Damon Snow and the Nocturnal Lessons Page 5

  Quite obviously. The house was as dark on the inside as it was from the outside. From the glow of the candles, though, his front hall hadn’t seen the business end of a duster in a long while. Too long.

  And Price set my coat over a bare side table. I groaned. I would just have to suffer Mother Dover’s extravagant laundry prices, I supposed. Perhaps I could at least get that much coin out of Byrne.

  “I’m sure I can recommend someone,” I said. “If you’re between help, I mean.”

  “No, no,” Price said. The candle glow did not hide the colour blossoming in his cheeks much. It must have been humiliating, for one’s six-pence molly to criticise the state of his home. Well, I had been worth a lot more than six-pence to him. It just didn’t seem like it. “I have a girl. All I really need.”

  “It’s quite a large house for just one girl,” I said. Not that I could tell from the front hall.

  “I manage,” he said.

  “Is there somewhere more comfortable we could speak?” I asked. Or did he purposefully keep me in the front hall as if I deserved no better?

  He started again, as if jerking out of a dream, and shook his head again. “Of course, of course,” he said. “Just through that door behind you.”

  So it wasn’t that large of a house. But I had never put Price on the same income level as Byrne. Not this close to St Giles. Byrne’s income was harder to read, as he dressed smartly but not overly extravagant, but I knew, from gossip and newspaper clippings, that he was worth at least ten thousand a year. Enough to have his drawing room on the first floor instead of the ground.

  I nodded and proceeded into the room Price had indicated, even though he was the one with the light and the familiarity with his surroundings.

  “I didn’t expect company,” Price said again.

  One never expects the incubus calling.

  “I’m most grateful then,” I said. Price’s candelabra illuminated a pair of sofas facing each other, the empty hearth and a bottle of whiskey with a dram already poured on the side table. So that’s what Mr Price liked to do in his free time. Man after my own heart.

  I took the tumbler and downed the liquor. Price didn’t protest. Although the candles smelled far better than rush torches, and the whiskey tasted smoother than the gin, it seemed so familiar to be speaking in the dark with a good bottle of ruin. I grinned at Price, and he swallowed.

  Oh, that wouldn’t do. At this rate, he’d think I was blackmailing him. The Bow Street Runners didn’t pay well, and they were a pox on returning customers, the kind who would tip better in the future.

  “Is the missus out tonight?” I asked. There must be a missus. No bachelor painted his own rooms powdered blue, nor kept an assortment of knickknacks over the mantle and side tables. The question did not help. His face completely shuttered, but at least he had stopped looking afraid of me. This wasn’t even the frightening part. “Ah, never mind then. I had just heard that you were married.”

  “I was,” Price admitted.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said, although I couldn’t have cared. It was what people were supposed to say unless you hailed from St Giles or Whitechapel or any of the other rookeries, and then you might spit at them and say ‘good riddance’.

  “Thank you,” he said, with the glibness of a man who has had to say it too much.

  “My mother died a few years ago,” I said. People hadn’t been too sorry then, except to mourn the passing of such good laundry prices.

  “Humans are rather fragile, aren’t they,” Price said.

  “They can withstand a lot.” I had known both green girls and mollies beaten nearly to death, yet still they had hung on by their fingernails. “Unfortunately, life just throws more at them.”

  Price sighed. “It does at that.”

  This was going nowhere. I stood and Price jumped to his feet too, but I motioned for him to sit. I wished that I could see, so I could wander the room. Instead, I wandered to the empty hearth.

  “I suppose I should light that,” Price said.

  I shrugged my shoulder. “It matters not to me.”

  “No, no, you were quite soaked,” Price said, getting to his feet. “Here, let me see if I can find…” Price cursed. I imagined that he had bumped into something large.

  I let him proceed, for it seemed to put him at ease somehow, and watched him silently. He managed to find the kindling ready and a flint piece to start the fire. It started slow, but Price, unlike most gentlemen, seemed to be used to setting his own hearth.

