Virginia Henley (18 page)

“You shouldn’t really be here, staring, mistress. Respectable young ladies don’t even drive down St. James’s. This is strictly male territory, except for—”

“Except for?”

“Well, you know, dollymops—”

“Dollymops? The girls who sell mops?” Alex asked, puzzled.

“St . . . streetwalkers,” Sara whispered.

“You mean prostitutes? Oh, how vastly amusing! The fellow has mistaken me for a strumpet.” Alex laughed. “The cheeky sod!”

Sara hurriedly led the way into King Street. “This is Almack’s. Finally, a place where ladies are allowed, but of course you must have a subscription from one of the patronesses.”

“Ah, yes, my grandmother will be sure to get me a subscription. The supper balls are held on Wednesday nights, I believe, and if you don’t manage a subscription you are socially dead. Is that correct?”

“I’m afraid so. It is the primary London marriage market for debutantes. There are gambling rooms to attract the gentlemen.”

“Marriage market? I warrant it’s more like a meat market where flesh is sold! Moreover, intelligent females are shunned, since everyone knows young women enjoy being inferior to men, and marriage is a lady’s natural condition.”

“Don’t you wish to attend?” Sara asked in disbelief.

“Oh, I can’t wait! It will supply me with endless material for drawing clever, but devastatingly cruel caricatures.”

They strolled along to Pall Mall. Alex spied a pie-man and bought them a couple of pasties. Sara didn’t mind eating in the street, but it was the first time she had ever seen a lady do so.

“I should like to see the theaters. How do we get to Covent Garden and Drury Lane?”

Sara was torn. She knew that Alexandra should not walk in such a seedy area but had to admit that the prospect was exciting. Stage actresses and the various classes of people they attracted to their performances were fascinating. Sara decided to compromise. “I shouldn’t really take you there, but if we leave before it starts to get dark, I don’t think we’ll come to any harm.”

As they made their way up Charing Cross Road, Alex noticed there were far more pedestrians about, and not many in the throng were fashionably dressed. Hawkers with barrows were shouting the praises of their wares and doing a brisk business. She looked up and saw some church spires, but she also saw many taverns and smoke shops dotted among the playhouses. Their doors were ajar and the racket from inside was raucous; the smell of cheap ale, gin, and tobacco permeated the air, along with curses, screeches, and laughter. Though it was only afternoon, some patrons staggered in and out of the public houses in a drunk and disorderly fashion, spitting on the pavement and spewing in the gutter.

Sara and Alex exchanged glances, held their skirts close, and hurried past. In Drury Lane, the theaters had just finished their matinee performances, and the crowds of people leaving littered the street with orange peel, chestnut shells, bread crusts, and various other remnants of the refreshments they’d enjoyed while watching the play. Mangy dogs and pecking pigeons vied for the scraps, while the miasma of sweating humanity made Alex pinch her nostrils.

“I should never have brought you here,” Sara declared.

“No, no, I absolutely love it! London isn’t all Mayfair town houses and Almack’s, and I am determined to see it all for myself.” Alex stared at an extremely good-looking young male who was with three gaudily dressed women, none of whom were clean, young, or pretty. She wondered fleetingly whatever he saw in them, then it suddenly dawned upon her that they were whores, and he their whoremaster! She knew an overwhelming desire to sketch the tableaux but had more sense than to pull out her pad. She knew she’d have to wait until she got home, but they made such a vivid impression, she’d have no trouble remembering them.

The smoke from London’s chimneys made the afternoon light fade earlier than it did in the countryside, and with great reluctance Alex decided they had better head back to Mayfair. “Well, Sara, we didn’t get far, but we saw a lot. We had a late start; next time we’ll go out for the whole day. This must surely be the most fascinating place in the world. I want to go into the bowels of the old walled city. I want to see London’s beauty and her underbelly, but most of all I want to see her people,” Alex said passionately. “Let’s go back a different way.”

As they walked down Long Acre, Alex was just about to buy them a drink of asses milk from a milkmaid when she saw a beggar woman with a child clutching her ragged skirts and another little mite clinging to her back. With an apologetic look at Sara, Alex gave the woman the only money she had left, then they made their way along Shaftsbury, up Regent to Conduit Street, and thus home.

