Wicked Little Secrets (20 page)

“What about all four of them for the entire night?” he inquired.

Fontaine’s thin lips spread into a satisfied smile. “Girls, make the Egyptian room ready,” she ordered. “You should know our guest is an apt student of history.”

“Wait.” Dashiell held up his palm. He swallowed, feeling suddenly naked and vulnerable. “I also desire, that is… I would like a lady about this tall…” He raised his hand to Vivienne’s height. “…with curling black hair down to her breasts and green eyes. Do you have such a creature?”

“I have a similar item with icy blue eyes of winter,” she replied, and then cocked her head. “But you only desire a green-eyed girl, do you not?”

He knew from the dangerous, sweet inflection in her voice that his grandfather’s words in Rupert’s Club had managed to drift down a few blocks and into Fontaine’s ear. This woman loved the power of secrets. She must have used them to claw her way across to West London.

“Go, my girls.” Fontaine clapped her hands twice. “I’ll bring Lord Dashiell up myself.” The madam turned and beckoned Dashiell with her finger. “Follow me, if you please.”

She led him back to the entrance hall, up the stairs, and to a room on the first floor. At the very end of the corridor, a door opened and a young servant with a pock-ridden face emerged from the servants’ stairs holding an armful of folded white linens. “Take those to the Jungle Room,” Fontaine told her, nodding toward the series of doors along the balcony. Then she removed a bracelet of keys from her cuff, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.

A blur of white and pink flashed before Dashiell’s eyes. A fluffy cockatoo landed on Fontaine’s shoulder. Twisting its head, the bird studied Dashiell with one black, round eye. Then it opened its beak, stuck out a stubby red tongue and hissed, bouncing up and down. “Frederick, stop that,” she gently admonished, as she soothed its feathers. “Please excuse him. He doesn’t like men. I don’t know why.”

The nervous bird edged across Fontaine’s shoulder and put its beak near her ear. “I love you. I love you,” he cawed.

“I know you do, my darling,” Fontaine cooed to the bird.

Dashiell’s eyes scanned the study. It was an odd room. There was no fireplace and only the one, tiny off-centered window. The stagnant air smelled with that rotting sweetness of dying roses. This room, like most of the others in the upper floors, must have been partitioned from the original construction. Paper printed with a pale gold oval pattern covered the walls. Clustered about a round, white marble table were a green cushioned sofa and two matching wingchairs. A dainty writing desk and ladder-back chair were set off to the side. Beside it was another door. About the walls hung paintings and illustrations.

“There you go, my little baby.” Fontaine raised her arm and gently nudged Frederick onto his perch. “Please sit down,” she said. “I’ll be but a minute.” She slipped into the adjacent room, closing the door behind her.

Dashiell studied the art on the walls. He had stopped before a plain charcoal sketch when Fontaine returned without her wings. Relieved of her turban, her hair was midnight black, like Vivienne’s, except frizzy with silvery threads running through the coils.

“That’s me a thousand years ago,” she nodded at the sketch and then tossed her head back in a terse laugh.

Dashiell studied the work. A heavy hand had outlined the contours of the scene and then shaded them with lighter, slanting strokes. A young Fontaine, with her hooded eyes and a slip of a mouth, sat on a window ledge, a rose lying across her palm. In the background, he recognized the obelisk steeple that rose above the tangle of roofs of Finsbury. The bottom of the sketch was concealed behind the frame, but he could make out the scrolling letters “James” rising at an angle from the bottom right.

“Beautiful,” he said. “The work of Lawrence James?”

“Yes,” she replied, having no emotion in her voice or expression for the man who had left her for a younger woman. She sat in the cushioned chair facing him, set her elbow on the carved wooden armrest, and leaned her temple against her hand. “And now, what do you wish to speak to me about?”

“It’s regarding a delicate matter,” he said. “Have you heard of an Eliza Cox?”

“Is this a runaway lover of yours?” She cocked a thin, curving brow.

“No woman runs from me.”

“They should.” She laughed. “You’re a no-good rogue. I can always tell where Dashiell’s been by the sound of sobbing married ladies or wagtail actresses.”

