A Woman of Virtue Read online

  And when she awoke, would she think him a cad? Or a gentleman? Certainly exploding into a rage and crushing her precious Chinese dancing girl had been beyond the pale, even if that stiff stick Giles had given it to her. And now, he was slinking off like a dog with its tail between its legs. He must go back and face her. Apologize.

  Yes, but was not that the very thing which had gotten him into this whole bloody mess? Still, it was important he not press her. In the first place, Cecilia did not press particularly well. He’d learned that lesson years ago. And in the second place, her trust had been taken advantage of by the men in her life—himself included—altogether too often.

  Perhaps he ought simply to ask her what she wanted of him? It was a novel concept—but yes, by Jove, it seemed fair. Give her the choice. Let her take her time. But it was a deuced risky game, that.

  For what if she didn’t choose him?

  ———

  Humming a rousing little tavern tune under her breath, Henrietta Healy lifted her ladyship’s best petticoat from its puddle on the chair and eyed it critically. Stubbornly, she snapped it, as if expecting the wrinkles might be intimidated into fleeing of their own accord.

  Reluctantly, Cecilia cracked another eye. Etta came fully into focus. “Ungh,” Cecilia murmured, fisting her hands above her head and stretching languidly under the sheets.

  “Mornin’ to you, too, mum,” announced Etta cheerfully, picking up Cecilia’s chemise. “Slept snug, did ye? Lor, I didn’t! The chimney down at Snead’s coffee house caught fire. Oh, you can’t think what a racket that was! Then the sleet. And after that, them grandbabies o’ Aunt Mercy’s cried the whole live-long night. And a funny thing, too,” she continued, draping Cecilia’s clothing over one arm. “One o’ them stockings is gone missing.”

  Cecilia gave another lazy stretch. “Your Aunt Mercy lost her stocking?” She yawned, struggling mightily to wake up and follow the conversation.

  “No,” fumed Etta, a deep frown puckering her brow. “Them pale ivory ones what Madam Germaine ordered made up special for that green dress.”

  Suddenly, Cecilia focused on the pile of clothing. Memory stirred. “Oh, my God!” She sat bolt upright in bed, frantically patting the covers all around her.

  “Well, it’s just a stocking, mum,” said Etta flippantly. “And it ain’t like ter be in yer bed.”

  “Oh, my God!” Cecilia repeated. Her head jerked up, and, stark naked, she bolted from the bed, shoving her arms through her wrapper as she went. “What is the time? Where is Shaw? Has anyone swept out the drawing room?”

  “The drawing room?” asked Etta, puzzled. “Couldn’t say, mum.” But Etta answered in vain, for her mistress was already heading for the door.

  “Well!” said Etta with a sudden, knowing wink. “I reckon you’ve finally gone ‘n dipped a toe in the water!”

  ———

  By seven in the morning, David found himself propped back in his favorite reading chair and staring at his bedroom ceiling. At least, he wanted to stare at it. However, when he opened his eyes, all he saw was a pale green mist.

  “I feel like a bloody garden snake trying to shed its skin but finding it caught on my ears,” he fumed.

  At his elbow, he could hear Kemble, and the rhythmic thwack, thwack of a razor being stropped. “Snakes,” the valet said airily, “have no ears.”

  “Well, how much longer, blister it?” David tried to sound cross, but it was awkward, given all the plaster Kemble had troweled onto his face.

  A dark shadow bent over him, and he felt the valet’s cool fingertip poke about beneath his eye. “I can take off the cucumber slices now,” he said saucily. “But the mask must stay another quarter-hour.”

  “Another quarter-hour? Good God, man, I have to be in Wapping by nine.”

  “Do you wish to be prompt or presentable?” retorted Kemble.

  “Prompt, damn you. I’m going riff-raff hunting with a bloody police inspector! Who cares what I look like?”

  “Well, you needn’t snap at moi!” said Kemble archly. “A man of your age simply cannot keep such hours. Home at five, and your bed not even rumpled! My dear boy, that’s what I call a sleepless night.”

  “I slept through part of it,” groused David

  “Indeed?” tittered the valet. “Not the important part, I hope.”

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re damned insolent?” muttered David struggling in the chair. “Now, get this bloody mess off my face. I have to sit up. We must talk.”

