Damon Snow and the Nocturnal Lessons (6 page)

“I preferred it when I drank the last of your gin,” I said. “Yet alas, it is all gone…”

“You should have thought of that before you drained it then,” Rogers said.

I almost asked Kendall if he could somehow convince me that love actually did exist and life wasn’t great plains of emptiness, but that would have been cruel. Instead, I asked, “What do you know about Price?”

“P-Price?” Kendall stuttered. “Err, why do you ask?”

“He seemed to distress you,” I said. “I can see why. He was brutal.”

“John isn’t brutal!”

I blinked. Rogers didn’t jest, so he must have been as surprised as I was.

“Oh,” I said. “I must have imagined it when he held me still to frig my mouth.”

“Now, that’s not nearly so amusing,” Rogers said.

“I…” Kendall said.

“Or perhaps it’s just I,” I said. “Then again, you seemed awfully afraid of him. You nearly jumped out of your skin to say ‘no’, though you knew what Benjamin would do.”

“Ben isn’t that bad a bloke,” Rogers said.

I shrugged, though he couldn’t see me. It didn’t matter to me. All men were the same when pressed. They turned to violence, they turned to lust. All the better for me, I supposed. I could feed from it then.

“He doesn’t… he doesn’t actually want me,” Kendall explained. “I mean, he’s polite — he’s a gentleman, after all, but… he doesn’t want me.”

Price seemed to, though. Benjamin hadn’t exactly stuck a pistol to his forehead to make him choose Kendall. But fancies came and fancies left. A favourite molly today was yesterday’s gossip the next day. We all knew it. The ones who didn’t were the ones who never survived.

“How often does he come in?” I asked.

“Are you sweet on him?” Rogers asked. “Someone call the Church. We have a genuine miracle.”

As if the Church wanted anything to do with me. “He stiffed me afterward,” I said.

“I could have helped with that,” Rogers said.

“It wasn’t that sort,” I said. “The next round, I would like to be properly compensated. So Kendall? When is he next due in?”

“He — he only comes once… once every fortnight,” Kendall said.

Damnation. “What else do you know about him? Where does he live?”

“You can’t sneak him,” Rogers said.

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “I just…” Blast, what was I supposed to tell them? That I actually didn’t have a care for the spare pence, but I had to learn about him so I could tell my dying flat? “I just want to understand him.”

Now, didn’t that just make me want to jump down a well.

“Do you have a fever?” Rogers asked.

“I’m perfectly fine,” I said. “Kendall, where does he live?”

“You can’t go to Tottenham, Benjamin—”

“Tottenham?” I interrupted. Yes, yes, I knew that it would be a serious faux pas. “Tottenham Street?”

Kendall made a sound as if he were choking. It must be true then. But why would Kendall care to keep me away from Price? What I was after had nothing to do with Kendall. He wouldn’t be in any trouble. I might even save him a fair bit.

“My thanks,” I said.

Kendall refused to say anything else for the rest of the night.

Chapter Five

I told Mother Dover that I was leaving for the night, no ifs, ands or buts. She reluctantly agreed she had more than enough mollies in her house that night to have need of me. Instead of waiting in the parlour for my next paramour, I froze my fingers and toes standing on Tottenham Street, waiting for Price to return.

I hugged my great coat around me. At least, I hoped he would return, and wasn’t already snug in his own home, sipping on brandy in front of his fire. That’s what I imagined the gentry did when they weren’t out gallivanting or visiting a bawdy house, which I also didn’t imagine happened very often, the bawdy houses taking up so much time.

Still a better fate than to have my throat slashed, I supposed, which was why I huddled against a building where no one could approach without me seeing them first.

A hansom drove past me, its large iron wheels doing its very best to soak me in muddy water. I tried to jump back, but there was nowhere to jump back, so it soaked my great coat through. Could incubi curse the living? I’d settle for cursing the wheels.

I doubted it, anyway. The only person an incubus seemed to curse was itself.

The driver brought the hansom to a stop in front of a dark house. Not even the hearth warmed its windows. I had thought it was abandoned between sales, for it never took long to sell a house in this part of Town, but it seemed as if I was mistaken.

Black riding boots emerged from the far side of the hansom. I couldn’t see who the boots were attached to. Smart, though, for he landed in a puddle. Alone too, for no one else emerged. The hansom drove off, revealing the figure looking to and fro as if he were sneaking into his own home.

Price.

I started across the street, only to pull back as another carriage drove on through, the driver swearing an oath at me. I glared back at him. During the distraction, Price had disappeared, but it didn’t matter. I knew which house.

When I could finally make my way clear across the street, I knocked on the door. I tapped my foot as I waited, then knocked again. The door opened. Price appeared still in his wet clothes holding a candelabrum to light his way. Oh, so he could afford wax candles, but not to leave an extra coin on the table?

“Good evening,” I said, as Price gaped at me. “May I come in?”

His lip quivered, and he glanced down either way on the street. I hid my grimace. His neighbours would notice something was morally questionable now, with the way he was acting. Price must know he had only two choices – invite me in or slam the door in my face and hope I didn't speak to any neighbours.

After a long moment, Price bobbed his head once, stood another moment frozen in the doorframe, and allowed me inside after I raised my eyebrows.

“How did you… Why are you...?” Price trailed off. “I mean, this is quite the shock.”

“I do venture past Covent Square once in a blue moon,” I said. Price opened his mouth to sputter some more, so I added, “I thought I'd pay you a social call.”

“A – a social call,” Price repeated.

“I know it's not a terribly fashionable hour,” I said. “You will have to excuse me.”

Since he didn’t seem to have a man at hand, I shrugged out of my own coat and folded it over my arm.