Dottie arrived by hackney just as they reached Berkeley Square. “Ah, Alex, you are so like me; neither of us could resist racketing about town the entire afternoon.”

Hopkins gave Sara a look of disapproval, but she returned it with one of angelic innocence. He turned his attention to Alexandra. “Flowers have arrived for you, Mistress Alexandra. I took the liberty of putting them in water.”

“Oh, how lovely!” As Alex bent her head to breathe in the fragrance of the roses and freesias on the hall table, her heart raced. She read the card quickly and felt immediate disappointment. “The flowers are from Hart Cavendish,” she told Dottie. “He is inviting me to attend a play tonight.”

“And shall you go?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve been longing to visit the theater district!”

 

Less than three hours later, Alex sat at her dressing table while Sara fastened the small buttons that ran up the back of her jade silk evening gown. She had spent two hours sketching people and scenes she had encountered earlier, wolfed down late-afternoon tea and scones, and taken her bath.

“You know, darling, you must be fitted for a couple of new gowns. I have neglected you shamefully; your clothes are definitely not up to crack. Those puff sleeves will be
hors de mode
this winter, mark my words.” Dottie was feeling most expansive, since Spinks had managed to sell the Lawrence paintings, and she had bamboozled Thomas Coutts into loaning her five thousand pounds. Of course she’d had to put up Longford Manor as collateral, but that was a mere technicality, she assured herself. She laid a ten-pound note on the dressing table. “This is mad money, darling. You can’t go about London with your pockets to let.” Her glance met Alexandra’s in the mirror. “You won’t be alone with Hart this evening, will you?”

“We are to meet Hary-O and Lord Granville at the theater, and Hart’s other sister, what’s-her-name, Countess of Carlisle.”

“She was christened Georgiana for her mother. When she was a child they called her Little G, but now she uses her middle name, Dorothy. Named after
moi,
actually. She married George Howard, Earl of Carlisle. He’s a bit of a corkbrain, but infinitely more interesting than Leveson-Gower Granville, who’s a dead bore. Hary-O and Dorothy are up for any old gig—not as flighty as their mother by a long shot, but a pair of prime goers.”

“I think I hear the carriage.” Alex stood up from the dressing table and picked up her cloak.

“Let him cool his heels. It wouldn’t do to seem to eager. I think my jade and turquoise earbobs will look splendid with that gown.” Dottie’s diamonds and emeralds had been pawned more than two years ago, but she clung to her semiprecious jewels for sentimental reasons.

Hart awaited Alexandra downstairs. She thanked him for the flowers and the invitation to the play. The black carriage, which had the Devonshire ducal emblem emblazoned on its door, had polished brass oil lamps fore and aft, a coachman, and a tiger in livery who sprang down from his rear platform to open the door for her. Inside, Hart sat facing her so that he would not crush her skirts, and Alex sat with lashes lowered as a refined young lady was expected to do.

That didn’t last long, of course. Inside, Alex’s wicked juices were bubbling as she lifted her eyes and gave him a conspiratorial smile. “I have a great desire to see Goldsmith’s play
She Stoops to Conquer,
rather than the Sheridan play. Do you think your sisters would mind if we didn’t join them tonight?”

Hart covered his surprise quickly and winked at her. “Do we care?”

“Not a whit,” she said, laughing. “I’ve read Oliver Goldsmith’s comedy of manners and would love to see it performed onstage. It pokes such delicious fun at the
haut monde
.” She produced an eye-mask. “I shall wear this to be on the safe side; being alone with a man flaunts every convention.”

Darkness covered up a multitude of sins in the theater district and lent it an air of glamour. Fashionably dressed people were alighting from carriages, oblivious to the prostitutes who were arriving in droves and the child beggars huddled in doorways. Young girls stood on every corner selling flowers or matches to gentlemen in evening attire; boys hawked playbills and lampoons.

