My Lady Notorious (30 page)

The earl fitted it tenderly onto her head. Chastity shuddered at his
touch. Lindle appeared with a long mirror which he propped against the
wall. The earl steered Chastity in front of it and for the first time
in months she saw herself as she should be. Thick glossy waves framed
her face in an exact reproduction of her natural style, as if the
horror had never been…

The wig was snatched away and she cried out. She was a freak again.
She saw the full effect of her costume. A freak, and an indecent one!
She covered her chest with her hands and turned away.

Her father snared her hands and held them tight behind her. forcing
her to face the mirror. She closed her eyes. He arched her so her
nipples sprang free of the bodice. “The rouge, Lindle.”

Chastity writhed but was helpless as her chemise was pulled down and something rubbed on each areola.

“Look,” said her father.

When she refused, he twisted her arms until she obeyed. The crests
of her breasts were a virulent scarlet. She might as well have been
naked, despite the chemise.

“How can you do this?” she cried to her father. “How can you let that… that
creature
touch me!”

He showed no remorse, but he released her aching arms. “You bring it
all on yourself,” he said as he strolled away. “I have given you
everything that a daughter could desire. I would have ensured your
welfare, but you have no trust, no sense of duty to your family, to me
your father. Now you see the cost. That rouge, by the way, is a
staining one. You will not be able to wash it off. But you may well
find it appropriate.”

Chastity turned slowly to face him, recognizing the approach of some new device.

He took out his gold pocket-watch and flicked it open. “It is now a
quarter past eight. Tell me Verity’s location by nine and you may go
free. Remain obstinate, and you will be delivered to a bordello down by
the river. The abbess is eagerly awaiting such a tasty morsel, and
assures me she will choose for you only the most
interesting
customers. Do you know what that means? A few months ago, I would have
thought not, but now I wonder. What adventures have you been enjoying,
daughter, since I unwisely left you at liberty… ?”

“You can’t!” she gasped.

“Indeed I can. You are no longer of any use to me.”

The reptilian coldness of it struck Chastity dumb, but on the whole
she was relieved. Her father would keep his word—he always kept his
word—and would let her go if she told him where Verity was. She would
do it, just before nine o’clock. She would be free, and by the time
Walgrave or his minions arrived at Winchester, Verity would be gone.
Thank heavens the earl didn’t know there was a third person in all this.

The earl pointed at the wig on the floor. “As a further inducement, if you oblige me, you may have that as a
douceur
.” He turned toward the door.

Chastity fought hard not to show her relief.

He turned the knob.

She eased out a long breath.

He stopped. “What have I forgotten, Lindle?”

The servant made no reply to this rhetorical question. The earl
turned back. “Ah, yes. There is the question of my daughter’s
punishment, isn’t there?”

Fear shot through Chastity as a real pain. She’d let him fool her again.

The earl saw it and smiled. “Let me see.” He began to count on his
strong, spatulate fingers. “One, you left your home without permission.
Two, you dressed in indecent clothing. Three, you wandered about
England and even gathered some money.” He raised his brows at Chastity.
“Would you care to tell me how? No? No matter. Four, you have led your
sister astray and put her and her child in danger. Five, you have been
impudent and obstructive to me. Six, you are unrepentant. Kneel on the
ground.”

“No, damn you!” Chastity cast around for any kind of weapon, but there was nothing.
Nothing
.

“Seven, you use foul language. Lindle.”

The secretary moved forward, amiably implacable. This time, no
matter how hopeless, Chastity would not submit. There was no trace
anymore of the paternal in this. It was driven solely by revenge and
spite.

She fought, even managing to bite Lindle, but he overpowered her,
wrenching her hands painfully behind her back. He tucked her head
backward under his arm. His armlock on her almost choked her, but she
kicked. Nothing was in reach of her boots.

He hauled her skirts up and she felt the chill air on her legs and
buttocks. She let out a piercing shriek that was mostly rage. They
couldn’t do this to her again. They couldn’t!

Lindle tightened his arm, choking her silent. The cane whistled and fire leaped across her thighs.

“You must learn, you she-devil!” snarled her father, and lashed her again. “You must learn! No one defies me! No one!”

