Wicked Company (4 page)

“I’ll see that his lordship receives these,” the manservant answered, barely deigning to acknowledge her presence as he reached for the packets clutched in Sophie’s arms.

She resisted his attempt to take her packages from her.

“Only
one
of these is for Lord Lemore,” she replied sharply. Recalling her father’s instructions, she took a deep breath and added, “And my father has asked for monies in full upon his lordship’s receiving the merchandise.”

“You may settle accounts when his lordship agrees to purchase the material,” the servant said loftily.

When Sophie made no move to hand over the packet, the servant shrugged and began to close the door. Quickly, she reached out to prevent its being shut in her face.

“Lord Lemore has
already
agreed to purchase these drawings,” Sophie said heatedly. “I am merely to deliver this special purchase from London and collect the fees owing.”

“God’s wounds, Laribee, shut that door!” a voice bellowed from what Sophie assumed to be a front sitting room off the foyer. “The draft’s blowing the coals all over the Turkey carpet!”

“Enter and wait here,” the butler said irritably. He indicated that Sophie should remain in the chilly entrance hall. “I shall see if his lordship will receive you.”

Within minutes, Sophie was ushered not into a parlor, as she had anticipated, but a spacious, well-proportioned room fitted with a pair of massive glass-fronted mahogany bookcases carved in the same, beautiful Queen Anne style as the table she’d glimpsed in the hallway. The walls behind the crowded bookshelves were painted a delicate shade of green and trimmed with elegant but restrained cornices of creamy white. Carpets in rich hues of deep garnet and blue warmed the room that otherwise might have seemed wintry despite the fire glowing in the grate.

Lord Lemore was seated in a leather wing-backed chair positioned beside a walnut keyhole desk. Upon the desk’s leather-tooled surface rested a scattering of pictures that had tumbled out of a large portfolio. A brass-ringed magnifying glass lay nearby.

“Ah… Mistress McGann… from the book shop,” he said, his cool gray eyes flitting from the tip of her shoes to the curve of her modest neckline.

Lord Lemore appeared to Sophie to be a man of about her father’s age, fifty-five. Edinburgh’s most celebrated book and engraving collector was tall and slender, except for a slight paunch emphasized by sloping shoulders—the result, perhaps, of hours spent hunched over his desk, peering at rare images. As a young man in his early twenties, Lemore had made the acquisition of drawings by William Hogarth fashionable among his set and was among the first to subscribe to the rather risqué series issued in 1733 titled
A Rake’s Progress.

Sophie offered a respectful curtsy and extended the wrapped packet to the aristocrat’s outstretched hands. His gaze settled on her face, and his short-sighted squint lent him an even more imperious demeanor.

“You work with your father in the book shop, do you not?” he inquired, looking at her steadily.

“Aye, m’lord,” Sophie answered, unnerved by his piercing stare.

“And you’re familiar with the engraving trade as well?”

“I am learning the business of
selling
them… yes, sir.”

“Ah…
learning,”
he echoed her words softly. “And how
old
might this comely student of art and commerce be?” he asked sardonically, as his bony fingers untied the string around the packet Sophie had handed him.

“I’m nearly seventeen,” she lied, hoping that adding nine months to her age might supply her with the degree of dignity she felt was sorely lacking during this rather strange interview.

“Hmm… seventeen,” he murmured, carefully removing the recycled playbill encasing his new purchases. “In the Highlands, lassies of your age are often betrothed. Have you a sweetheart, my dear?” he asked, examining the first engraving of the pile of four he held in his pallid hands.

“N-n-no,” Sophie stuttered, perturbed by the suggestive nature of the gentleman’s inquiries. She knew of girls hardly older than she living in the adjoining squalor of Edinburgh’s poorest wynds and closes whose “sweethearts” had gotten them in the family way—to their endless misery. She cast a nervous glance at the door to the chamber, which the disdainful butler had discreetly closed when leaving them alone.

The trace of a smile creased Lord Lemore’s thin lips. He breathed deeply and pleasurably as his eyes
drank in the contents of the image he held in his hands. Then he abruptly tossed it on the desktop and, reaching for his magnifying glass, gave the next new engraving his full attention. Seemingly oblivious, now, to her presence in his library, he took several paces toward the window, angled the picture toward the shafts of spring sunshine streaming through the panes, and surveyed his purchase through the thick examining lens.

Observing his rapt concentration, Sophie clasped her hands around her remaining packet and glanced furtively about the room. She compared the library’s airy spaciousness with the cramped, low-ceilinged, stuffy chambers she and her father maintained above the book shop.

During the lengthy silence, Sophie’s gaze fell on the engravings that were spread on top of the desk. The picture tossed nearest her view was the one from the packet she had just delivered. Her amber eyes
widened in shock as she began to scrutinize this particular black-and-white drawing. Printed in frilly script at the bottom were the words
Le Religieux, 1740,
and above the title were depicted three women and a cowl-robed priest.

Sophie’s generous mouth sagged open slightly as she gazed down at the engraved image of a disheveled woman sitting at a table, clutching a joint of beef in her fist. A second female held out a glass of wine in the direction of a lecherous-looking monk who was sexually assaulting a half-naked woman stretched out on a couch. Little wonder Sophie’s father had practically shoved her out the back door of the book shop with this delivery when the clerics were about to invade his domain! If images like these had been found on the premises, Daniel McGann would have been hauled off to the Tolbooth prison forthwith!

Suddenly, Sophie felt Lord Lemore’s gaze fasten on her face. Flushing scarlet, she raised her glance and their eyes met.

