Thirteen
Yvette watched as Jeremy climbed down and told the hackney driver to wait. Only then did she get a good look at the bawdy house.
Heavenly day.
It was one thing to study the language of fallen women or help them as part of her charity, where the soiled doves were on their best behavior and attempting to better themselves. It was another matter entirely to experience a bawdy house in all its sordid glory.
Hanging from every window was a woman in some state of dishabille. Bared breasts and hitched-up skirts abounded, probably to entice men inside. Through one window, Yvette could even see a couple engaged in a decidedly scandalous activity.
Good Lord.
With a smug smile, Jeremy held up his hand to help her out. “Are you all right?”
She snapped her gaping mouth shut. “Of course,” she said, as if she visited bawdy houses all the time. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“It’s not too late to give up this mad endeavor and return to the ball.”
Firmly, she took his hand and stepped from the carriage. “No, indeed. I’m here for a reason, and that hasn’t changed.”
He eyed her closely but tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and led her up the walk.
Thank heaven she wore a mask. Otherwise, he would see the heat staining her cheeks and know just how difficult this was for her.
A shout came from nearby and she jumped, but it was only a couple of drunken louts calling to the whores in the windows, who waved cheerily back, trying to coax the men to come in.
Oh, dear. That fellow on the right even looked familiar!
She sincerely hoped she didn’t know him. If she did, she’d never be able to look him in the eye again.
But that made her realize—there might be other men here whom she knew. Perhaps even women. Not all the reformed prostitutes at her charity remained reformed. This mask had better do its job, or she could find herself in deep, deep trouble.
Remembering her purpose, she scanned the women in the windows above, but she’d had only the most cursory description of Peggy Moreton from Samuel, and “a buxom chit with dark, curly hair” applied to half the women in the place.
Suddenly a blowsy female caught sight of Jeremy and cried, “Mr. Keane! I’ve got a hat for you!”
A hat? Was that street cant for a salacious act? Yvette wracked her brain for an alternate meaning to “hat,” but for the life of her she couldn’t think of one.
“What sort of hat?” Jeremy called up, seeming equally confused.
“You know, like the foreign musicians wear,” said the female. “Now I can be in your picture!”
In his picture? Did the chit mean a painting?
His arm stiffened under Yvette’s hand, and he avoided looking at her. “I told you, Sally, you’re too blond for that role.”
“I’ll wear a wig! Wait there, I’ll show you the hat.”
As Sally disappeared from the window, an older and decidedly broader woman appeared to block the doorway. “Back to stir up my girls again, are you?”
Jeremy merely dipped his head. “Good evening, Mrs. Beard. You look to be in fine health.”
So this was the famous abbess. Yvette couldn’t stop staring. The woman had a bull neck, a half-exposed bosom the size of two cakes, and arms the width of small trees. A riding crop was tucked into the gold sash encircling her waist. She looked to be in fine health, all right—fine enough to beat a man twice her size into submission. No doubt she had, too, a time or two.
Mrs. Beard laid her hand on the crop. “Don’t you try to turn me up sweet, Mr. Keane. I’m onto your tricks. And I ain’t so sure that the money you pay for my girls’ time makes up for the trouble you bring. They all fight for the chance to pose for your bloody pictures. Spoils ’em for doing their real jobs.”
Yvette gaped at the woman. He was paying the soiled doves to model for him? That was why he spent so much time in the stews?
No, that couldn’t be the only reason. Men didn’t go to bawdy houses to work; they went to play. Besides, if he’d merely been working, why hadn’t he told her one of the times when she’d chided him for his debauchery?
I just wish I were as much a rogue as you like to think.
She let out a breath. He had told her, in myriad small ways. His gentlemanly courtesy. His protests over their meeting alone at night. His repeated concern for this bawdy-house visit. And in some larger ways, too—like by not bedding her the first chance he’d had. Yes, he’d kissed and caressed her, but he’d always restrained himself from going too far.
Still, he’d never corrected her assumptions about his character. Why not?
Then it dawned on her. He’d wanted her to believe him a big, bad scoundrel. He’d known she didn’t approve of such men because she’d told him flat out. Perhaps he’d hoped that letting her think him one would provoke her into staying away, thus helping him keep his distance.
