The Gamble (22 page)

“Oh.”

“I say, this is quite a place, Georgie,” Frank said from my other side. Like the other gentlemen in our party, he was wearing a black-silk domino over his evening clothes.

“You have never been to Vauxhall, Captain?” the duchess asked graciously. The duchess’s domino was lavender, as was her mask.

“No, your grace.”

“You will quite enjoy it,” the duchess predicted. “You and Lady Winterdale must take the opportunity to explore some of the more famous paths. The South Walk, for instance, has three marvelous archways that simulate the ruins of Palmyra. They are quite realistic, I believe.”

“Duchess, is that you? I saw your name on the booth.” A middle-aged woman whose cheeks were too obviously painted, was standing in front of our booth looking up curiously. “How nice to see you here.”

As the two women engaged in light conversation, I looked slowly around the open arena in front of me at the strolling couples.

It occurred to me that a great many of the unmasked pairs who peopled the scene were married, but not to each other.

This was an extremely depressing observation, particularly in the light of my thoughts about my own husband earlier this morning. I looked now at Catherine and Lord Rotheram. His head was bent to hers, and he was listening intently to something she was saying. Would his feelings for Catherine last, I wondered, or would the corrupt morals of his mother and her lover, and the world they inhabited, subvert the purity of his feeling for Catherine and eventually send him off to find someone more worldly and less vulnerable than she?

I looked once again at Rotheram’s partially masked face. I remembered the lines that pain had engraved at the sides of his eyes, and the fear for Catherine that had gripped my heart loosened. Catherine was safe with her Edward, I thought. He was a man who had learned the hard way to value what was important in life.

Frank murmured in my ear, “Georgie, will you dance with me?”

I didn’t think I should leave the booth, but I also realized that this was the only chance Frank was likely to get to dance with me during his stay in London. I had invited him to accompany me here, I thought. I owed it to him to give him a dance.

“Of course,” I said lightly, and let him lead me to the rotunda, where a waltz was being played.

Frank put his arms around me and we stepped off together.

He began to talk immediately. “I have been trying desperately to get you alone, Georgie. Do you have any idea of the innuendos that are going around town about your accident in the park?”

My pink domino swung out behind me as we made a turn. “I know exactly what is being said, Frank, and none of it is true. Philip is not trying to do away with me, I can promise you that.”

“Is it true that you fell into the lion’s cage at the Tower?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

He shut his eyes. The part of his face that was revealed by his mask was very pale. “Georgie, I think you ought to let me take you back to Sussex to stay with my parents.”

I decided then and there that I had better tell him the whole story. After all, he was my oldest friend. I knew that he loved me. It wasn’t fair to allow him to think that I was married to a man who wanted to kill me.

I said, “Frank, after this dance is over, let us go for a walk. I have a long and rather ugly story to tell you. It doesn’t put me in a very good light, I’m afraid, but at least it will make you understand that I have nothing to fear from Philip.”

He hesitated, and then he said, “All right.”

We danced in silence until the music had ended and then we turned to leave the floor together. At the edge of the rotunda, we almost literally ran into Lord Marsh, who stopped me by the simple expedient of stepping in front of me.

“Lady Winterdale,” he said with every evidence of pleasure.

I was still wearing my mask and I demanded, “How did you know who I was?”

“I recognized your hair,” he said with that nasty amusement that never touched his eyes. “If you wish to disguise yourself, you would do well to exchange your braids for curls.”

I said fiercely, “Step out of my way, if you please.” I had no intention of even pretending civility to the man.

Lord Marsh sighed. “Such rudeness,” he said sadly. “I am shocked, Lady Winterdale.”

I replied in an icy voice, “I am quite certain that nothing is capable of shocking you, Lord Marsh. Now please let me pass.”

After a moment, he stepped out of my way and I brushed past him, ostentatiously holding my skirts aside in order to make certain that they did not touch him.

“Good God,” said Frank, once we were out of Marsh’s earshot. “What was that all about, Georgie?”

“I plan to tell you,” I said. “Come, let us go for a walk.”

It was growing dark so we chose the South Walk, which was well lit and fairly crowded with couples. I began my tale by telling Frank about how I had found out about Papa’s blackmailing scheme, and I carried on from there with how I had followed up by blackmailing Philip. I left very little out and when I had finished, I said, “So you see, it is I who have behaved very badly, Frank, and Philip who has behaved very well.”

He was silent as we walked away from the third arch that simulated the ruins of Palmyra. Then he said gruffly, “He could still be at the bottom of these attacks, Georgie. From what you have described to me, he was forced to marry you after all.”

“I was pushed into the menagerie before we married,” I pointed out. “And really, Frank, I don’t think I am such an antidote that my husband needs to go to such horrific lengths as murdering me in order to be rid of me!”

