Point of Honour (27 page)

The doorkeeper hesitated, clearly unsure of what to do.

“Please do not let my dress deceive you. I have not come seeking employment, nor have I come—if I understand your objections—to seduce any of the women employed here.” Miss Tolerance smiled precisely the smile she would have given a hansom driver who had taken the longest route and expected to be paid for it.

The doorkeeper leaned back.

“There is a coin in it for you if you give your master my message
now
,” she added.

The man stared at her a moment longer, then stood and started heavily up the stairs. Miss Tolerance called after him, “Tell him that Miss Tolerance, who found him in Heeble Lane a few nights ago, requests the pleasure of a few moments of his time.” The man trudged up the stairs without pause, his square back hunched up to his ears. He gave no sign of hearing.

Miss Tolerance took the chair the doorkeeper had lately vacated and sat down to wait. A few minutes later, a heavy woman in a yellow dress came to the head of the stairs and asked if Miss Tolerance was the lady waiting to see Sir Humphrey. When Miss Tolerance replied that she was, the woman jerked her head to direct her to the third door on the left.

Had anything been required to draw Sir Humphrey Blackbottle to her memory, the violet dressing gown he wore would have done it. Sir Humphrey wore the garment over a shirt with exquisitely starched collar points and a lavishly folded cravat, the dandified effect somewhat spoiled by the old-fashioned half wig that sat sloppily on his head, and a thin stain of red—Miss Tolerance suspected claret—that ran across the belly of his shirt. He was sitting at a desk with a number of papers and a counting book ranged around him, but when he saw his visitor, he rose to greet her with every evidence of gladness.

“There, and I thought I’d never see your pretty phyz again, dear lady. Come and take a glass of wine with me!” He reached across to a table where a decanter sat, and several imperfectly cleaned glasses. Miss Tolerance had no difficulty in refusing the libation.

“Well, what can I do for you?” The whoremaster stared at his visitor with bright, bloodshot eyes.

“You were very helpful to me the other evening, sir, but I wonder if you could answer one more question in the matter we discussed. You bought Mrs. Cunning’s jewelry from her, including the fan I mentioned. Did you buy any other fans at that time?”

Blackbottle drained the claret from his glass in one gulp. Several new, tiny red spots joined the earlier stain on his shirtfront. “I was buying up jewelry in those days—a business investment, you could call it, my dear. I had in mind to open a new house, an elegant, high-class affair like the one your auntie runs in Manchester Square—you thought I didn’t know you was Mrs. Brereton’s niece, did you? I have my ways.” His grin was full of blackened teeth. “I thought to deck out my girls in silk and trumpery and make the custom pay according.”

“You did not open the brothel of which you speak?”

The man rolled the stem of his glass between two fingers as if it had some oracular value. “In the end I didn’t, no. Seemed a better idea when I was thinking than when I started in. Too much capital outlay, you know. Couldn’t find girls of the sort I wanted. You’d have done nicely, now.” He grinned. “I’d have given you a brooch or two, my love.”

“It’s kind of you to say so, sir,” Miss Tolerance said. “May I ask to whom you gave the fan when you bought it, sir?”

Blackbottle shrugged heavily. “Thought I’d told you that. Fanny—Mrs. Virtue. I gave her a mortal lot of pretties over time. Sweet piece of business Fan was in her prime, half a dozen lordlings and worshipfuls weeping for a bit of her.”

“But the fan was in her hands all these years?”

“I imagine so; not like Fanny to let a gewgaw out of her hands. But you’d do best to ask her. She might even tell you true.” He grinned, leaned back, and eyed Miss Tolerance up and down. “I don’t ken what you’re playing at, my darling. Pretty girl like you should be in keeping with some rich gent. You think me a vain old Beau Nasty, but I’ve connections. I could do you good.”

Miss Tolerance shook her head. “I appreciate your concern, sir, but I’m afraid that would not suit me.”

“You’d come used to it. Must have been once, to be what you are.”

“What I am is no whore, sir.”

“Halfway to one, sweet.” Blackbottle’s hand shot out to grab her wrist. “Stay and talk. I’d be a fool to let a pretty one like you out of my hands.”

Miss Tolerance reached down and disengaged his hand. Blackbottle was strong, but he was also, despite the hour, half drunk. He rocked backward, holding his wrist, scowling at her.

