Loving Lily: Fair Cyprians of London: a Steamy Victorian Romantic Mystery Read online

  “I cannot agree to any terms if I do not know what you are offering me.”

  He gave another of his slight, dismissive shrugs. “I can return you to your husband, or you can agree to work for me. Women are ungovernable creatures ruled solely by their emotions, and yours have clearly got the better of you too many times for your own good. No, you will be told what is required of you in good time to be properly equipped for your role. Disappointingly, I will have to wait for you to gain some flesh, and a bloom to burnish your sallow, filthy skin before you bear any resemblance to the woman you once were. But I am patient. After a few weeks of nourishment and training, I trust you will be ready to put our little plan into practice. And did I mention that there would be rewards for both of us?”

  Now Lily truly did tremble. She was to be used for someone else’s ends, yet he would tell her neither whose ends nor what her role was?

  She glanced uneasily over her shoulder at the disappearing asylum, a tiny speck on the hill, and then at her boots. Her stomach growled audibly.

  “What say you to a saddle of beef and a bottle of claret when we reach our lodgings? Something substantial to sustain us before the crossing tomorrow.”

  Food.

  Mr Montpelier knew how easy it would be to make her sing to his tune.

  Her stomach growled again. But what did that matter when she’d sell her soul for a saddle of beef and a bottle of claret? A few more months at the maison, and she suspected that in her currently weakened and ill-nourished state, she’d be dead from any number of the diseases that swept through on a regular basis.

  “I say that the prospect of such a meal sounds delightful!”

  Her tinkling response landed badly when received with his usual dour contempt. “The street urchin trying to sound like a lady.” He looked amused as he narrowed his eyes. “That’s what they will make of you.” Then he sobered, and added, “Those who don’t know who, and what, you truly are.”

  Lily met his stare, unafraid. She would agree to Mr Montpelier’s terms because he was returning her to England. Not to her husband. In a day or two, she would be back in the land of her birth.

  Once in London, amidst the press of traffic, it would be easy to do what she now intended must be her only course. She would flee the carriage and, on foot if necessary, make her way to where her aunt lived in Norfolk. Aunt Kerridge would keep Lily safe until Lily found a means to support herself.

  It was even possible Robert did not know she was missing.

  “A saddle of beef and a bottle of claret,” she sighed, dreamily, stretching and closing her eyes as a feeling of contented satisfaction enveloped her. Mr Montpelier thought he was so clever, abducting her so he could make her do his bidding.

  But he’d met his match.

  “I’d agree to anything,” she added, “for a saddle of beef and a bottle of claret.”

  Chapter 3

  Hamish McTavish tapped his fingers on his knee, quietly impatient at the delay caused by the cooper’s wagon blocking Bond Street. The driver had jumped down to inspect the wheel, and now the horses were getting restless.

  As was his sister, though that was nothing new. Lucy had been complaining about something for the past few minutes, but Hamish had been too busy thinking of his forthcoming interview with Sir Lionel to pay her any mind.

  Until she thrust an object onto his lap, demanding, “I tell you, it’s shoddy work, Hamish, and I shall demand my money back. Already the flowers are detaching from my new bonnet—”

  “Good luck with that,” he muttered, casting a dispassionate look at the floral confection resting on his thigh then at his sister’s pretty, indignant face. “Papa thought it looked mighty becoming, and that’s saying something. You do realise the girl who made it is lucky to earn enough to put one square meal on the table from her labours?”

  Lucy sighed, taking the bonnet back and thoughtfully fingering one of the silk blooms, before thrusting it back at him with the exhortation that he must see the stitching that was come undone, adding, “Papa only praised me in the hope of bending my will so I’ll yield and return home to live with him; which you know I will never do! And you always get so fired up about the poor and unfortunate, yet you never publish a word about injustice in your magazines. Anyone would think you were just like Papa.” She said this almost sorrowfully, and Hamish had to temper the hot retort that sprung to his lips. Little could get him riled up, but a barb like that, especially coming from his sister, needed to be treated with kid gloves. Though perhaps not quite as expensive as the ones his sister adored.

