exactly did you live hereabouts?”

Lennie shrugged and pushed her way through the crowd. “Afore da died. He was an actor, too. Shakespearean. Ma said she fell plumb in love with his Benedick when he came to play at the house where she was governess.”

“And your mother died…”

Lennie’s shoulders slumped. “Coupla years ago. We’d moved on to Lime’ouse by then. Nan’s is two streets over, now,” she said as they returned to the center of the dial from which the seven streets radiated. “That red door there.”

That red door and the dingy, listing brick building with red curtains at the windows and a light barely lifting the gloom by the door. Fiona felt depressed just looking at it. She knew what she would find inside. Women in faded, dingy drawers, their faces painted like clowns, their eyes older than death. She would have to overcome the urge to hustle them all out the door and away before their lives grew even worse.

She couldn’t. She had nothing better to offer them.

It had always been hard to bear these places, where women traded away everything but the will to live. Where the fantasy of love wore a painted face and had an outheld hand. It was so much harder now that she knew how beautiful the act of love could be, how transcendent, so that a person’s soul could truly feel connected to another, so the glow in a lover’s eyes could light the way ahead. So every touch and kiss could be a blessing. Not a burden.

Lennie knocked on the red door and ushered Fiona in as if she were coming on a morning call. Nan Blessing was in, a corpulent, slow-moving woman with execrable taste, brassy blond hair, and a ready smile and hug for Lennie.

“Sit, sit,” she offered, motioning to the threadbare settee next to the overcrowded drinks table. Fiona briefly entertained temptation.

“Happy to know any friend of Lennie’s,” the woman said. “She told you of our old days, eh? I was quite the high-stepper in those days, wasn’t I, eh, Lennie?” Her laugh was booming, her breasts quivering over the edge of her corset with each move. “Couldn’t high-step now, could I? Couldn’t so much as see my feet.”

Fiona sat down as primly as a vicar’s wife and clasped her hands in her lap. “I’ve come to offer my services, Nan.”

Nan took one look at the pinched, pale face, the graying hair, and the unfortunate figure and almost choked with laughter. Since that was precisely the reaction Fiona had hoped for, she laughed right back. It was easier that way to bring up her real business, which went quite successfully, until the moment she stood to leave.

“Good thing you came in with Lennie,” Nan said, settling her voluminous puce skirts. “I don’t trust strangers much. Well, and I’ll be honest. With that reward posted, I’d be tempted to turn you in for it, no matter you don’t look like the mort they’re looking for at all.” She shrugged. “Worst they can do is take it back when they see you.”

Fiona did her best not to react. She didn’t even look at Lennie. “Reward? If it looks like a good deal, I might go in with you. Could always use a few quid.”

The older woman laughed until her top button popped. “Oh, lovey, don’t. You’ll make me pee. Man was here looking for a gentry mort. Red hair, he said, tall, womanly, beautiful. No offense…”

“None taken. I am what I am. Who wanted her, constables?”

“Naw. Some poor sod, says she’s been barmy since the last babe’s born. Been wanderin’ all over. Poor bloke looked right fatched. Says the wee ones are pinin’ for ’er.”

“I ran inta a mort with red hair,” Lennie piped up. “Tall, too. What’s this cove look like? If’n I find him, I’ll split the lot with you, Nan.”

“Where’d you see ’er?” Nan asked.

Lennie grinned like a gypsy. “Aw, Nan. Not that I don’t trust ya.”

Nan laughed again and tousled Lennie’s hair. “Tall, brown ’air, brown eyes. Real sad-lookin’, you c’n imagine. Just lost ’is job at the brewery, then this.”

Fiona’s stomach lurched. Who could it be? Alex would never convince this streetwise madame that he belonged here. She would have recognized his worth in a second. Could it be the man who had threatened him? Could it be emissaries of the Lions? She didn’t have the luxury of finding out.

She got Lennie out of there as fast as she could. “We might need to go,” she told the girl, hustling her along the walkway. “Leave.”

“Where?” Lennie asked, skipping to keep up with her long stride.

She shook her head. She couldn’t think. Should she trust her disguise, or should she just run again? Was she quite as invisible as she’d thought? Could it really have been a coincidence that she was being searched for in whorehouses? Alex knew how she had supported herself in Edinburgh. Had he spread the word?

She wished, desperately, that Alex were here. That he would somehow know where she was and how to get her out of this mess. At least hold her, so she didn’t once again feel so alone. She was so caught up in her thoughts that as she turned the street, she bumped into a man coming the other way.

“Excuse me,” she apologized, caught for a moment by the color of his hair.

He lifted a hand without turning toward her and kept moving, another in a stream of sorry men in search of work. “It’s all right.”

“If Nan didn’t see through you, nobody will,” Lennie said, as if she’d heard Fiona’s thoughts. “Believe me, Miss Fee. Y’r mammy wouldn’t know ya. Minnie Tolliver does such good work you look like a crone hasn’t dropped a babe in a decade.”

