Читать книгу Unmasking the Duke's Mistress - Margaret McPhee - Страница 11

It was only a few hours later that Arabella made her way up the stairwell of the shabby lodging house in Flower and Dean Street. The early morning spring sunlight was so bright that it filtered through the windows, that the months of winter rain and wind had rendered opaque, and glinted on the newly replaced lock of the door that led from the first landing into her rented room.

The damp chill of the room hit her as soon as she opened the door and stepped over the threshold.

‘Mama!’ The small dark-haired boy glanced up from where he was sitting next to an elderly woman on the solitary piece of furniture that remained within the room, a mattress in the middle of the floor. He wriggled free of the thin grey woollen blanket that was wrapped around his shoulders and ran to greet her.

‘Archie.’ She smiled and felt her heart shift at the sight of his face. ‘Have you been a good boy for your grandmama?’

‘Yes, Mama,’ he answered dutifully. But Arabella could see the toll that hunger and poverty had taken in her son’s face. Already there were shadows beneath his eyes and a sharpness about his features that had not been there just a few days ago.

She hugged him to her, the weight of guilt heavy upon her.

‘I have brought a little bread and cake.’ She emptied the contents of her pocket on to the mattress. Everything was stale as she had pilfered it last night from the trays intended for Mrs Silver’s drawing room. ‘Wages are not paid until the end of the week.’

Arabella split the food into two piles. One pile she sat upon the window ledge to sate their hunger later, and the other she shared between her mother and son.

It broke her heart the way Archie looked at her for permission to eat those few stale slices, his brown eyes filled with a look which no mother should ever have to see in her child.

There was silence while they ate the first slice of bread as if it were a sumptuous feast.

Arabella slipped off her cloak and wrapped it around her mother’s hunched shoulders before sitting down beside her on the edge of the mattress.

‘You are not eating, Arabella.’ Her mother noticed and paused, her hand frozen en route to her mouth, the small chunk of bread still gripped within her fingers.

Arabella shook her head and smiled. ‘I have already breakfasted on the way home.’ It was a lie. But there was little enough as it was and she could not bear to see them so hungry.

The sun would not reach to shine in here until later in the day and there was no money for coal or logs. The room was cold and bare save for the mattress upon which they were now sitting. Empty, just as they had arrived home to find it four days ago.

‘How was the workshop?’ Mrs Tatton carefully picked the crumbs from her lap and ate them. ‘They were satisfied with your work?’

‘I believe so,’ Arabella answered and could not bring herself to meet her mother’s eyes in case something of the shame showed in them.

‘You look too pale, Arabella, and your eyes are as red as if you have been weeping.’ She could feel her mother’s gaze upon her.

‘I am merely tired and my eyes a little strained from stitching by candlelight.’ Arabella lied and wondered what her mother would say if she knew the truth of how her daughter had spent the night. ‘A few hours rest and I shall be fine.’ She glanced up at Mrs Tatton with a reassuring smile.

Mrs Tatton’s expression was worried. ‘I wish I could do more to help.’ She shook her head, and glanced away in misery. ‘I know that I am little more than a burden to you.’

‘Such foolish talk, Mama. How on earth would I manage without you to care for Archie?’

Her mother nodded and forced a smile, but her eyes were dull and sad. Arabella’s gaze did not miss the tremor in the swollen knuckled hands or the wheeze that rasped in the hollow chest as Mrs Tatton reached to stroke a lock of her grandson’s hair away from his eye.

Archie, having finished his bread and cake, wandered over to the other side of the room where there was a small wooden pail borrowed from one of the neighbours. He scooped up some water from the pail using the small wooden cup that sat beside it and gulped it down.

Mrs Tatton lowered her voice so that Archie would not hear. ‘He cried himself to sleep through hunger last night, Arabella. Poor little mite. It broke my heart to hear him.’

Arabella pressed a fist to her mouth and glanced away so her mother would not see her struggle against breaking down.

‘But this new job you have found is a miracle indeed, the answer to all our prayers. Without it, it would be the workhouse for us all.’

Arabella closed her eyes against that thought. They would be better off dead.

Archie brought the cup of water over and offered it to her. Arabella took a few sips and then gave it to her mother.

And when the food was all eaten and the water drunk, Archie and Mrs Tatton lay down beneath the blanket.

‘It was noisy last night,’ Mrs Tatton said by way of explanation. And Arabella understood, the men’s drunken shouts and women’s bawdy laughter echoing up from the street outside would have allowed her son and mother little sleep.

Arabella spread her cloak with her mother’s shawl on top of the lone blanket and then climbed beneath the covers. Archie’s little body snuggled into hers and she kissed that dark tangled tousle of hair and told him that everything would be well.

Soon the only sounds were of sleep: the wheeze of her mother’s lungs and Archie’s soft shallow rhythmic breathing. Arabella had not slept for one minute last night, not after all that had happened. And she knew that she would not sleep now. Her mind was a whirl of thoughts, all of them centred round Dominic Furneaux.

