“To—to bed?” she echoed faintly.
“Y-yes,” he mimicked. “More comfortable, you know.”
She looked about her again. As far as she could ascertain, his shabby lodgings comprised two rooms. There was no bed in this one. Her face grew warm. “Well, then, good night,” she said politely.
Mr. Demowery considered this briefly. “I’m foxed, darlin’, so maybe I’m not hearing straight—but that sounded om’nously like a dismissal.”
“You expressed intentions of retiring.”
“And you ain’t ‘retiring’ with me?”
“Good heavens, I should hope not. I should not be in your lodgings in the first place. It’s most improper.”
“Sweetheart, I can’t decide,” he began slowly, after he’d mulled over these remarks as well, “whether you’re insane or if you’re horribly ungrateful. Didn’t I just pay fifty quid for you?”
Her face flushed, this time with indignation. “You have preserved me from a fate reputed to be worse than death. I asked you to do so. It’s completely illogical that I should express gratitude by doing exactly what I wished to avoid in the first place.”
As he stood gazing at her, his puzzled expression gave way to a rueful smile. “Very complicated reasoning, mlove. Too complicated for me.” He lifted her out of the chair, and, oblivious to her startled protests or the two small fists pounding on his chest, carried her to the bedroom and dropped her onto the bed.
“I will not cooperate,” she gasped.
“No, of course you won’t. It’s just my luck, ain’t it, this night of all the rest?” He turned and left the room.
Catherine lay upon the mattress, frozen with apprehension. Less than an hour before, her main concern had been escaping a place that could have been one of Dante’s Circles of Hell. Now, evidently, she’d leapt out of the pan into the flames. She’d left home for excellent reasons with a logical plan. Now she could not believe she’d been so naive, so horribly misguided. She had fled what promised to be a life of wretchedness and rushed headlong into what had speedily become the most horrid two—or three or four, she hardly knew—days of her existence.
Despite his drunkenness and apparent penchant for squalor she had believed that her benefactor was not entirely sunk to the depths of depravity. Yet, instead of taking her directly to the authorities, he’d carried her over his shoulder like a sack of corn to his lodgings and clearly expressed intentions of bedding her.
Perhaps he too meant to drug her. Mayhap even now he was preparing some foul concoction and would come back to force it down her throat. Catherine scrambled out of the bed and ran to open the window. It was stuck shut. Furthermore, there were three floors between herself and the ground and no visible means of descent.
Her panicked gaze darted about the room. She dashed to grab the basin from the washstand. Let him try, she told herself. Just let him try.
And if she did somehow miraculously succeed in overpowering a man nearly twice her size, what then? Where would she go, alone, in the middle of the night in this alien, hostile city? One crisis at a time, she counselled herself, as she crept to the door. She tried to close it quietly, but it would not shut altogether. Frustrated, she looked for a position from which she might take her attacker unawares.
At that moment she heard from the room beyond the terrifying noises by means of which primitive man once warned away the creatures skulking near his cave at night. She crept closer to the door and listened. It was true. Mr. Demowery was snoring.
For all that the sound might have in bygone days frightened away wild beasts, Miss Pelliston found it reassuring. She would wait another quarter hour to be absolutely certain he was asleep for the night. Papa was known to lose consciousness over his dinner—apparently dead to the world—then suddenly start up again minutes later, quarrelling with her as if he’d been awake the whole time.
Catherine was very weary, and the steady rhythm of that snoring made her drowsy. She looked longingly at the bed. She would lie down just for a few minutes and think what to do next. The few minutes stretched into half an hour, at the end of which Miss Pelliston too was fast asleep.
Chapter Two
The sun, which had risen many hours earlier, strove in vain to penetrate the grimy window as Clarence Arthur Maximilian Demowery awoke. He was not at all surprised at the great whacking and thundering inside his head, since he had awakened in this state nearly every day of the past six months. He was very much surprised, however, to find himself sprawled face down on a tattered piece of carpet in front of the sooty fireplace. Gingerly, he turned over on his side. A pair of shabby bandboxes blocked his view.