Or perhaps she was just seizing on this evidence that he sometimes painted or sketched at the bawdy house to prove what she wanted to believe—that he was a better man than she’d assumed. Well, whatever the truth, she’d unearth it tonight.
The big-bosomed Sally appeared in the doorway behind Mrs. Beard, waving a Spanish-style hat at Jeremy. “You see? I could pose as one of them foreign street musicians for you.”
Jeremy winced, and Yvette could easily guess why. That well-fed chit could never look like a worn-down Spanish woman fighting for pennies for her children.
“If I put street musicians in the piece, Sally,” Jeremy pointed out, “I can pay one of them to pose.” When the young woman frowned, he added soothingly, “I promise to find a place for you in a future work.”
Sally pouted. “It ain’t fair. Can’t help it that I came back here after you’d picked all the girls for your big picture. I want to be in a painting, too.” She glared daggers at Yvette. “I’m just as pretty as that Long Meg there, I daresay.”
It took all Yvette’s strength to resist a cutting retort.
“Sally!” Mrs. Beard barked. “Go take care of the gentleman in room eleven. I got no time for yer nonsense.” As soon as Sally sashayed back down the hall, Mrs. Beard leveled a hard gaze on Jeremy. “I got no time for yers neither.”
“I’m not staying long,” he said smoothly. “I’ve got some questions for you, and once I have my answers, I’ll be on my way.”
“You’ll get answers when I get answers.” The abbess narrowed her gaze on Yvette. “Since when do you bring your own ladybirds to the brothel?”
“Miss Hardcastle isn’t my ladybird,” Jeremy said irritably. “She’s a new actress at the theater down the road. We’ve just come from a masque performance.”
Miss Hardcastle? Yvette dearly hoped Mrs. Beard had never seen She Stoops to Conquer.
“She came to London,” he went on, “through the influence of an actress friend of hers, to try her hand at treading the boards. But when she arrived at the theater, her friend was nowhere to be found. She’s been looking for the woman in her spare time ever since.”
“And she stumbled over you instead?” Mrs. Beard asked.
Good Lord. Jeremy had certainly been right about the suspicious character of women in nunneries.
A crowd formed about them, made up of ladies of the evening, randy young gentlemen, and some passersby. Jeremy jerked his head to indicate the onlookers. “Could we go inside to your office? We’d like some privacy for this conversation.”
Mrs. Beard nodded at Yvette. “Don’t your actress friend have a voice?”
“Of course I have a voice,” Yvette snapped. “But as Mr. Keane says, I’d prefer to discuss my friend more discreetly.”
“Would you, now?” The woman’s eyes shifted from Yvette to Jeremy and back. Then she turned back into the house, striding off down the hall.
“Come on,” Jeremy murmured, and tugged Yvette into the bawdy house.
She struggled not to gape like some country Harry at everything she saw, but heavenly day, how did people live like this? The furnishings were garish, the carpets stained with who knew what, and the stench of human . . . fluids was barely covered by a pervasive and cheap perfume.
They passed a room where she glimpsed a man bent over with his trousers and drawers down and a giggling painted creature on the couch beneath him. Yvette could see his bare buttocks. She’d never seen a man’s buttocks in her life!
She must have slowed to stare—how often did a woman get to see male buttocks in the flesh, after all?—but Jeremy jerked her forward. “I’ll give you a tour later if you like,” he said under his breath.
Though her cheeks flamed, she said lightly, “Oh, good. Perhaps I can pick up some new words and learn how to speak more like a ‘dock whore.’ ”
His smothered oath made her grin beneath her mask.
As soon as Mrs. Beard showed them into her office, Jeremy shut the door and got right to the point. “Miss Hardcastle is looking for a former actress named Peggy Moreton.”
Mrs. Beard glanced at Yvette. “What makes you think the woman is here?”
Yvette avoided Jeremy’s intent gaze. “I was told she resided here as . . . er . . . one of your girls. And if not here, then in another brothel in Covent Garden.”
“Told by whom?” Mrs. Beard asked.
“Does it matter?”
“It do, indeed. I want to know who’s flapping their jaws about my business.”
The hint of threat in the woman’s voice alarmed Yvette. “I—I cannot reveal who told me,” she said, aware of Jeremy’s eyes on her, “but I assure you I had to pry the information out of him.”
