Vice and Virtue (6 page)

Aurora did not speak. A foppish bully and a recluse. Enter, penetrate, ingratiate, search. She let her chin drop to her chest and rested her forehead upon her hand.

“Are you feeling unwell?” asked Edward.

“No, merely fatigued.” She raised her eyes to his, which remained watchful. “If I agree to be your spy, it will be on these terms. I will do it for one month only, from this day until the same date next month. During that time you will not share my bed, nor importune me for any favours due to a husband. If your wealth is returned, you will pay me enough to bring a handsome dowry to my future husband. That is, the man I shall marry when our sham marriage is annulled.”

“And if we do not succeed within a month?” His eyes were bright, but whether with hostility, or hope, Aurora could not tell.

“Likewise,” she told him, “the marriage will be annulled, and I will go back to my mother as penniless as I was when I left her.”

He paused, thinking. “Then you will not seek to punish me in any way?”

“I will not. Are these terms agreeable to you?”

“They are.” He nodded, frowning. “So we have made yet another bargain, have we not?”

“We have, sir,” said Aurora wearily. “And now, I must go to bed. Where, pray, do you intend to sleep?”

At the Sign of the Seven Stars

C
ovent Garden did not resemble a garden in any way. The street Edward led Aurora down was as narrow, filthy and unevenly cobbled as any other street in London. The long shadows on each side blackened the buildings, though it was only a little after four o’clock in the afternoon.

“
Floral
Street!” Aurora observed.

Edward did not reply, but hurried on.

“I cannot keep up with you,” complained Aurora. “Your legs are longer than mine, and these old cobbles are torture.”

Edward was scanning the shop doorways. “Here. This is the place.”

The sign that swung above the door was of the Seven Stars. It was a bookseller’s. Aurora might have known Edward would choose such a lodging place. While she was out of the house he could make himself comfortable, reading volume after volume from the constant supply downstairs. She could already see the scene, and imagine the fruitlessness of her objections.

“The place looks mean,” she said. “Like a frowning face. As if it were carrying a great weight upon its brow.”

Edward looked at her blankly, then turned back to the door. “You say the oddest things sometimes, Aurora.”

“So I have been told.”

Edward rapped on the door. “Remember,” he told Aurora as they waited, “I am Edward Drayton and you are my sister, Miss Aurora Drayton. I am—”

“A writer, taking lodgings in London the better to observe humankind, as you are writing a comedy of modern manners. And your loving sister is to keep house for you,” recited Aurora. “I will not forget, Edward. Why do you keep testing me?”

“Forgive me. I am anxious.”

The door creaked open. A female face came round it, regarding them from under a cap made for someone with a smaller head.

“Mr and Miss Drayton,” said Edward. “We are expected by Mr Marshall.”

The maid stood aside. Aurora found herself in a hallway barely wide enough for two people to pass, and very dark despite the candle the maid held. Without a word, the girl led the way up the stairs.

The room above the shop was Samuel Marshall’s drawing room. As they entered, Aurora took in dark panelling, heavy furniture, damask curtains. Despite the building’s outside appearance, it seemed the proprietor of a Covent Garden bookshop could do quite well for himself.

“Ah, the Draytons.” A man of middle age rose stiffly from his chair and bowed. As Aurora completed her curtsey she examined his countenance. A self-satisfied man, to be sure, but not arrogant. His wig was short and simple, his clothes good but long worn, his lips ready with a welcoming smile. “I would accompany you to the rooms,” he told them, “but I am very gouty tonight. Mary will show you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Edward pleasantly. Samuel Marshall’s smile broadened. Here was a gentleman lodger who might take a glass of sherry with him now and then.

They followed Mary up a flight of narrow, uneven stairs. Aurora tried to catch Edward’s eye, but he would not look at her. He must surely feel, as she did, that they were stepping into uncharted territory. What would these walls see during the next month? This foray into crime detection was audacious, and they had neither expertise nor friends to call on should something go wrong. Only Richard Allcott knew where they were, and he was sworn to utter secrecy. He and Edward had already succeeded in their first deception, of Aurora herself. But tonight she entered the netherworld of the impostor, armed only with the determination to see right done.