“They know what they are getting into.” Dashiell took the seat across from her, extended his legs out, and stuck his thumbs in his waistband. “Anyway, I’m on a fool’s errand to locate this girl. She’s the lover of an acquaintance. She’s young, maybe fifteen, a bit of a beauty, so I came on the off chance she might have floated your way.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

“I have some other names. Maybe you might know where I can find them.” He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper where he had scribbled the price of a statue of Ishtar. He tossed out a name he had heard circulated in the clubs. “Can you tell me where I can find a Joe Horton?”

“He doesn’t have a place. He lives with whomever he’s selling. Poor wretches, bruised up and scared. I feel sorry for them.” She paused while a thought clouded her eyes. “But what can you do?”

“Well, then Georgina Villiers. What about her?”

She laughed, a throaty, almost malicious sound. “You mean plain Martha Jones before she took up that establishment by Lincoln Inn Fields.”

“And, of course, you’ve always been Angelica Fontaine,” he teased. “That tiny trace of Irish in your voice is for show. You’re no Mary O’Malley from the dens of Finsbury.”

Hot anger flashed across her face. She didn’t appreciate fast, unexpected moves. Frederick sensed his owner’s edginess and started up with his “I love you” routine.

“I doubt Martha Jones, or whatever she calls herself this week, would have the girl,” Fontaine said. “Really, you are looking for a needle in a haystack. There are thousands of women in this city willing to accommodate a paying gentleman.” She rose. “And I have the best of them. Now, I believe you are keeping my girls waiting in the Egyptian room.”

“I have one more name on my list.” He didn’t follow her cue to leave but remained in his chair, turning so he could see her face. “What about an Adele Jenkinson?”

Her jugular tensed again. “No,” she said after a beat.

“She never brought you a girl to be debuted?”

“Perhaps she came by.”

“Do you know where I might find her?”

Her smile stiffened. Annoyance flickered in her eyes. “Lord Dashiell, I don’t keep the address of every low madam or pimp in London.”

Dashiell paused, searching her expression. Her eyes were tight slits, letting nothing out. He shrugged. “Very well. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

She bowed her head and performed a low curtsy. “Now, won’t you follow me to heaven?”

***

Dashiell trailed Fontaine’s tiny form down the corridor and across the magnificent balcony. Three massive marble statues of barefoot angels that could have been stolen from a cathedral gazed down onto the ground floor where the tightrope walker greeted newcomers.

He mentally reviewed his conversation with Fontaine. He had wanted a little more solid information to chew on. But her reaction intrigued him. She was lying. She knew Jenkinson and chose not to reveal it. Why? Rather than getting closer to any answers for Vivienne, he was finding murkier waters.

“Good evening, Mr. Vandergrift,” he heard Fontaine say, knocking Vivienne from his thoughts.

From across the balcony, he recognized the thin mustache and the self-satisfied gleam in the cold, bright eyes of Vivienne’s fiancé. A raven-haired limp rag of a girl, no more than sixteen, clung to his arm. Blackness spread from the edges of Dashiell’s vision, blocking everything in his periphery. All his thoughts merged into one: kill John.

He tore past Fontaine and grabbed John by his neat cravat. “You have the best lady in London, and you disgrace her by coming here,” he hissed through his teeth.

“What?” John clawed at Dashiell’s wrists. “Get your hands off me.”

“As you wish.” Dashiell clamped his fingers around the back of John’s neck and then slammed him head first into the shoulder of an angel. John’s nose crunched against the hard stone, rivers of blood pouring from his nostrils. The statue rocked on its pedestal, then fell to the floor, cutting a deep gash in the parquet. The stone angel’s head broke off and spun on the floor.

“Are you going to pay for that?” Fontaine screeched.

John glared at Dashiell, cupping his hemorrhaging nose. Raw hatred burned like a blue flame in his pale eyes.

“I’m just making you all pretty for your wedding,” Dashiell told him.

John’s lips tightened around his teeth. He flew at Dashiell with his bloody fist cocked, ready to strike. Dashiell didn’t budge, letting John slam the hard bone of his jaw, feeling, almost savoring, the reverberating waves of pain bouncing off the back of his skull.

He heard his own laugh as if it were from someone else’s mouth, a growling and predatory sound. His senses slowed. Fontaine’s stream of profanity, the shrill gasps of the girls, the trilling piano all became a roaring drone in his ears.

John’s fist was flying toward Dashiell’s face again. Dashiell felt calm, as if time had elongated. He ducked the blow then sprang up, his knuckles connecting to the ridge of John’s cheekbone. The force sent John tumbling backward.

