Vice (25 page)

Juliana felt her temper rise. Her lip curled and her eyes threw poisoned daggers at him. Firmly she told herself that Viscount Edgecombe was not worth her anger. “Will you give me leave to go to the Marshalsea, my lord?” she demanded impatiently.

“Oh, you may have leave to do anything you wish if it’ll irritate Tarquin, my lady.” He chuckled and wheezed. “By all means visit the debtors’ prison. By all means choose your friends from the whorehouses of Covent Garden. By all means do a little business of that sort on the side, if it
appeals to you. You have my unconditional leave to indulge in any form of debauchery, to wallow in the stews every night. Just don’t ask me for money. I don’t have two brass farthings to rub together.”

Juliana paled and her freckles stood out on the bridge of her nose. “Rest assured, I will ask you for nothing further, my lord.” She dropped an icy curtsy. “If you’ll excuse me, my friends await me.”

“Just a minute.” He raised an arresting hand, impervious to her anger. “Perhaps I’ll accompany you on this errand. Lend a touch of respectability …” He grinned, the skin stretched tight on his skull. “If your husband bears you company, Tarquin will have to gnash his teeth in silence.”

Juliana wasn’t happy at the prospect of enduring her husband’s company. On the other hand, the idea of thwarting the duke had an irresistible appeal. He did, after all, have it coming.

“Very well,” Juliana murmured.

“Well, let’s be about this business.” He sounded relatively robust at the prospect of sowing mischief and moved to the door with almost a spring in his step. Juliana followed, her eyes agleam now with her own mischief.

Just as they reached the front door, Quentin and the duke emerged from the library.

“Juliana!” Tarquin’s voice was sharp. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She turned and curtsied. “For a drive with my husband, my lord duke. I trust you have no objections.”

The duke’s mouth tightened and an ominous muscle twitched in his cheek. “Lucien, you’re not encouraging this outrageous scheme.”

“My wife has asked for my permission to help a friend, and I’ve offered her my company in support, dear boy.” Lucien couldn’t hide his glee. “Wouldn’t do for Lady Edgecombe to go alone to the Marshalsea … but in my company there can be no objection.”

“Don’t be absurd,” the duke snapped. “Juliana, go upstairs to your parlor. I’ll come to you directly.”

Juliana frowned at this curt order. “Forgive me, my lord duke, but my husband has commanded my presence. I do believe that his commands must take precedence over yours.” She curtsied again and whisked herself out of the house before Tarquin could gather his wits to react.

Lucien grinned, offered his cousin a mock bow, and followed his wife.

“Insolent baggage!” Tarquin exclaimed. “Who the hell does she think she is?”

“Viscountess Edgecombe, apparently,” his brother said, unable to hide a wry smile. It wasn’t often that Tarquin was routed.

The duke stared at him in fulminating silence; then he spun on his heel and strode back to the library. He left the door ajar, so after a moment’s hesitation Quentin followed him.

“If that child thinks she can use Lucien to provoke me, she’d better think again,” the duke said, his mouth a thin, straight line, his eyes cold and hard as agate. “What could she possibly hope to gain by such a thing?”

“Revenge,” Quentin suggested, perching on the wide windowsill. “She’s a lady of some spirit.”

“She’s a minx!” The duke paced the room with long, angry strides.

“They won’t come to any harm,” Quentin soothed. “Lucien will—”

“That drunken degenerate is only interested in putting one over on me,” Tarquin interrupted. “He’s not concerned about Juliana in the least.”

“Well, no one need know about it,” Quentin said.

“No one need know that Viscountess Edgecombe in the company of three whores went to the rescue of a pauper harlot in the Marshalsea!” Tarquin exclaimed. “Goddammit, Quentin! They may not recognize Juliana, but they will certainly recognize Lucien.”

“Not if they take a closed carriage,” Quentin suggested lamely.

A dismissive wave showed what Tarquin thought of this
possibility. He resumed his pacing, an angry frown knotting his brow. Lucien would cause whatever evil he could. Juliana was only a country innocent, and she had no idea what she was dealing with. Somehow he would have to put a stop to her foolish alliance with Lucien.

