Page 10 of The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin (The Ill-Mannered Ladies #2)

10

We arrived in London in the early evening, smuggled Hester and Miss Grant back inside the house via the mews, and sent Thomas for Dr. McLeod. The dear man came immediately, but the prognosis was not good.

“She has declined rapidly,” he said to our anxious gathering in the corridor outside Hester’s room. “Overexertion. I prescribe complete bed rest and sustaining broths. I will have a draft made and send it around. No exercise for a week or so, and then gently so that she can build stamina.”

Miss Grant nodded and, with a curtsy, returned to watch over her beloved.

Dr. McLeod waited until the door had closed, then said to Julia and me, “Her body, including her heart, has been severely weakened by the treatment at the asylum. She must not exert herself, certainly no long-distance travel.” The careful lack of reproof in his voice was reproof enough.

“We understand, Doctor,” Julia said.

My sister, too, looked exhausted. I feared we were overlooking her health in the emergencies of Hester’s situation.

“And how are you faring, Lady Augusta?” Dr. McLeod asked me, placing his black Clericus upon his head. “Is your shoulder still bothering you?”

“Not at all, thank you.” I turned to my sister. “Julia, you said you wished to speak to Dr. McLeod privately.”

I lifted my brows at her: He is a good doctor; ask for a second opinion.

Julia frowned: I do not want a second opinion.

The doctor removed his hat again. “How may I be of service, Lady Julia?”

“I will leave you to your conversation,” I said. “Good evening.”

I swiftly withdrew down the staircase, ducking Julia’s glare. Perhaps it was presumptuous on my part, but Julia would not act on her own behalf, and her health was, in my view, deteriorating under Dr. Thorgood’s ministrations.

A little while later, Julia joined me in the drawing room. I put down the absorbing novel I was reading, coincidentally about sisters—one sensible and one full of sensibility—and rose from my chair. “Weatherly reports that dinner will be another half hour,” I said as she closed the door. I picked up the brandy decanter. “Would you like a glass?” A vain attempt to deflect the reproach coming my way.

“That was ill-done,” she said, meaning, of course, Dr. McLeod. She cocked her head at the decanter. “Brandy? Before dinner?”

Indeed, it was unusual. Brandy was usually taken after a meal and generally by men. Nevertheless, I thought the situation called for something a bit stronger than ratafia or canary. Besides, it was a very good brandy, almost certainly smuggled from France. I did not question Weatherly’s sources and he did not tell.

“Call it medicinal,” I said.

She gave a weary nod and sat down on the sofa, looking into the fire burning in the hearth. I poured the brandy and handed it to her, the silence between us lengthening.

I sat in the chair opposite. “Did you speak to the doctor?” I asked.

She looked up at me, her expression unusually closed. “That is between me and Dr. McLeod.”

Ah, so that was to be my punishment: to have the outcome of my intervention withheld. My sister certainly knew how to admonish me.

Another subject, then.

“I have arranged to meet Lord Evan in Bedford Street two nights hence,” I said.

“For the club?”

I nodded. “The odds of discovering something are not in our favor, but I feel we must try.”

Julia took a sip of brandy. “It is dangerously close to Covent Garden, my dear, and you really cannot be seen there. Not after the scandal.”

She meant, of course, being seen in the low Covent Garden brothel where our father had died. I had gone to rescue his body from the gawking onlookers, and my presence—and interaction with the residents—had become a scandal. A number of people had turned their backs upon both of us until dear Charlotte and George Brummell had nipped that ostracism in the bud.

“I know. But it is on the far side of the Garden behind St. Paul’s. Besides, I plan to be dressed in men’s clothes on the night.”

“I should protest at such a mad plan but I am too tired and I know you will take no notice of me.”

I took a sip of my own drink and watched my sister over the brim. She did not often admit to fatigue nor in such an irritated manner. Had she truly spoken to Dr. McLeod? Maybe I could ask the good doctor if she had consulted him. No, he would not tell me. He was the very model of medical discretion, which, after all, was the very reason Evan had recommended him to us.

“I think it would be prudent to visit the street beforehand,” I said. “To get the lay of the land.”

“How do you propose to do that without being followed by Mulholland or becoming another on-dit?”

“By having a legitimate reason to be there,” I said. “I thought we could see a play at the Lyceum. If you are feeling up to it. We could then drive through Bedford Street—very slowly—on the way home.”

“So you need me for respectability?”

“Always, my dear,” I said, raising my glass.

She looked at me, eyes narrowed. “I am not sure I want to be the respectable sister.”

