Private Arrangements (18 page)

“As you might imagine, my conversations with a loving mother left a lasting, positive impression of her son, leading to my current intentions. . . .”

“Until you were waylaid by Ladies Avery and Somersby and informed of the more sordid aspects of my past.”

“Actually, my daughter was the first to tell me.” She smiled wryly. “She disapproves of you. But I think a judgment of you based only on your prodigal years is perhaps as biased and incomplete as that made solely on what one knows of you before and after those years.”

She raked in the chocolates, set them in a neat pile before her, and cleared the cards. “Your turn to wager, Your Grace. Though I'd understand perfectly should you no longer wish to stay, now that I've revealed myself as both a fraud and a schemer.”

No, she hadn't merely revealed herself to be a schemer. She was still a schemer. She was still weaving fact and fiction together in order that her daughter could rise from the ashes of her divorce more socially prominent than ever.

Yet something bound him to her now. Thirty years ago, when the young Mrs. Rowland had been respectfully attending the late duchess, he had been silent and sullen at dinner, ignoring his mother to the best of his capability. He had hardly known the woman who gave him life. Even the death of his father hadn't imparted to him any urgency to better acquaint himself with her. She had been the healthy one. He'd assumed that she'd be around to wring her handkerchief and frown upon his infractions for decades to come.

He put up five pieces of chocolate. “Please deal.”

Chapter Nineteen

31 May 1893

A
s you can see, sir, we have outstanding vehicles that would meet your every need,” said the wiry Scotsman, proprietor of Adams's Fine Carriages, For Sale and For Let.

“Indeed,” said Camden. “Most excellent wares. I will be out of town for a day or two. When I return, I will decide on one in particular.”

“Very good, sir,” said Adams. “Allow us the honor to conduct you home in one of our fine conveyances.”

Camden smiled. He regularly hosted sorties on his yacht, and guests who had not seriously considered owning a yacht before had been known to commission one from him before they disembarked. So he appreciated the Scotsman's acumen. “It would be my pleasure.”

“This way, please.”

A sumptuous black-and-gold landau was already fitted to a team of four and ready to go as they approached the courtyard.

“Ah, Mrs. Croesus is here today, I see,” said Adams, with evident pleasure.

“Pardon?” said Camden, certain he'd misheard the man. Mrs.
Croesus?
He couldn't help imagining a small female pup with a gold leash and a diamond-encrusted collar.

“Won't you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Saybrook?” said Adams.

He rushed forward to greet the woman about to mount the carriage. Rope upon rope of perfectly matched pearls rambled across her shapely front. The rest of her was swathed in brocade shot through and through with gold threads. Beneath her oversize and wildly beplumed hat, the chin-length veil that concealed her face sparkled in the sun—tiny diamonds sewn into the netting.

The woman appeared exactly as a human Mrs. Croesus should. He ought to ask Gigi, Camden thought dryly, why she, one of the richest women in England, rarely dressed the part. Next time he saw her, that was. After their last coupling the night of the Carlisles' ball, she had sent him a tersely worded note the next morning, informing him that she'd be unavailable for procreation-related purposes for the following seven days. And he'd hardly seen her since.

Today was the eighth day.

Adams fussed over Mrs. Croesus. She received his attention with a grand condescension that he quite obviously relished. At last he handed her into the open carriage, bowed, and returned to Camden.

“Don't much care for fancy ladies usually,” he said. “But there is something about that one. Magnificent, eh?”

The magnificent one raised the lapdog she'd held on the side away from Camden and lifted it to her face. “Magnificent indeed,” said Camden, recognizing the corgi.

Gigi. What was she doing hiring a carriage from Adams's? Didn't she have barouches and broughams enough of her own? And why was she suddenly dressed like some American millionaire's mistress?

“On second thought,” he said to Adams, “I've decided that a cab will be all I require this morning.”

Gigi's hired landau went east, across Westminster Bridge, past Lambeth, into Southwark. Shops lined the thoroughfares. Vendors milled about the curb, hawking ginger beer and West Country strawberries. Sandwich-board men, wearily watching out for yobos who tipped them over for fun, advertised everything from tobacco to female pills.

The houses looked decent, some even well-to-do. But the prosperity did not extend beyond the main boulevard. The landau turned off onto a side street, and within a few blocks the neighborhood hung on to respectability by its fingernails.

The carriage stopped before a small establishment set between a grimy cookshop reeking of sausage and onion and the office of a doctor promising to not only cure common diseases and female ailments but also to regenerate hair and banish corpulence.

