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A moment later, after a stammered thanks, the flower girl was limping away. Vere watched until she’d rounded the southeast corner of the marketplace and disappeared from view.
Then his gaze came back to his prey—or, rather, to where he’d last seen her, for she was gone.
After a moment’s frantic survey of the marketplace, Vere spotted the gay turban bobbing among some scattered groups of idlers. The turban was heading northward.
He caught up with her near Russell Street. Planting himself in her path, he withdrew the cluster of straggling bouquets from under his arm, where he’d absently stowed them, and held them out to her. “‘Sweets to the sweet,’” he quoted from Hamlet.
With a shrug, she took the crushed flowers. “‘Farewell,’” she said, and started to move away.
“You mistake me,” he said, following. “That was the beginning.”
“So it was,” said she. “But the line ends with ‘farewell.’ Then Queen Gertrude scatters the flowers.” Suiting action to words, she strewed the posies about her.
“Ah, an actress,” he said. “This gypsy garb is to advertise a new play, I take it.”
“I’ve been an actress in better times,” she said without slowing her pace. “A fortune-teller in harder ones. Like the present.”
Once again she’d adopted someone else’s voice. This one was higher and lighter than her own, its accents coarser. If Purvis hadn’t told him she’d be here incognito, or if Vere had been as drunk as he pretended to be, she might have taken him in.
He couldn’t tell whether his act was taking her in, whether she truly believed he was too drunk to penetrate her disguise or she was simply playing along until she could find a way to escape without attracting attention.
As though her attire—what there was of it—wasn’t screaming, “Come pump me!” to every male in the vicinity.
“You passed any number of well-breeched swells who could have crossed your palm generously with silver, if not gold,” he said. “Yet you stopped for a crippled child who’d scarcely a copper to bless herself with. I very nearly mistook you for an angel.”
She shot him a glance from under her lashes. “Not likely. You acted the part so well, I could only play supernumerary.”
If she’d directed that sidelong come-hither look at another man, she’d be up against an alley wall in nine seconds with her skirts over her head. The image made his temples throb.
“It was the easiest way to get rid of the chit,” he said carelessly. “And to bring myself to your notice. You’d already brought yourself to mine, you see. Forcibly,” he added, ogling her lavish bosom. “And now I must have my fortune told. I strongly suspect that my love line has taken a turn for the better.” He pulled off his glove and waved his hand in her face. “Would you be so kind as to look?”
She swatted his hand away. “If it’s love you want, you need only look in your pockets. If you find a coin there, you might pluck any of the flowers of the night blooming here about you.”
While one of the other lechers plucked her? Not likely.
Heaving a deep sigh, he pressed to his breast the hand she’d swatted. “She touched me,” he said soulfully, “and I am transported to heavenly spheres. Gypsy, actress, angel—I know not what she is, or how I came to be worthy of her touch, but I—”
“Mad, quite mad, alas!” she cried, startling him. “Oh, good people, hearken and pity him!”
Her cry seemed so genuine that several whores and customers paused in their negotiations to stare.
“‘Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend/Which is the mightier,’” she declaimed.
Vere vaguely recalled the lines as Ophelia’s. If she thought he was going to play Hamlet—who lost the girl—she had another think coming.
“Mad for you,” he cried poignantly. A harlot nearby giggled. Nothing daunted, he announced to the onlookers, “Into the desolate darkness of my weary existence she came, all burning color, like the Aurora Borealis—”
“‘O heavenly powers, restore him!’” she wailed.
“And lit me ablaze!” he went on in stirring accents. “Behold me burning for but a smile from these ruby lips. Behold me consumed in the sweet fire of undying devotion—”
“‘O what a noble mind is here o’er thrown!’” Back of her hand to her forehead, she plunged into a cluster of laughing tarts. “Shield me, fair ladies. I fear this ecstatic fool will be driven to desperate acts.”
“Only the usual one, dearie,” said an older harlot with a laugh. “And it’s Ainswood, don’t you know, as pays handsome.”
“Fair Aurora, take pity on me,” Vere cried beseechingly. He elbowed his way through the crowd of men gathering round the knot of females. “Flee not from me, my blazing star, my sun and moon and all, my galaxy.”