  “Oooh! This sounds rich,” purred Kemble, snapping out a towel and tying it about David’s throat. “Was she married? Were you caught? Must I go and bribe her footmen?”

  “Not yet, no, and not yet,” grumbled David.

  “Oh, really—?”

  Suddenly, David realized what he’d said. “Blast it, I mean—no, no, and not yet!”

  “Was that a telling slip of the tongue, my lord?” asked Kemble on a choke of laughter.

  David tried to change the subject. “Damn it, never mind. Now, listen here—I need you to do something for me. Tomorrow afternoon, I want you to go down to Bow Street and hire a couple of runners. Big ones. Then take my traveling chaise over to the mission. Pick up that girl—Kitty, the one whose sister was murdered—and have the runners escort her quietly to my estate in Derbyshire.”

  “My lord, it is done,” returned Kemble, his voice suddenly more serious. “I take it you are worried for her safety? Two down and one to go, so to speak?”

  “Just so,” answered David as Kemble plucked the cucumber slices from his eyes and tossed them into the rubbish bin. “And so far, we can get very little information out of this younger sister.”

  “Hmm,” said Kemble, laying a razor to David’s face and stroking off a swath of the cucumber concoction. “Perhaps I could be of help?”

  David crooked his head to peer up at Kemble. In a perverse way, he was beginning to like him, undoubtedly another sign of his disordered mind. The man’s presence was something like an icy rain, not precisely comfortable but infinitely refreshing. Sometimes he found himself wondering if the Marquis of Rannoch might part with the fellow. Probably not.

  Nonetheless, Kemble’s suggestion had merit. The old boy had a way about him, there was no denying it. Perhaps de Rohan and Cecilia would not need to speak with Kitty at all.

  “People of the lower orders—well, they do not greatly trust the gentry, do they?” mused David. “It’s unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate?” Kemble laughed dryly, shaving off another swath of cucumber. “If you think that’s unfortunate, my lord, observe how they behave in the presence of a Bow Street Runner or a policeman.” He spoke with a certain knowledge.

  “What do you know about life in the East End, Kemble?” David asked curiously.

  For once, Kemble was reticent. “Enough to survive, my lord,” he said quietly as he worked. “What would you have me do?”

  “This girl,” said David returning to his topic. “She knows something which I fear is very dangerous. Do you think you could get her to share it?”

  With two neat flicks of his wrist, Kemble was done. “Your wish is my command, oh my Pasha!” he answered with an elegant, fluid salaam.

  “Jesus, watch that razor!” David drew back in horror.

  But Kemble’s smugness—as well as the rest of him—was still intact. Sharply, David exhaled. “As to Kitty, yes. Probe. But gently! She’s been through a vast ordeal.”

  “Just trust me, my lord,” he responded, drawing clean his blade against the edge of a copper basin. “With a knife. Or with anything else.”

  And he could trust him, David realized. Kemble was very charming when he wished to be, and for all his fussing and scolding, he had that air about him—an air of competence, yes, but also one of kindness. Women would respond to it instinctively, he thought.

  Kemble unfurled the towel from his neck, and for the next few minutes, Delacourt permitted the valetto dress him in relative silence. He did not
look forward to spending a morning traveling through Wapping and Shadwell. But he dreaded even more what he knew he must do in the afternoon.

  Just as David began to tie his cravat, he saw a way out—or at least a mitigation—of his dilemma. “Oh, and Kemble?”

  “Yes?” The valet poked his head out from David’s dressing closet.

  “Do you know anything about antique Chinese porcelain?” he asked casually, drawing the last end up and around into the loop.

  The valet’s fine brows went up as he snapped open David’s coat. “As in Ming vases and such?”

  “Why, yes, that very thing!” answered David, drawing back from the mirror to critique his knot.

  “Sorry, my lord,” Kemble said mournfully. “I’m a Ch’morning dynasty man myself.”

  “Oh.” David’s face fell as he shrugged into his coat. “But isn’t it all very like? I mean, you’re quite resourceful. Could you not dig up some of the other kind?”

  “Well, of course.” Proudly, Kemble drew himself up. “I know a few fences in St. Giles. And a couple of legitimate artifact dealers in the Strand. What did you have in mind?”