Now, that was a surprise; reputation had always been important to my twin. Ever since childhood, she and Duffy had been the most upright and virtuous members of our family. Was she beginning to enjoy our unsavory adventures? Or was it something or someone else exacting this change? A certain Runner, perhaps; a man who would be seen by the ton as barely one step up from the ruffians he brought to justice. A man who Lady Julia Colebrook should not know even existed.

“Do not worry, I know the truth,” I said lightly, to cover my disquiet. “I’ve seen you storm a brothel brandishing a blunderbuss. You are barely respectable and totally disreputable.”

Reluctantly, she smiled. “Very well, then, what is playing at the Lyceum? Heaven forbid it is Sheridan. I’m not sure I could sit through another one, even for Lord Evan’s sake.”

···

Fortunately the play was not a Sheridan, but a rather clumsily abridged Hamlet . At the final curtain, Julia and I slipped out the little-used side entrance and made our way to the end of Exeter Street, where John Driver waited with the carriage. The hope was that our exit would be obscured by the surge of departing theater patrons and their carriages at the front entrance. As it was, I saw no one watching us with any particular interest as I ascended the carriage steps behind Julia.

“I thought the Ophelia was rather good,” Julia said as I took my seat opposite her and rapped upon the wall for John Driver to walk on. “A pretty girl with some skill.”

I did not answer immediately, for my attention was upon the road as we jerked into motion. Still no watchful eyes upon us.

I sat back against the silk cushioning. “A bit too whispery for my liking,” I finally said. The genuine madness I had encountered at the Bothwell House asylum had been heartbreakingly loud and in no part pretty.

I had instructed John Driver to take the long way around Covent Garden, and before long we were progressing up Bow Street. As we waited to turn into Hart Street, Julia leaned forward in her seat to look at the street behind us, her gaze intense. I twisted back to see what had caught her attention. Ah, the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, its colonnaded portico abuzz with all types entering and exiting. Bow Street was always open.

“I wonder if he is in there,” I said blandly.

“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” she returned primly.

I did not follow up on my comment. It seemed Julia was not open to discussing either her health or Mr. Kent.

Before long we turned into King Street. The dwellings and shop fronts were small and the pavements busy with gentlemen on their way, no doubt, to the nearby pleasures of Covent Garden and the ladies from Harris’s List who worked there. On one corner, a balladeer sang for pennies, a small group clustered around him, and the patrons of a gin shop had spilled out onto the road, yelling their own raucous songs. We turned into the wider part of Bedford Street and I rapped upon the wall for John Driver to slow our momentum.

“What are we looking for?” Julia asked, peering out her window at the passing frontages.

A good question. The street was ill-lit and I did not want to draw attention by ordering Samuel to walk alongside with a lamp. “I’m not sure. Something that looks like a gentlemen’s club.”

Julia looked back at me with eyebrows raised. “And what exactly would that look like?”

I had no answer, of course—neither of us had ever been near St. James’s Street to view the elite gentlemen’s clubs. To do so would have been social death.

John Driver kept the horses at walking pace as we progressed down the street. On my side of the carriage, some establishments had light in the windows, some did not, but none of them gave any clue as to whether they housed a club of dubious activities.

“Anything on your side?” I asked Julia.

“I have no idea,” Julia said.

I rapped on the wall and called out, “Stop!” The carriage drew to a halt near the corner of Maiden Lane.

“Perhaps it is up ahead,” I said, peering into the final section of the street, which looked too narrow for our town carriage to pass.

Julia huffed an irritated breath. “Frankly, if we walked up and down the whole length of Bedford Street, we would have no way of knowing.” She leaned across and opened the door. The carriage rocked as Samuel immediately descended from his position at the back and appeared alongside, ready to help us down. “We need local knowledge,” she said over her shoulder as she took his hand and alighted.

“From whom?” I asked as I arrived behind her on the cobbled pavement.

I shivered, my silk evening cloak and gown not adequate for gallivanting on a cold night. Was Julia thinking of knocking on the door of one of the houses? How on earth would we explain a request for information about a gentlemen’s club?

“From her,” Julia said, nodding toward a hunched shape sitting beside a basket on the corner of Maiden Lane.

An old flower seller.

I had not even seen her there. One of the truly invisible.

“I would lay odds that she has sat in the same spot for years selling her flowers, just like Peggy in our square,” Julia said. Peggy? But of course my sister knew the name of the flower seller near us. “She will have sat there unregarded, watching the world walk by. That is the local knowledge we need,” Julia added.