A third blow bit into her thighs and she let out a strangled cry.

“Good God, Father. What are you doing?” Fort cried, bursting into the room.

Chastity was released. She crumpled to the ground, fighting for breath.

“Discipline,” snapped the earl. “Do you too deny my right?”

Fort was white with shock. “No, of course not. But this is hardly proper, or appropriate.”

The earl’s color rose high, and he was close to losing control.
Chastity prayed that Fort would finally see him for what he was. But
Walgrave won the struggle with himself. “You may be right, my boy,” he
said ruefully. “Yet the girl stretches my tolerance with her defiance
and her selfishness. She still will not assist us to find her sister.”

Fort came over and gently raised Chastity. “You must,” he said.
“Frazer has left his command. He gave some story of a family emergency,
but I doubt it.”

“I knew it,” snarled the earl. “Damn you…!”

Chastity saw Fort’s eyes widen at the sight of her clothes, and she
didn’t try to hide the indecency of them. “If he’s gone to Verity,
Fort,” she said, “she’ll be safe.”

Fort turned to the furious earl. “I suppose that’s true, Father. Frazer will see to her welfare.”

The earl’s color deepened to purple. “Has my whole family run
mad
? Am I to stand by while my elder daughter elopes with an officer within weeks of her widowing, and do
nothing
?
Why, after this trollop—” He jabbed Chastity sharply in the breast with
his cane so that she cried out. “—has dragged our name in the dirt, who
knows what will be said? Doubtless that Verity killed her first husband
to be free to wed her lover. Even the child’s paternity will be in
doubt.” He was spitting by the end.

A horrified Fort had pulled Chastity to his side for protection, but
now she broke free. Her father hovered on the brink of revealing his
true nature, and she would push him over. “No,” she shouted. “You may
have ruined me, you loathsome hypocrite, but I won’t let you destroy
Verity!”

The earl slashed at her face with his cane, but she blocked it with her arm. A scarlet weal sprang up.

“Stop it!” Fort shouted, and seized the cane. He snapped it and hurled the pieces aside.

“Lindle!” howled the earl. “Knock the traitor out!”

Still smiling, the burly secretary closed on Fort. The earl, now
spitting with rage, urged him on. Chastity, for the moment, was
ignored. She could do nothing for Fort, and she doubted his danger was
as great as hers. She took her chance and fled, grabbing the wig as she
went.

“Stop her!” bellowed the earl. But Chastity, wings on her heels, was
already down the stairs and out into the close. One of the earl’s men
stood there, but he wasn’t a big man. She caught him by surprise and
knocked him over.

She sprinted down the narrow deserted street, her short skirts now
an advantage. It was dark, though, and she went flying over a cask
someone had left by their doorstep.

She picked herself up, gasping and trembling, and forced herself to
slow a little. Behind her, voices called, but the pursuit was not yet
well-organized. She thought of trying for help at some house but
dismissed the idea. In her present garb, no respectable person would
let her through the door and besides, almost anyone in England would
turn his errant daughter over to the Earl of Walgrave.

She pushed her red nipples back into her bodice and plunged down a
dark alley, then turned swiftly into another, then another, her only
intent to lose any pursuer. She had no idea where to go, or where to
seek help.

Would Fort be in any condition to assist her?

If only Cyn were around. She caught back a sob. It seemed another life, those few sweet days in his company.

Down a narrow street she flew, grazing her elbow on a wall. Past a
gaping night-soil-man. Into another dark alley, gasping for every
breath. Was she running in circles?

Suddenly, the alley disgorged her by the side of the Thames, on the
docks. Small vessels bobbed at anchor, and nearby a song drifted out
from a tavern. For a moment that cheerful sound comforted her, but then
she remembered about a brothel down near the river. She shuddered and
shrank into the shadow of a bend in a wall, knowing this was no place
for her to be.

She took a moment to catch her breath and tried to throw off the
panic that tangled her mind. It was no good; it had all been too much.
She hurt. She was terrified of worse to come. She was a hunted thing
now, seeking only a hole to hide in. She stretched her senses for any
sound of pursuit.