“Your father has done well,” he said on a low breath, taking a step toward her and gently placing the three other engravings beside the one that had riveted Sophie’s attention. “At first, he seemed reluctant to fulfill my request,” he continued, setting the magnifying glass on top of the desk as well, “but I see that even though he scorns such works as prurient, the man has his price.”

Sophie’s chin jutted defiantly in the air, despite her utter shock at learning that her father sold such erotica. He had never displayed this type of engraving in the shop. Indeed, her father must have been in desperate financial straits to be fulfilling such requests from the likes of Lord Lemore.

Sophie clutched the package she was to deliver to the Canongate Playhouse manager and made movement as if to depart.

“At your service, m’lord,” she murmured, nodding her head respectfully. “I fear I must beg your leave to return to my father.” She bit her lip uncertainly and then plunged ahead with the request she knew she had to tender. “He asks that I secure payment for this special order from London.”

“Ah… yes,” Lord Lemore replied, seizing her hand familiarly with his own. “I must pay for my pleasures, must I not? Have your father send me an accounting,” he said, and he raised her right hand to his lips and laid a lingering kiss against her flesh. Suddenly, he pulled her hard against his concave chest and the packet destined for the playhouse was crushed between them. She could smell the brandy on his breath and the stench of musky perfume masking odors far less pleasant. A strange mound pressed against her thigh and she could hear Lemore breathing heavily next to her ear.

“Did that picture arouse your senses, my sweet?” he murmured into her hair, his grip tightening around her shoulders with suffocating strength. “Did that monk’s obscene pose put ideas in your pretty head?”

“No!”
Sophie hissed, at once confused and repelled by the aristocrats rough fondling. She pushed against his narrow chest with all her strength, but despite Lemore’s slender frame, he held her with unyielding force, his thin fingers biting into her flesh. “Let me
go
!” she cried desperately, twisting side to side in a frantic attempt to escape his steely grip.

A sudden upward motion of her pinioned arm slapped Sophie’s playbills sharply against his chin, pushing him off balance. Lord Lemore emitted a low grunt and Sophie felt him lose his footing. The two of them fell awkwardly against the wing-backed chair, pushing its upholstered bulk into the desk. Having managed to yank a hand free, Sophie grabbed the heavy magnifying glass off the desk top and held it up threateningly over her head like a weapon.

“Now, now! No need for head bashing,” Lord Lemore protested, stepping back.

Panting from exertion, Sophie watched, dumbfounded, as the nobleman adjusted the waistband of his breeches, shaking first one bony leg and then the other in the oddest fashion imaginable.

“You
do
look rather young,” he conceded, scrutinizing her slender form and small stature as if she were a yearling at a horse auction. “Not that youth cannot pique one’s fancy.” His eyes narrowed and his thin lips pursed. “Pray, tell me not that you’re merely a lass of twelve or thirteen?”

“No… as I told you before… I am
nearly
seventeen,” she said, her voice ragged despite a herculean attempt to regain her composure. She set the magnifying glass carefully on the desk, fighting the tears of fright and anger that suddenly welled up. She swallowed hard, and once more clasped the packet of playbills to her bosom. “But
nothing
gives you the right to say such things to me or take such liberties…
nothing!”

“No right?” the aristocrat repeated, eyeing her coldly. “I suggest you remember what rights I do, indeed, possess—and curb your slattern’s tongue. Otherwise, someone in authority shall have to curb it
for
you!” He waved his slender hand at her with a gesture of dismissal, the circlet of lace swaying from his coat cuff. “You may go.”

“I would like payment for your order, if you please,” Sophie said stiffly, conscious of a heavy thudding in her chest.

Lord Lemore took a menacing step toward her. His eyes glittered with malice.

“I will repeat this just once more,” he said in a controlled voice. “I bid you have your father send me an accounting of what I owe and I will have my man of business consider his request and attend to it as he sees fit. Good day!”

Sophie stared at her father’s best customer with a coil of black rage twisting inside her stomach. How
dare
he do this? How
dare
he act as if
he
were the one who had been insulted? How
dare
he order such material through her father’s shop, put them all at risk from the authorities, and then have the audacity to refuse to pay! High-born nobles were infamous for ordering meat and port and all manner of luxuries “on account” from merchants throughout Edinburgh and then disregarding the obligation to the poor tradesman. In her father’s situation, Daniel McGann would certainly not hazard bringing Lord Lemore legally to task for unpaid bills relating to bawdy drawings that were forbidden by the religious censors anyway. And if Sophie accused the man of making improper advances toward a lass of her age—an age at which, as he said, many young Scottish lasses became brides and even mothers—’twould only make the situation worse.

Lord Lemore retrieved his magnifying glass and continued studying the newest purchases in his collection of engravings while utterly ignoring her. A smug smile played across his narrow face. Sophie bobbed a perfunctory curtsy. “As you wish, m’lord,” she said and made an unceremonious dash for the door.

In the distance she could hear St. Giles toll one hour after noon as she emerged, trembling from her ordeal, into the sunny square. Head high, back straight, she retraced her steps to the arched entrance to Chessel’s Court, wondering if Lord Lemore’s cold gray gaze was boring into her back.

Nonsense!
she chided herself. The old rogue was probably slavering over the lewd details of his latest acquisitions, too absorbed to give her another thought.

The throng of carriages and sedan chairs had thinned out on the High Street as Sophie proceeded down the road toward the Canongate Playhouse, a virtual stone’s throw away from Chessel’s Court. She was more than a little disquieted by her discovery that her learned, high-minded father trafficked in such salacious merchandise, yet her young mind wrestled with the central precept he had always taught her: that neither church nor state had a right to control an individual’s
words
or
thoughts.

As he had often maintained, “You may heartily disagree, Sophie, with what a man may say or write, but you’ve
no
just cause to take away his right to express it!”