He let out a long sigh. “Of course you’re not an antidote, Georgie. I suppose I want to think the worst of Winterdale because I’m jealous of him.” We had taken off our masks as the crowd on the walk had thinned out and now he turned to look at me, a very worried look in his steady gray eyes. “But if Winterdale isn’t the one who is responsible for these accidents, then who is?”

“Philip is trying to find that out.”

Frank said, “Have you seen anyone on that list here tonight besides Marsh?”

“No.”

“Of course, that doesn’t mean anything,” he said worriedly. “This place is full of people wearing dominos and masks. God knows who could be stalking you, Georgie. You should never have come here.”

I patted his sleeve. “I had to come for Catherine’s sake. And since Philip was out of town, I asked you for protection, Frank. I shall be perfectly safe as long as we stay together.”

By this time we were almost at the very end of the South Walk. It ended with a Greek temple, which I understood was lit with an artificial fountain on gala nights at Vauxhall. Tonight, however, the temple was dark and deserted, and the path around us was deserted as well. Frank and I had been so deeply involved in our conversation that we had not realized how far we had come from the crowds that filled most of the pleasure garden.

In fact, right now we were the only couple at this end of the South Walk.

Frank looked around him and then said authoritatively, “Come along, Georgie. Let us return to the rest of our party immediately.”

I agreed and the two of us turned to retrace our way back to the supper boxes.

We had not gone above a dozen steps when I heard the sound of steps behind us coming from the direction of the Greek temple.

“
Run, Georgie!
” Frank yelled at me as he whirled with fists raised to confront the four men who were rushing at us.

I screamed and tried to go to his aid, but a large, callused hand seemed to come out of nowhere to close over my mouth and pull my head back against a man’s coat. I struggled, trying to kick my attacker, and someone swore, and I felt the sharp crack of a fist on my chin, and then blackness descended.

CHAPTER
twenty-one

I
WOKE IN A SMALL
,
DIRTY ROOM THAT SMELLED LIKE
cabbage and beer and urine. My jaw ached something fierce. I was lying on a filthy straw mattress on the floor. Two men were standing at the foot of the mattress, arguing.

“We’ve bin paid t’snuff her, Alf. I say we do the job, collect our blunt, and be done wi’ it.”

“I ain’t sayin’ we don’t do that, Jem. I just say we have our bit o’ fun wi’ her first. A fancy lady like that—when ’r you likely to get a bit o’ muslin like that come your way agin, eh?”

Even in my semidazed state, it didn’t take me long to realize what they were talking about. They were going to kill me, but if the one called Alf had his way, they would rape me first.

I lay very still, with my eyes shut, and tried desperately to remember what had happened.

I remembered going to Vauxhall with Catherine and Frank. Then I remembered the pocket I had had Betty sew into my domino. Moving very slowly, I slid my fingers across my dress. The silky smoothness I touched told me I was still wearing the pink cape.

Thank God.

I opened my eyes a slit so that I could see the two arguing men. Then, slowly and carefully, I reached my fingers inside the domino to the pocket. The small knife I had hidden there slid into my hand.

The room I was being held in was very small, and the arguing men at the foot of the bed were blocking my way to the door.

My heart was pounding and my blood was singing in my ears. My head pulsed with pain. The smell in the room was so bad that I felt like throwing up.

I had not been this frightened even in the lion’s den.

I had to get out of here.

I summoned up all my courage and moaned.

Immediately the men fell silent.

I tossed my head from one side to another, and moaned again.

“She’s wakin’ up,” the man called Jem said. “I say we do ’er now.”

“Go and see if the alley is clear,” the man called Alf ordered. “We don’t want no one to see us when we dump ’er. I hear’d Claven bin askin’ questions about that slingshot in ’yde Park. We don’t want Claven down on us, Jem.”

“Ye’re right about that,” the other said fervently. I heard the door open and close and steps clattered on the stairs. Then I heard Alf’s step as he came over to the bed. My eyes were closed but I could feel him looking down at me.

“Ye might be a fine lidy, but I’ll bet ye’re just the same under your skirts as any doxy from the street,” he said. He put his hand on the neck of my evening dress and began to rip it.

I brought the knife up fast and stabbed him deep in his left shoulder.

He howled.

Blood gushed out of the wound. He clutched at it and tried to grab the knife.

I pulled the knife out of the wound, inflicting more damage I hoped, rolled off the bed, and ran like a maniac for the door.

Outside I found myself on a small landing, with stairs that only went down, not up. Evidently we were on the top floor. I held up my skirts and raced downward, praying that I would reach the ground floor before Jem came back from his job of checking the alley.

