Page 13 of The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin (The Ill-Mannered Ladies #2)

13

Someone was shaking my shoulder, insistent but gentle. I opened my eyes. Still dark. My cheek was pressed against Evan’s broad shoulder, every breath drawing in the comforting smell of woolen cloth, soap, and warm male skin. I had, it appeared, fallen asleep and used him as a pillow.

“Sorry,” I muttered, and sat up, my neck tight from the crooked position. I dug my cold fingertips into the stiff muscle and yawned, still somewhat bleary. “You should have woken me.”

“Nothing has happened for the past few hours, so I figured you may as well sleep.” He smiled. “I can report you do not snore.”

I squinted at him. “I am glad to know it.”

“But look.” He nodded toward the club. “The meeting is over.”

Men were exiting the building, still wearing their masks and clearly the worse for wear. Some of them staggered down the front steps or clung to the railing as they descended; others had cravats untied or waistcoats undone. They were eerily silent, none of the songs or laughter of their entrance, not even any conversation among them. I counted twenty-two members departing, ten making their way to Maiden Lane and twelve to Chandos. Our devil and king left together, while Mr. Whitmore hurried along Maiden Lane by himself.

After them, three women came down the steps. They moved wearily, but from this distance, they did not seem injured. Two had their arms around each other, and the other walked alone, all of them heading up Maiden Lane toward the Garden.

“Where are the others?” I asked. All sleep bleariness had disappeared, chased away by the realization that two women had not departed.

“Perhaps we missed them coming out. Or maybe they went out the back way,” Evan said.

“I did not see them come out.” We watched the front door for another minute, but no one else emerged. “I think it is time to take a look inside the club,” I said. And not only for the sake of our own investigation.

Evan gave a nod—my own unease reflected in his face—and pushed himself upright, making a low sound of discomfort as he stretched the cold-induced kinks from his long body. I followed suit, my own stretch propelling me into a limp-hop on cramped legs across the veranda tiles. Very elegant.

Evan picked up the flagon from the ground, swinging it to test the weight. “Not ideal, but it might stop someone in their tracks.”

Another household item as weapon. Not that I scorned the idea. Lately I’d used a Wedgwood vase, a full chamber pot, and a large painting to good effect. Although the last had ultimately not protected me from the stab of a stiletto blade.

“A one-shot pot,” I quipped.

His smile gleamed in the dim light. “I recall that is your specialty.”

“I prefer Wedgwood,” I said.

Evan gave a small bow. “Only the best.” He lifted the flagon. “Mind you, this is a bit tougher than fine porcelain, with the added benefit that anyone seeing us carrying it will probably dismiss us as drunkards.”

And so Mr. Lennox and Mr. Jessup, arm in arm and waving a gin flagon, lurched drunkenly across Maiden Lane toward the stretch of terraces that housed the Exalted Brethren of Rack and Ruin. From the corner of my eye, I saw Dorothy watching with some interest. I wondered what she made of us.

By the time we reached number 2, the front door was closed, although there was still some light within.

“The old flower seller said there was a yard behind these terraces,” I said. “Perhaps we can get in through there.”

We weaved along the pavement, finding a roughly cobbled laneway between the first set of terraced houses and the second. With a nod to Evan and all pretense of drunkenness gone, I led the way along the rough stones, keeping close to the brick wall of the house that bordered the lane. We both ducked beneath a barred window—it was dark and curtained, but better to be safe—and continued to creep alongside the wall to the corner of the house and the mouth of the rear yard.

I stopped just as Evan caught my arm: we had heard the same sounds ahead. Female voices, the slosh of water, and the hollow clank of iron.

I glanced at Evan: Our Covent Garden girls?

He lifted a shoulder: Maybe. Then he jerked his chin: Take a look.

I slid my back along the cold bricks and carefully peered around the edge of the wall.

Not our two missing women but two young maids, one drawing water from a central well in an iron bucket, the other scraping a brush while fervently explaining something to her companion about beans—dried haricots, from the little I caught. It seemed rather early for such morning preparations. Then again, dawn was only an hour or so away and some households rose with the light. Were they from the club or one of the other houses?

I drew back and leaned close to Evan’s ear.

“Two maids,” I breathed.

He lifted his hand, palm out: Wait, see if they go inside.

A reasonable plan since we could not bluff our way into a private club in our current workmen’s clothes.

We both settled back against the wall. The length of our arms touched, hands finding each other upon the rough bricks, our morning-chilled fingers entwining into a warm embrace. Perhaps it was not too late, after all. To be seen by this man in all my naked truth. And to see him. I smiled and, in the darkness, sensed the answering upcurl of his mouth.

It was not long before the voices and the clanking shifted, the sounds receding, then muffled, then no longer audible at all.

“Gone?” Evan murmured.

We released hands with a mutual press of our fingers: neither of us wished to let go.

I peered around the corner again.

“It is clear,” I whispered.

I trod as silently as possible into the rear yard, Evan close behind. The cobbled area was shared by the four houses: each had three steps up to a back door that led into a kitchen or scullery, and a set of steps downward, enclosed by a railing and gate, that presumably led to the basement entrance.