  “Oh, I don’t know... maybe half a dozen? And get a couple of greenish-looking ones.”

  “Half a dozen?” asked Kemble archly. David thought he caught a flash of humor in the valet’s eyes, but it was quickly veiled. “But, of course, my lord. You need only tell your man of affairs that I shall require the cash with which to purchase them.”

  “Oh, you tell him,” muttered David, tugging on his gloves. “Just be quick about it. I’m in a devil of a fix.”

  “Yes, of course,” answered Kemble smoothly. And when Delacourt next looked up from his toilette, his valet had disappeared.

  ———

  By a quarter past nine, London’s fog had not dissipated. Indeed, near the river, it hung thicker still, cloying, cool, and metallic in David’s nostrils. Standing beside de Rohan along a curving stretch of roadway, he stared past the Prospect of Whitby and down the adjacent alley as a man in a damp leather waistcoat rolled a hogshead toward Pelican Stairs. David could barely make out a second man who stood at the end of the alley, clutching a rope. Their boat no doubt floated in the river at the foot of the stairs.

  “She was found there?” asked David.

  De Rohan nodded, his expression grim.

  The men with the hogshead carried their burden down the stairs and disappeared below. De Rohan then stepped briskly into the street, snapping his fingers to the huge black dog which seemed to follow him everywhere. In the morning fog, with his long, black greatcoat swirling about his boots, the inspector looked like a dark, avenging angel.

  David followed him into the alley—it was more of a narrow passageway, really—and single-file, they walked the few yards to the river. The alley widened at the end, opening out into a space behind the Prospect and the adjacent building. After pacing about and staring at the ground for a moment, de Rohan stepped up onto the ledge and stared down into the water just as the two men rowed away.

  The wash of their small boat slurped forlornly against the stairs as they melted into the mist. “High tide in half an hour,” muttered de Rohan. “There’s nothing left to see anyway. Let’s visit the Prospect.”

  “What will we do once we go inside?” David asked as they reached the door. Automatically, the mastiff flopped down beside the entrance, grunted, then dropped his head to his forepaws.

  “Speak to the lad first, if he hasn’t already vanished,” said the inspector with a shrug. “After that, we’ll drift about, see who we might know.”

  “I rather doubt I know anyone who might frequent such a place,” David murmured, eyeing the door with grave suspicion.

  But he was wrong. They had no sooner entered the door, their eyes slowly adjusting to the gloom, than who should come clattering down the narrow stairway but Hell-Bent Rutledge, whistling a hornpipe jig as he buttoned his waistcoat beneath a hastily tied cravat. In the crook of his arm, he carried a limp blue coat.

  Across the room, a thin, narrow-faced man stood at the bar, carving a hunk of Stilton cheese. A platter of quartered onions sat at his elbow. He lifted his gaze to Rutledge, an expression of recognition on his face. But before he could speak, David stepped smoothly away from the door. “Good morning, Mr. Rutledge,” he said quietly. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Rutledge’s head jerked up and around as he peered blearily into the weak shaft of daylight. “What! That you again, Delacourt?” he cheerfully returned. “These low taverns do have a certain charm, don’t they?” With a sardonic wink, the young man crossed to the bar, leaned across, and snared a crumbling chunk of cheese, stuffing it into his mouth with a shameless grin.

  “Morning, Rutledge,” sighed the tapster, setting aside his knife. “You’ll be wanting a bit o’ something for the road, eh?”

  Still chewing, Rutledge shrugged into his coat, a sad affair which looked as if he’d slept in it—or perhaps on it was a better guess. But with whom and doing what, David couldn’t bear to consider. “Coffee’ll do me, Pratt,” Rutledge answered on a swallow. “And set the cheese down on my shot, right?” Then he sauntered across the room and flung himself onto a bench by the bank of sooty windows which gave out onto the river.

  It had become obvious that the man at the bar hoped to ignore his two visitors. With a slow, steady gait, de Rohan approached, leaning over the counter on one elbow. “I’ve come to see the boy who found the body out back yesterday, Mr. Pratt.”