  “Which you know I am not,” he managed calmly, wrapping the reins about his wrist to prevent him flicking them in agitation when the horses were still at a standstill. Hamish was considering whether to enlarge upon his offence at being compared with his father when the incompetence of the carriage driver in front decided him that his assistance might expedite matters and get the traffic moving once more.

  Jumping down from the seat, one long ribbon of his sister’s bonnet became caught in his cufflink, and he stopped to extricate it in order to return the piece of millinery to his sister.

  What happened next caught him totally off-guard; for one moment, he was aware of a flurry of grey, and when he turned, Lucy was screaming, pointing at a figure that was now running across the road, the trailing pink ribbons suggesting that his sister’s unsatisfactory bonnet had just found a new home.

  “Catch her! Don’t worry about me!” Lucy exhorted him, still pointing at the figure of the beggar woman who’d just evaded death from beneath the wheel of a cooper’s wagon coming from the opposite direction.

  The dirty bundle of rags was in the process of picking herself up from the cobblestones before making a run for a group gathered beneath a shop awning, where she no doubt hoped to evade notice.

  Ducking and weaving between the carriages, Hamish tore off in pursuit. For all Lucy’s complaints, the bonnet had cost a pretty penny, but above all, he considered society was in a parlous state if law-abiding people waiting in carriages were not safe from such assaults on their liberty to go about their business.

  He stopped to let a dray go by, still keeping in sight the woman whom he saw ducking and weaving amongst the throng of shoppers. He might have lost her had a stretch of empty road not cleared up, and he was able to dart down a side street where he saw her in the distance.

  Lucy would either wait or make her own way home, for she’d made clear her priorities: the return of her bonnet. And although he’d decry he was as unlike his harsh and puritanical father as it was possible to be, Hamish was nevertheless concerned about upholding law and order. It would set a poor precedent if he couldn’t arrest a brazen thief in the middle of the day; and a delinquent young woman, at that.

  Yet, the brazen thief appeared to have outwitted him. Frustrated, he stood on the corner and shaded his eyes, scanning the cobbled street until, in the distance, he saw that the person had obviously been crouching in the shadows, pressed against a wall, before, perhaps perceiving it was safe, darting back into view, pausing, then dashing up a short flight of stairs and into a four-square dwelling, whose door had just opened. A couple of ladies were now stepping out onto the pavement.

  He would have been surprised at their lack of concern at being passed by a clearly desperate creature had he not drawn close enough to recognise the establishment as Madame Chambon’s notorious House of Assignation. Stories of desperation—and vice and villainy—were common enough here, he supposed, and although this was the last place Hamish would willingly step into, the street was now empty, and he had an excuse that was valid enough reason to satisfy his curiosity, though he told himself that mere curiosity had nothing to do with entering.

  If the thief was one of Madame Chambon’s girls, then she should be brought to justice.

  But as he stopped in the vestibule, breathing rather fast as he gazed about the sumptuous surroundings—which he put down to exertion only—he recollected that Madame Chambon’s
girls were renowned for being as refined and well-dressed as any duchess. Their beauty, poise, and wit made them highly sought after by the discerning male establishment looking for diversions their wives could not provide.

  No, this creature was an urchin. She most definitely was not one of Madame’s girls.

  “Sir, how can we help you?”

  The purr belonged to a young woman of considerable beauty and in accents that would have done any duchess, or person with pretensions to gentility, proud. For a moment, he could only stare. The light from the high window highlighted the sheen on her glossy dark ringlets, which were arranged in the elaborate curls and twists so fashionable at the time. Her gown would have had Lucy in raptures, except that the low cut of the bodice so early in the afternoon was just one indication of the woman’s calling.

  She really was a beauty, was his first thought.

  Then, what brought these creatures so low? he wondered as he realised, with embarrassment, that he’d obviously been mistaken for one of the clientele.

