Ruining Miss Wrotham

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Miss Wrotham made no attempt at conversation. She sat alongside him, gripping her reticule, staring ahead, as if she could make the hackney go faster by sheer force of will. Mordecai had the disconcerting sensation that the clocks had lurched back a year and that now wasn’t now any longer. Miss Wrotham was even wearing an outfit she’d worn during her Season: the ivory-white walking dress with the vandyked hem, the navy blue spencer that matched her eyes, the chip straw bonnet with the blue riband. An outfit that had been elegant last year but looked slightly shabby now.

It felt as if time had turned back, but also as if it hadn’t, because this Miss Wrotham wasn’t quite the young woman he remembered, even though she wore the same dress. This Miss Wrotham had the cool, aloof composure of last year’s Miss Wrotham—but beneath that composure she radiated tension.

She turned her head and caught him looking at her.

“How far is it to Seven Dials, Mr. Black?”

“A mile or so.”

Miss Wrotham gave a jerky nod and opened her reticule. She pulled out a folded letter. “Sophia wrote that she didn’t know exactly where she was, but it’s above a tavern. She could see the Seven Dials crossroads from her window. She says . . . she says that when she arrived in London she had no money and she didn’t know where to go, and a woman took her in and fed her and gave her a bed for the night and then . . .” She gripped the letter tightly, crumpling it in her fist. “And then she said that Sophia owed her five shillings in return and that she must work to pay it off—and Sophia says it’s a brothel.”

Mordecai nodded, unsurprised. “It’s a common ploy. The abbesses use it to catch young girls from the country, those who don’t know any better.”

“Well, it caught Sophia,” Miss Wrotham said bitterly. “She says Mrs. Harris has locked her in a room, and she can’t get out.” She looked down at the letter, and smoothed it out on her knee. “But she had paper with her, and a pencil—she can draw, you see—she says she sometimes earns a little money from her drawings . . . and she says the girl who came to empty her chamber pot was friendly, and she was going to ask her to post this for her.”

“She obviously succeeded.” Mordecai tried to make his tone reassuring. “Miss Wrotham, your sister will be all right.”

Miss Wrotham looked at him gravely. “I received this letter only yesterday, but Sophia wrote it four months ago.”

Mordecai let out his breath slowly.

“Four months.” The tears were back in Miss Wrotham’s eyes.

Mordecai couldn’t bring himself to say She’ll be all right again.

Miss Wrotham dashed the tears away and lifted her chin. She held the letter out to him. “Sophia sketched what she could see from her window. I thought it might help me find her.”

Mordecai took the letter. Sophia Wrotham had written fast. Her words were a rough, hasty scrawl, almost illegible. He resisted reading them and focused on the sketch at the bottom. It was neither rough nor hasty; Sophia Wrotham had taken pains with it.

His gaze drifted up to the final line of the letter—I pray that you get this letter, Nell, for I know you will help me, whatever Father may say.

Nell. Miss Wrotham’s sister called her Nell.

He jerked his gaze back down to the sketch, studied it for a moment, fixing the details in his mind, then looked at Miss Wrotham. “It will help.”

Seven Dials had once been a respectable neighborhood, although no one would call it that now; each of the seven streets radiating from the crossroad boasted a public house on the corner. But there was more to the Dials than merely taverns. There were gin shops and chophouses and brothels and tenements and shops selling goods that were third or fourth hand, and hawkers loudly advertising their wares, and children playing in the gutters, and men and women of all ages afflicted with the same condition: poverty. A good many of them were afflicted with a second condition: drunkenness.

If Halfmoon Street had been uncomfortably warm, Seven Dials was sweltering. The air was thick, stifling, choking with foul smells. He and Miss Wrotham stood on the filthy flagway, buffeted by the heat and the noise, the stench, the people.

Mordecai kept a firm grip on Miss Wrotham’s elbow. She pressed close to him, showing a calm face, but he felt her tension, felt the faint trembling of her arm. He glanced down at the sketch, and back at the scene before him. “Over there. You see it? That’s where she drew this from.”

Miss Wrotham followed his gaze. The building was shabby, its mortar crumbling, one of its upper windows boarded over. “I see it.”

Mordecai handed her the letter and tightened his grip on her elbow—not because he was afraid she’d try to pull free, but because he wanted there to be no mistake. To get to her, you have to go through me. Together they crossed the road and gained the far side. The loiterers and the passersby paid them little attention; Mordecai scanned their faces, saw nothing that alarmed him, then looked down at the children playing in the gutter. He reached down and took one of the boys by the ear. “Which is Mrs. Harris’s bawdy house?”