George Ridge climbed up from the basement steps of the house opposite the duke’s mansion on Albermarle Street and stood watching the group of four women and a man followed by a footman stroll down the street. He stood with his feet apart, adjusting his waistcoat with a complacent tug, his right hand resting on his sword hilt. He’d been watching the house on Albermarle Street since midmorning, and nothing he’d seen made any sense. Last night he’d assumed that Juliana had been bought for the night by the two men who’d taken her into the house. But now it seemed as if she lived there. His first thought was that it was a whorehouse and the men were visiting her there. But two ladies, evidently irreproachable in their somber clothes, had arrived in a carriage with an earl’s arms on the panels. Then the two men he’d seen the previous night had escorted them back to the carriage with all due ceremony and courtesy. Then the three young women, accompanied by a footman, had arrived. Some altercation had occurred, he was convinced, between Juliana and one of the two men who seemed to live in the house, and now there she was in the company of yet another man, prancing down the street with the other women.

None of it made any sense. Juliana’s dress was fine as fivepence and didn’t look in the least whorish, but there was an air about her present companions that he would swear labeled them as Impures. High Impures, certainly, but definitely not fit companions for a young lady of Juliana’s birth and breeding. And what of the man whose arm she held? Unsavory-looking creature, George thought, although the view from his hiding place was partially obscured by the iron railings. Something very rum was going
on, and the sooner he got to the bottom of it, the sooner he’d be able to decide on his next move.

He stood for a few more minutes until the party reached the end of the street; then he strolled off toward the mews at the back of the house. Someone there would tell him to whom the house belonged. It would be a start.

“Don’t you think we should get a hackney, sir?” Juliana inquired as they emerged onto the crowded thoroughfare of Piccadilly.

“Oh, all in good time … all in good time,” Lucien responded easily. “I’ve a mind to show myself to the world in such charming company. It’s a rare sight for me to be surrounded by a bevy of the doves of Venus. We’re bound to meet up with some of my friends … an acquaintance or two. Introduce you, m’dear wife … and of course your friends … your previous fellow laborers.” He chuckled.

Juliana’s lips thinned. She wasn’t prepared to sacrifice her reputation just to annoy the duke. Lucien was taking matters too far.

A hackney carriage trundled along Piccadilly toward them, and with swift resolution she hailed it. “Forgive me, my lord, but I don’t believe we have the time for social dalliance.” She tugged on the handle of the carriage door as it came to a stop beside them. “I think we can all fit in, if you don’t mind sitting on the box, sir.” She offered him a placating smile and was taken aback by the flash of sullen anger in the ashy coals of his eyes.

“I say we walk along Piccadilly, madam.”

Juliana’s smile remained unwavering as her three friends were handed into the coach by the footman. “Indeed, my lord, but we cannot spare the time. Poor Lucy could even now be dying of starvation in that place. We don’t have a minute to lose.” She turned to follow her companions into the hackney. Seating herself, she leaned out of the still-open door.

“If you don’t wish to sit on the box, my lord, perhaps you could follow us in a separate hackney.”

Lucien glowered at her. Juliana coaxed, “Please come, my lord. If I go alone, His Grace will feel he has cause to be vexed with me. But as you so rightly said, if you come, he’ll have to bite his tongue.”

It worked. The viscount, still glowering, climbed onto the box beside the jarvey. “The Marshalsea,” he growled. The jarvey cracked his whip and the hackney moved off, the footman leaping onto the step behind, hanging on to the leather strap.

“Why are you so set on this, Juliana?” Lilly fanned herself in the warm interior, her languid air belied by the sharpness of her gaze. “I warrant it has to do with more than Lucy’s plight.”

“Perhaps it has,” Juliana said with a serene smile. “But Lucy’s situation is the first consideration.”

Rosamund was sitting in silence in a corner, the muslin collar of her short cloak drawn up around her ears as if she were hiding from something. When she spoke, her voice was husky and awkward. “Forgive me, Juliana, I don’t wish to pry. But … but that is your husband who’s accompanying us?”

“Yes, for my sins,” Juliana replied with a shudder. Once out of the viscount’s presence she couldn’t hide her repulsion.

“He’s a sick man,” Rosamund said hesitantly. “I don’t know if—”

“He’s poxed,” Lilly stated flatly. “There’s no need to beat about the bush, Rosamund, we all know the signs. Have you been in his bed, Juliana?”

Juliana shook her head. “No, and I shall not. It’s not part of the arrangement.”

“Well, that’s a relief!” Emma sighed and relaxed. “I didn’t know what to say … how to warn you.”