He stared at my folded coat. I lifted that arm and he seemed to snap out of his paralysis. He shook his head and took my coat. “My apologies. I don’t often have visitors.”

Quite obviously. The house was as dark on the inside as it was from the outside. From the glow of the candles, though, his front hall hadn’t seen the business end of a duster in a long while. Too long.

And Price set my coat over a bare side table. I groaned. I would just have to suffer Mother Dover’s extravagant laundry prices, I supposed. Perhaps I could at least get that much coin out of Byrne.

“I’m sure I can recommend someone,” I said. “If you’re between help, I mean.”

“No, no,” Price said. The candle glow did not hide the colour blossoming in his cheeks much. It must have been humiliating, for one’s six-pence molly to criticise the state of his home. Well, I had been worth a lot more than six-pence to him. It just didn’t seem like it. “I have a girl. All I really need.”

“It’s quite a large house for just one girl,” I said. Not that I could tell from the front hall.

“I manage,” he said.

“Is there somewhere more comfortable we could speak?” I asked. Or did he purposefully keep me in the front hall as if I deserved no better?

He started again, as if jerking out of a dream, and shook his head again. “Of course, of course,” he said. “Just through that door behind you.”

So it wasn’t that large of a house. But I had never put Price on the same income level as Byrne. Not this close to St Giles. Byrne’s income was harder to read, as he dressed smartly but not overly extravagant, but I knew, from gossip and newspaper clippings, that he was worth at least ten thousand a year. Enough to have his drawing room on the first floor instead of the ground.

I nodded and proceeded into the room Price had indicated, even though he was the one with the light and the familiarity with his surroundings.

“I didn’t expect company,” Price said again.

One never expects the incubus calling.

“I’m most grateful then,” I said. Price’s candelabra illuminated a pair of sofas facing each other, the empty hearth and a bottle of whiskey with a dram already poured on the side table. So that’s what Mr Price liked to do in his free time. Man after my own heart.

I took the tumbler and downed the liquor. Price didn’t protest. Although the candles smelled far better than rush torches, and the whiskey tasted smoother than the gin, it seemed so familiar to be speaking in the dark with a good bottle of ruin. I grinned at Price, and he swallowed.

Oh, that wouldn’t do. At this rate, he’d think I was blackmailing him. The Bow Street Runners didn’t pay well, and they were a pox on returning customers, the kind who would tip better in the future.

“Is the missus out tonight?” I asked. There must be a missus. No bachelor painted his own rooms powdered blue, nor kept an assortment of knickknacks over the mantle and side tables. The question did not help. His face completely shuttered, but at least he had stopped looking afraid of me. This wasn’t even the frightening part. “Ah, never mind then. I had just heard that you were married.”

“I was,” Price admitted.

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said, although I couldn’t have cared. It was what people were supposed to say unless you hailed from St Giles or Whitechapel or any of the other rookeries, and then you might spit at them and say ‘good riddance’.

“Thank you,” he said, with the glibness of a man who has had to say it too much.

“My mother died a few years ago,” I said. People hadn’t been too sorry then, except to mourn the passing of such good laundry prices.

“Humans are rather fragile, aren’t they,” Price said.

“They can withstand a lot.” I had known both green girls and mollies beaten nearly to death, yet still they had hung on by their fingernails. “Unfortunately, life just throws more at them.”

Price sighed. “It does at that.”

This was going nowhere. I stood and Price jumped to his feet too, but I motioned for him to sit. I wished that I could see, so I could wander the room. Instead, I wandered to the empty hearth.

“I suppose I should light that,” Price said.

I shrugged my shoulder. “It matters not to me.”

“No, no, you were quite soaked,” Price said, getting to his feet. “Here, let me see if I can find…” Price cursed. I imagined that he had bumped into something large.

I let him proceed, for it seemed to put him at ease somehow, and watched him silently. He managed to find the kindling ready and a flint piece to start the fire. It started slow, but Price, unlike most gentlemen, seemed to be used to setting his own hearth.

The room wasn’t much better in the light, for it showed the layers of dust on the walls and the furniture and other knick knacks. His wife seemed to have had a talent for decoration. I told Price so.

“Yes, fortunately for her, we moved to London quite young,” he said. “We came from Yorkshire, but I gained employment as a banker and came to London. I spent hours arguing with her that we needed to at least bring something. She wanted to leave it all behind. A fresh start, where she could choose every single fashion. She never liked my mother’s taste.”

“What lady does?” My mother would have accepted living with pigs, as long as she could return to her former lifestyle. Unfortunately, I ruined that chance for her.

“Oh, what rows they would have,” Price said. “My mother thought she was mad. It took at least ten years to decorate the house, when we could afford to, and we still have a few rooms bare.”

More than ten years married. That would make him older than five-and-thirty at youngest, or even forty. I had miscalculated.

“Our bedroom, for one,” he said. My shoulders tightened, but it didn’t seem to be an invitation. “Once we discovered that she was expecting, she had to finish the nursery first, and then we never really got around to it.”

“Oh, so you have a child?” I asked.

Price looked away. “Three.”

“Are they off at public school?” I asked. “I hear St Bartholomew’s is excellent.”

“No.”

Ah. His wife, his children, all gone, and here he was, all alone in the dark and the dust.

“You could always remarry,” I said. “You’re still young enough to start again.”

Price pursed his lips and shook his head. That was cute. He thought he was in love with her. It must be true love, with the way he slithered into Mother Dover’s every week or two.

“Why are you here?” Price asked.

I smiled at him, the false one I kept for getting bigger tips out of flats. “I told you. Paying you a social call.”