Red Jack's Daughter (17 page)

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The room was not as seedy as Jessica had expected it to be. It was small, with mean furnishings, but it was, withall, clean and tidy. The narrow bed was made up with a colorful quilt, the few pieces of furniture were old but clutter-free, and there was even a dainty vase filled with flowers upon a table. The woman gave Jessica an ironic and knowing smile when she saw her surprise, and told her to stay well back from the window. Then, nodding as though satisfied, she picked up a light shawl, went with slow and unhurried step to the door, and stepped out into the tiny yard in front of the house.

Jessica hung back, close to the wall. From her vantage point she could peep through the curtains to see the street, and she could hear whatever transpired through the open window as if the persons were in the very room with her.

After what were only a few minutes, Jessica’s breath caught in her throat as she saw Mrs. Carey arrive in a large old-fashioned gray coach. The horses stopped and Mrs. Carey hopped down as sprightly as a girl. She looked up and down the street, quite ignoring Jessica’s unknown new friend, and then began to call out in a high sweet voice, “Oh, my dear, you can come out now. All is well. My coach is here. Oh, my dear, it’s Mrs. Carey, do come along now. Oh, young woman
...”

After a few more tries, Mrs. Carey grew still. She muttered beneath her breath and finally turned to the woman who stood insolently leaning against the half-fallen fence. She asked abruptly, “Have you seen a young woman hereabouts, Maria?”

“I might have,” the woman answered, yawning.

“Don’t play with me, Maria,” Mrs. Carey flashed back in anger. “Have you seen a young girl?”

“Seeing how I live right here, Mother,” the woman
retorted idly, “I’d have to be deaf not to have heard your nattering outside my window.”

“Well?” Mrs. Carey asked angrily, crossing her arms about her breast. “Are you going to enlighten me as to her whereabouts?”

“Begging your pardon, Mother,” Maria answered, “but why should I, after all?”

“Oh, very well,” the older woman complained, and fishing in her purse, she extracted some coins and passed them to Maria, who stood holding them in her open palm and gazing at them as though she had never seen coin of the realm before.

“There,” said Mrs. Carey, adding a few more to the others, “now have done, Maria, I’m a busy woman and you shan’t have a ha’penny more. Where is she?”

Maria slid the coins into a pocket of her skirts and laughed in such a friendly fashion that Jessica’s heart sank and she looked wildly about the room for either a bolt hole or a weapon.

“Too slow off the mark, Mother,” Maria said. “I saw it all. Didn’t blame you in the least, either. She was a love all right. But as soon as you’d turned the
corner
, and I was wondering whether I ought to ask her in, just to make sure she was right and tight when you got back, a young blade comes tooling down the street in a curricle. He sees her and gives out a shout, ‘Mary, my love!’ He’s at her side in a second and the two of them fall about each other like Romeo and Juliet. She’s crying and he’s telling her he never meant a word of it, and begging her forgiveness, and giving her such slop that it fair turned my stomach, Quick as you can stare, he’s got her up on the seat with him, and they’re driving off. Don’t fret, though, Mother, for by the look of him, she was well connected and you’d have found her more trouble than she was worth.”

Mrs. Carey stood seething. She finally gave Maria one long direct look and shook her head. “There’s where you’re out, Maria. For once I’d had the chit a day, her family would have been done with her forever.”

Maria shrugged. “What’s done, done. I told you all I know.”

Mrs. Carey gave her one last long piercing look. “You’d
better have done, my dear. I pay well for service, but I pay back for a disservice twice as well.”

Maria drew herself up and gave back a haughty stare. “Don’t come heavy with me, Mother. I know what side my bread’s buttered on. Just because you’ve lost a chick is no reason to eat me!”

Mrs. Carey paused for a moment before she reentered the coach. Then she said bitterly, “Aye, sweet little Maria would never cross me. Still, you’re right. The world’s full of pretty young baggages. As you should well remember, my dear.”

Maria stood awhile lost in thought after the coach had driven off. Then she shrugged again and came back to the room where Jessica stood, still fearing to move a muscle.

“That’s a debt paid, and in more ways than one,” Maria said almost to herself as she took the coins out and recounted them. Then she gave Jessica a bright look and laughed. “You can breathe again, ‘Mary,’ it’s all over now.”