“Yours? When, how, why yours?” The turban disappeared briefly in a forest of top hats, but when she emerged from the cluster of laughing men, Vere darted to her side.
“By love’s decree,” he told her. He fell to his knees. “Sweet Aurora, behold me prostrate before you—”
“That isn’t prostrate,” she said reproachfully. “Truly prostrate is out flat, face down—”
“Bung upwards, she means, Your Grace,” a tart called out.
“I should do anything for my goddess,” he said above the male segment of the audience’s raucous suggestions of various acts he might perform in his present position. He would kill them all later, he decided. “I wait only for you to bid me rise from this decaying earth. Only summon me, and I shall lift up my soul to join yours in celestial realms. Let me drink the ambrosia of your honeyed lips, and wander the sweet infinity of your heavenly body. And let me die in ecstasy, kissing your…feet.”
“‘O shame! Where is thy blush?’” Gesturing at him while her gaze swept the audience, she went on, “He feigns to worship, yet you hear him. He dares to sully my ears with talk of lips, of—of”—she shuddered—“kisses.”
Then she flounced away in a rustle of petticoats.
He was caught up in the game, but not so caught up—or drunk, as she believed—to let her escape so easily. Almost as soon as she moved, he was on his feet, hurrying after her.
Vere saw the collision coming.
Grenville changed direction and glanced over her shoulder as she darted toward the piazza’s columns—at the same moment a woman in spangled black hurried out from its shadows.
Even as he was calling, “Look out!” his “Aurora” crashed into the woman, knocking her back against a pillar.
He reached them before they’d fully recovered their balance, and drew the dragoness away.
“Why’n’t you look where you’re going, you bean pole slut!” the woman in black screeched.
It was Coralie Brees. Vere would have recognized her shrill tones from a furlong away.
“It was my fault,” he said quickly as his glance took in the pair of bully boys trailing behind her. “A lovers’ quarrel. She was so vexed with me that she couldn’t see straight. But you are better now, are you not, my sun and moon and stars?” he inquired of Aurora while he straightened her turban, which had slipped askew.
She pushed his hand away. “A thousand apologies, miss,” she told Coralie contritely. “I hope I caused you no injury.”
Vere would wager fifty quid that the bawd had not been addressed as “miss” in some decades, if ever. He would also wager that Grenville had caught sight of the two brutes as well, and wisely decided in favor of pacification.
Madam Brees was not looking remotely mollified, however, which boded ill for peace.
That should have been agreeable to Vere, for he was in the habit of looking for trouble, and the pair of bully boys would have suited him admirably. Tonight, however, he must make an exception. Having spent the afternoon heaving bricks, stones, and timbers, he preferred to reserve his remaining energies for Her Highness. Besides, she might easily wander into another fellow’s greedy hands while Vere was busy pummeling the brutes.
He pulled the jade stickpin from his neckcloth and tossed it to the procuress. Coralie caught it neatly, her expression softening during a quick examination.
“No hard feelings, m’dear, I hope,” he said.
He did not wait for her answer, but turned a drunken grin upon Grenville. “What now, my peacock?”
“It’s the male of the species that’s colorful,” she said with a toss of her head. “The female’s dull. I’ll not stay to be called your drab, Sir Bedlam.” In a swirl of petticoats she turned and started away.
But he was turning, too, laughing, to scoop her up in his arms.
She let out a gasp. “Put me down,” she said, wriggling. “I’m too big for you.”
“And too old,” Coralie said acidly. “A great lump of mutton, Your Grace—while I can give you dainty young lambs.”
But Vere was carrying his lively burden into the shadows and away from the bawd’s shrill litany of her youthful employees’ attractions.
“Too big?” he asked the alleged gypsy. “Where, my treasure? See how neatly my head fits upon your shoulder.” Nuzzling her neck, he let his gaze linger upon the luscious territories below. “It will fit as comfortably upon your breast, I’ll warrant. And I can tell,” he went on as he dexterously shifted his hand toward her derriere, “there is precisely enough here—”
