At the sound of that name, Alice sucked in a breath of air. She had hoped never to hear it again, but of course couldn’t be so lucky, not with Mr. Tenpenny traveling in circles not so different from Mrs. Wraxhall’s own. And now he was to be here, in this house, at the dinner table with her? She clutched the embroidery in her hand, and then gasped when she realized she had pricked herself on the needle. Before she could collect herself, a bead of bright red blood had formed on her fingertip and dropped onto the cushion. “Oh no!” she cried. “I’ve quite ruined your work!”
“Oh, bother my work,” said the lady. “You’ve done most of it yourself anyway. Stevens, ring for a plaster for Miss Stapleton, will you?” As if to underscore her point, she threw the embroidery, hoop and all, into the fire. Alice yelped anew, because surely some of the piece could have been salvaged, some corner with which to make a pincushion or a coin purse. That was, somehow, a more potent reminder of Alice’s unbelonging than even the news that the odious Mr. Tenpenny would be arriving.
Pleading the necessity of tending to her wound, which had already stopped bleeding and would soon be nothing more than the ghost of a pinprick, Alice went upstairs as quickly as was compatible with dignity. She would feign illness and stay in her bed the remainder of the house party. That was the only way. Facing Mr. Tenpenny was out of the question.
But staying in bed meant more time around Molly. Molly, whoknew. Molly, who had caught her looking, which was bad enough. What was worse was that Molly hadn’t seemed to mind. Alice knew how to handle outrage—she could have apologized, she could have tried to disappear in a cloud of polite self-recrimination. But Molly had only responded with blithe acceptance and then gone on to do some looking of her own.
Perhaps she could borrow enough from Mrs. Wraxhall to take the stagecoach back to London. But the house in Grosvenor Square was closed up for the next month while Mrs. Wraxhall attended a succession of house parties. There was nowhere for Alice to go.
She flung open her bedroom door and shut it quickly behind her, as if she were being chased by a pack of wolves.
“Lord help me,” Molly exclaimed, leaping up from the table where she was sewing silk flowers to a pair of dancing slippers. “Are you all right?” Petals were scattered at her feet.
“Yes, quite.” Alice was struggling to catch her breath, and the words came out as more air than sound. “I’m fine.”
“Well, that’s a lie. What happened?”
Alice contemplated making an excuse, but then figured she had nothing to lose. After this morning, was this sordid tale likely to make a difference? “It’s only that I didn’t realize that Mr. Tenpenny was going to be here.”
“Oh?”
“I can’t meet him again.” Alice wrung her hands. It was one thing to decide to tell the story; it was another thing entirely to find the words. She finally settled on, “He’s the reason I was sent from home.”
Molly’s eyes opened wide in confusion, before narrowing to slits. “You... you and this Tenpenny fellow?”
“No!” Alice lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The words might be easier to say if she didn’t have to watch Molly’s reaction. “He... did something untoward, and I was blamed.”
“He touched you?” Alice could hear the fury in Molly’s voice. The last time she had told this mortifying tale, there had been fury in her father’s voice, but that time the anger had been directed towards her. Alice knew without asking that Molly placed all the blame on Mr. Tenpenny.
Squeezing her eyes tight, Alice forced herself to speak. “He opened his trousers.”
A sharp intake of air. Exasperation, not shock, if Alice had to guess. “Made you look at his prick, did he?”
Alice nodded.
“Bastard. I’ll never understand why men need to show the world their pricks. We’ve all seen them.” This was the best possible reaction: disgust mingled with annoyance. That was precisely how Alice might feel about the incident, if it hadn’t resulted in her losing everything she had loved.
“Ihadn’t.” She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at Molly.
“Right. Forgot about that. It must be a terrible shock for fine ladies, never to see a proper cock until they’re married.”
Never would Alice have guessed that she’d find something to laugh at in this situation, but laugh she did, a great wave of amusement sweeping over her until she was pressing her face into the pillow to smother the sound. “A proper cock,” she repeated in between gusts of laughter.
“Or a very rude and improper one,” Molly said.
“Rude indeed,” Alice agreed, breathless. “Such an unprepossessing article. And he seemed so smug about the wretched thing.”
Molly came over to sit on the edge of the bed, her weight dipping the mattress and causing Alice to roll slightly towards her. “What happened to get you tossed out?”
“When he took out his...”
“Prick,” Molly supplied, which was very helpful because “member” was a good deal too dignified for the occasion.
“Well, I screamed. I ought to have...” Alice still didn’t know what she ought to have done. Smile politely? Thank the man for his offering, the way she did when one of her brothers or nieces brought in a half-rotten turnip from the garden?
“Bugger ought to have,” Molly said. “Nothing wrong with screaming. Who knew what he meant to do with the thing? He might have meant to do more than show it to you.”
Exactly. That was what Alice had feared. She was inexpressibly grateful to be understood. “I screamed, and servants came running. I went to my bedchamber, trying to avoid everybody. But he put word about that we had been...” She paused, hoping Molly would fill in the gaps in her vocabulary.