  The room wasn’t much better in the light, for it showed the layers of dust on the walls and the furniture and other knick knacks. His wife seemed to have had a talent for decoration. I told Price so.

  “Yes, fortunately for her, we moved to London quite young,” he said. “We came from Yorkshire, but I gained employment as a banker and came to London. I spent hours arguing with her that we needed to at least bring something. She wanted to leave it all behind. A fresh start, where she could choose every single fashion. She never liked my mother’s taste.”

  “What lady does?” My mother would have accepted living with pigs, as long as she could return to her former lifestyle. Unfortunately, I ruined that chance for her.

  “Oh, what rows they would have,” Price said. “My mother thought she was mad. It took at least ten years to decorate the house, when we could afford to, and we still have a few rooms bare.”

  More than ten years married. That would make him older than five-and-thirty at youngest, or even forty. I had miscalculated.

  “Our bedroom, for one,” he said. My shoulders tightened, but it didn’t seem to be an invitation. “Once we discovered that she was expecting, she had to finish the nursery first, and then we never really got around to it.”

  “Oh, so you have a child?” I asked.

  Price looked away. “Three.”

  “Are they off at public school?” I asked. “I hear St Bartholomew’s is excellent.”

  “No.”

  Ah. His wife, his children, all gone, and here he was, all alone in the dark and the dust.

  “You could always remarry,” I said. “You’re still young enough to start again.”

  Price pursed his lips and shook his head. That was cute. He thought he was in love with her. It must be true love, with the way he slithered into Mother Dover’s every week or two.

  “Why are you here?” Price asked.

  I smiled at him, the false one I kept for getting bigger tips out of flats. “I told you. Paying you a social call.”

  “No, really, why are you here?” Price asked. “Why me?”

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about our encounter,” I said. Mainly because Byrne was forcing me to think on it. “I thought to myself, I need him so wantonly inside of me. I want to render my services to you — without charge.”

  Price stared at me, lips parted.

  I darted my tongue over my lips. His hands clutched the arms of his chair.

  “I can’t believe my luck that the house is so empty,” I said. “No one to interrupt. It’s like Fate herself divined this for us.”

  “R-really?” Price said.

  I stood up, offered that god-searing smile again, and took my place on his lap. With that contact, I could feel that beast inside of him, slowly awakening, making Price’s pulse jump.

  “I just — it’s shocking, really,” Price said. “It hadn’t seemed as if you even liked me.”

  I chuckled. “What does ‘liking’ have to do with this?”

  The beast slid out of Price like water down a pipe. I found myself lying on my back, on the floor, and without a body on top of me. “Ow?”

  Price had escaped to the corner of the room. He had shoved me! He had shoved me and hadn’t even taken advantage!

  “Are you really turning down a free fuck?” I asked.

  Price winced. “I don’t want to—to frig,” he said.

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Then why do you come to Mother Dover’s?
”

  “I - I wanted to make love to—to—”

  “You mean that you wanted to slam your cock down my throat and up my arse.” I peeled myself off the floor.

  “No!” Price exclaimed. When he jerked back, as if I had actually given him a physical blow, I stayed where I sat on the floor. I didn’t need to do anything else to remain in control.

  “Then you had a very disappointing evening indeed,” I said, brushing off my shirtsleeves. The carpet was as filthy as the rest of the place.

  “Yes,” Price hissed.

  I scoffed.

  “I wanted to see Kendall,” Price said.

  “Kendall doesn’t want to see you,” I said. “He made that very clear to me.”

  So Price should just understand how fortunate he really was that circumstances had arranged themselves so I offered my body to him without charge. I never did that. Never.

  “I know,” Price said. “I know, but I have to keep trying.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Boys like Kendall are a sixpence a dozen.”

  “Not like him,” Price said.

