Wicked Little Secrets (7 page)

“I think Mrs. Fontaine could use ’er,” Willie said. “We could sell ’er to Fontaine to get ’er off our backs.”

Jenkinson dropped her hold on Vivienne and turned her head to look at her son. Vivienne saw the flash of a gold chain dotted with tiny sapphires spilling out of the envelope. She remembered the Sunday her aunt let her wear that very necklace to church for her fifteenth birthday. This foul madam was blackmailing her aunt.

“You don’t know nothin’ ’bout business,” the madam barked at her son.

“I’m very sorry,” Vivienne said. “I didn’t hears your name?”

For several long seconds, the woman scrutinized Vivienne with narrowed eyes. Hers were surprisingly beautiful eyes, the color of blue marbles. Vivienne had to believe that at one time, this monster of a woman had been very attractive.

“Adele Jenkinson,” she said finally. “The girls ’ere call me Mama Dellie. I suppose you can too and all.”

“Mama Dellie, I’m afraid there might be a tiny mistake.” Vivienne just needed to slip quietly away without making a scene, and then she could think about what to do next.

“See, she has ’em nice manners,” Willie said.

“You want to work for Mrs. Fontaine, don’t you?” his mother asked. “She would set up a girl like you right nicely.”

“I…”

The front door slammed with a hard thud, and Dashiell stomped into the parlor. His brows slanted down like an angry hawk and his left cheek quivered with fury. In his hand, he still held the plate with the one remaining sandwich, while a terrified Garth hid his head under Dashiell’s armpit, his leash wrapped about his shivering hind legs. “I am taking you home now!” Dashiell hissed through clenched teeth. “Do you understand?”

“Just what the ’ell is going on ’ere?” Jenkinson yanked Vivienne behind her and screamed, “Sidney!”

On the floor above, there was the sound of scraping, like a chair being pushed back, and then the whole house shook with the pounding of footfalls. For a second, Vivienne felt she had fallen into the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fable and was about to urge Dashiell to cut the beanstalk to keep the giant from descending from the sky when the largest, most perfectly square man she had ever seen took up the entire entrance to the parlor. His shoulders were about as wide as his torso and legs combined, and he held his head at an angle to keep it from grazing the ceiling.

Dashiell groaned. “Oh, bloody hell.”

“Darlin’, find out wot this gentleman wants,” Jenkinson ordered.

Sidney snorted through his nose like an angry bull and gave Dashiell a hard, mean eye.

“Don’t hurt him!” Vivienne freed herself from Jenkinson’s grasp and threw her body between Dashiell and the giant. “This ’ere is my—my ’usband,” she cried. “You see, we ’ad a fight ’cause he don’t make no money. We ’ave six children and—and that dog—all hungry. And he don’t do nothin’ but sit around all day, drinkin’ and good for nothin’. I says to him, if you don’t get money, I will.”

Dashiell wore the most incredulous, yet horrified expression on his taut face. When he spoke, his voice came out high and stiff as if the words hurt to utter. “That’s what I was comin’ to tells you, my sweet sugar muffin. I found work.” He held out the platter. “Look, I have food here.”

“Oy, you mean it?” she wailed, trying to get all teary-eyed for realism.

“I sure do, my little butter biscuit.” He looked like he could slap her. “Now you can get the hell home and raise our six children proper.”

“Honestly, I should’a known!” Jenkinson barked. Her eyes squeezed to slits and she looked hard at Vivienne. “I was right bein’ suspicious of you. I don’t know what game you’re playin’, but you don’t have six starvin’ children. If you did, you’d sell that purty li’l necklace around your neck to feed ’em.” She jerked her head toward Dashiell. “And this man ’asn’t worked a day in his life, not wearin’ ’em fine clothes. And look at his hands! Sidney, take her necklace for the trouble she’s caused me.”

The bull of a man lurched forward, and the floor shook on impact. She could smell the metallic scent of hard gin wafting off him. His eyes were shiny and dilated with intoxication. He put his enormous hand on her necklace.

“Don’t you dare touch my scarab!” Vivienne kicked the man’s shin. He didn’t move, solid as the cliffs of Dover, but emitted a low laugh that sounded like rumbling thunder. He pushed her backward, and she stumbled against the harp.

She heard the ringing sound of the platter hitting the floor and Garth’s startled yelp. Then something flashed across her face. It was Dashiell’s fist ramming into Sidney’s face. “Don’t you goddamn touch her!” he shouted. “Vivienne! Get out!”