When she thought of their coupling of last night she felt like weeping, both from anger and from shame, and from a heart that ached from remembering how, when she had given herself to him before, there had been such love between them. And the anger that she felt was not just for him, but for herself.

For even from the first moment that he had come close and she had smelled that familiar scent of him, bergamot and soap and Dominic Furneaux, she had been unable to quell the reaction of her body. And when he had taken her, not out of love, not even knowing who she was, her traitorous lips and body had, in defiance of everything she knew and everything she felt, welcomed him. They had known his mouth, recognised his kiss and the caress of his hand, and responded to him. And the shame of that burned deeper than the knowledge that she had sold herself to him.

She thought of the offer he had made her. To buy her. To be at his beck and call whenever he wished to satisfy himself upon her. Dominic Furneaux, the man who had broken her heart. Lied to her with such skill that she had believed every one of those honeyed untruths. Could she put herself under the power of such a man? To be completely at his mercy? Could she really surrender herself to him, night after night, and hide the shameful response of her body to him, a man who did not love her, a man who believed her a whore for his use?

She clutched her hands to her face as the sense of despair rolled right through her, for she knew the answer to each of those questions and she knew, too, the ugly truth of the alternative.

Arabella relived the moment that the group of gentlemen had entered Mrs Silver’s drawing room, and it did not matter how hard she had tried to deaden her feelings, no matter how much she could rationalise the whole plan in her head, when it had come to the point of facing what must happen she had felt an overwhelming panic that she would not be able go through with it. She closed her eyes against the nightmare, knowing that there was only one decision she could make. Even if there were certain aspects of the negotiations that she would have to handle very carefully.

And as she lay there she could not help but think how differently things might have turned out if Dominic Furneux had been a different sort of man. If he had loved her, as he had sworn that he did, and married her, as he had promised that he would, how different all their lives would have been.

Dominic arrived at Mrs Silver’s early and alone. The drawing room was filled with a woman of every colour of Mrs Silver’s rainbow, every colour save for black. He knew with one sweep of the room that Arabella was not there and he felt a whisper of foreboding that perhaps everything was not going to go quite how he had planned.

‘Variety is the spice of life, your Grace. Perhaps I could tempt you with another colour from my assortment?’ Mrs Silver smiled at him and gestured towards the girls who had arrived looking a little breathless and rushed following his early arrival.

‘I find I prefer black,’ he said. ‘Miss Noir …’ He stopped as the thought struck him that perhaps following his discovery of her Arabella had gone, fled elsewhere, to another part of London, another bordello … somewhere he could not find her.

‘Will be here presently, your Grace, I am sure,’ the woman said with supreme confidence but her eyes told a different story.

He had not contemplated that Arabella would choose this wretched life over the wealth and comfort he had offered. That she would actually run away had not even occurred to him. His mouth hardened at his own naïvety. A man was supposed to learn from his mistakes.

‘If you are content to wait for a little.’ Mrs Silver smiled again and gestured to one of the sofas.

Dominic gave a curt nod of his head, but he did not sit down. He stood where he was and he waited, ignoring the plate of delicacies and the glass of champagne by his side.

Five minutes passed.

And another ten. The women ceased their attempts to engage him in seductive conversation.

What would he do if she did not come?

By twenty minutes he was close to pacing.

By forty minutes there was only Miss Rouge and himself left in the room and a very awkward silence.

At fifty minutes, Miss Rouge was gone and he felt like he had done that day almost six years ago—angry and disbelieving, a fool and his wounded pride.

He had requested his hat, cane and gloves and was about to leave when Arabella finally arrived.

‘Miss Noir, your Grace,’ announced Mrs Silver, all smiles and solicitude as she brought Arabella into the room and left.

The door closed behind Mrs Silver.

The clock on the mantel punctuated the silence.

Dominic’s glass sat beside it, the champagne flat and untouched.

She was wearing the same scandalous dress, the same black feathered mask and beneath it her face was powder white. She came to stand before him and he found he was holding his breath and his body was strung tight with tension.

He swallowed and the sound of it seemed too loud in the silence between them.

He waited, not daring to frame the question, any certainty of what her answer would be long forgotten.

‘I accept your offer, your Grace,’ she said and her voice was low and dead of any emotion. She seemed so pale, so stiff and cold, that he had the absurd urge to pull her into his arms and warm her and tell her everything would be well. But then she moved away to stand behind the cream-coloured armchair and the moment was gone. ‘Let us discuss the details.’

He nodded and, like two strangers arranging a business deal, they began to talk.

When Arabella returned to the little room in Flower and Dean Street later that same night it was to find Mrs Tatton and Archie curled again upon the mattress.

‘It is only me,’ Arabella whispered in the darkness, but Mrs Tatton was already struggling to her feet, armed with the chamber pot as a makeshift weapon.

‘Oh, Arabella, you startled me.’

‘Forgive me, Mama.’ Arabella made her way across the room by the light of a nearby street lamp that glowed through the little window.

