Tarnished Amongst the Ton Read online

  Waiting was the hardest thing, Phyllida thought as she stood behind the door. The window opposite was wide open, curtains flapping. The posts at the corners of the bed were not part of the structure, she had discovered, merely supports for manacles. With a shudder at the thought of how they had been used, she had tugged one free of the brackets that held it, then jammed it across the window opening before tying the long tail of plaited sheets to it.

  The makeshift rope would not hold her weight, she knew, but it served its purpose if it drew her captors to the window and gave her the chance to slip out the door.

  It seemed hours before the household began to stir. Footsteps outside had her tensing every muscle, but they passed by. Women’s voices, low male replies, a shriek of laughter, the bang of the knocker.

  Then, with shocking suddenness, loud shouting, a crash from far below, screams and the report of a pistol. A raid by the magistrates? She hardly dared hope.

  The door opened without her hearing any footsteps. Phyllida braced herself to run. The man strode towards the middle of the room and as he did so a big black bird landed on the sill with a harsh croak.

  ‘Lucifer!’

  The man spun on his heel. ‘Phyllida!’

  ‘Ashe. Ashe.’ She fell into his arms laughing and sobbing.

  ‘Are you all right? Have they—?’

  ‘No. No, just very frightened,’ she admitted.

  ‘But not so frightened you could not think,’ he said with a glance at the open window, the shattered mirror and stripped bed. ‘Clever. That could have worked.’

  ‘You!’ Buck burst into the room behind them, blood on his face, a wicked knife in his hands. He waved it at Phyllida. ‘You bitch, I’ll gut you.’

  ‘You’ll go through me to do it.’ Ashe drew a long blade from his sleeve. Feet pounded along the corridor, voices shouting in a foreign tongue coming closer.

  Buck looked like a cornered rat. He bared yellow teeth at Ashe. ‘Some other time. You’ll pay.’

  He was at the open window in one long stride, threw a leg over the sill and ducked out, his big hands grasping the sheet rope. Lucifer gave a sharp caw and flapped away into the alley.

  ‘No! It won’t hold,’ Phyllida shouted as Buck vanished from sight.

  There was a sharp cry from the bird, a scream of ‘Get away from my eyes, you—’ from below the open window, then a sickening thud.

  The room filled with silent, turbaned men. One man leaned out of the window and spoke to Phyllida in a language she did not understand, then, as suddenly as they had appeared, they melted back, leaving her alone with Ashe.

  ‘Oh, God. I’ve killed him?’ She had never meant it as a trap, had never meant to do more than create a diversion.

  ‘You are responsible for nothing. He lived the life he chose and he died of its consequences,’ Ashe said harshly. ‘If anyone killed him, it was Lucifer. Come on.’

  ‘Where are his men?’ She followed him into the corridor and down the stairs.

  ‘Engaged in a battle royal with your friend Ashok and his followers in the basement, by the sound of it.’

  She saw the way his eyes went to the head of the lower stairs, the tension in his body. ‘Go. I will be all right here now.’

  ‘No.’ He turned away and led her to the front door. ‘That is Ashok’s fight now. We agreed he would deal with Buck and his men, and he’ll take the spoils of that. My part was to find you.’

  ‘What would you have done if Buck had not fallen?’

  Ashe took her arm and strode up the street towards Smithfield. A hackney carriage stopped at the top of the road and he hailed it, then turned to look down at her, but he answered only obliquely. ‘He touched you, threatened you, put fear in your eyes. Now we get clear of here before someone calls the law.’

  He would have killed Buck, she saw it in the cold, hard glitter of his eyes, the set of his jaw, and offered up a silent prayer of thanks that in the end it had been an accident and there was no blood on Ashe’s hands.

  ‘Now what happens?’ she asked as they sat back on the battered squabs of the carriage and it rattled into motion.

  ‘I take you home and we say nothing to anyone of this. I will speak to Ashok in the morning, make certain everything is tidied up.’

  Make certain Buck is dead, you mean, she thought, but did not say it. ‘I had not realised that Ashok was more than a trader,’ she ventured. It seemed that Ashe was not yet ready of speak of what now lay between them.