She ducked under his arm, fell to her knees, and grabbed Garth’s leash as he attempted to hide under the sofa. The ladies shrieked and leapt up, stepping on her hand as they fled.
Ouch!

As she came up with a scared and whimpering Garth in her arms, Dashiell’s head slammed onto the sofa cushion beside her. “Oh my God!”

He had that stupefied look as if he had just suffered a hard blow. She turned and gazed up. Sidney stood, swaying on his feet, a lopsided smile hanging on his lips. He had his fist pulled back, ready to deliver Dashiell another punch. Rage rushed through her. With one hand, she ripped an ugly lamp from the side table and swung it at the giant’s face, missing him entirely, instead slamming Dashiell’s collarbone. “You are not helping,” he howled. “Go outside before you kill me.”

“I won’t leave you,” Vivienne cried.

Sidney grabbed Dashiell by the collar, yanked him up, then wrapped his arm around Dashiell’s neck, choking him like a python.

“Now, you just let him alone,” she shouted at the terrible Sidney. “Or… or I’ll set this dog on you.” She held up Garth, who tried to hide his bulging eyes under his paws. “He is vicious, really he is.”

Sidney laughed through his big yellow teeth, and with the hand what wasn’t around Dashiell’s neck, pushed her and Garth onto the floor.

“You bloody puff guts,” Dashiell growled and rammed his elbows into the giant’s ribs. He fell back, stumbling in his drunken state, giving Dashiell time to extract himself and land two lightning quick jabs to the man’s fleshy jaws.

“I said, get out,” Dashiell ordered Vivienne in the hardest, most malevolent voice she had ever heard, at the same time dodging Sidney’s fists.

Still, she wouldn’t budge. “But—”

“Now!” he yelled.

She rushed for the door with Garth hugged to her chest. Over her shoulder, she took one last peek just as Dashiell slammed Sidney’s gut. The man groaned, listed sideways, and smashed against the wall.

“You touch my wife again, and I’ll kill you, you goddamn rump splitter,” Dashiell growled.

Vivienne waited on the walk, chewing on three fingernails. She didn’t feel much safer outside as a crowd of sharp-eyed street urchins, drunks, and women in garish rags had begun to gather, all curious about the goings-on at Jenkinson’s place.

***

From outside the brothel, Vivienne could hear the shrieks of women, the banging of metal, then a heavy thud and the musical reverberation of the harp’s strings. Dashiell shouted a terrible curse word that started with “f.” Then glass shattered, and the sandwich plate was thrown out of the window, breaking into pieces on the street. The throng of spectators whistled and cheered like this was a sporting game.

Garth leapt from her arms, sniffed the fragments of the plate, and began to growl menacingly at the brothel.

“Oh capital, Garth,” Vivienne yelled. “Couldn’t you have gotten angry a few seconds ago when it mattered?”

Why was she upset with Garth when this was entirely her fault? She couldn’t let an innocent man—well, somewhat innocent man—perish on account of her reckless actions.

“Wait here,” she ordered Garth as she wrapped his leash around a lamp pole. Then she swung open the brothel door. Dashiell stood at the threshold. He had a red circle on his jaw and three parallel scrapes that looked as if fingernails had been slashed across his cheek. Rose-scented white powder covered his clothes. Behind him, all was silent inside the brothel.

The crowd broke out in applause, as if Dashiell were a champion pugilist.

“I’m so, so, so sorry,” Vivienne cried.

He ran his hands down his chest, straightening his coat, and then stretched his neck to the left, then the right. “Don’t talk to me,” he growled.

Four

Dashiell stalked through the streets back to Wickerly Square, keeping his hand tight on Vivienne’s wrist to keep her from scurrying to some other squalid rookery and getting him killed. She hurried alongside, trying to keep up with his stride, as she held traumatized Garth. The hound pleaded to Dashiell with his round buggy eyes as if to say, “Don’t leave me with this mad lady!”

Dashiell found a narrow alley running beside a wine merchant’s shop and pulled her inside. The lane was empty except for a bony black cat pawing at something small and dead in the gutter. Garth leapt from Vivienne’s arms and the cat shot off, disappearing into a small opening at the bottom of a rotting door, leaving Garth to sniff and then roll on the deceased creature.

“You’re going to tell me what the hell is going on,” Dashiell ordered.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was… was… a brothel. You should have told me.”