“There’s two rooms,” announced Mary bluntly.

The first was small, its only furniture a bed, a table with two hard chairs, and a wooden bench long enough for about one-and-a-half people to sit. There were no curtains, and the meagre grate did not look as if it would hold much of a fire. Aurora thanked Providence that it was springtime.

Still Edward did not look at her, but he took in his surroundings quickly, then gestured to Mary to open the door to the inner room. This turned out to be even smaller, set into the eaves, and furnished only with a bed and a table, on which Mary put the candle. Aurora went to the tiny window. The glass was too dirty to see through, but she could hear horses and passers-by in the street below. She supposed this would be her bedroom.

Longing swept over her, to be in her real bedroom at home, falling asleep to the sounds of the dying fire and Flora’s regular breathing. She ignored it. “Edward, my dear,” she said, “these rooms are perfect. Will you settle with Mr Marshall, while I discuss domestic concerns with … Mary, is it?”

The maid nodded. “Breakfast brought up, no other meals,” she told them. “Bedlinen provided. Washin’ extra.”

“Of course,” said Edward. “My sister will see that you are paid for your work. Now, is there a man to help bring our luggage from the Black Swan?”

“William,” said Mary in her economical way. “Don’t like porterin’, but if you give ’im something for ’is trouble, sir…”

Edward had already left the room. “Very well!” Aurora heard him call from the stairs. “Aurora, I will be back forthwith!”

Mary and Aurora regarded each other. “Will you bring the linen?” asked Aurora. “And candles?”

The maid gave a very small curtsey. “Yes, ’m.”

She seemed to be waiting. Aurora resisted. “Very well, you may go,” she said, and, in a gesture of dismissal she had often seen her mother use, began to loosen her hat-strings. “I wish to rest.”

Mary took the candle and stumped down the stairs, leaving Aurora in utter darkness. She removed her hat, feeling the familiar woven straw between her fingers. Her heart trotted a little. She thought about her trunk being half carried, half dragged from the inn where Richard’s carriage had deposited Edward and herself an hour ago. Before they had left Hartford House, Richard had given Edward a sealed packet that Aurora suspected contained money. Edward had shaken his friend’s hand, then embraced him. “Until we meet again, my dear Richard. May God bless you,” he had told him earnestly.

Aurora felt for the edge of the bed and sat on it, her brain busy. In a little under a month she would be free of her promise. Meanwhile, she must live as Miss Drayton, beholden to a husband of three days, whose only bargaining power lay in a fortune he did not possess. She was not sure that she could do what he wanted, anyway. And if Miss Drayton’s true identity should be quickly exposed, who would bear the consequences?

A commotion on the stairs brought her to her feet. She felt her way to the door. In the outer room Edward and a skinny boy of about sixteen were manhandling the luggage while Mary trudged about, putting a taper to the wall candles.

“Very well, that will be all!” Edward maintained the cheerful demeanour he had obviously decided should characterize Edward Drayton’s dealings with servants. “A penny for your trouble, William!” He fished in his pocket and inspected the coins in his palm. “No, tuppence!”

The boy disappeared with no word of thanks, followed sulkily by Mary. Edward closed the door. “Good God, what a useless boy!” He reached into the deep pocket in the lining of his coat and produced a bottle of wine. “This will warm us, inside and out.” He set the bottle on the table. “No glasses, but you are not averse to drinking from the bottle, are you? This miserable place needs something to cheer it up, and a bottle of wine is as good as anything.”

Aurora would rather have had a hot cup of chocolate from a coffee house, but she smiled at Edward’s expectant face. His demeanour was strikingly different from that of the man who had proposed to her in her mother’s parlour. He no longer stooped; his back was as straight as her own. He wore a plain coat over a waistcoat trimmed with a narrow twirl of gold thread, and a short wig. His eyes remained shadowed, to be sure, but they had lost their blank look.