  ‘In his way he is as hard and as ruthless as Buck,’ Ashe said. ‘You will not go into the East End again, too many people have taken notice of you now.’

  Part of her wanted to defy him, simply because he was giving her orders, but she knew he was right and she would have come to the same conclusion herself. ‘I was going to get a manager for the shop, once Gregory was settled. I will do that now; there is a man at one of the auction houses who I have in mind.’

  ‘And what will you do to occupy yourself?’ Ashe asked.

  The tiny flame of hope that had flickered into life when he had taken her in his arms in that sordid room wavered and died. Ashe was not going to say they could put it all behind them, carry on as they were before she had met Buck again. But then, how could he? He had learned that she had sold her body, had been prepared to keep that from him at the risk of a scandal that would tarnish his whole family if it came out. And she had always known, deep in her heart, that a marriage was impossible.

  ‘I will do what I always planned, go and live in the Dower House.’ There was silence between them, a heavy stillness that felt physically hard to break. After a minute she said, ‘I will tell you what happened, when—’

  ‘No. I do not want to hear. It is not my business.’ Ashe was looking out of the window as though Leadenhall Street was of abiding fascination.

  ‘You saved me just now. You know what he was going to do.’

  ‘I would have done the same for any woman I knew to be in that danger,’ Ashe said politely, as though she had thanked him for rescuing her parasol from a gust of wind.

  I love you.

  They sat without speaking until the hackney turned into King Street and passed Almack’s. They would be in Great Ryder Street at any moment.

  ‘I would not have married you. I never intended to,’ Phyllida said hurriedly. ‘I knew I could not because of what had happened, how it happened. I was wrong not to have been stronger right from the start, never to have allowed you to kiss me, never to have let this farce of a courtship go on as it has while I let myself dream.

  ‘You will not hear my story and I understand why not. You are very angry and I have put you to a great deal of trouble, let alone embarrassment and danger. But I want you to realise that I would never have compromised your honour by becoming your wife. I could never have married you and kept this a secret from you, even if your honour had not mattered to me.’

  Her house key was in her hand now as the carriage drew to a halt. Phyllida pushed the door open and jumped down before Ashe could move. She stood on the pavement and took a last, long look at his face. ‘I love you, you see. Goodbye, Ashe.’ Then she turned and hurried up the steps, thrust the key in the lock and was inside before she heard his booted feet hit the pavement.

  I love you, you see. The door slammed shut. Goodbye. That had been final.

  ‘You getting back in, guv’nor, or is this it?’ the cabby demanded.

  Ashe gave him the address and climbed inside again. Is this it? the man had asked. Was it? He should be glad. Phyllida was safe, he was saved from a highly unsuitable marriage, the slums were free of Harry Buck, an unsavoury predator upon women who had met his just desserts.

  I love you. She did not mean it, did she? He had not tried to attach her emotionally, she had made no attempt to cling to him, to plead with him. Her eyes as she said it had been dry.

  Why had he not let her tell him her story? If she could bear to tell it, then he should have the patience to hear it. Then he realised that
it would have taken courage for him to sit and listen, that it mattered to him, more than an abstract story of an everyday outrage. It mattered because Phyllida mattered.

  Sara was alone in the drawing room when he walked in. ‘Whatever have you been doing? You look as though you have been in a fight!’

  ‘That is because I have been in a fight.’ He sank down on the sofa beside her and leaned his aching head on the cushioned back. ‘And don’t worry Mata by telling her.’

  ‘Of course not. Did you win?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Excellent.’ She picked up her embroidery and let him rest.

  ‘Sara, may I ask you something shocking? Something I should not even dream of speaking of to you?’

  ‘Is this something else I should not be telling Mata about? Of course you may.’

  Ashe sat up, rested his elbows on his knees and studied his clasped hands. ‘What would drive you to sell yourself? To give your body to a stranger, a man who revolted you. Hunger?’