He flung up his arms. “And how was I supposed to know that?”

Her head jerked back, confused. “But… but y-you’re a rake.”

He let out an exasperated sigh and clamped his hands on her shoulders, drawing her so close to him that her subtle vanilla and jasmine scent filled his nose. “My dear Miss Taylor, I would have trembled to say this before, but clearly you are no longer a little girl.” He leaned down until his lips just touched her little shell-shaped ear. “I do not have to pay for pleasure, my little sugar muffin,” he whispered.

She was all too much. Her smell, her feel clouded his brain. His pulse, still wild from the fight, surged even higher and he took a small nibble of her lobe, letting his tongue glide along its edge. He heard her gasp, and her breasts brushed against his chest, unleashing a low animal desire in his body. In his mind flashed an image of her against the alley wall, her legs around him, as he took her in a wild frenzy of pent-up desire. His secret little sister. Oh God, she had become so dangerous to him. He let out a long, ragged breath and withdrew.

The pink edge of her tongue showed through her parted lips. Her green eyes were large and lush, like a Scottish landscape after rain.

“Why did you follow this man with the blue coat?”

She leaned against the brick and rubbed her lips together. “I shouldn’t tell you.”

He took a curl of her hair and wound it on his finger. “But you
want
to tell me,” he said. “You can trust me. Remember the Bazulo vow.”

A smile flickered momentarily on her lips, and then her features tensed back to that tight worried expression. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“Of course I won’t. You know that.”

She related a story about coming home from the Royal Academy to see the man in the blue coat leaving her house, her aunt in hysterics, and her suspicions of blackmail. “So I followed him to see where he went,” she concluded.

“Why didn’t you go to your fiancé for help—or to me, for that matter?”

“I couldn’t tell John. He would…” She gazed down. “He wouldn’t approve.”

“Hell, I don’t approve. You could have gotten really hurt.”

She flashed him a hot eye. “Don’t patronize me. I knew what I was doing. I had all I needed to know and was about to leave, without busting out the windows, mind you. But you stormed in, acting like some overgrown Ajax.”

“Ajax?” he echoed incredulously. “This is what I get for saving your life? Oh, and that six children act was quite convincing. I should warn this John fellow that he has his hands full with you, cracked lady.”

“You can just go to… to…” She tried hard to repress the expletive, but it burst forth. “
Hell!
I told you not to follow me, anyway.” She turned with a frustrated cry and stomped off.

Garth, left shivering by Dashiell’s leg, looked up at him with frightened bulbous eyes and whimpered. “Wait!” Dashiell called. “You forgot your dog. He’s scared.” In fact, Dashiell was scared too.
What
has
Vivienne
gotten
into?

She spun around so fast that her cloak and gown formed an ellipse about her body. She stalked back and scooped up Garth, squeezing him to her bodice. Tears were spilling out of her eyes, running down her cheeks.

The pain in his chest hurt more than any blow Sidney could give. “Good God. What did I say?” he whispered, hearing the deep quiver in his own voice. “I-I didn’t mean to call you cracked. I’m the cracked one. Everyone knows that. Please say that you will forgive me?”

“It’s not that,” she choked. Unable to wipe her tears, she ran her face over Garth’s wrinkled head. “My father is in terrible financial straits. His workshop burned down, and the insurance company claimed he started the fire intentionally. They called him a criminal so they wouldn’t have to pay. So he had to borrow funds, but by the time the workshop was rebuilt, he’d lost his customers. Now these vile men are threatening him, but he can’t pay his debts, certainly not at the interest the money lender is charging. We could lose everything.”

“Oh, Vivienne, why didn’t you say something?” He’d had no idea that Vivienne’s family was going through such hard times. That she had been suffering so while he was off playing around the globe. “Let me lend you some money. Let me do something. Anything.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s all better now. I’m marrying John. His father is the manager at South Birmingham Railroad and he can give Papa enough work to begin paying down his debt.” She tried to smile but failed. Garth licked a stray tear that was rolling off her chin. “It’s just been hard watching Papa get hurt. Please don’t tell anyone. It’s just… I didn’t have anyone to talk to.”

“Of course.” Dashiell took Garth from her arms and set him on the ground. Then he wrapped her in his embrace. “Don’t worry,” he said, wishing that damn bonnet wasn’t there so he could kiss her soft hair. “We’ll figure this out together. I promise.”