“There’s no need. I’ve had fair warning,” Juliana responded, looking out of the window to conceal her expression from her companions. “And I’m in no danger … at
least not of that sort,” she couldn’t help adding in a low voice.

“It’s to be hoped we don’t catch something in the Marshalsea,” Rosamund muttered. “There’s jail fever and all sorts of things in that place. Just breathing the air can infect you.”

“Then you may stay in the hackney,” Juliana said. “The viscount and I will go inside and procure Lucy’s release.”

“I’m certainly coming in,” Lilly said stoutly. “You don’t know Lucy. She won’t know to trust you.”

“No, she’s had so much ill luck,” Emma agreed with a sigh. “She won’t know whom to trust.”

The carriage came to a rattling halt on the uneven cobbles in front of a fearsome high-walled building. Great iron gates stood open to the street, and ragged creatures shuffled through them, exuding a desperate kind of defeat.

“Who are they?” Juliana gazed out of the door as the footman opened it.

“Debtors,” Lilly said, stepping down to the road ahead of her.

“But they aren’t incarcerated.”

“No, they’re paroled from dawn to dusk so they can beg—or work, if they can find something,” Emma explained, following Juliana to the cobbles. “And they have visitors, who bring them food, if they’re lucky. There are whole families in there. Babies, small children, old men and women.”

Lucien clambered off the box, the maneuver clearly costing him some effort. He stood for a minute wheezing, leaning against the carriage, sweat standing out on his pallid brow. “I must be mad to agree to such a ridiculous scheme,” he muttered, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief. “You go about your business, madam wife. I’m going to settle my chest in that tavern over yonder.” He gestured to a ramshackle building with a crooked door frame and loose shutters. Its identifying sign was unreadable and hung by a single nail over the door. “Come to me in
the taproom when you’re finished with your errand of mercy.”

Juliana silently resolved to send the footman through that unsavory-looking door, but she curtsied meekly to her husband, eyes lowered to the mud-encrusted cobbles.

Lucien ignored the salutation and hurried off, the smell of cognac drawing him like a dog to a bone.

“Oh, dear, I thought the viscount was going to negotiate for us,” Rosamund said, dismayed.

“We have no need of Edgecombe for the moment.” Juliana gathered up her skirts and set off toward the gate, watching her feet warily as she picked her way through the festering kennel in the middle of the street, praying she wouldn’t catch her high heel on an uneven cobble.

The gatekeeper stared blearily at them as they stopped at his hut. His little eyes were red-rimmed and unfocused, and he smelled most powerfully of gin. He took a swig from the stone jar on his lap before deigning to answer Juliana’s question.

“Lucy Tibbet?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Tibbet, eh? Now, who’d ’ave put ’er in ’ere?”

“Mistress Haddock,” Lilly said.

“Oh, that bawd!” The gatekeeper threw back his head and guffawed, sending a foul miasma into the steamy summer air. “Lucifer, but she’s an ’ard one, she is. Worse than that ’ubby of ’ers. That Richard. Lor’ bless me, but ’e was worth a bob or two, weren’t ’e?”

“If by that you mean he took every penny his girls earned, I’d agree with you,” Lilly said acerbically. She was clearly made of sterner stuff than Rosamund and Emma, who were hanging back, holding their skirts well clear of the matted straw and rotting vegetables littering the cobbles.

“You one of ’em, missie?” The gatekeeper leered. “Mebbe we could come to some arrangement, like.”

“And maybe you could tell us where to find Mistress Tibbet,” Juliana said, stepping forward. The gatekeeper drew back involuntarily from the tongues of jade fire in her
eyes, the taut line of her mouth, the tall, erect figure. This lady looked as if she were unaccustomed to meeting with opposition, and she held herself with an assurance that whores generally lacked.

“Well, now, mebbe I could, my lady … fer a consideration,” he said, pulling his whiskery chin.

“I have forty pounds here to pay her debt,” Juliana said crisply. “In addition I will give you a guinea, my good man, if you make things easy for us. Otherwise, we shall manage without you.”

“Oho … hoity-toity, aren’t we!” The gatekeeper lumbered to his feet. “Now you listen ’ere, my fine lady. The name’s Mr. Cogg to you, an’ I’ll thankee to show a little respect.”

“And I’ll thank you to mind your manners,” Juliana said. “Are you interested in earning a guinea or not?”

“Ten guineas it’ll be to secure ’er release.” His eyes narrowed slyly.