“Now where in blazes did you come from?” he asked. Though he spoke aloud, he was startled to hear a faint moan in reply. Had he moaned? From what seemed a great distance he heard a cough. Then he remembered.
He’d gone to Granny Grendle’s to enjoy one last night of nonrespectablility. There he’d found a curiosity and had brought it—or her, rather—back with him. Though he was not at the moment certain why he’d done so, he was hardly surprised. As a child he’d regularly carried home curiosities of various sorts: insects, reptiles, and rodents, primarily. He wondered how his father would respond to this particular trophy. At eight and twenty, Max was too old and much too large to be spanked. Anyhow, there was no reason to enlighten his father regarding this or any other of the past six months’ adventures.
A second faint moan from the bedroom dragged Mr. Demowery to his feet. Not only his head but his muscles ached, jogging his memory regarding several other details.
He’d gotten into a brawl in a low brothel, after which he’d also parted with fifty pounds for the privilege of hearing a bit of muslin show her gratitude by politely denying him the favours he’d so extravagantly paid for.
He hauled his weary body to the partially open bedroom door and glared at the frail form entangled in the bedclothes. A cloud of light brown hair billowed over the pillow, veiling what seemed to be a very small face, out of which poked a straight, narrow little nose. Gad, he thought in sudden self-disgust—she’s only a child.
At that moment the object of his scrutiny opened her eyes, and his heart sank. They were wide, innocent hazel eyes whose expression changed from child-like wonder to fear in the instant it took her to recall where she was.
“How old are you?” he asked abruptly, feeling unaccountably frightened himself and therefore more annoyed.
“One and twenty,” she gasped.
“Hah!” He marched away from the door and threw himself into a chair.
Steadfastly he ignored the sounds that issued from the bedroom—the rustle of bedclothes, the splash of water, more rustling, and some thumps. He pretended not to see her creep out to grab her bandboxes and scurry back to the room again, pushing the stubborn door half-closed behind her.
When she finally emerged, he thrust past her into the bedroom and took an abnormally long time about his own washing up. Was that what he’d brought home? Dressed in a sober grey frock, with all that glorious hair yanked back into a vicious little knot, she seemed neither the curious baggage he’d taken her for last night nor the child he’d believed was swaddled in his bedclothes.
Yet the frock and bun matched what he recalled of her conversation. She had sounded like a schoolmistress last night, and that in combination with the personal charms he’d briefly glimpsed had appealed to his sense of humour— or maybe his sense of the absurd was more like it. Such a creature was not at all what one expected to find in an establishment such as Granny Grendle’s.
Max Demowery was no wet-behind-the-ears schoolboy. He’d had considerable experience with the frail sorority in England and abroad, in the course of which he’d heard any number of pathetic tales. He’d not actually believed her story, but had taken her away because she amused him. Purchasing her from the old bawd had seemed a fitting conclusion to his six month orgy of dissipation.
Not until the young woman had declined to reward him as he?
??d expected had he, drunk as he was, begun to wonder whether her tale was true. Besides, he’d never yet forced himself upon a woman.
That was as far as he’d been able to reason at the time. Today, in the clear, too-bright light of early afternoon, he found a deal more to puzzle and distress him. A common strumpet he could put back upon the streets without a second thought, assuming confidently that she must be able to survive there or she would never have reached the advanced age of one and twenty. Suppose, however, she wasn’t street goods?
Suppose nothing, he told himself as he savagely scoured his face with the towel. If he had a sense of impending doom, that was because he was hungry and out of sorts. He’d give her some money and send her on her way.
He was debating whether to shave now or after breakfast when he heard the door to the hall creak. Flinging away the towel, he hurried out of the room to find the young woman attempting to close the door behind her without dropping her bandboxes.
