Gray Whiskers set down his ale with a thump and swallowed hard. “I don’t know you.”
“Don’t know me!” She descended on him, her arms akimbo, her black eyes flashing. “Ye don’t know me, ye say? I suppose ye don’t know yer own ten poor wee bairns then, either?” Quivering with outrage, she stalked up to him. He was still pushing back his chair when she brought up her open hand and walloped him across the face.
The smack of flesh against flesh brought a sudden hush to the assembly. A gangly, half-grown lad with a tray of empty tankards quickly set aside his burden to grab her arm. “Now there ain’t no call to—”
She wiggled free of his restraint. “Let go of me, ye bloody madge cull.”
A bald-headed man with a broken nose reared up from a nearby table to collar the stripling with one beefy fist. “Hey. That’s no way to treat a lady.”
Gray Whiskers surged to his feet, one hand clamped to his stinging red cheek. “Lady? You callin’ her a lady?”
The man with the bald head swung around and planted one of his meaty fists in Gray Whiskers’s potbelly.
A cheer went up around the room. Someone threw a punch at the stripling, who ducked and fell back against a wooden chair, splintering it beneath him. Sebastian heard the door on the half landing jerk open and turned to see a burly man in a moleskin waistcoat come barreling down the stairs into the melee. “Here, here, what’s this? We’ll have none o’ that at the Black Dragon.”
Sebastian quietly slipped past him up the stairs and into the chamber on the half landing.
After the dim haze of the common room, the chamber’s blaze of lights made Sebastian’s eyes water. Two branches of wax candles burned on the mantelpiece, with three more scattered on the tabletops around the room. Ian Kane stood before an easel in the center of a good Chinese rug. Of medium height and build with hair the color of burnished copper, he was stripped down to his breeches, shirt, and waistcoat, and held a piece of charcoal in his hand. Some ten feet in front of him, a winsome young thing with soft white flesh and a halo of golden curls sprawled on a blue velvet divan. She wore pink slippers and a pearl necklace, and nothing else.
At Sebastian’s entrance, Kane glanced around. The girl jerked, but Kane said, “Don’t move,” and she froze.
“Nicely done,” said Sebastian, coming to look at a half-completed charcoal sketch somewhat in the style of Ingres.
From the room below came the sound of breaking glass and a man’s hoarse shout. Kane reached for a rag and calmly wiped his fingers. “I presume you started that for a reason?”
The faint echo of a Lancashire burr was still there in the brothel owner’s speech, but he’d obviously made considerable efforts to eradicate it in the ten or fifteen years that had passed since he’d fled the mines. His breeches, coat, and waistcoat could only have come from the best Bond Street tailors. Sebastian could easily see Pippa from the cheesemonger’s shop taking this man for a gentleman. However nefarious the nature of his current businesses, Kane was working hard at obscuring his origins. But unless he’d dyed his hair, Pippa was unlikely to have described him as “dark.”
“I thought our conversation would be more congenial without the presence of one of your gentlemen of the Fancy,” said Sebastian. He wandered the room, his gaze roving over the series of canvases on the wall. Done in oils in much the same style as the charcoal sketch on the easel, the paintings included both London street scenes and views of ships on the Thames. One particularly striking image of the church of Allhallows Barking caught in a stream of sunlight was only half finished. But most of the paintings were of naked women in a variety of languid poses.
“I suppose that’s one of the advantages of running a brothel,” said Sebastian. “There can’t be many artists with such ready access to a houseful of women who are more than willing to take off their clothes.”
Kane merely set aside his rag and grunted.
“I wonder,” said Sebastian, “did you ever paint Rose Fletcher?”
“Who?”
“Rose Fletcher. Up until last week she was one of the dashers at the Orchard Street Academy. I understand you’re the proprietor.”
Kane picked up a short piece of charcoal and traced a neat line along the hip of the figure in his sketch. “I have more than one house and employ scores of women. Do you think I know them all?”
From below stairs came a loud thump, followed by a bellow of rage. Sebastian said, “This woman left your house precipitously and went into hiding. I’m wondering if she was hiding from you.”
“What do you think?” said Kane, keeping his attention on his work. “That I stock my houses with traffic from some nefarious white-slave ring?” He had a slickly handsome face and a wide mouth full of straight white teeth he showed in a smile. “Why would she hide from me? Every soiled dove on the street would have you think she was kidnapped and forced into the trade. It’s all a fantasy. The girls in my houses are there because they choose to be, and they’re free to leave whenever they want.”
Sebastian glanced toward the Cyprian on the divan. She made a small movement, then lay still, her rosy-tipped breasts rising gently with each breath. A faint flush of color had spread across her cheeks. It was one thing, evidently, to pose naked for Ian Kane, but something else to do it in the presence of a stranger.
Sebastian said, “You weren’t angry that she left?”
