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Surely there was some way of proving Mr Adams the cheat he was?
And, in doing so, maybe — just, maybe — she could save them both.
Chapter 4
Only three more days. Shivering in her thin dressing gown, Charity marked off the calendar on her wall then went to sit on her bed to think.
It was late morning and she could hear a little movement in the house. The chink of buckets wielded by the servants and muted conversation from several of the other girls who were in the passageway.
She heard Rosetta protest something too loudly, as was her wont, and, on impulse, Charity threw open the door of her bedchamber to call after them. Time was running out and she was panicking.
“I need to help Hugo,” she said without preamble. She knew she must look as desperate as she felt. She’d thought she and Hugo might try and come up with a plan together, but Charity feared Hugo didn’t have enough aggression and fire within him to counteract the evil Cyril, when, after a night of deep contemplation, she’d decided that was what was needed.
Emily sat on the bed. “I know he’s a regular at a gambling den called The Red Door.”
“And,” said Emily, “my Thursday gentleman, Mr Mortimer, is willing to let us in, as long as we’re discreet. Yes, you asked for our help, but we’re ahead of you, Charity.”
“We though
t you’d be too naïve to know where to start,” said Rosetta, examining her fingernails. She glanced at her friend, then said in a rush. “All of us girls have been discussing it. We don’t want you to have to earn your living like the rest of us. That’s why we’re discovering everything we can so that — ” she shrugged — “you’ll avoid our terrible fate.” Her tone was harsh but Charity recognised the sentiment behind them and tears stung her eyes. These women had been forced into the kind of work Charity was terrified of and appalled by but they still had enough goodness in their hearts to try and protect her from it.
She clasped her hands together. “Thank you,” she said softly. “For both your sakes, I will try and be less naive and — ” she cleared her throat — “more underhand and devious for I do appreciate all the effort you’re going to.”
“I think you shouldn’t try to be underhand and devious unless it’s specifically under our direction,” said Emily hastily with a meaningful look at Rosetta. “We’ve had lots of practise and there’s nothing that can ruin a plan so quickly as a novice with good intentions.”
“Then what should I do?” asked Charity, relieved of course that she’d been let off the hook — to a certain extent, at any rate.
“Come to the Red Door with us on Thursday.”
Charity nodded. A great weight seemed to fall from her shoulders. It was all very well to decide that Mr Cyril Adams should be called to account but, in truth, she’d not had the first idea as to how she could go about it.
Rosetta and Emily, however, were well versed in the ways of this treacherous world.
The fact that they were so motivated to help her made her realise that, with such friends, somehow, Charity would survive.
* * *
The red satin gown was lavishly ornamented with bows and sparkles while the feathers in Charity’s hair were the perfect complement.
She looked just as she was supposed to. As, she supposed, everyone imagined her to be: a harlot. A lightskirt. A barque of frailty, a lightskirt, en horizontale. As such, the attention she garnered was not surprising. Gentlemen leered at her through their monocles as she sashayed, in Rosetta and Emily’s wake, into the tobacco-filled air of one of the most insalubrious residences of Soho.
But her palms were sweating inside her elbow-length gloves and she could feel the sheen of it on her carefully applied makeup.
Emily had worked wonders on her face so that she almost didn’t look like herself. Actually, she rather liked the way she looked though she was glad her mother would never see her.
Glad her mother had never lived to see her only child become what she had worked so hard to try to prevent. But, really, that was always rather a vain hope for, without a father who would recognise her, and with no money and no references, what chance had Charity of being anything else?
“There he is!” Rosetta’s excited whisper was augmented with a sharp tug of her skirt and Charity glanced up to follow the direction in which she was pointing.
She’d not seen Hugo’s cousin, Mr Cyril Adams, before. The gentleman had only been described to her as a mischief-maker, an untrustworthy type. So very unlike Hugo.
The fact that she’d sent a note to Hugo asking him to come here was the only reason Charity didn’t crumple up in a heap just to see Hugo’s nemesis. Their nemesis.
Mr Adams was about the same age as Hugo and, from this distance, there was a similarity in visage — the square shape of the jaw — but whereas Hugo’s was moulded in a way that made him appear always pleasant-natured, Mr Adams’, when combined with the sharpness of his expression and the glittering intensity of his eyes, made him seem like a man determined to get what he wanted.
Charity tried not to look at him too pointedly. Was she just imagining this, knowing what Mr Adams had done to her darling Hugo? He’d ruined his own cousin, no doubt to further his own ends. Hugo had said even before all this terribleness, that his father favoured his nephew over his own son and had said in as many words that he preferred a man of action over a poet.
“What if he realises who I am?” she asked in sudden panic as Mr Adams glanced in their direction.