We made our way past the closed doorways of numbers 4 and 3, shut fast against the chilly morning with no light or signs of life yet within. It was the same for the club: kitchen door closed, no light, no signs of movement. The one difference was that its basement gate had been left half-open.

The maids must have gone into the first house, for its kitchen door stood ajar, a glow from candles and a lit hearth showing the edge of a table and the glint of pans.

Keeping a wary eye upon that door, we climbed the club’s back steps. I peered into the small side window, poised to run if someone was within the gloom. No one inside, but I made out the shapes of an unlit hearth, bare shelves, and unused hooks for hanging pots and pans. More or less empty, although a number of sacks were propped against the far wall, packed full of something that could not be recognized in the dim light. A lumpy something. What would merit so many sacks?

“It is clear,” I whispered.

I drew back to let Evan peer in, a slight huff telling me that he, too, was puzzled by the unused kitchen. Would not a club serve food?

I tried the door handle, expecting it to be locked.

It turned, the door opening a small way under my tentative weight. I looked at Evan. He raised his brows.

Indeed.

Onward, then.

I pushed the door open and we stepped into the dark, deserted kitchen of the Exalted Brethren of Rack and Ruin.

I crossed the empty floor to the line of hessian sacks against the wall, listening for any kind of sound in the house. All was quiet, although I could not ignore the feeling that someone else was still inside the building, that preternatural awareness of another living presence.

Evan carefully closed the back door and just as silently crossed the room to join me at the line of sacks. Suddenly nervous, I glanced at him: Ready? On his nod, I tentatively pulled open the first sack in the line, ready to snatch back my hand. We both leaned in.

A gleam of green glass.

Empty wine bottles.

I breathed out, feeling a little absurd. What had I expected: body parts? I flipped the top of the sack back into place. As it happened, a little too forcefully: the slight tug of hessian dislodged the top bottle. The clink of glass against glass rang out in the silence. We both froze, listening.

No footsteps. No voices. No movement.

Even so, I whispered, “I do not think we are alone.”

Evan nodded and lifted the flagon. “We should proceed with caution.”

And with a blunt weapon, I thought but did not voice.

He led the way to the kitchen door—with no actual door attached—and peered around the jamb. Over his shoulder, I could see the wall of a hallway and the gold glint of a picture frame, the painting within too dark to make out in the gloom.

“No one,” Evan whispered, then crept out into the hall.

I followed, immediately seeing the glow of candlelight emanating from the two front rooms. Close to the painting now, I could make out its subject: a depiction of a man and woman in congress, the woman clearly not consenting to such activity. It seemed tonight I was to be confronted by the Act from all angles. I averted my eyes and quickened my pace behind Evan, who was making his way silently toward the front rooms.

We passed a doorway—closed—and came to the staircase, its steps leading both down to the basement and service rooms and up to what would have been the living areas, if this were just a normal house.

Evan paused at the basement steps for a moment and looked back, eyebrow raised: Want to go down or keep going?

I pointed ahead: the front rooms would have been where the men had gathered.

We passed the stairs and made our way to the front of the house and the two doorways opposite each other. We stopped short of them; the doors stood open. Evan pointed to the left one and I nodded—I would check it. He crossed over to the right side of the wall, flagon raised. We both edged closer to our doorways. I tilted my head to peer around the jamb, rapidly scanned inside the room, then drew back.

Bookshelves, card tables, chairs, more bottles. But otherwise, empty. It looked like any other card gambling room. Across the hallway, Evan’s shoulders had relaxed a little, the flagon once more at his side. His room must be empty too.

He joined me on my side of the hallway.

“It’s just like a normal club,” he whispered. “Armchairs, sofas. It’s a mess, but that is typical after a night’s revelries.”

I nodded. Not the scenes of sexual debauchery I had dreaded. Perhaps they were upstairs, in the bedrooms. “I’m going to take a closer look in here, then maybe we should go upstairs.”

“I’ll take the other.”

We parted ways.

I entered the card room. It was a mess too—bottles left on the tables or strewn across the carpeted floor, used wineglasses and whiskey tumblers, the ends of cigarillos, playing cards left in disarray, and the remains of a roasted haunch on a sideboard. So food was served after all, most likely brought in from one of the Covent Garden inns. I screwed up my nose: the air stank of cheap perfume, cooked beef, piss, and vomit. A stomach-churning mix. I spotted two chamber pots in the corner, filled to the brim. That explained the piss and vomit. The perfume had no doubt belonged to one of the women. I weaved around the eight tables, not sure what I was looking for—evidence of malfeasance, perhaps—but saw only the remains of a night of hard gambling. I had experienced it often enough myself at routs and assemblies, although not so robustly foul.

I turned my attention to the bookshelves. Annual bindings of the Gentleman’s Magazine , a well-used collection of the de Sade novels, and a great number of illustrated books and folios. I pulled one of the books from the shelf and opened it, only to be confronted by a drawing of a man behind a donkey, mid-congress. A little too meticulously drawn. Good God. I snapped it shut and pushed it back into its place on the shelf.

“Gus.” I turned around at the hiss of my name. Evan stood at the doorway, gesturing urgently for me to follow.

Had he found something?