  “Who are so afraid of you they won’t even take your coin?” I asked. “I’m sure you could foster that in someone else. Keep them locked in your cellar. Or is that where your maid is now?”

  “What are you accusing me of? Of course not,” he said. He stopped in front of me, and for that moment, I glared at him, informing him that he may not lock me in a cellar or he would suffer unfortunate consequences. “Kendall is sweet and kind. He always listens to me, to my problems, even when I blather on and on about double entry bookkeeping. I hate double entry bookkeeping.”

  “Of course he listens,” I said. “You pay him to.”

  “It’s more than that!” Price insisted. “He cares about me. He told me that he loves me!”

  I blinked, and that was the only motion that I would allow to show my shock. Kendall had professed his love for this man? Rogers would in a heartbeat if he thought it would end in gifts, but Kendall had actually acted as if he had thought such a concept was worth more than cheap trinkets.

  I leaned forward. “Then why does he refuse to see you?”

  Price threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know! He professed to me, and I – I, well, I—”

  “Laughed,” I said.

  “I didn’t!”

  “Because it would be appropriate,” I said. A flat didn’t care about a molly’s finer feelings.

  “I didn’t laugh. I was merely… stunned. I couldn’t speak. Then next thing I knew, he was racing away like a fox in a hunt.”

  I stood. Price stepped back, his hands up around his face as if he expected me to attack him.

  “Let me tell you something, Mr Price,” I said.

  He stared at me, wide-eyed and innocent. I opened my mouth to tell him that Kendall had only told him what he wanted to hear, because Price had paid him to. Because mollies were just objects to be picked up and discarded as needed. Because even if a green girl had the chance of becoming a kept mistress, no one could ever dare keep another man — even if they could do the impossible and care enough to risk the pillory. Not when there was a pond full of molly-fish they could rely on.

  I snapped my mouth shut and fled the house, even leaving my coat behind.

  Chapter Six

  Kendall had professed he loved Price. Rogers would remark that it was well-played, except that he couldn’t reap the rewards if Kendall kept refusing Price. What had Kendall hoped to accomplish that he would so eagerly refuse a paying flat — a flat who would pay more for him?

  I took a swig from my bottle, crouched in the dark corner of the sunken pit leading to the servant’s door. My own blue ruin, this time. I hadn’t even filched the coin for it from Rogers. Rogers could share it with me, if he could pry the thing from my cold dead fingers.

  I was going to get foxed. I knew it, as surely as I knew my own name. As surely as I knew the demon which lay inside of me. Another special power, I was sure. Forecasting my own level of inebriation.

  Mother Dover would be pissed. Benjamin, furious. He wouldn’t let me in for the night if he caught me, at best, and perhaps a few bruises to keep me from entertaining for the next few days after that. Or worse. There was always worse. But I couldn’t stand to sit in that damn parlour, not now, not when my head was so full of… love.

  I laughed, although it sounded more like a wheeze than glee. I took another swig, let the burning river swell inside of me. The river stopped. I shook the bottle. Only droplets pinged inside. The thing inside me did not allow me to get properly drunk, only just enough to give a nice buzz in my head for a while. I could never afford to keep it for very long.

  I threw the bottle against the opposite corner, let it shatter into a million pieces. Why not? That’s how I felt. Misery enjoyed good company.

  “Bloody hell,” a voice said, jumping out of the shadows.

  I bit my bottom lip to keep from snarling. “What are you doing, Kendall?”

  “Err, nothing, Snow, nothing at all,” Kendall said.

  My name gutted me like a knife. Kendall was the only person who ever called me as I wished to be called. Everyone else took improprieties.

