Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss

‘I did not want that money for myself, Cora,’ he explained, sitting on a chair by the bed to tug off his boots. ‘You know I don’t need it. I’ve invested wisely these last few years.’ Somehow that admission only made this evening’s work seem worse.

‘I have ensured the girl will be safe,’ he protested, untying his neckcloth and letting it slither to the floor.

‘Does that please you, Cora?’ he addressed the shadowed corners of his room. But there was no answer.

With a groan of despair, he lay down on top of the bed, still fully clothed, and flung his arm over his eyes. If she was not going to come back, he did not know how he could bear to go on.

There was no satisfaction to be had in ruining one man, or bestowing largesse on another.

Not when she wasn’t there to see it.

He needed her.

God, how he needed her!

He felt as though he had barely closed his eyes, when he was woken by the sound of somebody knocking on the door.

Persistently.

Ephraims must still be out, he thought, sitting up and running his fingers through his disordered hair. He would have to deal with whoever was visiting himself. Probably one of the men from whom he had taken promissory notes the night before, he decided as he padded barefoot to the outer door.

However, it was not a shamefaced gambler who stood on his doorstep, but the grubby street sweeper from the night of the vision on Curzon Street.

‘Grit,’ he observed, opening the door wider to admit the rather scared-looking boy. ‘You had better come into my sitting room.’

‘Her name is Mary,’ the boy announced without preamble, the moment Lord Matthison sank wearily on to the sofa. He did not really want to hear anything the lad had to say. But he might as well let him earn his tip, since he had plucked up the courage to walk into the devil’s lair.

‘The red-head you was after. She come to Lunnon about six or so years ago as an apprentice, and has been working her way up. Well, not that she’s indentured regular, like, on account of her being a charity case.’

Lord Matthison brushed aside the apparent coincidence of that female appearing on the scene about the time Cora had disappeared. Hundreds of working girls came up to London from the country every year.

‘No one can match the stuff she turns out now,’ Grit added, staring round Lord Matthison’s study with apprehensive eyes, as though half-expecting to see a human skull perched on one of the shelves. ‘The nobs fight to get a dress wot she’s had a hand in.’

Cora had been exceptionally fond of sewing, he recalled. But then, so were lots of gently reared girls. It meant nothing. Nothing!

‘If you want to meet her,’ the boy said, after a slight pause, ‘she’ll be in the Flash of Lightning Friday night. Her friend, see, has an understanding with a jarvey wot drinks in there.And they mean to sneak out and meet him. ’Bout seven,’he finished, sticking out his hand hopefully.

‘Go into my room,’ said Lord Matthison, jerking his head in that direction, ‘and you can pick up whatever you find on the floor.’ There had been several crown pieces amongst the coinage he had won last night. Grit was welcome to them.

He sat forwards on the sofa, his head in his hands. Last night, he had thought he had got it all clear in his mind. The woman he had seen on Curzon Street could not have been Cora. He had just been drunk, and had imagined the likeness.

But now he was beginning to wonder all over again.

Take the way Grit had described her as a red-head. The woman he had chased had been wearing a poke bonnet that covered her hair completely. So how had he been so sure it was red?

As Cora’s was red.

And what about the way the bleak chill that usually hung round him like a mantle had lifted the second he saw the early morning sun brush the curve of her cheek? The way his heart had raced. As though he was really alive, and not just a damned soul, trapped in a living body.

He was not going to find a moment’s peace, he realised, until he had looked the seamstress in the face, and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she bore no more than a passing resemblance to Cora.

‘Stop worrying, Mary,’ Molly cajoled. ‘Madame Pennypincher won’t know nothing about it unless we tells her.’

‘She’ll know it shouldn’t take us so long to make a delivery.’

Ever since Mary had come back from the Curzon Street errand with her nerves in shreds, Madame Pichot had sent Molly with her on her daily walks.

Molly had been cock-a-hoop at escaping their relentless drudgery, shamelessly making use of their daily excursions to arrange this clandestine meeting with Joe Higgis, who worked out of a hackney cab stand on the corner of Conduit Street.

Mary did not begrudge Molly her snatched moments of happiness, she just did not see how they would manage to get away with taking a detour to a gin shop in Covent Garden.

‘All we have to do is think up a story and stick to it,’ Molly persisted. ‘We’ll tell her the housekeeper asked us to take tea in the kitchen, or the lady had some query about the bill.’

‘I don’t…I can’t…’ Mary felt her face growing hot. The very thought of telling her employer a barefaced lie was making her insides churn.

Molly clicked her tongue and sighed. ‘Just leave the talking to me, then, when we get back. You can keep yer mouth shut, can’t yer?’ She gripped Mary’s arm quite hard. ‘Ye understand it ain’t right to snitch on yer friends, don’t yer?’

‘I would never snitch on you, Molly,’ said Mary, meaning it.

When she had first come to work for Madame Pichot, she had existed in an almost constant state of sickening fear. London was so confusingly crowded, so nerve-jarringly noisy. She had found it hard to understand what Madame’s other girls were saying at first, so peculiar did their accent sound, and so foreign the words they used. But Molly had always been patient with her, explaining her work slowly enough so she could understand, even putting a stop to the acts of petty spite some of the others had seemed to find hilarious.

‘Anyhow, Madame ought to let us have an hour or two off, once in a while, and then we wouldn’t have to sneak off on the sly!’

No, she would not say one word to Madame about where they had been.

She would not need to.

She looked round uneasily as Molly towed her into the overheated and evil-smelling den in which her Joe liked to take a heavy wet of an evening, with the other drivers who worked for the same firm as him. Madame would only have to breathe in as they walked past to know exactly where they had been.

Molly soon spotted her beau, who got his pals to make room for the two of them at the table where they were sitting. A slovenly-looking girl deposited two beakers on the sticky tabletop in front of them, and Joe flipped her a coin.

Molly dug Mary in the ribs.

‘Say thank you to Joe for buying us both a draught of jacky, girl. Ever so generous of him, ain’t it?’ Molly beamed at him, and his eyes lit up. Sliding closer to her, he slid his arm round her waist, and gave her a squeeze. Molly giggled, turning pink with pleasure. Mary might as well not have existed for all the notice he took of her.

She reached for her beaker, and bent her eyes resolutely on the liquid it contained, feeling slightly nauseous. She could not understand what Mary saw in Joe Higgis. He had sloping shoulders and a thick neck. His fingernails were dirty, and, given the nature of his job, he probably smelt of horses. How could Molly let such a man paw at her like that, never mind encourage it?

Molly had explained that he made her laugh, and that in this miserable world, you didn’t turn your nose up at a man who could make you laugh, no matter what.

For Molly’s sake, and to avoid hurting Joe’s feelings, she supposed she ought to try to look as though she was grateful for the drink he had bought her. Besides, she thought, glancing about her nervously, if she appeared to be concentrating on her drink, she would not look so out of place as she felt.

Tentatively, she tasted it, and was surprised to find it had a lightly perfumed flavour. Gin was not unpleasant, she grudgingly admitted, taking another sip.

‘Friend of Molly’s, are yer?’ asked the man beside her, who had been eyeing her speculatively ever since she had sat down.

Mary bit down a scathing retort. She had come in with Molly. She was sitting next to Molly. What else would she be, but a friend of Molly’s?

‘Now, none of your cheek, Fred!’ Molly suddenly stirred herself to say. ‘Nor none of you others, neither,’ she addressed the other men who were sitting at their table. ‘I won’t have none of you taking advantage of Mary, just coz she’s too simple to do it for herself. I’ll darken the daylights of anyone who so much as lays a finger on her!’ she declared belligerently.