Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss

‘…leaving me to pick up the pieces! Now you will not even do me the courtesy of explaining your outrageous behaviour! You said you loved me…’

His face dark with rage, he suddenly seized Mary’s shoulders, and kissed her hard on the mouth.

Mary was so surprised, she had no time to react. He had not looked in the least like a man who was about to kiss a woman.

But before she could do more than gasp, all hell broke loose.

With an inarticulate bellow of rage, Fred rose up, reached over her, seized the poor, deranged gentleman by the lapels of his very expensive coat, and hauled him to his feet.

His sudden action caused the bench on which they were all sitting to topple over, sending Mary flying backwards in a tangle of skirts. Joe, whose reactions were lightning fast, had managed to leap to his feet as the bench slid out from beneath him, but Molly had tumbled to the floor alongside Mary.

‘Quick, this way!’ Molly shrieked, grabbing her by the arm even as she herself started to scramble on all fours out of the reach of the flailing boots of the three men now struggling together where, just a moment before, they had been sitting quietly drinking their porter.

By the time they reached the door, everyone in the place seemed to have been sucked into the brawl. Glancing over her shoulder as Molly hustled her out, she saw one of the serving girls bringing her tray down on the head of a coal-heaver who had a bespectacled clerk in a bear hug, while one of Joe’s pals accidentally elbowed Fred in the face as he drew back his fist to punch a man in naval uniform. But she could not make out the dark gentleman anywhere amidst the sea of struggling combatants.

‘What a night!’ Molly gasped as they made it to the safety of the street, her face alight with excitement.

‘Are you not worried about Joe?’

From inside the gin shop Mary could hear the sounds of furniture breaking, and men cursing and yelling.

‘Sounds like—’she broke off briefly at a tremendous crash of breaking glass ‘—he’s having a smashing time.’Molly giggled as she straightened Mary’s skewed bonnet. ‘Did you see how fast he was?’ she added, dancing on the spot, and throwing a few punches at imaginary opponents for good measure.

‘I scarcely knew what was happening,’ Mary admitted. ‘It all happened so fast. One minute that man was kissing me, and then…Oh dear—’ she paused, casting an anxious glance over her shoulder ‘—I hope they are not hurting him.’

‘Well, strike me!’ Molly looked at Mary as though she had never seen her before. ‘Here was I thinking you’d be all of a quake, and all you can think of is whether Joe and the lads are hurting your beau!’

‘He’s not my beau! I just feel…sorry for him, that’s all. He seemed to think I was someone he had known once, someone who said she loved him, but then left him. That must have been why he followed me the other day, I must look very like her.’ Even sitting face to face with her, in the glaring light of the tavern’s lanterns, he seemed convinced she was his lost love. It was so sad.

Molly tucked Mary’s hand in the crook of her arm, and stepped out briskly, muttering, ‘I done the right thing, then. I weren’t sure,’ she said a little louder, darting Mary a sidelong glance, ‘but the thing is, Mary, girls like us don’t have a lot of choice.’

‘What do you mean? What have you done?’

‘It’s for your own good,’ she replied, puzzling Mary still further. ‘And it’s not as if you’re scared of him now, are you? Not like you was the other day?’

‘No,’ Mary confessed, shamefaced. ‘I was just being silly that day. He startled me, that was all, leaping out of the shadows like that…’

‘There, you see. It will be fine!’

‘What will be fine? Molly,’ Mary panted, ‘do we have to walk this fast? Nobody is chasing us now.’

‘Sorry,’ said Molly, moderating her stride to accommodate Mary’s. ‘You know I’ve always watched out for you, haven’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s what I’m doing now. When Grit came to ask me what he oughter do about the questions Lord Matthison was asking about you, I told him to tell the gentleman whatever he wanted to know. Coz I don’t think he’ll do you any harm, Mary. There’s places what cater to gentlemen of that sort, and he don’t go to them. Not that I’ve heard…’

‘Molly, I don’t understand what you are talking about!’