“Goddammit!” Fontaine shouted. “Stop it or I’ll have you both removed!”

John, ignoring her order, rushed like a charging ram, crashing into Dashiell’s chest. Dashiell felt the banister railing cut into his backbone. The crack of splintering wood echoed in the balconies, and the gilded plaster leaves on the ceiling appeared to be blowing away. He and John were falling through the air, still locked in a combative embrace. The back of his head hit hot metal, and a yellow flame flashed before his face. Glass shattered and a woman’s screams pierced the air as he felt his bones smack down on the floor. A bright sun of hurt burst around him, then everything turned black.

“Viv,” he murmured.

A few seconds or hours later, the sounds of pounding feet and the shrieks of women roused him. Throbbing pain radiated from his spinal column. He felt sewn to the floor. He opened his eyes to see two pale blue orbs shining though a haze of gray motion. John. A fist broke through the blur. Dashiell couldn’t do anything but take it on the jaw.
This
was
getting
old
.

He drove his knee deep into the scoundrel’s gut. John doubled over, grabbed his belly, and let out a low, aching howl. Dashiell balled his fists and swung, hoping to finish off the tenacious cove, but a fat hand caught his fist just before it connected with John’s head. Then there were more hands, the square rough kind belonging to men. They were shoved under his armpits, lifting him up. He was hurled at a wall. His cheek smashed against the cold glass of a picture frame. The wall plaster crumbled, and the picture slid down, coming to balance on the toe of his shoe. Dashiell blinked. Behind the cracked glass was a cartoon of a very familiar tubby fop clad in a pastel yellow coat. He was squatting on the ground, using his grotesquely long nose to hike up the hem of a buxom lady’s pink gown and ogle the contents underneath.

Dashiell leaned over, picked up the picture, and held it close to his eyes. He focused hard on the pink gown and yellow coat.

“Blow me,” he whispered as an idea germinated in his head.

He turned and examined the scene before him, feeling disengaged, as if it too were just a sketched caricature. The flashman and two of the fleshy country bumpkins, previously stationed under the tightrope walker, now had him boxed in, their thick legs spread, fists clasped over their balls. The third bumpkin held the weeping, nude acrobat safe in his fat arms. On the opposite wall, John crouched, blood still dripping from his nose.

Dashiell’s gaze drifted up to where Fontaine stood in the splintering gape of the broken banister. Her fingers were wrapped around the handle of a dainty silver muff pistol. She held the gun steady and aimed at his head. The end of the barrel, blackened and scratched, peered at him like a disembodied eye from an Egyptian hieroglyphic. He knew Fontaine wouldn’t kill a man in her carefully constructed celestial paradise. She did heaven’s dirty business in private.

On the balcony above her, his waiting harem, adorned in Egyptian wigs, peered over the railing with gaping mouths.

His grip tightened around the picture frame. What the hell was he doing here?

“This has been a most memorable evening,” he said, turning on his heel and nearly falling. “But I have to go.” He steadied himself against the wall and then stumbled toward the door.

***

Walking back in the cold night, remorse gripped Dashiell. His head hurt too much to think about the situation, or maybe he just didn’t want to. He limped along. His back ached, his jaw and cheekbone throbbed, and his muscles were stiffening in the cold air.

At home, he flung open his chamber door and chucked the picture he had taken from Fontaine’s onto his bed. He pulled a stone Egyptian frieze of Isis from the wall, turned it over, and slid his fingers into a crack in the stone, fishing out a key.

He unlocked his desk and slid out the pictures Vivienne and he had discovered last evening from under a heavy volume detailing Napoleon’s discoveries in Egypt. He took the illustrations over to his bed and laid them out. Two of the sketches were not the caricatures, but realistic studies. A lady lay upon a bed, her head tilted over the mattress’s edge, letting her thick, dark curls spill over. A smile curved on her lips as she gazed at the artist from upside down, her breasts rising in peaks from her chest. In her eyes was a tender glow wholly missing from Fontaine’s portrait. Dashiell studied the pen strokes. The heavy lines contoured the model’s body, but the sheets, the bedpost, were light wisps of parallel lines, all slanting left as they had in Fontaine’s portrait. His gaze moved on to the cartoons. A heavy black pen outlined the man’s protruding nose and equally protruding appendage. Yet his coat was a series of yellow strokes slanting to the left.