‘What are you doing home so early? I had not thought to see you until the morning.’ Her mother’s hair hung in a heavy long grey braid over one shoulder and she was wearing the same crumpled dress she had worn for the last five days. Then her eyes widened with fear. ‘The workshop have turned you off!’

‘There has been a change of plan, it is true,’ Arabella said and quickly added, ‘But you need have no worry. It is for the better.’

‘What do you mean, Arabella? What change?’

‘It is an arrangement that will ensure we do not end up in the workhouse.’ She glanced towards the sleeping form of her son. ‘We will live in a warm furnished house in a good respectable area, wear clean clothes and have three square meals a day. I will have enough money that Archie need not go without. And you, Mama, can have the best of medicines in London. We will not be cold. We will not be hungry. And …’ She glanced towards the footsteps that passed on the landing outside. She lowered her voice, ‘We will be safe from robberies and fear of assault.’

Her mother set the chamber pot down on the floor and came to stand before Arabella, staring into her face.

‘What manner of arrangement?’

Arabella felt herself blush and had to force herself to meet her mother’s gaze. She had known this moment would come and could not shrink from it. Better they spoke of it while Archie was not awake to hear. They would be moving out of here in a few days and there was no way that Arabella could continue her pretence. She had to tell her mother the truth … just not all of it.

‘With a gentleman.’

‘Oh, Arabella!’ Her mother clasped a hand to her mouth. ‘You cannot!’

‘I know it is a very great shock to you,’ she said in a calm reassuring voice that belied everything she was feeling. ‘And I am not proud of it.’ She was ashamed to the very core of her being, but she knew in order to make this bearable she must hide her true emotions from her mother. She must stand firm. Be strong. ‘But believe me when I tell you it is the best of the choices available. Do not seek to dissuade me from this, Mama, for my mind is quite made up.’

‘There was no workshop, was there?’ her mother asked in a deadened voice.

‘No.’ She saw the tremble in the old swollen hand that Mrs Tatton still clutched to her mouth and felt as bad as if she had just reached across and dealt her mother a physical blow.

‘And the gentleman?’

Arabella swallowed and averted her gaze. ‘It is best that he remains nameless for now.’ If her mother knew it was Dominic to whom she was selling herself there would be no force in heaven or on earth that could stop the awful cascade that would ensue.

‘Really?’ Mrs Tatton said in a hard voice that revealed to Arabella everything of her mother’s disillusionment and hurt. ‘And have you told him yet of Archie and of me?’

‘No,’ said Arabella quietly and her heart was racing and all of her fears rushed back as fast and frantic as a spring tide racing up a shore. ‘He need know nothing of either of you.’

‘It will be his house, Arabella. Do you not think he will notice an old woman and a child cluttering his path to his fancy piece?’ Mrs Tatton’s nostrils flared, revealing the extent of her distress.

Oh, indeed, Dominic would more than notice Archie in his path, Arabella thought grimly.

‘It will be a large house and he will not visit very often.’ She had been very careful in her negotiations with Dominic, forcing herself to think only of Archie’s safety and not the baseness of what she was doing, laying out her demands like the most callous of harlots. ‘All we need do is keep you both hidden from his sight when he does come.’ Words so simply spoken for her mother’s sake, but Arabella knew that they would have to be very careful indeed to hide the truth.

‘You think you are so clever, Arabella. You think you have it all planned out, do you not?’ Mrs Tatton said. ‘But what of the servants? It is the gentleman’s money that will pay their wages. They will be loyal to him. At the first opportunity they will be running to him behind your back, eager to spill your secrets. And he shall send Archie and me away.’

‘Do you think I would stay without you?’ she demanded. ‘It is true that it is his money that will pay the servants. But it is also true that if I dissolve our agreement, which I would most certainly do were they to tell him of your and Archie’s presence, then they shall be out of a job as much as me. I shall put it to them that it is in their interest, as much as mine, that we keep your presence secret from the gentleman.’

‘For men like him there are plenty more where you came from. Do not hold yourself so precious to him, Arabella,’ her mother warned.

The smile that slipped across Arabella’s face was bitter. ‘Oh, Mama, I know that I am not precious to him at all. Do not think that I would ever make that mistake.’ The word again went unspoken. ‘But he will take the house and the servants for me. And were I to leave, he would let them go again just as easily.’

‘Then we best pray that you are right, Archie and I.’ Mrs Tatton turned her face away but not before Arabella saw the shimmer of wetness upon her cheeks.

Mrs Tatton did not look round again, nor did she return to bed. She just stood there by the empty black fireplace, staring down on to the bare hearth. And when Arabella would have placed an arm of comfort around her mother’s shoulders, Mrs Tatton pulled away as if she could not bear the touch of so fallen a woman.

Arabella’s hand dropped back down to her side; inside of her the shame ate away a little more of her soul. She wondered what her mother’s reaction would be if she knew what the alternative had been. And she wondered how much worse her mother’s reaction would be if she ever learned that the man in question was Dominic Furneaux.