Fiona was surprised into a laugh. “Once we have you back in petticoats, we’ll have to work on your language, Lennie. You mother would be appalled.”

Shoving her hat back on her head, Lennie shoved her hands in her trouser pockets. “Aw, I know when to use cant and when not to. Me mam made sure of that.”

Fiona knew better than to hug the girl, even though she wanted to. “Well, then let us just say that when we get settled I’ll carry on your mother’s job.”

They had just reached Shaftesbury Road and been forced to stop. The traffic here was heavy, drays and beer wagons and hackneys, horses and pushcarts and the odd stage, barreling through as if they were the only ones in the road. Seeing a break, Fiona had just laid her hand on Lennie’s shoulder to urge her forward when she saw the mail coach approach, its bright red wheels and maroon panels splattered with mud. She hesitated, her foot midair, her now-full reticule clutched like the pillow to her chest. She had just turned to tell Lennie to wait when she caught a flash of something behind her, a face she thought she knew. And then, suddenly, she was cartwheeling toward the road, ruthlessly pushed right into the path of the thundering coach.

She saw the lathered horses, and the gaping mouth of the guard, his blunderbuss in his arms like a baby. She heard a shout, and thought a scream, and wondered if it had been she.

Mairead
, she thought, and then,
Alex
.

She wasn’t sure, even after, how she missed being trampled beneath those steel-shod hooves. One minute she was tipping inexorably toward disaster. The next, she was yanked back so hard she landed on her bottom, right there in the street.

“Oh, miss!” Lennie cried, down on her knees beside her.

The coach went thundering past, the breeze from it blowing Fiona’s bonnet back. She struggled to catch her breath, her hand still holding her reticule to her flattened chest, her glasses hanging off one ear. “Who…”

She looked up, finally, to thank whoever had saved her. A man stood there, hand out, his face in deep shadow. She could smell hard work on him, horses and beer, and smiled her gratitude.

“Thank you ever so much,” she said, taking his calloused hand in hers and letting him pull her up.

He had thick dark hair and broad shoulders. For a moment her heart skipped around. She felt a moment of joy, relief, gratitude. Then the man turned so that Fiona could see his face, and she realized it was unfamiliar to her. He was pale-eyed and broad-cheeked, with a gentle smile and a missing arm, clad in the faded uniform jacket of the 95th Rifles. Older than she’d thought, with a face marked in creases and old pockmarks. A savior who had risked himself for a stranger. But not Alex.

Did every man suddenly remind her of him? Only a week away, and she was imagining him everywhere.

“You all right now, miss?” not-Alex asked, doffing his cap. “Gave me a scare, no question.”

“I gave me a scare as well,” she admitted, reaching up with shaking hands to right her bonnet. “I think you saved my life, Mr.…”

“Mitchell, ma’am. Tom Mitchell.”

“How can I pay you back, Mr. Mitchell?”

His smile broadened ruefully. “You got a job for a man with one arm, I’d surely take it, ma’am. But if you’re walking these streets as well, I fair doubt it.”

She could barely feed the people she was responsible for. And yet how could she fail to reward such an act? “Tom Mitchell, can you read and write?”

“I can.”

She nodded and turned to Lennie. “Don’t you think our enterprise could use a strong arm?”

Lennie squinted up at him, as if sizing him up. “D’ya see who pushed her?”

He stared at Fiona. “You were pushed? I just thought you slipped.”

Resettling her bonnet, she shook her head. “No. Someone must have thought I wasn’t walking fast enough. Did you see, Lennie?”

Lennie shook her head.

“I saw,” Fiona heard just behind her, and her heart did another somersault.

She whipped around and gaped. It was the man she had just bumped into coming out of the brothel, the one she thought had been looking for work. She froze, her breath caught in her chest, her heart threatening to break free. It looked as if he was doing the same thing, his mouth actually sagging a bit, an odd glitter in his eye.

She had imagined him all week, but now when she’d seen him, she hadn’t recognized him. Somehow, he had learned to mix in. Somehow, he had become hopeless and shabby and worn. She couldn’t take her eyes off his beloved face.

But he wasn’t looking at her. He had turned to Thomas Mitchell, her one-armed savior. “You know who pushed her, don’t you?” he asked.

Fiona looked up at Thomas. But it wasn’t the Thomas who had introduced himself. This one was hard-eyed and grim. She caught that in an instant before he gave her another great shove and ran.

Alex caught her handily and set her back on her feet. She tried to run after Thomas Mitchell. How dare he push her? Who was he? Who had sent him?

But Alex held her still right there in the middle of the teeming sidewalk, his face almost as grim. “You’re not going anywhere, sweetheart. Chuffy needs the exercise. Are you all right?”

She couldn’t seem to manage more than a nod. Her heart was still pounding so.

“You, Lennie?” he asked without looking away from Fiona.

“Right as a trivet. We’re gonna get trampled, we stay here, though. Shouldn’t we go?”

Alex nodded. “We should. Where?”

Oddly, Fiona couldn’t remember. “How did you find me?”