  “My sister’s bonnet was stolen just now, and the woman who snatched it ran into this establishment.”

  The young woman raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes as if the news was distressing to her personally. Then she smiled and put her hand on his arm. “A brazen crime like that can’t go unpunished. Can I offer you something while I despatch someone to search the premises?” She pressed a little closer, and he was assailed by the scent of violets. When he looked into her eyes, he saw that her own eyes were the colour of violets, also. She was, he thought, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  He glanced away, ashamed of the wave of raw desire that washed over him, reminding him that he really was so much more than the hot-blooded, tempestuous youth who’d left England in disgust at serving his father’s empire six years before, than the cold and reserved adult he must, these days, pretend to be for the world.

  He fought the impulse to humour the young woman with at least a smile, instead saying stiffly, “That would be appreciated.” And then, because he had to make it clear, in case she was under any misapprehension, adding, “I am here only to secure the return of my sister’s bonnet.”

  “I imagine a disgruntled sister would be highly vexatious to one’s afternoon plans, sir. Let me show you into the sitting room where you can wait while I make enquiries.” The young woman took his arm and led him through an entranceway hung with heavy red velvet curtains, into a room which, thankfully, was empty. Pausing on the threshold, she sent him an appraising smile, then added, “Perhaps another time.”

  “I doubt it, madam; no offence intended,” he murmured as he lowered himself onto a plush gold-tasselled settee and stared about him. The room was tastefully decorated, a portrait of the queen above the mantelpiece, several Turners—prints, of course—on the walls. It could have been the room of repose of any respectable person of his acquaintance.

  The house was surprisingly quiet. No other customers were about, thank goodness. He hadn’t thought of that. A chronic embarrassment it would have been—to both parties—had there been. Not that he expected he would have been recognised. He did not frequent houses of ill repute, and he supposed he was not likely to associate with those who did; though he’d discovered that even people one thought one knew well could surprise one.

  He frowned at an elegant porcelain vase on the sideboard filled with hothouse blooms of the variety his Aunt Madeleine favoured, his cheeks suddenly flaming up at the thought of conjuring up his redoubtable, fearsome aunt in a place like this.

  A few minutes later, he glanced up to see the beautiful young woman who’d admitted him standing in the doorway.

  “Madame Chambon has sent someone in search of the thief who will be found,” she assured him. She moved languidly towards a bellpull. “Would you like some tea while you wait?”

  He shook his head, despite the thought flitting into his mind that it would be a novelty to take tea with a beautiful woman like this one. In his busy life, he rarely had time to do more than squire his sister to the events where she wished for a male escort.

  “Will your sister be anxious that you’re gone so long?”

  He jerked his head up, surprised at such a reasonable question. In her fashionable, figure-hugging princess-line polonaise, she could have been anyone his sister associated with. Her accents, too, were polished. Yet, she was no one his sister could ever know. This woman had traded that right by choosing vice and its ill-gotten gains over respectability.

  “I’m afraid she will.” He sighed. “I’d just stepped out of the carriage to investigate a hold-up in the traffic, when the thief dashed past and opportunistically made off with the bonnet which my sister had just removed. Of course, I took off after her.”

  “A man of ungovernable passions, by the sound of things.”

  Through narrowed eyes, he took in her gentle humour.

  She was smiling at him. “I sense that you’ve never been in a house like this, and you’re uncomfortable. Yet your actions suggest you are prone to acting on impulse, nevertheless.” She raised an elegant hand when he opened his mouth to protest. “I’m not about to make any offers, have no fear of that, Mr…?” She looked at him inquiringly.

  “McTavish.”

  “And I am Celeste. And here is Madame Chambon with, it would appear, the person who is responsible for abducting your sister’s bonnet.” With an incline of her elegantly coiffured dark head, she withdrew from the room.

  And Hamish found himself face to face with the large-bosomed, fearsome red-headed Madame of the establishment, whose grip upon the elbow of a bedraggled creature reassured him she would not be escaping justice. Lucy’s pink-ribboned bonnet dangled from her hand.