The boy yelped and screwed up his face—playacting; Mordecai’s grip wasn’t cruel. But the pretense of pain was earning the boy the wide-eyed attention of his companions.

“Which door?”

The urchin pointed.

Mordecai released him and tossed him a coin. The boy caught it, grinning widely.

The door had seen better days, but it was stout enough. Not a door a young woman would be able to break down if it were locked. It wasn’t locked today. Mordecai pushed it open. A staircase led upward, steep and dark and malodorous. No bullyboy waited at the foot of the stairs, but Mordecai was certain there’d be one at the top.

He thought of his pistols in their silk-lined case, back in Grosvenor Square, and wished he had them with him. But if he didn’t have pistols, he had his fists—and he’d wager he was a better fighter than any bullyboy.

Unless the bullyboy had a knife.

Mordecai glanced at Miss Wrotham. She shouldn’t be here.

He imagined her shrieking and fainting—and dismissed it as impossible; and then he imagined her picking up a vase and smashing it over a bullyboy’s head. That wasn’t impossible, not if she was the woman he thought she was.

“If there’s a fight, don’t involve yourself,” he said firmly. “Leave it to me.”

Miss Wrotham nodded.

Mordecai didn’t believe the nod; if it came to a fight, if she thought her sister’s life was in danger, Eleanor Wrotham would plunge into the fray. Therefore, there must be no fight.

He set his foot on the bottom stair—then turned back and bolted the door behind them. Now their backs were safe.

Mordecai climbed the stairs, Miss Wrotham following closely behind him. At the top was a narrow corridor with doors opening off on either side. Here was the bullyboy, slouching in a chair, his chin sunk on his chest, half-asleep.

The man jerked awake when Mordecai loomed over him, staggered to his feet, and stood swaying. Mordecai revised his assessment: not half-asleep; half-drunk.

“Mrs. Harris,” Mordecai said brusquely. “We wish to speak with her.”

The bullyboy was shorter and heavier than Mordecai, with a fighter’s face: broken nose, scarred eyebrows. “An’ who might you be?” he said, bluster in his voice.

“Mrs. Harris,” Mordecai said. “Now.”

The bullyboy squinted at Mordecai’s face while he worked through his options, then he made the wisest choice: he turned and headed down the corridor.

Mordecai and Miss Wrotham followed.

The bullyboy halted at the third door along and pushed it open. “Some’un to see you,” he said.

Mordecai stepped into the room on the bullyboy’s heels. It was a parlor. There was only one occupant: a woman on a settee, a teacup in her hand. The settee had once been a handsome piece of furniture. Its lines were still good, but the fabric was thin in places, stained and greasy in others.

Apart from the settee, the room was sparsely furnished. There were no vases for Miss Wrotham to smash over the bullyboy’s head. But there was a sturdy oak stool that would be easy to wield, and by the fireplace was a set of tools: poker, tongs, shovel, brush. Mordecai eyed the poker briefly, and then looked back at the woman.

Mrs. Harris was in a similar condition to her settee: she’d once been handsome, but was no longer. She looked as tough as her bullyboy, a woman on the wrong side of fifty with tight lines bracketing her mouth.

Miss Wrotham stepped into the room alongside Mordecai, so close that her arm brushed his. Mrs. Harris’s gaze swung to her, sharp and assessing, like an auctioneer looking over a prime horse.

“Mrs. Harris?” Mordecai said.

The woman put down her teacup. “Who are you?”

“We’re here for Sophia Wrotham.”

“Never heard of ’er. Joe, show ’em out.”

“No,” Mordecai said, closing the door and standing with his back to it. “Sophia Wrotham. You offered her a bed for the night, gave her some food—and then told her she was in your debt. That she had to work for you to pay it off.”

Mrs. Harris lifted her chin. “What if I did? I ain’t a charity.”

“Where is she?” Mordecai said, his voice hard and flat and full of menace.

“Joe,” Mrs. Harris said shrilly. “Stop standing there like a fool! Get rid of ’em.”

The bullyboy hesitated. His gaze traveled from Mordecai to Miss Wrotham and then to the fireplace, coming to rest on the poker. He took a lurching stride towards it.

Mordecai took two quick steps forward, scooped up the stool, and threw it.

The stool hit the bullyboy solidly in the head—crack-thud. He collapsed bonelessly.

Mrs. Harris scrambled to her feet. She snatched up her teacup and held it like a weapon.

“Sophia Wrotham,” Mordecai said again. “Where is she?”

“I don’ know who you mean!”

“She was here four months ago,” Mordecai said.

“Four months?” Mrs. Harris’s expression changed. She looked as if she wanted to spit. “Girl with yeller hair? Pretty?”