‘No, I don’t s’pose you do. Look,’she said earnestly, ‘how long do you think Madame will keep you on, once your health goes completely? She puts up with you now, because the kind of beading you do is all the rage. But there’ll be a new fashion next season. Or your eyesight might go. Or…or anything could happen! And then, out you’ll go!’

Mary shook her head. ‘Madame took a risk, taking me in and giving me a job. She’s always been good to me.’

‘I’ve worked for her a damn sight longer than you, girl, and I’m telling you, she’s like an old spider, she is, sucking all the life out of us, and then throwing away the husks what ain’t no good no more! Mary, she don’t even pay you!Yougetyourbed andboard, while she’smakingher fortune out of what your clever fingers bring in. Do you know how much she charges the Earl of Walton for those gowns you embroider for his wife? And do you see a penny piece of it? No! Coz you’re too simple to stand up for yourself. Well, I’m doing it for you!You’ve caught the eye of a real live lord, girl. One of the wealthiest in town.’

‘Well, yes, but only because I look like someone he used to know.’

‘Makes no difference why he wants you. It only matters that he does want you. Gents like him can be very generous, if you give them what they want. And when he tires of you, he won’t just chuck you out on the street. Point of pride with men like him, to leave their ladybirds comfortably off.’

‘L…ladybird?’ Mary echoed in appalled disbelief.

‘Oh, yes! I reckon he’ll be making you an offer quite soon. And when he does, you take it! You hear? Play your cards right, and this could be the making of you.’

‘The making of me?’ Mary gasped. ‘The ruining of me, you mean!’

‘Lord, Mary, don’t be any dafter than you have to be. You don’t dislike him, do you?’

‘It’s not that. I do feel sorry for him, but…’

‘Well, there you are. No harm in offering the poor man a spot of comfort, is there?’

No harm? She did not know where to begin to explain the sheer magnitude of the harm that would come to her if she sold her body to a man! She could never regard becoming a man’s mistress as a step up in the world. It was all very well for Molly to describe it as a chance to gain the kind of financial security she could never hope for, not if she sewed for Madame for a hundred years, but as far as she was concerned, it would be the ultimate degradation!

But there was no point even trying to explain all that to Molly. She would just see her scruples as further proof of her stupidity.

She hunched her shoulders against her friend’s well-meaning meddling, and walked back to the shop in Conduit Street feeling like the loneliest, most misunderstood girl in London.

Chapter Three

Mary was standing on the edge of a cliff. She could hear waves pounding the shore far below, but it was too dark to see them. It was too dark to see anything. One false move, and she might go tumbling down to her doom.

Her heart started to race. Her legs shook. And, just as she had somehow known it would, the ground beneath her feet crumbled away and she was falling, falling, her mouth open wide in a soundless scream…

She landed with a bump, in the bottom of a small boat, winded, but unharmed. The dark gentleman had been there, waiting to catch her. His arms broke her fall.

It was not dark down here in the boat with him. The sun was shining. She felt warm and secure lying in the dark gentleman’s arms, being gently rocked as the waves lapped against the boat. She could hear gulls keening. She looked up into a vast, cloudless sky, the kind of sky you never saw in London, fettered as it was by rooftops rank with smoking chimneys.

He smiled down at her as she relaxed into his hold with a sigh.

‘I know you want me to kiss you,’ he said, and lowered his head…

With a jolt, Mary woke with the blankets twisted round her legs. The feeling of tranquillity dissipated under a sharp blast of shame. How could she be dreaming about kissing a man? That man! She could not seriously be considering Molly’s suggestion she become his mistress!

Could she?

Sick with self-disgust, Mary pulled her nightgown out from under Molly’s leg, and wriggled out of the bed she shared with her and Kitty, one of the other seamstresses who lived with them over the shop.

She pulled her wrapper round her shoulders, and padded barefoot up to the workroom. The sun was not yet up, so she lit one of the lamps Madame Pichot kept available when her girls had to work beyond the hours of natural daylight, and settled onto her stool by her embroidery frame.