Half a dozen women stood on the sidewalk, two carrying small children, all waiting. They smoothed skirts and hair with ungloved hands, trying to not stare at the grand lady in the landau and not entirely succeeding.

The coachmen leapt down, unfolded the steps, and held open the door. Gigi alit, looking richer than God and colder than Persephone in Hades' bed, her green-and-gold-striped day dress an almost shocking display of color and brilliance amid the women's faded blues and duns. As she approached the door, it was opened from within by a middle-aged, neatly attired woman.

From across the street in his hired cab, Camden watched in fascination. What was Gigi doing on a Bermondsey street barely one rung above seediness?

One waiting woman bent down to speak to her child, clearing Camden's line of sight at last to the small bronze plaque affixed to the left of the door.

Croesus Lending Co.
For Ladies Only

Gigi had dealt with this young girl and her young child a hundred times—different faces, different names, but always the same story. She'd been in love, she'd thought it would last, but it didn't. And here she was, at her wits' end, with only a ha'penny to her name, throwing herself at the mercy of a stranger.

The story still sent chills down Gigi's spine. Had she been a poor, friendless seamstress, might she not have fallen for the handsome apprentice baker next door? Had she been in service, perhaps she, too, would have believed the sweet nothings proffered by the son of the house.

She'd made all the same mistakes. She knew what it was like to be lonely and desperately in love. What it was like to willingly abandon all good sense.

Miss Shoemaker had been a promising apprentice florist in Cambridge when she lost her head over a young professor who came into her employer's shop every morning for a fresh boutonniere. The rest was mundane tragedy. He refused to marry her or even support her. She lost her position when her pregnancy could no longer be hidden. No other reputable florist would hire her. To keep herself and her child alive, she turned to prostitution.

It seemed that her prayers had been answered when a fellow apprentice florist, Miss Neeley, wrote for her help. Miss Neeley had left Cambridge to open her own shop in London before Miss Shoemaker's disgrace and still thought her a reputable young woman. Miss Shoemaker worked under Miss Neeley for two years, socking away every spare penny for the day when she could open her own shop. But just when she thought she had put her past behind her, in walked Miss Neeley's brother one fine morning and recognized Miss Shoemaker from her streetwalking days.

The outline of Miss Shoemaker's difficult young life took up all of one typed page from the private investigator Gigi kept on retainer for Croesus Lending. Those applicants with good references and character letters were handled by Mrs. Ramsey. The irregular cases came to Gigi.

She listened impassively as Miss Shoemaker stuttered her way through her unhappy story, her cheeks stained a dark red.

“I'm sorry I've no character, mum. But I know all about flowers. I can read some and I'm real good with numbers. Miss Neeley used to let me keep the books for her too. And she gots all sorts of compliments on them big arrangements I made for weddings and dances and such. . . .” Miss Shoemaker's voice trailed off, finally cowed into silence by Gigi's glacial magnificence.

And it wasn't just her overdressed self; it was the room too. After the shabby anteroom and the narrow, dark hallway, the opulence of her office dazzled without fail. Lavishly framed paintings by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, brimming with the dazzling white marbles and the impossibly blue skies of a lost antiquity, drew forth astounded gasps. Furniture as fine as any found in aristocratic drawing rooms routinely made the applicants round-eyed with fear, afraid to soil the posh vermilion-and-cream brocade upholstery with their humble posteriors.

“You said you wish to open a shop of your own,” Gigi said. “Do you have a location chosen?”

“Yes, mum. There is this small shopfront just off Bond Street. The rent is dear, but the location is good.”

Miss Shoemaker had ambition and daring. Gigi liked that. “Bond Street? Getting ahead of yourself, Miss Shoemaker?”

“No, mum. I've thought and thought about it. It's the only way. The people in trade, their wives wouldn't use me, not if they've heard anything from Miss Neeley. But the grand ladies, they might not care so much if I do real good work.”

There was some truth to that. “Even so, I would advise you to become a very proper widow.”

“Yes, mum.”

“And before you become too thrilled with your blue-blood patrons, find out which pay their bills and which think you should pay them for the privilege.”

“Yes, mum.” Miss Shoemaker could hardly speak for her rising excitement.

“And keep your eyes peeled for any rich Americans coming to town. Get their business as fast as you can.”

“Yes, mum.”

Gigi wrote out a cheque and placed it in an envelope. “You may take this to Mrs. Ramsey in the next room down the hall. She will handle the rest.”