Mordecai glanced back at Miss Wrotham. She nodded.

“A viper, she were. Broke a winder and run off. Took one of me girls wiv ’er.”

“She’s gone?”

“Are you deaf? I just tole you! She run off.”

Mordecai surveyed the woman through narrowed eyes. “I want to see inside every room in this building.”

Mordecai searched from cellar to attic, his hand wrapped tightly around Mrs. Harris’s upper arm, Miss Wrotham following silently. Sophia Wrotham wasn’t there, although they found the room where she’d been kept. The window was broken and boarded over.

Mrs. Harris had five girls working for her, all asleep at this time of day. Mordecai shook them awake and asked them the same questions: Did they know where Sophia Wrotham had gone? Did they wish to leave themselves? They all answered No to the first question; three of them said Yes to the second.

Half an hour after he and Miss Wrotham had entered the bawdy house, they left it. The bullyboy was still out cold on the parlor floor.

Mordecai unbolted the door at the foot of the stairs and stepped out onto the street. Nothing had changed; the air was still thick and hot and stinking, the same urchins still played in the gutter.

“Is there somewhere you’d like to go?” he asked the three girls.

“Home,” one of them said. She looked about eighteen years old, a thin, drab creature, pale-skinned and lank-haired. All her belongings fitted into one shabby carpetbag.

“Where’s that?”

“Near Stevenage.”

“I’ll take you to a coaching inn,” Mordecai said. “Get you a place on the stagecoach.” He looked at the other two girls. “You?”

“Putney,” one of them said. “Ma lives there. She’ll ’ave me back.”

“Mine won’t,” the last girl said. She looked like a farmer’s daughter, strong-boned and ruddy-cheeked, but for all her sturdiness she also looked fragile and forlorn. Her gown was soiled and wrinkled, her hair disheveled, the remains of a bruise gray on her face.

Mordecai knew his duty. He’d have to employ her. A scullery maid? A housemaid? Perhaps a milkmaid on his Devonshire estate?

“Come wiv me, then,” the second girl said. “Ma’s a laundress. She’ll be glad fer the extra ’ands.”

Mordecai saw the two girls into a hackney and paid their fare to Putney. He gave them each a banknote. “Look after her,” he told the girl from Putney, with a nod at the farmer’s daughter.

“I will, sir.”

He hailed a second hackney, handed the last girl into it, and found himself confronted by a dilemma. “Ah, Miss Wrotham?”

She glanced at him, and then at the girl in the carriage, and he saw that she understood both his dilemma and his unvoiced question: Do you object to sharing a carriage with a prostitute?

She responded by stepping up into the hackney.

Miss Wrotham’s father would have turned over in his grave in horror; Mordecai was simply relieved. He directed the jarvey to take them to the Saracen’s Head in Holborn, from where the coaches north departed, and climbed into the carriage.

It was a silent journey to the Saracen. The only sound was the clatter of the hackney’s wheels. Miss Wrotham sat clasping her hands. She looked remote and haughty—and beneath the haughtiness, exhausted. Mordecai wondered if she’d slept at all on the stagecoach from Bath, and when she’d last eaten. And then he tried to remember when he’d last eaten. Too long ago, his stomach told him.

The Saracen’s Head wasn’t the inn Miss Wrotham had arrived at that morning, but it was just as busy. Miss Wrotham didn’t appear to notice the press of people; her gaze was unfocused, her attention directed inwards.

Mordecai paid the girl’s fare to Stevenage and ordered a meal for her. “Are you hungry?” he asked Miss Wrotham. “Would you like to dine here?” But she merely shook her head.

Mordecai gave the girl ten pounds. He could tell from her expression that it was more money than she’d ever seen in her life. “Good-bye,” he said, and turned to go.

“Sir?”

Mordecai turned back. The girl stood clutching the ten-pound note in her dirty fingers.

“I don’ know where your friend is, but I know where Lizzie’ll be.”

Miss Wrotham’s gaze became suddenly sharp. “Lizzie?”

“The one who run off wiv ’er.”

Miss Wrotham took a step forward, her eyes fixed intently on the girl’s face.

“Lizzie said she knew some’un who’d take her in, if she could get back to Exeter.”

“Who?”

“I don’ know ’er name, ma’am, but Lizzie said she’s a godly woman who ’elps the fallen.”

“Fallen women?”

The girl nodded. “Lizzie said she didn’ like bein’ preached at, but anything’d be better than whoring.”

“Exeter?”

The girl nodded again. “That’s where Lizzie will ’ave gone. And prolly your friend wiv ’er.”