Just mail the letter, damn you, and don’t ask a lot of foolish questions. Better that you don’t know too much about my son, anyway.
Too late. She’d just seen the sort of place where Samuel’s son might be living. She would never give up the quest to find him now.
“If you can’t tell me where you heard it from,” Mrs. Beard said just as the door opened, “then I don’t know no Peggy Moreton.”
Sally breezed in. “Sure you do,” she said, oblivious to her employer’s frown. “She was the one who went by Peg Morris on the stage, remember?”
Was the one? Had the woman left the bawdy house? Or worse yet, died?
“This ain’t none of yer concern, Sally,” Mrs. Beard snapped. “Didn’t I tell you to take care of the gentry cove in number eleven?”
“Already did. Got him off right quick.”
Mrs. Beard scowled. “Ye daft cow, ye’re not supposed to get him off right quick. Ye’re supposed to make him wait. That’s what they like. That’s what makes ’em come back.”
“Well, he must have liked it, because he paid me in ready blunt.” With a sniff, Sally dropped some coins on the desk.
Mrs. Beard stuffed them into her apron pocket. “Then go out and get another chap, will you?”
Sally rolled her eyes and headed back for the door.
“Wait!” Yvette cried. “What happened to Peggy Moreton?”
“Why, she got a protector, lucky girl. Said he’s going to marry her.”
“That’s enough, Sally,” Mrs. Beard said. “Back to work now.”
Yvette ignored the abbess to hurry out into the hall after Sally. “Where did she go? Do you know?”
Sally glanced from Yvette to Mrs. Beard, as if finally realizing she’d stumbled into something she shouldn’t have. “I’m sorry, I don’t. Not even sure I remember the man’s name.”
“Go on, Sally,” Mrs. Beard ordered. “You’ve said enough.”
Desperation gripped Yvette. Heedless of Mrs. Beard’s threatening presence in the office behind her, she grabbed Sally’s arm. “Just tell me one more thing—did Miss Moreton take the child with her?”
“The child?” Jeremy growled behind Yvette.
She ignored him. “The boy. Did she take the boy with her?”
Sally looked frightened now. “Please, miss,” she murmured, tugging free of Yvette’s hand. “I gotta go.”
“It’s time you leave, too,” Mrs. Beard said to Yvette.
“No!” Yvette whirled on the abbess. “I have to know what happened to the boy. Did he go with Miss Moreton? Do you have any idea where they went? He’d be about four years old.”
Mrs. Beard started out of the office, but Jeremy stepped into the doorway to block her.
She scowled. “I want yer friend gone.”
“I’m not leaving until I find out what happened to Miss Moreton’s boy!” Yvette cried.
People were coming out of the other rooms now, curious about the ruckus.
Mrs. Beard glared up at Jeremy. “Ye’d best get yer friend under control.”
“Let me talk to her.” Reaching inside his coat pocket, he pulled out a handful of guineas. “In private.”
The woman’s expression grew more speculative. “In private, eh?”
An argument erupted somewhere on the top floor, and she muttered a curse. Snatching the guineas, Mrs. Beard said, “Fine. I’d best go take care of that lot upstairs anyway. Use my office.” A knowing glint shone in her eye. “Just don’t get it too messy.”
Messy? Oh, Lord, she thought they were going to do that in her office?
Before Yvette could protest her assumption, Jeremy nodded grimly and stepped aside to let the woman leave. With an amused glance, the abbess pushed past and swaggered down the hall, barking at people to mind their own business.
Yvette glowered at him. “You . . . you let her think that you and I—”
Jerking her into the office, he shut the door and locked it, then stared her down. “So that’s what this was about. Finding a child.”
All her indignation vanished. He knew the truth. And now he’d expect to know everything. “Yes.” She pushed back the hood of her cloak and removed her mask. If she was going to explain herself, she wanted him to look her in the eye while she did it.
Swearing, he began to pace. “I heard this was how the English handled their by-blows, but I never thought to see it done so badly or callously. Didn’t you bother to keep track of the boy’s nurse? Didn’t you pay her enough to take care of him on her own?”
That flummoxed her. “Pay her enough! What are you talking about?”
“The child you obviously handed over to someone else to raise.” As he rounded on her, icy anger and betrayal glimmered in his gaze. “The son you obviously bore Lieutenant Ruston.”