  The tapster cut him a nasty look. “The boy didn’t ‘ave aught to do with it, de Rohan. ‘Ave you fellows down at Wapping New Stairs run out o’ mudlarks and lumpers to hound?”

  De Rohan drummed his fingers on the scarred oak surface. “Just fetch him, Pratt,” he said with infinite weariness. “I’ve had three hours’ sleep, my boots are wet, and I’ve got better things to do than roust every fat-pocketed lighterman who sets foot through your door from now ‘til Michaelmas. So save me the chore, won’t you?” Without another word, de Rohan pulled away from the bar and crossed the room, passing by Rutledge’s table to take a seat around the corner near the kitchens.

  Delacourt followed him, cutting a glance toward Rutledge as a thin, sleepy-eyed serving girl leaned over his table to set down a crockery mug and a tattered newspaper. Absently gazing into the fog, Rutledge ran a hand up her leg to settle on her rump. Then, with a jerk, he looked up, as if she was not who he’d expected. The girl gave him a half-hearted slap and went about her business.

  “You know him?” asked de Rohan as they settled into chairs in the corner.

  “Very little,” he answered. “His name is Bentham Rutledge, a bit of a blue-blooded ne’er-do-well.” Which was probably just one step removed from being a devil-may-care fribble, David wryly considered.

  He found himself looking over his shoulder at Rutledge, studying the carefully crafted façade of affability which undoubtedly masked a deep, youthful anger. An anger which was destined to boil down to a middle-aged rage, hardening his heart as well as his too-handsome face.

  At the thought, a bitter smile pulled at his mouth. Funny how easily one recognized the telltale signs from a distance. Was that what he had looked like at Rutledge’s age? And just how hardened had he become?

  David remembered when he’d been but a few years younger than Rutledge and newly come to town after a blissful tenure at Harrow and Oxford. Rich, titled, and not unattractive, he had fancied himself very much the man about town, and society was to be his oyster. Then had come the letter from his father—no, from the man who had abused his mother. And life as he had known it, or life as he had expected it to be, had come crashing down about him.

  So David was left to wonder... what was Rutledge’s secret? For, most assuredly, the young man had one. Inwardly, David shrugged. It was none of his concern. Just then, the kitchen door swung open, and a tall, slender lad of about sixteen came out, wiping his hands on a dingy apron. “I’m Thomas,” he said, hesitating at the edge o
f their table.

  De Rohan’s mouth turned up, but the smile did not reach his eyes. “This gentleman and I should like to hear about the girl you found in the river.”

  Thomas dropped the apron. “Don’t know much,” he said with a shrug.

  Idly, David drew a couple of coins from his pocket. De Rohan made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat as David slid a crown across the deeply scarred table. “Well, let’s hear what you do know,” he suggested very softly, snapping the coin against the wood with a neat click. “And then let’s hear what you might know.” Neatly, he plunked down a sovereign next to it.

  The boy’s eyes widened. “What d’ye mean? Might know?” he asked suspiciously.

  David shrugged. “I daresay there’s a vast deal of gossip in a place like this.”

  The boy crooked an eyebrow and let his eyes drift over David’s clothing. Apparently, he was persuaded. “I went out right at dusk,” he began, “to pitch the potato peelings ‘n such, and there was this mooring, knotted up at the bollard. But there weren’t no boat. So I peered over the edge, and that’s when I seen ‘er, just a-floating. Facedown, ‘er arms spread out like an angel.”

  De Rohan looked disappointed. “You didn’t get a good look at her?”

  “Oh, I hung about whilst the watchmen pulled ‘er out,” answered Thomas ghoulishly. “Swole up something ter’ble, she was. But it looked like old Meg, right enough.”

  “You knew her?” interjected David, leaning across the table.

  “Mostly I recognized ‘er workin’ dress,” he admitted. “Dark red satin, it were. She wore it all the time.”

  “She was known here?” asked de Rohan urgently.

  “I’ve worked at the Prospect well nigh four years, and she’s a reg’lar,” said the boy proudly. “We get sailors, stevedores, ‘n lightermen a-comin’ in here night ‘n day. Even the odd gent or two. A good place for things you want done on the quiet.”

  De Rohan glanced at Rutledge again. “You’ve rooms upstairs, I take it?” His meaning was plain.