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“I like both.” Hamish wondered what he could say that would not arouse suspicion of his motives. He did not want the picture of Celeste to make it into any rival publication. Or to find its way to Lord Carruthers. Perhaps if Benedict thought the interest was personal, he would think no more of it. So, he asked, “Do you know where I might make her acquaintance?” in the hope of putting him off the scent.
Benedict stuck his thumbs in his suspenders and rocked on the balls of his broken boots and grinned. “Nevva ’fought I’d ’ear yer ask me a question like that, guv? But I reckon I’s jest the man ter show yer ter places the readers o’ Morals & Manners would curl up their little toes an’ die jest ter know they existed.”
“Good man.”
Benedict was from the gutter, and proud of it. With a loose tongue and ready to swim wherever the tide would take him, Benedict was like a water rat, a survivor; the kind of man who might one day prove valuable, for he knew how to infiltrate the palaces of the rich via their underground servant’s corridors, and learn the business of those upstairs, just as well as he knew the rookeries of the poor.
“In fact, I could take yer ter meet this young lady ternight, if yer desire.”
“The brunette or the blonde?”
“Both. But women like this don’t come cheap. Like me photographs.” He laughed in response to the twitch of Hamish’s nostrils. “I weren’t sure if yer took me meanin’, guv. Reckon maybe yer not so interested, now. But I’ll take yer ter Madame Chambon’s. There’s a girl there I quite fancy, meself.” When he saw the expression Hamish failed to hide in time, he let out a guffaw! “Lor’, the pleasure o’ one o’ ‘em girls would cost me a year’s wages. An’ I don’t really fink yer in the market, either,” he added shrewdly, glancing between Hamish and the women in the photograph. “No, the girl I’s interested in works as a servant there. Course, yer interest is ’bout warnin’ yer readers o’ the moral dangers o’ bein’ taken in by one o’ Madame’s girls. Easy ter get taken fer a ride if yer don’t know the dangers.” Benedict tapped the side of his nose. “That’s the story, ain’t it, guvnor?”
* * *
Hamish was careful to arrive by the discreet side entrance. Some bolder personages, or those entering or leaving in the dark, were not so concerned about being observed, but as editor of a magazine that upheld morality, Hamish was taking an enormous risk.
He also knew that his sense of integrity and honesty required him to investigate whether this woman, Celeste, might be compromising the safety of the country through her intimacy with two men with opposing agendas.
It was midafternoon as he stood in the dim entrance, blinking to accustom his eyes to the gloom. There was little sign of activity. A faint perfume permeated the air. Pleasant and sophisticated; not the rank, cloying odour he would have expected, though he remembered, of course, that he’d been surprised by the sophistication of his surroundings during his last brief visit.
When he asked to see Celeste, he was embarrassed that his request was misconstrued, though the fault lay with him, he knew.
“I wish to speak to her on a matter of business only,” he tried to clarify. But the young woman he addressed merely said patiently, “Celeste doesn’t do business at this time on a Thursday. I’m afraid you’ll have to come back tomorrow, sir. However, Karolina is available. I’ll go and see if—”
“No!” he responded sharply, realising that his voice sounded too loud. “I wish to see Celeste on a matter quite different.”
He was heartily wishing he’d not come at all when another voice intruded, and he glanced up to see a golden-haired beauty. She’d paused halfway down the stairs, and as she looked into his eyes, he felt the shock of recognition like a branding. She smiled. “Perhaps I could pass on a message, sir.”
Hamish was tongue-tied. It was rare that he truly could not find the right response. She was even more beautiful and poised than she’d appeared in the photograph that had crossed his desk earlier that day.
The sunlight behind her burnished her golden ringlets and made her milky skin glow like sun-kissed rose petals. Her teeth were white and pretty, and she carried herself like a duchess, not a woman from the gutter, or a fallen angel, or anything else that was rotten on the inside and eaten up with vice and sin, which he knew she would have to be if she worked here.
She put her head on one side to regard him with faint amusement. “What is it, sir? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Or have we met in another life? There are plenty of gentlemen who like to say that.”
“I beg your pardon, madam,” he floundered. “I…I thought I recognised you.”
For, although Hamish recognised her from the photograph in his satchel, as she took another step into the light, the faint tug of memory had him floundering even more.
In the flesh, the sense of having seen her before was even stronger than what he’d felt just looking at the photograph.
She tilted her head, her eyes meeting his in challenge, forcing him to study and acknowledge her as she apparently felt she deserved.
Was she mistaking his identity? Did she believe him to be one of her myriad admirers? After all, she must have had many. Certainly, with a face and figure like that.
She gave a short laugh. “I hope your sister was relieved to get her bonnet back. Mind you, that shade of pink does little for my complexion, so like as not, I’d have returned it.”
Her words froze him to the spot. He blinked rapidly as his brain struggled to assimilate the bag of bones and lustreless hair and eyes of the guttersnipe who’d snatched Lucy’s bonnet, with the woman before him. But Hamish was a man of imagination who spent a good deal of time poring over photographs and studying the features of their subjects for a popular segment his father had introduced on page 7 of the magazine called Saint or Sinner?
Hamish deplored the segment, but the readers delighted in writing in to suggest why the physiognomy of a convicted felon should have proclaimed him—without need of magistrate or jury—instantly guilty.
This woman would have had his readers in raptures over her saintlike features—had she been proclaimed for her good works. Her skin was unblemished, her hair was thick and glossy and arranged in the intricate twists that were fashionable. There was an air of saintlike innocence about her that was so at odds with what he knew her to be. A thief at the very least.
By the same token, Hamish knew that if her photograph had been printed proclaiming her to be a husband-murderer, those same readers would have written in decrying the deceptiveness of the devil in fashioning their creature as a heavenly manifestation of what was, in truth, a fiend who should burn in Hell.
“Good lord!” he exclaimed! This time he really struggled to get out the words. “You!”
“Yes.” She leaned a little over the bannister, smiling artlessly at him as she said, “Though I am not in the habit of being greeted in such a cavalier fashion.”
