Eleven
Mrs Rice sat in the room behind her glove shop, sipping a glass of claret and mentally calculating the amount of money she could wring from her girls this night.
She frowned. She’d recruited one new girl, who was almost useless. Fit for nothing but streetwalking. Without Katy and Mary business had definitely slowed. Profits were down. At this rate, she might make more blunt with gloves than with harlots.
Trigg, the procurer who had let the maid slip through his hands, entered, wearing a smug look on his face.
‘I hope this means you have girls for me,’ Mrs Rice muttered.
‘I have information.’ He sauntered over to her table and leaned in close. She detested the odour of the man.
‘Well, what is it?’ She would love to get rid of Trigg, who was a bit too clever for her to control completely.
He grinned, showing yellow teeth. ‘Word is out that a society lady has them.’
‘A society lady.’ She could guess which society lady. ‘Her name?’
Trigg took a step back. ‘I will discover the name soon.’
Mrs Rice drummed her fingers on the table. ‘It is that woman.’ She hissed. ‘The one who charged in here big-as-you-please.’
Trigg’s brows rose. ‘Describe her.’
Mrs Rice huffed. ‘I cannot. She obscured her face.’
‘A Long Meg?’
‘Why, yes, she was a bit tall.’
He frowned and rubbed his head. ‘I know the one.’
A few minutes later Trigg stepped out into the street, pausing to take a swig from the bottle of gin he carried in his pocket. He headed for a pub he knew of, the place where an acquaintance had heard from another man that some footman spoke of females more like harlots who were guests in his lady’s house. It was thin evidence, and the man said the next day the footman denied it all, but Trigg did not relish hearing Rice ring a peal over his head. Besides, he wanted to believe it was that lady in the park. He’d be pleased to consign her to the devil, quick.
He stepped into an alley, for another quick taste of gin. Suddenly hands grabbed him from behind, dragging him deeper into the dark and he felt a cold edge of steel against his throat.
A sinister voice said, ‘I hear you’ve been asking questions about some missing doxies.’
Trigg nearly casting up his accounts, knew better than to show fear. ‘What of it?’ he growled.
The blade’s edge pierced his skin and he felt his blood trickling warm down his neck. ‘Stay out of it,’ the voice—a familiar voice, he realised—snarled. ‘If you want to keep your head.’ The knife made another slice, not deep, but Trigg was afraid to move lest it sever more than his skin.
‘What’s it to you?’ He tried to sound fierce, but his voice rose like a girl’s.
The man laughed and it was enough to make Trigg taste his own vomit. ‘I have them. The maid and that other one, too. The one who knocked you out. They are mine and the man who takes them from me will not live.’
Trigg tried to laugh, too, but succeeded only in making a gasping sound. ‘Why should I listen to you? Who are you?’
The chilling laugh returned. ‘I am the devil. Touch what is mine and I’ll have my due.’
Trigg was pushed forward, and he fell to his knees into a puddle of filth. By the time he scrambled to his feet and turned around, the man—the man from the park—had disappeared.
Sloane watched Trigg from the depths of the alley, the man silhouetted against the lamplight coming from St James’s Street. As he’d anticipated, Trigg broke into a run. Sloane figured he’d run all the way to whatever dirty hovel he called home.
He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the blood from his knife. Tossing the handkerchief away, he put the knife back in its sheath in his coat pocket. He left the alley from the back and made his way to the street.
When he stepped on to the pavement of St James’s Street, he looked like any other gentleman pursuing his nightly interests.
It was fortunate Sloane had refused Hannah’s offer of a carriage ride home. The day’s episodes with Morgana had left him disordered, restless, on edge. Having made his way to his post at Mrs Rice’s window, what he’d overheard fuelled his already taut nerves with something more dangerous. The violence of the underworld had taken a step closer to Morgana, and Sloane needed to push it back hard. It was a good night for intimidation. He’d halfway wished for an all-out brawl.
His tactic was misdirection. Trigg would now abandon his search for the ‘lady’ and begin looking for a tougher customer. Sloane wagered the man would not guess it was a resident of proper Culross Street who, as easy as the roughest rookery thief, used a knife to draw blood.
Sloane would return to spy on Mrs Rice’s place again, to make sure his trickery worked.
After thinking about it half the night, Morgana quite sorted it out in her mind that Sloane’s familiarity towards her had been her own fault. He’d seen how unladylike she could be, and, therefore, felt less gentlemanly restraint in her presence. She could still enjoy his company, but she must never mistake it for something more, not when he was intent on marrying Hannah. Better Morgana throw her energies into her girls.
They were gathered in the library, Madame Bisou having just arrived. Morgana happened to mention her invitation to Vauxhall.
Katy flung herself down on the settee. ‘Can we not all go to Vauxhall with you? I am sure I shall die if I spend one more day in this house.’
Morgana regarded Katy with sympathy. Her charges had indeed been trapped within the confines of this house, able to go no further than the tiny garden or the privy. Only Lucy had ventured beyond, but that was merely to the patch of land next door to assist Mr Elliot with his plantings.
‘We cannot chance Mrs Rice seeing us, Katy.’ Mary was at her most earnest. ‘She would make us go back to her.’
Katy waved her hand dismissively. ‘It is not as if Mrs Rice would go to Vauxhall. Besides, we could wear masks. They wear masks at Vauxhall Gardens, do they not?’
‘They do indeed,’ answered Madame Bisou, who gave Morgana a thoughtful look. ‘As I think of it, our girls could do with a bit of practice. We ought not to launch them upon the world without a trial. Do you not agree, Miss Hart?’
How could Morgana agree when she really had no wish to launch her students at all? Sloane’s words echoed in her mind—they would sell themselves to the highest bidder and still be at the mercy of a man’s whims. What if they could not match the success Harriette Wilson had achieved? What happened to failed courtesans?
She feared they would wind up in shops like Mrs Rice’s. Would all her hopes for the girls come to naught?
She had come too far to lose