He ought to have breathed a sigh of relief and cried good riddance, but he caught a glimpse of her face and found himself asking instead, “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
Her guilty start caused her to drop one of her boxes. “Oh. I was leaving. That is, I should never have abused your hospitality in the first place. I mean, I should never have fallen asleep—”
“Ah, you meant to leave in the dead of night.”
“Yes. No.” She reached up to push back under her dowdy bonnet a wispy curl that had broken loose from its moorings.
Part of his brain was wondering why she’d made herself so deuced unattractive, while the other part watched, fascinated, as she struggled not to look frightened. Each step in the process of composing herself was evident in her face, and most especially in her large, expressive eyes.
“What I mean is, this is a very awkward situation. Moreover, I have put you out dreadfully, and therefore it seemed best to go away and leave you in peace. I’m sure you must have a great deal to do.”
“You might have said goodbye first. It’s usually done in the best circles.”
“Oh, yes. I’m so sorry. I never meant to be rude.” She picked up the bandbox. “Goodbye, then,” she said. “No, that’s not all. Thank you for all you’ve done. I will repay you—the fifty pounds, I mean. I’ll send it here, shall I?”
Though Mr. Demowery didn’t know what he’d expected, he was sure it wasn’t this. He was also certain that, even if she were not a child, she might as well be, so frail was she and so utterly naive and so very lost—like some fairy sprite that had wandered too far from its woodland home.
This fanciful notion irritated him, making him speak more harshly than he intended. “You’ll do no such thing. What you will do is leave hold of those ridiculous boxes and sit yourself down and eat some breakfast.”
“Sit,” he repeated when she began backing towards the stairs. “If you won’t on your own, I’ll help you.”
She bit her lip. “Thank you, but I’d much rather you didn’t.” She re-entered, dropped the bandboxes, marched to a chair, and sat down. “I’ve been flung about quite enough,” she added in a low voice, her narrow face mutinous.
“Beg your pardon, ma’am—Miss Pettigrew, if I remember aright—but you picked an uncommon careless and impatient chap as your rescuer. Right now I’m impatient for my breakfast. It’ll take a while, I’m afraid, because my landlady is the slowest, stupidest slattern alive. While I’m gone, I hope you don’t get any mad notions about sneaking away. You’re in the middle of St. Giles’s. If you don’t know what that means, I suggest you think about Cholly and Jos and imagine several hundred of their most intimate acquaintance upon the streets. That should give you a notion, though a rosy one, of the neighbourhood.”
Catherine’s host returned some twenty minutes later bearing a tray containing a pot of coffee and plates piled with slabs of bread, butter, and cheese.
They ate in silence for the most part, Mr. Demowery being preoccupied with assuaging his ravenous hunger, and Miss Pettigrew (nee Pelliston) being unable to form any coherent sentence out of the muddle of worries besetting her. Only when he was certain no crumbs remained did Max turn his attention again to his guest.
Now that his stomach was full and his head relatively clear, he wondered anew what had come over him last night. She was not at all in his style. He was a tall, powerfully built man and preferred women who weren’t in peril of breaking if he touched them. Full-bosomed Amazons were his type—lusty, willing women who didn’t mind if a man’s head was clouded with liquor and his manners a tad rough and tumble, so long as his purse was a large and open one.
He was amazed that, after taking one look at this stray, he had not stormed back to Granny Grendle to demand a more reasonable facsimile of a female. Miss Pettigrew appeared woefully undernourished, so much so that he’d thought her smaller than she actually was. In fact, she was so scrawny that he wondered just what had seemed so intriguing last night. This, however, troubled him less than the realisation that he’d come so close to forcing his great, clumsy person upon this young waif.
He’d never had a taste for the children who walked the streets of London by night and populated its brothels, though he knew of many fine fellows who did. Had six months wallowing through every sort of low life in a last, desperate attempt to enjoy something like freedom finally rotted his character and corrupted his mind?