  ‘No!’ He felt the movement as she shook her head vehemently. ‘I would rather starve.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Well, the money would be a reason, otherwise why do it? But…’ She fell silent for a while, thinking. ‘I would do it if it would save Mata from some awful danger. Or for you or Papa. If one of you were sick and there was no money for a doctor and medicines, then nothing else would matter.’

  She said it earnestly, obviously meaning it. After a moment she moved close to him and put her hand on his arm. ‘Is that why you were in a fight?’

  ‘Yes. She was very young.’

  ‘Oh, poor thing,’ Sara said compassionately. ‘Is there anything I can do to help her?’

  ‘No, she’s safe now.’ I have broken her heart, but she’s safe. Ashe got to his feet. ‘I’m going out, probably won’t be home for dinner.’

  Fransham, when he finally ran him to earth, was at White’s, dozing over a newspaper in a quiet corner of the library. ‘Clere! Have a drink.’ He waved to the waiter and tossed the paper aside. ‘You’re looking uncommonly serious.’

  Ashe had washed, changed, combed his hair, before he had left home, but it seemed he had not been able to scrub away the darkness in his mind. ‘I wanted to ask you something personal, something you probably don’t want to talk about. Only it affects Phyllida and I need to understand.’ Understand not only Phyllida, not only what had driven her to that desperate act, but himself. How he felt for her, why he ached inside, why he felt worse than he had when Reshmi had died.

  ‘All right.’ Gregory sat up and poured a couple of glasses of brandy. ‘Ask away, I can always punch you on the nose if you get too personal.’

  ‘Phyllida told me about your parents, why they didn’t marry until after she was born. But what happened when your mother died? She didn’t seem able to talk about it.’

  Fransham’s face clouded. ‘God, that was an awful time. She told you how unreliable our father was? Well, the time he spent with us got less and less—and so did the money. And then Mama got sick. Consumption, the doctor said. We did the best we could. I was fifteen and I got a job with the local pharmacist, just a dogsbody, really, but he paid me in medicine. Phyllida was seventeen and she ran the house and nursed Mama and kept writing to Papa.

  ‘He never answered, so in the end she scraped together enough money for the stage and set off to London to find him. She came back a month later, looking ghastly, and said he’d died in a tavern brawl. Knock on the head and too much drink. She’d seen the lawyers and they said there was some assets and more debts. I was the earl, and that kept the creditors at bay for a bit, but it was too late for Mama. She died a week after Phyll got home.’

  ‘If she took only enough money for the stage, how had she lived in London?’ Ashe asked, knowing the answer only too well. She could have turned around and gone home when she didn’t find her wastrel father at once, but she had hung on, kept searching even though she was starving.

  ‘Got some odd jobs, I suppose. I never asked, what with Mama and the news about Father.’ Gregory scrubbed his hand over his face. ‘I should have thought. She was as thin as a rake, took her ages to put the weight back on.’

  So she had sold herself for the money to stay alive while she found her father, because if she did not then her mother and brother would starve. And the world would think—he had thought, damn it—that what she had done dishonoured her. And she believed that if she married him it would compromise his honour.

  ‘I have fallen out with Phyllida,’ Ashe said bluntly. ‘I’ve hurt her and I doubt she’ll open the door to me now.’

  ‘Do I need to name my seconds?’ Gregory asked and set his glass down with a snap.

  ‘No. You need to give me your door key and eat dinner out. In fact, I suggest you go and beg the Millingtons for a bed for the night.’

  ‘The devil you say!’ But Gregory was pulling the key out of the pocket in the tail of his coat.

  ‘Don’t ask and I won’t have to lie to you. Thanks.’

  ‘You had better be intending to marry her,’ Gregory warned. ‘I’ve been a damned slack brother, but I mean to do the right thing by her now.’

  ‘I can ask. Only Phyllida can accept,’ Ashe said and pocketed the key.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ashe let himself into the house in Great Ryder Street with the care of a burglar. The ground floor was silent, but he could hear the murmur of voices from the basement, the clang of copper pans. Soft-footed, he moved to the top of the stairs and listened. Three feminine voices, none of them Phyllida’s.

  They were devoted to her, he knew that from observing Anna. Whether that devotion would move them to fillet him with a boning knife or help him, he had no idea, but he could hardly be alone and uninterrupted with Phyllida unless they knew he was there from the start.