“Thank you,” Jessica said rapidly. “It was more than good of you to hide me and counsel me so well. I’ll go now and I promise never to forget you for your kindness.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that.” Maria laughed. “For the old cow didn’t half-mistrust me. She’ll keep an eye peeled for you a good while yet. No, you’re safer to stay with me till evening. For that’s when the trade picks up and she’ll have to be back at her house, and she’ll need her bully boys about her.”

“But even if they do lay hands on me,” Jessica said bravely, “I shall set up such a ruckus as they have never heard. And surely you could notify my friends if I left an address with you. Or I could convince them that I want no part of their plans.
”

“You’re so wet around the ears I wonder that you didn’t swim up the street,” Maria chortled. “Set up a ruckus? But there’s always some sort of to-do around here. And as for your reasoning with that lot, I tell you, missy, that it can’t be done. No, they’ll give you a nice cool drink, or some such, and before you know it, you’d be walking on the ceiling, doing anything they asked, never knowing what you were about. And when you did know, a few days later, it would be far too late to send for help. There’d be no help for it. No, love, that’s their way of business, and business is what they’re about.
”

Jessica gave Maria such a look of consternation that the older woman laughed again.

“Well, you do have a choice, sweet. You can either rest here with me, or go and take your chances with Mother. It’s all the same to me.”

“You must think me very ungrateful,” Jessica began, embarrassed at how easily the other woman had read her discomfort with her surroundings.

“Oh, yes, to be sure,” Maria mocked as she turned and lit a fire in her small grate and began to assemble the makings of small tea. “I am shocked at how any young woman of breeding could possibly not wish to remain with such a fine lady as myself. Give over, do, love. Why should you want to stay here with me? But you may as well have a seat. I’ll brew up a nice cuppa.
”

Jessica sat and wondered at the
chameleon like
affect of her hostess. One moment she seemed no more than a low slattern, but the next she could affect accents of high gentility. Jessica was unsure of how to ask any questions without giving offense, and it was not until her benefactor sighed and came to sit down at the table with a steaming pot of tea that she spoke again.

“I owe that old witch a thing or two,” Maria brooded as she poured Jessica’s tea into a simple white mug. “For there was a time when I was down on my luck and so muddled that I even asked her if I could work in her house till I got on my feet again.”

Jessica’s tea splashed in her cup as she realized just what her hostess’s occupation was, but Maria didn’t seem to notice, she was so deep in recollection.

“And the old sow said as how I was too old and washed out to work for her. I ... too old and washed out! Ha,” Maria said, boiling with remembered resentment. “I, Maria Dunstable, who once was the toast of Covent Garden. Well, it’s a lucky thing that the old besom’s eyes is as bad as her business, or I’d have been for it. I got myself together again, straight off, and I’ve been doing well on my lonesome ever since. I daresay it won’t be long before I’m back up on top again.”

B
u
t chancing to glance at Jessica’s white face, she misread the look of consternation and sighed again. “No, I suppose you’ve the right of it. Those glory days are gone forever. It’s my teeth, I daresay. But as soon as I get some gold together, I’ll take myself off to a surgeon in town who can make up some crockery to disguise what I’ve lost. Then, you’ll see who rules the roost.
”

Jessica eyed the other woman. It was true that the two missing teeth disfigured her, but even if there had been no gaps in her smile, her lined face, bulky form, and strange overdyed hair would have been enough to discourage compliments. Wisely, Jessica said nothing and only sipped at her tea.

The older woman made a slight face and then said defensively, “I was on top once, you know. That’s a gospel truth. I danced at Covent Garden in the opera. Soon as you could stare, I was set up in my own apartments by a nob. But that wasn’t the half of it. I trafficked with nothing but Quality for a while. Aye, I was in the keeping of a Duke! Jason Thomas, Duke of Torquay. He was a right one, all right, but fickle, you understand. We parted best of friends, we did. No sooner had he shown me his back when I was snapped up by the Marquis of Bessacarr, and then his friend, Lord Hoyland. I lived in style, my girl, and don’t you forget it.

“But,” Maria said in a diminished voice into the silence that had fallen when Jessica had no idea of what to reply, “I didn’t play my cards right. That’s the truth, too. You have to be as wily as a politician, that’s what counts. And I let my heart rule my head. And here we are,” she said broodingly.