A muscle jumped along Kane’s suddenly tight jaw. “Whores leave all the time. They usually come back. But even if they don’t, do you think I care? There are always more where they came from.” He jerked his head toward the street below. “You can’t walk a block without tripping over half a dozen strumpets.”
“Perhaps. Yet Rose Fletcher was undoubtedly afraid of someone.”
“Most whores are afraid of someone. A husband maybe, or a boyfriend who’s a little too handy with his fists.” Kane cocked his head to one side, studying the sketch before him. “What I’m wondering,” he said, carefully smudging the line he’d just drawn, “is why a fine gentleman like yourself would take an interest in a piece of Haymarket ware. Surely you don’t fancy her for yourself?”
“Not exactly. She’s dead. She was one of the eight women murdered at the Magdalene House last night.”
The suggestion that the fire at the Magdalene House was no accident didn’t seem to surprise Kane. But then, word traveled fast on the streets. Without looking up, he said, “You think I did that?”
“I think you’re hiding something.”
There was a pause, after which the brothel owner appeared to come to a decision. He reached for a finer piece of charcoal. “You’re right. Rose Fletcher was at the Academy. She was there the better part of a year. I don’t know why she left. She never gave any indication she was unhappy there.”
“Rose Fletcher wasn’t her real name, was it?”
“Probably not. They all take noms de guerre.”
“Do you know where she came from?”
Kane gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Women like her are a commodity. You think I care where they come from? We’re not talking fine wine here. The provenance is immaterial.”
Sebastian glanced toward the naked woman on the divan. The flush in her cheeks had deepened.
“Did Rose ever have trouble with anyone at the Academy?”
“You mean customers?” Kane shook his head. “We’re very careful with our clientele. Those who like it rough learn to go someplace else.”
“Did she have any special customers?”
“She was a popular piece of merchandise.” His eyes narrowed as he layered in defining detail to his sketch of the woman’s breasts. “But as a matter of fact, there was one particular customer that I know of. He was so enamored of her that he offered to buy her away from the house.”
“Buy her? I thought you said these women aren’t slaves.”
Kane shrugged. “She had some debts. Most whores do. They work to pay off what they owe.”
It was the usual practice: Advance the women just enough money to keep them in a perpetual state of debt so that they couldn’t leave even if they wanted to. It wasn’t technically slavery, but that’s what it amounted to.
Sebastian studied the man’s smooth face. He had a faint blue line, like a tattoo, that ran across his forehead. Sebastian had seen marks like that before, on miners. Coal dust settled into healing cuts, leaving a mark that never disappeared. Kane had obviously spent some time in the mines himself as a lad, before fleeing to London. Sebastian said, “What was the name of the customer who tried to buy her?”
“O’Brian. Luke O’Brian.”
“Who is he?”
Kane flashed his white smile. “You think I’m going to give you everything?”
“Actually, I’m wondering why you’ve told me as much as you have.”
Kane laughed, his attention all for his sketch. Sebastian said, “And was Rose willing to be released to this O’Brian?”
Kane kept his gaze on his sketch. “Actually, no.”
“Why not?”
“She didn’t say.”
“She didn’t say, or you’re not saying?”
They were both aware of a heavy tread on the stairs. A moment later, Kane’s pet prizefighter came back into the chamber, the thug’s eyes narrowing when he saw Sebastian. “Trouble here, Mr. Kane?”
“No trouble,” said Sebastian, one hand slipping, significantly, to the small flintlock he kept in his coat pocket. “I was just leaving.”
The henchman’s gaze flicked to Sebastian’s hand. He set his jaw, but stayed where he was.
Sebastian smiled. “Good evening, gentlemen.” He bowed to the silent woman on the divan. “Madame.”
Cherry was waiting for Sebastian on the footpath outside the Black Dragon.
“You didn’t get hurt, did you?” he said, dropping a crown into her outstretched palm.
“Me? Nah. It was fun. Did yer little trick get ye what ye wanted?”
Sebastian glanced toward the tavern in time to see a bulky shadow jerk back away from the lamplight. “I’m not sure.”
Chapter 13
George, Prince Regent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, gripped a vial of smelling salts in one plump white hand and held it to his own nostrils.
“Perceval tells us there was another attack in Yorkshire,” said the Prince. “Luddites!” He inhaled deeply and shuddered, although whether it was in reaction to the smelling salts or the thought of the Luddites, Jarvis couldn’t be certain. “Carrying on like savages,” continued the Prince. “Hiding their faces. Smashing machines. Something must be done about this!”
“A number of arrests have already been made,” said Jarvis, privately consigning the Prime Minister to the devil. Whatever had possessed Perceval to regale the Regent with this tale? “Unfortunately, the lower orders are still infected by the events in France. They think they can remold society. Become uppity with their betters. But the more progress our armies make on the Continent, the sooner these Luddites and their ilk will see the error of their ways.”
“Yes, but are we making progress on the Continent?”
“We will,” said Jarvis resolutely.