What should she do? She’d been desperate to escape her father, but
now she was alone at night, penniless and close to naked in a strange
town. In the roughest quarter of a strange town and looking as she did,
she had no hope of help.

She realized she was clutching the wig and pulled it on. It would make her look a little less peculiar.

It was tempting to stay here, cowering in the shadows, but she had
to move. She’d be safer in a better part of town. Perhaps she could
hide in a garden or a shed until daylight. What then, she did not know.

Voices approached and she froze, pressing back against the wooden
wall behind her. Four men strolled by, complaining in a thick burr of
the price of tobacco. When they went into the tavern, the volume of the
singing abruptly rose, then fell. When they were gone she sagged with
relief and tentatively crept out of the shadows.

A flickering lantern outside the tavern shed a little light, and she
could see that the area was deserted—of people, at least. Two fat rats
scurried past that feeble light.

Chastity fought back a whimper and sidled down the building until
she came to another alley, a mere dark gap, leading into shadows. She
entered its maw. Her boots slid on the slimy ground and the stink made
her want to vomit. Doubtless the other alleys had been the same, but
she’d been too panicked to notice.

She thanked heaven she couldn’t see what this narrow passageway was
like, but feared what she would step into next. She remembered the
alley in Shaftesbury and the dead cat. This alley smelt as if it held
any number of them.

It held a live one. She stepped on it and it scratched her knee and fled, yowling.

Dear heaven, she thought with a whimper, was there an inch of her that was not cut or bruised?

She put a hand out to touch the chill stone of a wall at her right,
doubtless the wall to a back yard. She ran her hand along it as she
staggered forward, for it gave assurance of reality in the dark. In
front of her all was pitch-black. Only above, if she looked up, was a
narrow band of gray—the cloudy sky.

She began to think she would never see light again. She heard a
strange noise and realized it was her own gasping whimpers. She gulped
them down.

Then she glimpsed light ahead. It was only a faint golden glimmer,
but she stumbled toward it as if it were the gate of heaven. The alley
broke into a slightly wider lane, leaned over by old narrow houses,
mostly dark. One had a guttering flambeau by the door and it was that
she had seen.

It was as if sanity had returned to an insane world.

There was nowhere to hide here, though. No breaks between the
houses, no steps. She raced toward a wider street, desperate to get
away from the river and into concealment.

Voices ahead!

She froze, looking right and left, but it was hopeless.

She shrank back against a wall, praying that this not be her pursuers, that these men not come her way…

But then they appeared, a linkboy lighting the way for two
scarlet-coated officers—one rotund, one slender. The officers were
jovially drunk, but steady on their feet.

Chastity edged toward a door, hoping it would look as if it were her
home, and that they would pass her by. Faint hope. They stopped. The
thin one raised a quizzing-glass and smiled. With a shared leer, they
sauntered toward her.

“Well, good evening, my pretty,” the fat one said cheerfully.

Chastity could only do what a lady would do if rudely accosted. She
stared past his shoulder. Her chin was gripped by hard fingers which
forced her to face the thin man. He was not ill-looking, but his
expression was hateful. “Lost your manners, hussy?” he sneered.

Chastity’s strength was gone. She hurt. She swayed with exhaustion.
Tears spilled out. “Please, gentlemen, I am not what you think!” She
saw her highborn accent have some effect and scoured her mind for a
story. Why not a bit of the truth? “I am a gentle lady kidnapped from
my home and sold into a brothel! Help me, please.”

The men shared a glance, then studied her again. They were
listening, but she didn’t think her words were having the right effect.
The thin one’s expression had become even more disgusting. She covered
her breasts with her hand.

The fat one turned to the linkboy. “What do you think, eh? Lady or whore?”

The boy seemed to regard this as a sideshow designed for his enjoyment. “Looks a right whore to me, Captain.”

“My thought entirely.” The man turned to Chastity. “Your story may
be true, my pretty, but it’s clear you’ve been at your trade a while.
Why balk at a few more guineas? Let’s taste your wares, and then we’ll
send you home to Mama, eh?” He guffawed at his joke, and the thin one
sniggered.