Still, he dismally reminded himself, there would be no more such excursions into London’s seamier locales. If he sought feminine company in the future, he’d be obliged to do so in the accepted way. He would go through the tiresome negotiations required to set up some Fashionable Impure as his mistress. Even the assuaging of simple carnal needs would be complicated by some infernally convoluted etiquette. He refused to think about the greater complications he could expect when he acquired a wife—and the passel of heirs his father impatiently awaited.
Mr. Demowery glowered at the elf—or whatever she was—and was further annoyed at the fear that leapt into her eyes. “Oh, I ain’t going to eat you,” he snapped. “Already had my breakfast.”
“Yes,” she answered stiffly. “I’m amazed you had the stomach for it. My f—that is, some people are quite unfit for taking any sustenance after a night of overindulgence.”
She winced—no, actually, she ducked. Dimly he recalled seeing that nervous movement before. He wondered if it were a tic.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. You were very kind to share your breakfast with me. Thank you.” She stood up. “I should not keep you any longer. I’ve put you out quite enough, I expect.” After a brief hesitation, she put out her hand. “Goodbye, Mr. Demowery.”
Remembering his manners, he rose to accept the proffered handshake. What a small white hand it was, he thought as his own large tanned paw swallowed it up. That realisation also annoyed him, and he was about to hurry her on her way when he glanced at her face. Her expressive hazel eyes gave the lie to the rigid composure of her countenance. Her eyes said distinctly, “I am utterly lost, utterly frantic.”
Mr. Demowery’s own face assumed an expression of resignation. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where you’re going?”
“Of course I do. My friend—the friend I had intended to visit—”
“I can’t imagine what sort of friend would let an ignorant young miss find her own way from a coaching inn through a strange city, but I suppose that’s none of my business. Soil, I ain’t ignorant, and I know that if you were foolish enough to be cozened by that old strumpet, you’ll never make it to this friend of yours on your own. If you’ll give me a few minutes to change into something I haven’t slept in, I’ll take you.”
“O—that’s very kind of you, but not at all necessary. I can find my way in broad daylight, I’m sure.”
“Not in this neighbourhood, sweetheart. Night or day is all the same to the rogues about here.”
She paused. Obviously, she was weighing the perils of the squalid streets against the dangers of accepting h
is protection. She must have concluded that he was the lesser of two evils, because she soon managed a squeaky thanks, then began an intensive survey of the ragged corner of carpet on which she stood.
Max Demowery did not consider himself a Beau of Society. The process of shaving and changing was therefore accomplished in short order. A few fierce strokes with his brush were enough to subdue his tangle of golden hair, and with scarcely a glance into the stained mirror he strode out to rejoin his guest.
Not until they had nearly reached their destination— Miss Collingwood’s Academy for Young Ladies—did the sense of impending doom return to settle upon Mr. Demowery’s brow. A school?
He stole a glance at the young woman beside him. She looked like a schoolteacher, certainly, and her air and manners, not to mention her speech, bespoke education and good breeding. It was as he had feared: She was respectable and her story had been true and though all that had been evident by the time they’d left his lodgings, only now did the implications occur to him. Any respectable woman who’d spent two nights as she had just done was ruined— if, that is, anyone learned of the matter.
He halted abruptly and grabbed Miss Pettigrew’s arm. “I say, you’d better not tell anyone where you’ve been, you know. That is,” he went on, feeling vaguely ashamed as the hazel eyes searched his face, “you may not have considered the consequences.”
“Good grief, do you think I’ve considered aught else? I shall have to tell a falsehood and pray I’m not asked for many details. I shall say I was delayed and pretend that my message to that effect must have gone astray. It must be simple,” she explained, “because I’m not at all adept at lying.”
This being a perfectly sensible conclusion, Mr. Demowery had no reason to be sharp with her, but he answered before he stopped to reason. “Good,” he snapped. “I’m relieved you don’t have any hard feelings. I did, after all, take you to my lodgings in opposition to your expressed wishes. Another woman would have exacted the penalty.”