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  The cook dropped the ladle she was holding and the little maid gave a squeak of alarm. Anna jumped up from the chair by the range where she had been mending and marched up to confront him. ‘What did you do to her? You got her away from Buck, I’ll say that for you, but she’s shut herself away in her bedchamber and she won’t talk to me, or come out. If you’ve hurt Miss Phyllida, you rakehell, his lordship will beat your brains out and we’ll cheer him on!’

  ‘I didn’t do anything to her,’ Ashe said and sat down in a chair by the kitchen table, neatly unsettling Anna who did not seem to know how to deal with gentlemen lounging at the table, stealing Cook’s still-warm jam tarts. ‘I managed to say the wrong things, not say the right ones, and comprehensively put my foot in it with her. So, yes, I’ve hurt her, but not the way I suspect you mean, Anna.’

  He laid the key on the table. ‘That’s Lord Fransham’s, by the way. He knows I am here and he won’t be in now until tomorrow.’

  ‘So that’s the way it is,’ Anna said and sat down too.

  ‘If you’re all going to eat those tarts, I’d best put the kettle on,’ Cook said, suiting her actions to her words. ‘Get the tea caddy, Jane.’

  ‘Are you in love with Miss Phyllida?’ Anna demanded. Ashe raised his eyebrows at her tone, but she was not to be intimidated and sat there glaring at him while she waited for an answer.

  Am I? ‘Do you think I’d tell you before I tell her?’ he asked. ‘I do not mean her harm, that I promise you.’

  Cook passed him a cup of tea and pushed the plate of tarts closer. ‘Well, get your strength up. You’ll need it,’ she added darkly.

  She could not stay in her room for the rest of her life. Nor the rest of the day, come to that. Phyllida swung her legs over the edge of the bed and ran out of energy to stand up.

  This would not do. Life had to go on and Gregory would be worried and the staff would fret if she hid herself away like a lovelorn adolescent. There was much to be done, that would help. A manager to find for the shop, the Dower House to whip into habitable shape, Gregory’s wedding to plan for.

  Goodness, she would be
so busy she would forget Ashe Herriard in a few days. Oh, who was she deceiving? Not herself, obviously. Phyllida lay down again, curled up into a miserable ball and stubbornly refused to cry. A girl was entitled to mourn for a day when her heart was broken, she told herself with a rather hysterical attempt at humour.

  The door opened. ‘Go away, Anna. I do not want to be disturbed.’ It closed again, but there were soft footfalls, the sound of breathing. ‘Anna, please go away. Tell Cook I will not be down to dinner and say to Lord Fransham that I have a headache.’

  ‘Lord Fransham will not be in to dinner. He is staying the night with the Millingtons.’

  Ashe? Phyllida uncurled and sat bolt upright. ‘What the devil are you doing here? I said goodbye and I meant it.’ How could he come and mock her like this?

  Ashe sat down on the side of the bed. ‘I was shocked. I was shaken and I was horrified and above all I was hurting and I had no idea why,’ he said abruptly. ‘Then I made myself think. No woman sells herself unless she is desperate, or foolishly thinks prostitution is an easy way of life. And you are neither stupid nor wanton. I ought to have had that clear in my head. I recalled what you had said about your father, how your family had been abandoned and so I asked Gregory about the time just before your mother died.’

  ‘You told him what I did?’ It would kill Gregory to know she had been driven to that.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Ashe scrubbed one hand across his face. ‘I might have made a thoroughgoing mess of this, but he has no idea why I asked him. What he told me made sense and I knew why you had no choice. Damn it, Phyllida, if a man fought and killed for honour and to protect his family, then everyone understands, thinks he’s a fine fellow. If a woman puts herself through hell for her family, sacrifices everything short of her life, then she is called a whore and is ruined.’

  He twisted round to face her fully. ‘I should have had that straight in my mind and I should have told you that was what I thought, there and then. What you did for your family was courageous and honourable. When you wanted to tell me about it, I should have listened and reassured you and comforted you.’