Page 22 of Lady Like
Though Harry assures her the establishment at which they will take shelter is a teahouse, they have barely crossed the threshold before Emily begins to have her doubts.
While the interior is painted in pinks and greens like any respectable tea-serving establishment, and china cups are laid out on each table, turned upside down on their saucers, it feels like the set of a play, accurate but unlived in.
Emily has the impression no one has ever pulled back any of these chairs from their respective tables to sit down to share a pot with a friend, nor unfolded the paper menus and perused the offerings.
The shop is empty but for a woman at the counter, her bodice displaying a fair amount more breasts than is typical of even a barmaid.
Her hair is an unnatural shade of red, like new-laid brick.
She shrieks in delight when she sees Harry and comes out from behind the counter to greet her.
“Darling Harry, my love!” She cups Harry’s face between her hands and kisses her upon the forehead—Harry, who seems to anticipate this, stoops down to receive it, like a blessing from the pope.
“It has been ages! Where have you hidden yourself? And you’re soaking wet, the pair of you!
” The woman turns to Emily. “Who is this?”
“A friend of mine,” Harry says. “Miss Sergeant, may I present Miss Pearl White.”
In Harry’s oversized coat, Emily is certain she looks like a rag shop granted the wish of becoming a person, but she still offers a hand in genteel greeting. “How do you do.”
“We were caught riding in the rain,” Harry says. “Do you mind if we kip up here for a bit?”
“You’ve rotten timing,” Pearl replies. “I’ve gents coming down any minute, so you’ll have to make yourselves scarce. But you can warm yourselves in the Cunt Cavity for now.”
“The…what?” Emily splutters, but Pearl must not hear her, for she holds out her arms.
“Let me hang your wet things for you.”
Harry helps Emily peel off her heavy coat, then passes over their duds to Pearl.
When both their backs are turned, Emily discreetly hooks a finger around one of the menus on the nearest table and flips it open.
Each thick page is etched not with baked goods and beverages, but rather with a different woman’s likeness and a list of their rates and particular skills, accompanied by revealing illustrations and phrases like discreet flagellation and luscious posterior in fancy calligraphy.
Emily is almost relieved to have had all her suspicions about Harriet Lockhart confirmed. Of course this wicked woman brought her to a brothel, and of course she is well known by the proprietress here.
“Miss Sergeant?”
Emily snaps the menu shut and turns. Harry, one step behind Pearl, is holding open a door at the back of the shop, waiting for her to follow.
“Coming?” she asks, and Emily barely bites back a bubble of hysterical laughter.
The hallway behind the shop is as anatomical as its name would suggest, with curved ceilings melting into arched columns, and everything painted in varying shades of pink.
The curtains lining the hallway too are pink, some drawn back to reveal the alcoves behind them, lined with paintings.
It is blessedly warm—though perhaps, Emily thinks, that too is meant to invoke a certain je ne sais genitalia.
But she is beginning to feel her toes again, so Emily follows Harry and Pearl down the corridor.
“You can take Exquisite Dandies, or The Dairy Maid’s Delight—I’ve the stove lit there,” Pearl says, pointing to each of the alcoves in turn. “I think the Arse Bishop of Canterbury’s free as well, though it’s farther from the fire.”
“The Dairy Maid’s will be the warmest,” Harry answers. She holds out a hand to Emily, seems to reconsider the context of leading a lady into one of these secluded chambers, and withdraws with a simple “After you.”
Pearl flips a sign beside the curtain, then says as she departs, “Let me see to my gents and I’ll be back.”
The Dairy Maid’s Delight is an alcove decorated with three paintings, one on each wall of the recess, and a small stove in the center.
Its belly smolders with thrillingly warm coals.
As Emily strips off her wet jacket and wraps herself in one of the quilts offered them by Pearl, she examines the paintings as discreetly as possible.
In the first, a dairy maid coyly churns butter while a gentleman in a soldier’s uniform enters her from behind.
The movement requires her round ass to be thrust out at such an improbable angle that it takes Emily a moment to work out whether it is one woman or two, for surely no one can stand so upright while contorting their hips so as to provide such easy access. And all while vigorously churning.
“I wouldn’t advise you sit there.”
Emily turns. Harry is barefooted, though she’s standing on her boots.
Her cheeks are red, and she coughs into her fist before nodding to the bench beside the stove onto which Emily had been considering swooning, though whether in shock at the art or from the lingering cold, she isn’t sure.