When Alex showed an avid interest in the cartoonists’ lampoons, Hart grinned down at her and paid the grimy urchin a crown for a couple of them—more than the lad usually earned in a month. In the theater foyer, it seemed that every member of the
ton
went out of his way to greet the Duke of Devonshire and cast his eye over the lucky lady with the red-gold curls who accompanied him.

They sat upstairs in a private box; when Alex enjoyed a farcical moment in the play, she laughed out loud, making Hart appreciate a companion with such a unique and natural personality who did not pay lip service to convention. He decided immediately that he would invite her once more to see Sheridan’s play
The Rivals
. Since his sisters were seeing it tonight, they wouldn’t be there to cramp his style.

After the play as they exited the theater, Alex took her courage in her hands. “Are some of these fashionably dressed women mistresses?”

“It’s not a subject I should be discussing with you, Alex.”

“Oh, I know that, but since I need educating, I didn’t think you’d mind giving me lessons.”

What man could resist? “Yes, the beautiful companions are mistresses, the plainer ones are generally wives. You could easily be mistaken for my mistress tonight, Alexandra,” he warned gravely.

That’s a step up from the strumpet I was taken for in St. James’s Street today!
With a straight face she inquired, “What does a mistress cost?”

“Gowns, jewels, carriage and horses, plus a house in Chelsea.”

“Why are the streets filled with . . . ladies of the night?”

“Ah, the ‘Duchesses of Drury Lane.’ After the first act is over, the theaters lower the admission price. The doxies flock inside to ply their trade. Why does this lurid subject interest you?”

“Because it’s lurid, of course,” she said, laughing.

“This whole area, from the Strand to Holborn, is
quite
lurid—not at all suitable for unwed ladies, though.” He tried to change the subject. “Would you like some late supper?”

“If you take me somewhere close by that’s interesting.” >

“Well, I cannot guarantee that the company will be
élite
.”

“If you could, I wouldn’t want to go.”

They passed a man on the corner playing a barrel organ. His tiny, red-capped monkey held out his tin cup to them, and when Hart dropped in a half crown, the fey little creature doffed his cap. Laughing, they turned down Russell Street, where Hart took her into an interesting establishment that served food and drink. It had a bar with a brass foot-rail where the patrons could stand, or they could sit at small round tables and rub elbows with the
habitués
.

Hart ordered for her, as was the custom. It was a custom Alex abhorred; though she did not object to the potted lobster
hors d’oeuvre
when it arrived, she drew the line at the ladies’ drink of sherry. “How about a wager? I’ll order a typical male supper of raw oysters and cognac, followed by one of your cheroots. If I get through it without casting up my accounts, you must agree to take me wherever I wish to go one night next week. If I don’t pass muster, you may choose the place.”

Hart Cavendish was fascinated. Alexandra Sheffield wanted to be treated as an equal, rather than being placed on a pedestal like most debutantes. “The place you want to visit must be strictly off-limits, for you to make such a drastic wager.”

“Perhaps, but I shan’t tell you where until the very night.”

“You make the mystery so intriguing! I accept your wager.” He promptly ordered them each a dozen oysters and a cognac.

Alex made short work of the oysters on the half shell; however, she knew the cognac would be a challenge. But when Hart opened his gold cigar case and offered her a cheroot, she took it without much anxiety; the Hatton twins had taught her to smoke when she was fourteen.

When he lit her cheroot with an amused look of skepticism on his face, Alex knew she had to pull it off. She sipped and puffed very, very slowly, and her eyes narrowed against the smoke. She looked about the room in a leisurely fashion until she heard sudden applause. “Isn’t that the famous singer from Ranelagh Gardens?”

Hart turned his head. “Sophia Baddeley, yes. She’s Melbourne’s current mistress, but he and I won’t acknowledge each other tonight, because I have a lady with me.”

“But I’m smoking like a chimney; how will he know I’m a lady?”

“Because I will give him the
cut,
and he’ll know immediately.”

“Oh, Hart, how ridiculous the rules of Society are. We didn’t need to attend a play that was a comedy of manners; we are
living
a comedy of manners!”

“Being with you is more entertaining than any play, Alex. You win the wager; I shall take you wherever you wish to go.” He grinned at her. “Even if you had lost, I would have taken you.”