After staring for a space, she looked up at her guest. “But here I am giving you my life’s story and I don’t even know your name or your game. Whatever brought you here, missy?”

Jessica cleared her throat and began to introduce herself. Before long, she had lost her shyness at finding herself in such a bizarre situation. Somehow there in the close room, with an interested listener—and one, moreover, who knew what sort of questions to ask and seemed to make no judgments
—
Jessica found herself unburdening her story. As
the
afternoon dwindled, she told Maria of her childhood, her father, her visit to London, and her present circumstances. She was careful, however, even in the thick of her narration, not to name names, for somehow she felt she should shelter Lady Grantham and Ollie and the others from random gossip.

When she had done, her hostess peered at her closely. “Go on,” Maria breathed. “You call those problems? My Lord, I would give anything to have your sort of troubles, Jess.”

“But they’ve none of them been honest with me,” Jessica protested, dismayed that Maria should feel she was enormously privileged to be in such distress.

“Oh, get away with you.” Maria laughed harshly. “You’ve got a fortune coming to you. You’ve got looks. You’ve got a parcel of Quality gents falling over each other to get to you. What else could you want from life?”

“I don’t know,” Jessica said somberly, “but surely, I do know that I don’t want to marry. Or to be ordered about until I do know what to do. Can’t you see that?”

“Don’t fancy men?” Maria asked knowingly. “Well, there’s a hurdle, all right. Got a girlfriend you want to set up as a life’s mate, then? I can’t see anything in that, myself, but it takes all kinds.”

Jessica’s cheeks flushed bright. “Oh, no,” she exclaimed, “never, that’s not it at all. I just want to be
...
” And then she began to laugh a little wildly. “There’s the point, Maria, I don’t know quite what I do want.”

“Well, Jess,” Maria said, rising and bearing the cups off to the basin, “it’s a problem I’d give the world to have. That gentleman that told you as how it’s a hard world for a woman alone wasn’t half-right. Of course, if you play your hand well, it’s all gravy. But I can’t see you setting up as a Cyprian. And I can’t see you going on alone, because it’s clear you’re not wise to the time of day, love. No offense, but I think you ought to just pick the best of the lot and get shackled. To that young fellow from your village. Or to that Alex you keep going on about. Seems to me you have a care for him.”

“Lord Leith?” Jessica gasped, so overwhelmed at Maria’s misinterpretation of her complaints that she forgot discretion. “Why, he’s the worst of them all.”

“Lord Leith,” Maria asked, turning about to stare at Jessica. “Oh, that’s flying high. Never say he’s the chap you were complaining of?”

Caught by her hostess’s glittering eyes, Jessica only nodded.

“Top of the
t
rees he is,” Maria said excitedly. “Oh, he’s high as the Regent. One sees him everywhere. He’s got that shrewd piece Libby Kenton in his keeping now. She puts it about that she’s Lucille LaPoire, but she’s no more a Frenchie than you or I. Friend of “Harry” Wilson’s and as wise as owls, she is,” Maria said enviously.

“In his keeping?” Jessica asked, forgetting her resolve not to mention any of her acquaintances to Maria, and only catching onto that one salient fact. “He has a female in his keeping?”

“Oh, Lord love you, Jess. You’re green as sour apples. Of course, he does. All the Quality does. Don’t you know anything?” Maria laughed.

And suddenly affecting a motherly air, Maria sat down with her young guest again. There, as the evening drew close, Maria sat at her small table and patiently explained the ins and outs of the world of the demi-rep to Jessica. She was flattered and pleased by having her young friend’s absolute attention, and so she carefully explained the hierarchy of her profession to the rapt girl.

Jessica sat still, only silently moving her lips now and again, as though memorizing the information. Maria began at the bottom, telling wild tales of such low females as the infamous Flashy Nance, Dirty Suke, and Billingsgate Moll. These graceless females frequented the lowest sort of establishments and would sell their admittedly inferior persons for as little as a draft of Blue Ruin, or Giniver, Maria explained. Then she waxed rhapsodical as she detailed the exploits of such successful and admired harlots as Brazen Bellona, the famous Harriet “Little Harry” Wilson, and of Lucille LaPoire, and of their traffic with the gentleman of the Ton. She spoke lovingly of their jewels, their gowns, and their houses in the best part of town.