“You look as pleased with yourself as a truant schoolboy,” she told him.

“I feel a little like a truant schoolboy,” he confessed, pushing the stopper from the bottleneck and wiping the lip on his shirt-tail. His anxiety, which must have been relentless throughout the period since his father’s death, had given way to euphoria. He sat down at the table. “Here, you have the first draught.”

Aurora immediately felt the wine comforting her chilled body. She drank again, then passed the bottle to Edward, who closed his eyes in satisfaction as he swallowed. Then he put the bottle down and turned his gaze steadily upon Aurora. There it was again: the thin, unsmiling mouth, shadowed cheeks, bright black eyes. The same face that had beseeched her to take pity on him at Dacre Street that day. And yet, now she had become more familiar with it, it was not the same face. It was no longer the face of a lovelorn consumptive. Aurora could not describe it as the face of a man of action, but in it she saw conviction and purpose.

“Drink again,” he said. “You are shivering.”

Aurora put the bottle to her lips but took a very small sip, unwilling to fortify her nerves at the risk of blunting her judgement. “I am shivering, I confess, because I am fearful.”

“I doubt it not,” Edward assured her gently. “If Josiah Deede discovers you are an impostor, I cannot predict what he will do.”

“We neither of us can.” She took another small sip. “I do not know what to think. This has happened so quickly; my brain is a-whirl.”

He again took the bottle. “Your brain is about to be tested. You must begin your task tonight.”

“Tonight?” Aurora was surprised. “What would you have me do?”

“Attend the play at the Theatre Royal.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

It was rare for a young woman to appear unchaperoned in public, even at the notoriously laissez-faire Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.

“But—” began Aurora.

“You must seem friendless, or there is no point.”

“But why must I go there?”

Edward leaned towards her. “The actor who played my man-servant yesterday is acquainted with Josiah Deede’s son,” he explained. “He says Deede the younger is at Drury Lane almost every night. He will be one of the rowdiest of the ‘bloods’, you may be sure. You must draw attention to yourself in some way so that he notices you, and when he sees that you are alone, he may approach you.”

“But how will I know him?”

“You will not,” replied Edward tolerantly. “But someone will. Half of fashionable London will be there. If you use that brain, a-whirl or not, you will find him.”

“And if I fail?” Aurora was beginning to wish she had not taken even one mouthful of the wine.

“Then we will try again tomorrow night.”

“We?”

He gave her a sheepish look. “Do not scold me, Aurora. This plan will only work if the Deedes suspect nothing. Father and son have seen me, but they have never laid eyes on you. Now, get your hat.”

“My dear, are you alone? How shocking!”

“Not quite alone,” Aurora replied to the hawk-nosed woman who had taken the seat next to hers. She hoped the woman was shocked only by her solitude, and not her appearance. Having no knowledge of the fashions of the Theatre Royal, and no time to find out, she had donned the dress she had been married in. Strenuous tugging on her corset-strings had produced a bosom more uplifted than usual, over which she had resisted the temptation to place a lace kerchief, and she had added a bunch of pink and blue ribbons to the brim of her new hat. With one of her hands she held a draw-string bag in a pink striped material – a cast-off of Flora’s – and with the other she put up her lace-trimmed mask in front of her face. “My mask and I are good companions, madam.”

“How droll you are! And how
very
pretty!” the woman exclaimed in delight. “I insist that you lower that mask immediately, and permit the gentlemen to see your beauty.” Her gaze flicked around the auditorium and up to the boxes. “I see several of them have noticed you already, and are asking one another who you are. Tell me, where is your mama?”

Aurora lowered her mask and gave a small sigh. “I confess, madam, I have no mama, or papa. My elder brother and I have come but lately to London. He is in ill health, and stays at our lodging day after day. But I so long to meet people! I gather that to attend the theatre is permissible, as long as I choose a seat in a suitable part of the theatre, which I hope I have done.”