Mrs. Ramsey would take Miss Shoemaker through Croesus Lending Co.'s standard contract, tell her what to do with the cheque, and, at the end, show her out through the back door. Gigi did not want the applicants to share their successes with one another or for it to become common knowledge that she granted the vast majority of their requests.

“Oh, mum, thank you, mum!” Miss Shoemaker curtsied so deep she nearly fell over.

“More sweet,” her son, who'd been completely silent, suddenly chirped loudly.

“Shhh!” Miss Shoemaker dug out a pretty tin, opened it, and quickly shoved a piece of bonbon into the boy's mouth.

The tin. Good God. From Demel's of Vienna. An identical one had been there right next to Gigi's hand, on Camden's writing desk, the last time he'd taken her.

“Where'd you get that?” she asked sharply.

“From a gentleman outside, mum,” answered Miss Shoemaker, looking at Gigi uncertainly. “He gave it when Timmy wouldn't stop crying. I'm sorry, mum. I shouldn't have taken it. It was very wrong of me.”

“It's all right. You did nothing wrong.”

“But, mum—”

“Mrs. Ramsey is waiting for you, Miss Shoemaker.”

Gigi searched all around, but there were no signs of Camden anywhere outside Croesus Lending Co. She rode the landau back to Adams's and allowed the Scotsman to hail her a cab, which took her to Madame Elise's, where she had fifteen minutes to choose fabric for a new shawl before her own brougham arrived outside, having unloaded her two hours earlier.

She arrived home and found Camden in his bedchamber, dropping a stack of starched white shirts into a traveling satchel.

“What were you doing following me?”

“Curiosity, my dear Mrs. Croesus. I happened to be at the carriage place when you came around,” he said without looking at her, a small smile about his lips. “If you saw me dressed like the king on coronation day, calling myself Lord Bountiful and going about on mysterious business, what would you have done?”

“Gone about my own affairs, of course,” she said, not very convincingly.

“Of course,” he murmured. “But rest assured, your secret is safe with me.”

“It's not a secret. It's but anonymity. The women who come to Croesus Lending for help aren't exactly what the holier-than-thou set would call ‘the deserving poor.' I don't want to have to explain anything to anyone, that's all.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don't understand.” What could he possibly understand, Mr. Mighty-and-Perfect? “These are hardworking, enterprising women who happen to have a less-than-spotless past. All they need are a few quid to get them on their feet again.”

“How much money did you lend out today?”

She hesitated. Was he expecting a numerical answer? “Sixty-five pounds.”

His brow lifted. “A goodly sum. Did any of it go to Miss Shoemaker?”

“Ten pounds.” Ten pounds was a significant amount of money. It was not uncommon for working girls to earn two quid a month.

“What about Miss Dutton?”

“Eight pounds. Miss Dutton is an unusually talented calligrapher. She will have a secure future if she keeps her more destructive tendencies in check.”

He placed three cravats in the satchel and looked up. “On the strength of her own words? I assume Miss Dutton didn't have a character either.”

“I have a private investigator on retainer. In six years I've had only three women default on me, and one of them was run over by a carriage.”

“Admirable.”

“Do not condescend to me.” She grew angry at his facile comment. “Croesus Lending may operate outside conventional boundaries, but it is legitimate and honorable. I sleep better at night for it.”

He buckled the satchel and came to her. “Calm down,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. And when she jerked away from his touch, he took one more step toward her and placed his palms on her cheeks.

“Calm down. I think what you do
is
admirable. I'm glad someone remembers the forgotten. And I'm glad it's you.”

She could not be more astonished had he announced he was nominating her for sainthood. He dropped his hands and ambled to the demilune table to wind his watch, but her cheeks remained hotly imprinted with his touch. “I just want to give someone a second chance,” she mumbled.

She'd never received one from him.

His fingers paused in their motion. He glanced once at her before resuming the winding of his watch. He said nothing.

She suddenly felt she'd stayed too long. Said too much. “Well, then, I'd better let you get on. A pleasant trip to you.”

“I'm going to Devon to dine with your mother and the Duke of Perrin. My train leaves Paddington in an hour. Have the kitchen pack you a sandwich. You can come with me.”

A dozen thoughts raced through her head. He wanted her conveniently nearby so he could get on with impregnating her, so that Mrs. Rowland couldn't pester him about the divorce, so that it'd be less awkward at dinner with the duke. But the quake of pleasure brought on by his invitation refused to subside.

“I already told her I wouldn't come,” she said.

“Give her a second chance,” he said, slipping the watch into his pocket. “She'd like that.”