“Pearl does her best, but some things never wash away.”
Emily takes a quick step away from the bench. Then, just for good measure, a second step. “Right.”
Harry slings her stockings over the stove tray, which sizzles as the water drips down. “Upholstery may not have been the best choice.”
Emily’s reply dies in her throat as she notices the painting behind Harry, in which two women frolic together in a pastoral landscape.
Are they both women? she wonders, but yes—the anatomy is unmistakable.
Emily scans the painting, searching for the man that is surely pleasuring himself in the nearby tall grass or concealed in a tree and about to leap upon them, but it’s just the ladies.
One wears a tricorn and tails, though her hair is long and loose.
Her improbable bosom on full display as she hefts up the skirt of the presumably titular dairy maid.
“Miss Sergeant,” Harry says, and Emily blinks.
“Beg pardon?”
“I asked if you’d like me to hang your socks.”
“Oh, that would…yes.” Emily steps out of the oversized boots she borrowed from a groom for the walk to the tea shop.
Harry turns away as Emily pulls her skirt up over her ankles to slide off her socks, the gesture a harmless courtesy, yet, in the presence of the ladies in the painting, Emily feels suddenly indecent.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Harry nods toward the painting as she takes Emily’s socks and drapes them beside hers.
“There was a fire here several years ago and Pearl had the damaged art replaced with something a bit more elegant.” She indicates the painting of the two ladies, in contrast to the opposite portraiture of the butter churner with the enormous ass.
“Do you frequent this place?” Emily asks before she can stop herself.
Harry’s eyebrows rise. “Meaning what, precisely?”
Before Emily can reply, Pearl appears through the curtain behind them. “Here’s some warm wine!” She sets her tray on the bench, then wraps an arm around Harry’s neck and nuzzles into it like an affectionate cat. “Darling, we have missed you. Mariah says you’ve been splendid in Macbeth. ”
Emily’s surprised to see that rather than take the compliment in stride, Harry instead looks as though it hangs heavy around her neck. Her shoulders sink, and she mumbles, “Mariah also thinks Byron is an understated poet, so she is no great arbiter of taste.”
“She also said you’re speaking to Collin again. Sweet lamb. How is he?”
“What need have I to come around,” Harry mutters, disentangling herself from the embrace and swiping a bit of Pearl’s powder off her cheek, “when Mariah keeps you so informed of my every move?”
“Why have you stayed away?” Emily asks sweetly. At last— at last! —it is her turn to embarrass Harriet Lockhart, not to mention prove she is a degenerate. “Miss Lockhart, you shouldn’t deprive Pearl of your business.”
“Business?” Pearl asks, oblivious to the glare Harry shoots Emily. “No, just missing our little girl! We’ve hardly seen her about since her dear mother passed.”
Emily feels herself go red. Harry looks down at the floor. Pearl, immune to the discomfort perhaps as an occupational necessity, kisses Harry again, checks the coals in the stove, then departs.
Silence, so deep and long Emily feels she could have swum in it.
Then Harry says, without looking at her, “Collin and I grew up here. My mother was a Cyprian, but she quit the business when a benefactor bought her a house in Westminster. We moved there when I was ten.” She takes a sip of the wine Pearl left, winces at the heat, then adds, “You can pass any judgments you’d like, but I’ll warn you, I’ve heard it all before. I’m hard to wound.”
Harry looks away, suddenly sheepish, which, Emily thinks, she should be, for bringing Emily to a nanny house without any forewarning, then having the audacity to choose the exact room in the Cunt Cavity with this painting of these ladies, but turn away when Emily took off her socks like some kind of goddamn gentleman.
While they’re on the subject, it really should be Harry apologizing to Emily for looking so fit on the back of a horse that Emily mistook her for the duke, and for the loan of her coat and carrying Emily in the rain in such a way that Emily couldn’t help but feel how soft and warm and bosomy she was, like a buxom loaf of bread.
What, Emily thinks, a confusing day this has been.
Emily pulls the quilt tighter around her. The stove has at last begun to warm her, and when she reaches for her glass of wine, her fingers do as she asks without hesitation. She doesn’t know what to say. She wants to apologize, but instead asks tentatively, “Was it strange, growing up here?”
“You don’t have to—” Harry starts but Emily interrupts her.
“I want to know. Truly.”