“I’ll call Bobby upstairs to civilize you. He’d like that; he come over all moral about the way you’re dressed.”

“I shall remember to wear sprigged muslin and kid slippers the next time I call.” Miss Tolerance was pleased that her tone was unruffled; she did not feel so calm. “For now, please believe that civilizing me would require far too much—what did you call it?—capital outlay. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

Miss Tolerance bowed slightly and took her leave. At the head of the stairs she looked down and saw Bobby, the doorman, sitting on the last step, his beefy back to her. She had her foot on the riser to descend when something, perhaps the sound of a breath taken sharply inward, made her turn. At the end of the hallway a slender man, too well dressed to be a local, stared at her for a moment before he went into a room. The door closed behind him and Miss Tolerance heard a woman’s voice, raised in greeting. Miss Tolerance turned and went down the stairs.

It was not until she had gained the street and reclaimed her horse from the boys she had paid to watch it that she realized who the man had been. Sir Randal Pre, whom she had recently stopped from cutting the throat of one of her aunt’s whores. It was unsettling to encounter a man whom last she had seen swearing and vowing vengeance. Miss Tolerance did not regard it as more than coincidence; there were many brothels in London, but not so many as to render impossible an encounter with a familiar face.

It was now midafternoon. Mrs. Cook had confirmed that the fan she sought was the fan she had received from Mrs. Virtue. Now it seemed she must speak to Mrs. Virtue again. Once she had crossed the Thames, Miss Tolerance turned in the direction of Cheapside. On this third visit to Blackbottle’s brothel, the doorman, Joe, greeted her with a bob of his head and told her with polite regret that Mrs. Virtue was out of the house, shopping for gloves. Even the offer of sixpence did not change the doorman’s story, and given that he offered her a chair to wait in, and even suggested that she might be more comfortable in Mrs. Virtue’s own rooms, Miss Tolerance surmised that the bawd was truly out of the house. She left her card, with a note to the effect that, as it had been before, a meeting would be to Mrs. Virtue’s advantage, and went home to Manchester Square.

M
iss Tolerance returned her hack to the stable, where she was advised that the horse she had taken to Richmond and thence to Oxford had been returned by Versellion’s groom, and the bill discharged. Pleased by this news, she returned to her cottage, changed her dress, and, having an errand to do, went out to Bond Street, accompanied by Marianne and Chloe and the required maid. Chloe had forgotten both her gratitude and her irritation with Miss Tolerance, and chatted about bonnet patterns until Marianne rolled her eyes at Miss Tolerance in mock horror. She was near Miss Tolerance in age, a fair, plump, pleasant-looking woman with a brisk, friendly manner. Miss Tolerance found it difficult to imagine her as an object of passion, but Mrs. Brereton had assured her before that Marianne had a small army of faithful followers. They reached Bond Street, bought gloves and stockings at a shop on a side street, and turned back to Manchester Square. As they approached the corner of the Square, Miss Tolerance noted several men in deep discussion at the corner of the street nearest her aunt’s doorway, a very unexceptional thing until one of them broke away from his fellows and called to her.

She stepped away from her companions and waited. The man who approached seemed familiar to her, but she was sure she had never spoken to him.
I must be tired,
she thought.
That’s twice today I’ve failed to put a name to a face.
The man came possessed of a neat brown coat, light pantaloons, and Hessian boots. His hair was dark, his face long and well shaped, and his eyes very blue. He walked slowly, examining her. His expression was not pleasant.

“Well,” he drawled, when he was a few feet from her. “My cousin’s whore.”

Miss Tolerance felt her face flush, and her hand tightened on the bundle she held. “I’m sorry, sir. I think you mistake me for someone else.” She nodded her head and turned back to Marianne and Chloe.

“I say you are my cousin’s whore.” The voice was louder this time. Miss Tolerance glanced over her shoulder at the man. She knew now where she had seen him before, quarreling in the street with Versellion. “He has you poking through all the stews in London on his business, I hear.” The man, whom Miss Tolerance now believed to be Sir Henry Folle, stepped closer, lowering his voice to tones almost intimate. “As you’re a businesswoman, I’ll make you an offer for more pleasant work than interviewing Southwark bawds. You come home with me and I’ll pay treble what my cousin Edward has; you can whisper me his secrets while I’m—”

“My dear sir,” Miss Tolerance interrupted. “’Twould be a generous offer if I had any idea of what you meant. But even were I the woman you believe me to be, I doubt I would like to have my business noised about in the public street.”