  “Mr McTavish, I am sorry for the ills you and your sister have suffered this afternoon.” She huffed out a breath and gave the personage a shake. “I found her hiding in the cupboard beneath the stairs. This is yours, I take it.”

  Madame Chambon relieved the person of the bonnet and handed it to Hamish. “Rest assured she will be punished. Unless you would like to hand her over to the police, personally?”

  With Lucy’s bonnet safely in his possession, and the embarrassment of his surroundings weighing upon him, not to mention the amount of time he’d been absent, Hamish shook his head.

  He stared at the girl. Her face had a greyish hue to it, which he recognised from the malnourished poor he’d had occasion to administer to when they’d come to him asking for dispensation or favours. He was generally sympathetic to those who had so little, but he nevertheless had stern words for the girl.

  “Hard work will be rewarded, but theft cannot be condoned,” he said, frowning. “I’m sorry for your poverty, but it does not give you license to take what does not belong to you.”

  The young woman gave a slight toss of her head as she said proudly, “The bonnet was about to drop to the ground, sir. I merely snatched it up for safekeeping.”

  The effect of her performance was incongruous. She was like a shopgirl—no, a gin-sodden slattern for no shopgirl would present herself with the dirt ingrained in her skin and her hair in greasy strands—trying to imitate a duchess.

  Hamish was still trying to reconcile the modulated syllables that spilled from her mouth when Madame Chambon stepped forward. “I trust Celeste offered you refreshment, Mr McTavish?”

  “She did, thank you.” He was impatient, anxious to leave.

  Madame cleared her throat. “You did not wish to…” she hesitated, her smile cloying, “spend a little time in her company?”

  Horrified, Hamish shook his head then immediately added, for fear of causing offence, “Celeste was charming, but I…no.”

  “Perhaps you are not so fond of brunettes.” A thoughtful frown creased the woman’s forehead. She was still clutching the arm of the thief, and now she pushed the creature in front of him. “Celeste’s composure can be intimidating, I agree. Perhaps you prefer to…dominate.”

  Hamish tried to hide his horror
while his nostrils quivered with disgust. “No, I would never…” He checked himself. “I must go.”

  “So, you do not care what becomes of the baggage?

  Half-turning, Hamish sent a distracted look at the young woman. Her earlier dignity had deserted her, and now her frightened eyes looked much too large for her pinched face, and her mouth trembled.

  “I’m happy to spare her prosecution, if that’s what you mean?”

  “Please, sir!” The young woman put out her hand suddenly, and Hamish stepped back. “Please…help me.” She dropped her hand, and Hamish looked at her, in shock and surprise, before Madame laughed and said, “These thieving rings grow more brazen by the day. Listen to how she’s refined her accents for her pretty pleas.” She sighed. “I think they are lost on a kind sir who has exhausted his charity for one day, girl. Good day to you, Mr McTavish. It’s always a pleasure to assist handsome young men.” Madame began walking him up the passage, still grasping the young woman by the arm. “You know where to find us.”

  * * *

  Hamish stepped onto the street from a side entrance feeling lightheaded and disoriented by the bright sunlight.

  So that was what Madame Chambon’s establishment looked like from the inside.

  He’d heard tales of its infamy, and had he known where he was headed as he entered, he probably would have chosen to let the chit have Lucy’s bonnet rather than risk being seen where he definitely would never enter of his free will. The demimondaine was a vice-filled pit for which he had only contempt.

  He was retracing his footsteps along the pavement, Lucy’s bonnet dangling by its ribbon, when a tall, rangy gentleman with a sharp nose and eyes, and too-fashionably coiffed and oiled hair, and side-whiskers, approached him and asked, with a nod of his head indicating the bonnet, “You found her then? The woman who stole the bonnet?” He glanced with shifty eyes over Hamish’s shoulder at Madame Chambon’s famous establishment and flexed his bony fingers. “She’s in there?”