I had just made it past the second landing when the front door to the narrow, stinking building opened and someone came in below me. I couldn’t take a chance that it would be Jem, so I turned and ran back up again to the second floor.

There was no place behind the staircase to hide, only two rickety doors on the narrow landing. Desperately I tried one of the doors only to find it locked. I tried the other one and it opened. I ducked inside.

The room was dark and it smelled just as badly as the room upstairs where I had been held. I was not alone in the darkness, however, as the sound of a creaking bed and the unmistakable grunts of a man in the final throes of sexual pleasure made clear.

“Who’s that?” a rough, female voice asked through the thick, stinking blackness.

The walls were so thin that it was easy for me to hear the sound of Jem’s feet tramping past the door and beginning to mount the steps to the next landing.

“Oh dear,” I said brightly. “I thought that this was the Smith residence.”

The man on the bed, who was obviously now finished with his business, cursed foully.

“Sorry,” I said to the couple I had so rudely interrupted. “I’ll go.”

I slipped out of the room, tore down the stairs and out onto a dark, narrow, and excessively smelly street.

I had no idea where I was. Mayfair was the only section of London with which I was familiar, and clearly this was not Mayfair. One thing I did know, however. I had to get out of this neighborhood before Alf and Jem found me again.

I began to run.

Someone shouted at me from an alleyway.

I stepped ankle-deep in something I didn’t even want to think about.

Then I heard the sound of heavy steps in pursuit.

I ran even harder, looking around desperately to see if I could find a hackney to take me back to Grosvenor Square. But evidently hackneys did not frequent this section of London. I thought of how my father had been killed, and ran faster. But my breath and my legs were beginning to give out.

All of a sudden a woman’s voice from a doorway said urgently, “In here.”

I didn’t even think, I just blindly obeyed the command, ducked into the doorway, and allowed myself to be propelled up a flight of narrow stairs and into a room. The door closed behind me and I stood still, my breath ratcheting in my lungs, my legs trembling with the effort of my run.

The woman lit a single tallow candle, illuminating a bed, a scarred old dresser, and a baby’s cot in the corner. A tattered rag rug was on the floor, and muslin curtains hung on the windows. A single wooden chair faced the cold fireplace.

The room smelled like turnips and baby.

“Are you hurt?” my rescuer asked me in a voice that had a heart-warming burr that I recognized.

I shook my head, still breathing too hard to talk.

“There’s blood all over you,” the woman insisted.

“It’s not mine,” I managed to say. I realized that I was still holding the knife in my hand, and I held up its bloody point to show her. “That man who was chasing me was trying to attack me. I stabbed him.”

“Sit you down,” she said, pointing to the chair, and I dropped into it, grateful to get off my shaking legs.

“The man who was chasing me,” I panted. “Has he gone?”

She went to the window and peered out between the curtains. “I din’t see him.” In the dim light of the single candle I saw her back stiffen. “Wait a minute, here he be now.”

“Oh God,” I muttered. “Did anyone see me come in here?”

“I din’t think so,” she replied. “It’s sommat quiet out there tonight. I was standing in the doorway for two hours and only got one customer.”

For the first time I realized that I had been rescued by a whore.

We waited in silence for what seemed to me a very long time. Then she turned, and said to me, “It be all right now. He’s gone.”

The tension went out of my lungs in a whoosh. “Thank God.” I rubbed my hands together, like Lady Macbeth trying to wash off Duncan’s blood, and said shakily, “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been good enough to call to me. The man who was chasing me was going to kill me.”

She turned completely away from the window and surveyed me from the tips of my feet to the top of my head. I knew I must look terrible. My shoes were filthy from the streets, my hair had come undone and was tumbling down my back, and my clothes and my hands were streaked with Alf’s blood. But I was wearing a silk domino and under the cape was a dress that I was certain must have cost more than this woman could earn in five years.

The baby in the cot began to cry. The woman went over and picked him up and cradled him tenderly in her arms.

“He’s hungry,” she said and matter-of-factly she unfastened the front of her dress and began to nurse her child.

It was my turn to look at her.

She was very young and appallingly thin. I thought she would have been pretty if she were not so thin. Her blue muslin dress was threadbare, but clean.

The whole room, in fact, looked clean. It smelled, of course, but not the way the rest of the rooms I had been in that night had smelled.

“Why was someone trying to kill you?” she asked me in a matter-of-fact voice. “Did you get some gent’s wife angry at you?”

It was then that I realized she had mistaken me for a fellow whore.

I said, “No, I’m afraid it’s a little more complicated than that. In fact, my husband is going to be very upset when he discovers that I’m missing.”

“You got a husband?”

“I do indeed have a husband.” I gave her my friendliest smile. “I am Georgiana Mansfield,” I said, “and my husband is the Earl of Winterdale.”