  That was the kind of man Kendall was. Price really did have the measure of him. If it had been Rogers or Long or I that he had spoken of, I would have known he was full of bollocks. Telling himself pretty lies to make his life seem better. To make it easier to take advantage of us. But Kendall… sweet, kind Kendall, who never did anything against another’s wishes…

  Why had he confessed? Kendall may be sweet, but he was clever enough. One had to be to survive in this line of business, to get into a nice position like Mother Dover’s. Kendall should have known what would happen…

  What would it be like to tell someone that one loved them, and they had just… paused? I couldn’t imagine it, even in theory. I would never tell a flat that I loved him. I would never love a flat. I would never love at all. Even ‘like’ seemed a far stretch, although I knew I liked gin. That was about it.

  “Where do you hale from, Kendall?” I asked. “The country?”

  Kendall jumped back. Most likely startled that I had bothered to enquire anything about him. “No, sir,” he said.

  My eyebrows twitched upward at the honorific. Was he responding to my words, as if the clip in my tongue could make the fraud real? “Servant work, then?”

  “No, no… I…”

  Impossible. “St Giles?” How did one stay so kind as a street rat, one step from the work house?

  Kendall examined his hands closely, avoiding my gaze. As if where he came from was an embarrassment. No worse than anyone else, though. He’d made something of himself.

  “Did you have a mother?” I asked. I expected she would have passed before this.

  “Aye — yes, sir,” Kendall said. “Once upon a time,”

  “But she died when you were young.”

  Kendall’s voice was meeker. “Yes, sir.”

  “So you… what? Joined a rookery?” I asked.

  “No, sir, not that.” He wouldn’t look at me now.

  Ah. I had the root of it now. “Mother Dover’s is much better than streetwalking, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, still not looking at me. When I didn’t add anything, though, he sidled up next to me against the wall.

  “Is there something you need?” I asked. Otherwise, he would have escaped.

  Kendall’s lips parted. I could only see in the dark from being so close to him. He grabbed onto my arm. “What did you do?” he demanded.

  “Do?” I let him keep my arm.

  “Where were you today?” he asked. Before I could reasonably answer, he continued, “You went to him, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  How did he – never mind. By even asking where Priced lived the previous night, I might as well have announced my intentions. “Yes,” I said.

  He heaved a sigh. “He fancies ye now, don’t he.”

  His polish was fading, sho
wing me the street brat that lay beneath.

  “Not in the least,” I said. “He refused me.”

  Kendall turned his face up at me, his eyes wide as a full moon in a pond and twice as watery. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Why would I lie?” I asked. I should have lied that I was his favourite, destroy what little hope that Kendall had left. Forced him to remove his affections, forced him to forget, because what Kendall longed for, he couldn’t have. He could never have it.

  Perhaps I was more drunk than I had thought. That was the only explanation that I could make, for I said, “I have a plan.”

  I didn’t have a plan, but it was more that I wanted to make a plan than anything else.

  “For him?”

  “Yes, for him, and for you,” I said. “He told me what you told him.”

  “Oh,” Kendall said. He threw my arm down. “Oh. He told you that. So you could both enjoy a good long laugh at me.”

  “No one laughed.” Well, I had, but Kendall didn’t need to know that.

  “So that Rogers and you can laugh at me,” Kendall said. “Mock me behind my back. Well, I don’t care! I don’t care if you laugh. I don’t care if you think me stupid, or if he thinks me stupid, because I said it… and… and…”

  “Shut it,” I said. Before he started crying. I knew crying was supposed to be considered manful among the nobility, with the Prince of Wales bursting out at the least provocation, but I wasn’t noble. “I have a plan.” I needed to formulate one quickly. “We’ll pool our coin together and rent a room for the night, where you and Price can—”

  “Can what?” Kendall demanded. “Why would he even go?”

  “Because.” My lips still refused to form the words, because he loves you too. “Do not worry over yourself about quibbling details like that. It’s my plan. It will work.”

  “Quibbling?” Kendall said. “Tell me one good reason why I — I shouldn’t throw me fist at ye!”

  “Because I could break your nose faster,” I said. “But never mind that. You should be thanking me for this opportunity—”

  “This opportunity for me to say it again, to watch him stare at me in amusement… again? Is that what I should thank you for?”