“Brilliant,” I said.

Julia acknowledged the accolade with a nod, then turned to our footman. “Samuel, bring the lamp.”

Samuel unhooked the carriage lamp and followed us across the road. He still walked a little stiffly from his beating from Mulholland’s man but otherwise seemed to have recovered from the ordeal.

The old woman looked up as we approached, immediately holding out a raggedy bunch of snowdrops. The tiny white bell blooms trembled in her hold. “Flowers, milady? Flowers? Penny a posy.”

In the light of the lamp, I could make out a deeply lined face with inflamed, crusted eyes and a sunken mouth. She wore an old knitted shawl tied over a threadbare coat, and a straw bonnet sporting a large hole and a frayed ribbon around the crown.

“I will take all that you have left,” Julia said, peering into the basket. She worked open the drawstrings of her reticule and dug her fingers inside.

“All?” the old woman echoed. She peered into her basket too. “I got this many.” She held up her other hand—wrapped in rags for warmth—and splayed her fingers. Four posies.

Julia withdrew a shilling and crouched beside her, holding out the coin. The old woman stared at it. “That’s a shillin’, that is. I ain’t got the wherewithal to give back the difference, my lady.”

Julia dropped the coin into her hand. “The shilling is yours. What is your name?”

“They call me Weepy Iris,” she said, inflamed eyes fixed upon the coin cupped in her palm.

“What is your real name?” Julia asked gently.

The woman looked up and blinked in the lamplight. “Dorothy, my lady. Dorothy Martindale.” Her voice rasped on the n , as if she had not spoken the name in a long while.

“How long have you sold your flowers on this corner, Dorothy?” Julia asked.

The woman closed her hand around the coin. “Nigh on twenty years, my lady.”

“Am I right in thinking you see everything that happens in Bedford Street?”

She considered Julia for a second, a lightning-fast reckoning of an unusual situation. A lady did not often crouch on the pavement beside a flower woman for a chat. “That I do, my lady,” she finally said.

Julia held up another shilling. “Can you tell us something?” She gathered me into the conversation with a glance. “I am Lady Julia and this is my sister, Lady Augusta. We wish to know if there is a gentlemen’s club somewhere along here. A club called—”

“The Exalted Brethren of Rack and Ruin,” Dorothy whispered. She glanced across the corner and gave a small nod. “Number 2, down there.”

Julia handed over the coin, quickly closed in the filthy hand.

“But you don’t want to go nowhere near it, my ladies,” Dorothy added. “It’s a bad place, full o’ bad men.”

“In what way?” I asked, although I already knew from the colonel’s report.

Dorothy drew in a portentous breath. “Sometimes girls go in there and I ain’t seen ’em come out.” She looked at us defiantly. “It’s true.”

“We believe you,” I said. “When does the club open? Is it every night?”

“Most, my lady. After the Evensong bells.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping into a whisper again. “Sometimes even on Sundays. Most of the coves come out ’bout a few hours before dawn. All of ’em foxed. They wear masks too.”

“Masks?” Julia asked. “You mean like loo masks for a masquerade ball?”

“No, like the old mummers.”

So, they kept their faces completely hidden.

Julia looked at me: Anything else we should ask?

“What do you think happens to the girls that do not come out?” I asked. “Have you heard any rumors?”

Dorothy shrugged, wariness shrinking her sunken mouth even more. “Maybe I’m wrong and they go out another way. There’s a yard out the back of them row of houses. Could be they go out there.”

She huddled back into her ragged clothes, ducking out of the light of the lamp. Our shilling, it seemed, had run out.

“Thank you, Dorothy,” Julia said, rising from her crouch. “We appreciate your help.”

“Don’t forget your flowers, my lady,” Dorothy said, and gathered up the small posies. She held up the bobbing blooms, her faded eyes darting from Julia to me, then back again. A decision made. “Don’t know if this ’elps,” she said slowly, “but I ’ave seen somethin’ time to time that struck me as another kind of odd: a handcart pushed by two men comin’ and goin’ from that yard. In the wee hours. Only stays for a short while. Looks like a delivery cart, but it goes in empty.”

“Do they bring something out?” Julia asked, taking the flowers.

I glanced at my sister: Like, for instance, a brutalized girl?

Julia quirked her mouth: Exactly.

Dorothy shook her head. “Never seen nothin’ in it. Goin’ in or out.” She shrugged. “Always empty. Thought it was odd, ay?”

An empty cart. Odd, indeed.