She jerked, and her baby lost her nipple. He yelled with outrage and she connected him back to his food supply. “You ain’t serious?” she said. “You ain’t no countess?”

Once more I gave her my friendly smile. “I am afraid that I am. And what is your name?”

“Maria,” came the mumbled reply.

“Are you from Sussex, Maria?” I asked gently.

Once again her head jerked around to look at me. “How’d you know?”

“I am from Sussex also. I recognized your accent.”

The girl heaved a heartfelt sigh. “I wish I was still in Sussex,” she confessed. “I thought I was so smart, coming up to Lunnon. Sussex wasn’t good enough for the likes of
me
, I thought. No, I was going to get a job as a milliner’s assistant. No life as a farmer’s wife for the likes o’ Maria Sarton, I thought.” She snorted. “What a fool I was.”

“What gave you the idea of becoming a milliner’s assistant?” I asked curiously. It was not a thought that would normally occur to a Sussex farmgirl, which clearly is what Maria had been.

“Some woman stopped me one day when I was comin’ home from minding the sheep,” Maria said. “Told me she was looking for a pretty girl like me to work in her shop. Fool that I was, I believed her. I took her money and sneaked away on the stage. Only thing was, when I got to Lunnon and looked the lady up, it turns out she was Ma Nightingale, the worst abbess in London.”

“Abbess?” I queried.

“She run a brothel, my lady,” came the brutal reply. “And that was where she put me to work, not at no milliner’s shop.”

I stared at the young woman, appalled. “But that is a horrendous story, Maria. Couldn’t you have gone back home to your family?”

“I din’t have no money, my lady. Ma Nightingale made bloody well sure of that. Nor did my folks know where I’d gone to, so they couldn’t come lookin’ for me. Not that they would have. My ma and pa had six other mouths to feed. They were probably just as glad to get shut of me.”

I was horrified by this tale, told so simply and in such a matter-of-fact tone of voice. I said a little hesitantly, “Are you still working in this brothel?”

“No, my lady. When I got myself in the family way, Ma Nightingale threw me out. I can tell you, it’s been hard goin’ for me ever since. I’ve had to stand in doorways and get my business from passersby.”

Maria’s story was getting more and more frightful. I remembered the terror that I had felt at the thought that Alf and Jem might lay their hands on me, and this poor girl had it happen to her every night.

“Well today is your lucky day, Maria,” I said to her firmly. “If you will help me to get back to my husband, I can promise you that you will never want for money again.”

She sat in silence, holding her child to her breast. Then she said, in a small, tentative, heartbreaking voice, “Do you really mean that, my lady?”

“I most certainly do. If it had not been for you taking compassion upon me tonight, I would have been dead. I owe you my life, Maria, and I am not a person who forgets her debts. You and your baby will be taken care of from now on. I give you my word on it.”

She pressed her lips against her baby’s head. “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”

Tears stung my eyes, and I blinked them away. It wouldn’t do to get maudlin, I thought. I had to get back to Philip before I could do anything to help Maria.

“How can we get a message to Grosvenor Square?” I asked her. “Is it possible to get a hackney cab in this neighborhood?”

She laughed shakily. “No, my lady, that it is not.”

It was cold in the room, and I could see that Maria was shivering. So was I. I looked at the empty grate.

“Do you have any coal?” I asked.

“No, my lady. I used my last scoop yesterday.”

I tried not to think about my creature comforts and concentrated instead on my immediate future. “What about in the morning?” I asked. “Could we get a cab in the morning?”

“Not here, my lady. We’d have to walk toward the river.”

I was afraid to venture forth in the daylight. I was certain that Alf and Jem would still be on the lookout for me.

How was I going to get back home?

I meditated for a minute and a name surfaced in my mind. “By any chance do you know someone named Claven?” I asked.

She stiffened, and once again the baby yelled with indignation at being cut off from his milk supply. “I should think so! That is, I don’t know him, but I know of him, certainly. Everyone does.” She frowned at me. “How do you know Claven, my lady?”

“I don’t know him at all. My husband does. Is it possible for you to get in touch with Claven, Maria?”

“It might be,” she replied cautiously. “The man upstairs is a messenger, and he works for Claven sometimes.”

“If I can reach Claven, then I’m certain that he will make it possible for me to get home safely,” I told Maria. “Is this upstairs neighbor of yours at home, do you think?”

“I’ll go and look,” Maria said. The baby had finished nursing and fallen asleep, and she went to lay him in his cot. I noticed that she had a woolen blanket that she folded and put over the child while there was only a thin cotton blanket on her own bed. After she had left the room I went over to the window and stood behind the clean, worn curtain to peer out at the street.

What a horrible place
, I thought, shuddering. I was sure there were rats running through the gutters.