Folle pressed forward as if to intimidate her. “If you weren’t doing my cousin’s business, why were you there? I hear you don’t do your whoring here; do you give Blackbottle’s the benefit of your—”

Miss Tolerance stepped in and laid a gloved finger across his lips to stop him. The gesture was gentle, almost as if they were conspirators. Behind Folle she sensed, rather than saw, the men who had been talking to him as she came home, watching the contretemps with interest. She raised her voice a little to reach that audience.

“Sir Henry, you are drunk with anger. I suggest you let your friends take you home, that you might sleep it off. And next time try a more wholesome brew, or I shall be tempted to fetch my smallsword and answer you with it.” She kept her eyes on Folle’s face, but heard his companions in agitated conference. She took her finger from the man’s lips. “May I bid you good afternoon?”

As she stepped back, Folle raised his hand—and his walking stick—as if to strike her. Miss Tolerance had already moved in her mind through the steps she must take to stop the blow and use the man’s weight and height to throw him to the ground. She was not put to these straits. Two of Folle’s companions joined them, restraining Folle, murmuring good counsel about the disagreeable consequences attending public brawls and scandal. One man, an unremarkable fellow of middle years, took Folle away with him; this left Miss Tolerance standing with the other: Lord Trux.

In the wake of the confrontation, Miss Tolerance felt suddenly exhausted. Her heart was racing, her face flushed, and her hands were not entirely steady. She stood looking blankly at the cobbles at her feet; there was a sparse scatter of color across a few of them: dried flowers.
Folle must have had the stuff in his pocket
, she thought. Lavender and verbena drifted across the polished toes of Trux’s boots and disappeared down the street. Miss Tolerance cleared her throat and clasped her hands together to force them to steady.

Trux seemed unaware of all this, or perhaps too much aware of his own discomfort to mind hers. Sweat beaded his upper lip, and he was wheezing, whether from exertion or the heat, Miss Tolerance could not tell.

“Must make my apologies for Folle,” Trux muttered. “Had a bad day, ain’t like him to …” Words appeared to desert him. “Ain’t like him, beg you to believe it,” he repeated. Then, as if remembering that a business relationship was supposed to be existing between them, he adopted his more usual tone of irate condescension. “I have not received any report from you in days, Miss Tolerance. Have you nothing to say to me?”

Miss Tolerance looked around her. “When I last saw you in Oxford, my lord, you were in no situation to receive such a report; I hope your head is feeling better? As for this moment, Sir Henry has drawn a good deal of attention to my aunt’s doorstep. Surely you do not wish to have a discussion here?”

Trux nodded importantly. “Of course not, I never meant—perhaps—”

“If you would be so good as to call upon me at Tarsio’s in an hour, sir? I shall be very happy to discuss the matter with you then.”

“An hour? Better make it an hour and a half.” Trux inclined his head in lieu of a bow. “Again, apologies for Folle. Not like him in the least.”

Miss Tolerance turned back to the house. Chloe and the maid had already gone inside, but Marianne still stood upon the step.

“I was about to call Keefe,” she said. “I imagine you can hold your own with words, but blows?”

Miss Tolerance smiled grimly. “Do you know the gentleman? Would he actually descend to brawling in broad day with an unarmed woman? I can hold my own with blows well enough. But thank you, all the same,” she added more kindly. “My aunt would not be happy if I started a brawl upon her doorstep.”

Marianne shook her head. “That she would not. But it was he who came a-purpose to start a fight, and he didn’t much like that you wouldn’t take his bait.” She paused, her hand upon the knocker of the door. “It bothered you, though, I saw that right enough. That he called you a whore.”

Miss Tolerance considered with whom she was speaking and measured her words. “It bothered me that he thought I could be bribed to tell a client’s business.”

“Oh, yes, no one likes to be accused of that,” Marianne said matter-of-factly. The door opened and she stepped inside. “It’s as Mrs. Brereton says: even a whore has her reputation to think of, and her perhaps more than other folk.” She smiled, handed her parcel to Cole, and started up the stairs. Miss Tolerance was left with the uncomfortable feeling that there was more to be said upon the subject.