Read A Private Gentleman Online
Authors: Heidi Cullinan
does he?”
The pills. Barrows was speaking of his pills. Wes faltered. “F-F-For-For m-m-
my n-n-n—”
“Nerves?” Barrows finished for him acidly. He shook his head in disgust.
Wes felt his cheeks burn. “I c-c-c-can’t f-f-f-fun-function w-w-w-without
them.”
Barrows stared at Wes very hard, his piercing gaze making Wes squirm
despite the opium. “I take men out of the gutter every day, my lord, and give
them new life. Drunks. Washed-out sailors. Street whores. Any man or woman
with a spark left, I tell them, come to Dove Street, and you won’t go hungry
again, and you’ll fuck who you like for real money. We bring in girls who were
mothers at thirteen and traded their cunts for a crust of bread, teach them
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manners and self-respect, and they go on to be maids in decent households or
run pubs with their men or retire happy and sated after making themselves a
tidy sum on their mattress. I train lads how to steal and not get hanged, who to
steal from, and what to do with the stash. I turn street thugs into my thugs, and
they’re loyal as the day is long. I make ten silk purses out of sows’ ears before
breakfast each day.” His voice hardened. “But as soon as I smell the poppy, I
leave them be. Dragon claws are sharp, and they quickly steal what little spark a
body has left.”
Wes flushed at this, not a blush on his cheeks but a hot rush over his whole
body, an odd mix of insult and cold fear. He wanted to argue, to explain to
Barrows that it wasn’t for pleasure that he took the pills, but for medicine. He
wanted to insist no dragon had claws in him, that he hadn’t had a spark to steal
to begin with. But he could not. Because even as the defiance tried to rise, it
drowned in guilt. Guilt that he knew he had long ago left the dose recommended
to him by his physician—and had yet to confess this to his medical guardian.
Guilt that he hardly waited for true anxiety any longer, dosing himself higher
and higher to keep the empty feelings at bay, always hoping for that softening of
the edges of the world that he could rarely get any longer, which only severely
upping the dose would do.
Which sometimes he did at night, just so he could lie back on his bed and
ride away on the rainbow tides of soft, careless pleasure.
Barrows said nothing more on the matter, simply returned to his work with
grim determination. His words echoed in Wes’s head for two days, however, and
one afternoon, having left Michael curled in the window seat of Barrows’s office
with a new book Wes had brought him as a present, Wes went not to his
apartment but to the east side of town, to the docks, to the street where he had
meant to meet Legs but had met Penelope Brannigan instead.
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He rapped hesitantly on her door. A white-capped old woman ushered him
inside, but Miss Brannigan herself rose from a chair beside an invalid on a sofa
and hurried over to greet him.
“Lord George,” she exclaimed, beaming at him. “What a lovely surprise.”
Her smile nearly split her face. “What brings you here today, sir?”
Having no idea himself, Wes could only sputter helplessly for a moment
before giving up and sliding his gaze away. It helped him not at all that he had
done his best to refrain from extra pills all day and the result was he felt so raw
and exposed he wouldn’t be surprised to learn the skin had come free of his
spine, letting all the sensations of the world rush at once into his brain.
His silence didn’t seem to upset her. She only smiled and held out her hand.
“Come, my lord. Come have some tea.”
He let her take his hand, let her lead him to a comfortable chair beside the
fire, even though he felt very foolish doing so, as if he were a little boy she had
found on the street and was tucking in for some comfort. The thought prompted
him to glance around looking for the young man he had seen when he’d visited a
few weeks ago. He was in the same place he had been then, even wearing the
same clothes. He did not cast a single glance at Wes, and he appeared to be
taking great care to do so. Other than the boy, the room was empty, save the
white-capped old woman who settled in a rocking chair near the front window,
taking some sewing from a basket and losing herself in it at once. The room was
quiet and warm, the only sounds the click of the young man’s chess pieces, the
creak of the old woman’s rocker and the crackle of the fire.
Wes wanted to speak, to explain to Miss Barrington why he had come, or at
least to invent some reason, but even in the gentleness of her parlor he found
himself tongue-tied. After a few sputters, he gave up and sank back in his chair.
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She smiled comfortingly at him. “There, my lord. No need to upset yourself.
It’s a long journey from your part of town to mine. Take some tea and collect
yourself a moment.” She stationed herself in the chair across from him. For a few
minutes she let him steep in quiet, and then she began a comforting but endless
prattle. “The donation your man sent over was most kind. I used it to pay our
rent for the next several months, with leftover enough to take the children to
Covent Garden for some ices. Some of them. We have six children here, you see.
Four boys and two girls. We could have more easily, God knows, for the streets
are littered with homeless children, but I’ve found six is about all I can manage at
once, and even then sometimes that is too many. Difficult, sometimes, knowing
the ones I let go will come to bad ends. But better to do what can be done with a
few than do badly by many. This is what I tell myself.”
She smiled a little sadly. “I find ones who are damaged, you see.
Stammerers, sometimes, but sometimes they don’t speak at all. Everyone deals
with tragedy in different ways. And as I tell them, it doesn’t matter to me how
one gets out of a hole, just so long as they get out of it and go about their
business.” She reached for her own cup of tea. “Though to be honest, I do better
with older children, or adults. You would think they are more difficult, and it’s
true. But the honest truth is that I’ve had more practice helping addicts and full-
grown lost souls.”
She paused, then looked at Wes kindly. “Don’t mind me, dear. I’ll just keep
prattling on until you feel comfortable enough to speak. Didn’t see any reason
not to fill you in a bit while I did so.”
Wes blinked several times. She was a sort of female Rodger Barrows, he
supposed, though she smiled more. Somehow he doubted she also ran an illegal
smuggling ring on the side.
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He cleared his throat and tried to manage his end of the conversation a little
better. “W-W-Why d-do y-you d-do this?”
“Why, because I’m a silly American. Wasn’t it obvious?” She laughed. “To be
honest, I can’t even sort it out myself. I began nursing one addict, but I lost her.
In a sort of stupid grief I simply went out and got myself another. She lived, and
for a time that was enough. She kept house for me, and I tried to decide what to
do with my life next. Somehow that became helping another, and then another.
And then we discovered a pack of urchins living behind our bins in the alley,
and of course I brought them in and fed them, and of course they stole anything
worth taking once I was asleep.” She looked pensive. “I suppose it’s gone that
way with everything. I ruin my first attempts, but I do all right on my second,
and it becomes a habit after that.” She shrugged. “That’s all I have for an
explanation. I didn’t fit in at the salons of the other do-gooders, and I hated how
we only talked of reform, yet actually achieved so little. It all comes together like a puzzle somehow, I suspect, when laid out on the table.”
Simply listening to the woman made Wes dizzy. “H-How-How were y-you
ever a st-st-sta-stammerer?”
He expected another laugh and saucy dismissal. But she did not laugh. Not
even a smile cracked her lips. She turned to the old woman at the window. “Mrs.
Howard, would you take Tommy upstairs?”
The woman looked up startled, but she nodded and rose, moving with a
lumbering, arthritic gait. “Of course, Miss Brannigan.” With a whisper in the
boy’s ear, she helped him from his chair and nudged him toward the stairs. Once
the door closed, Miss Brannigan turned back to Wes.
“It’s a bit of a grim tale, Your Lordship. But if you truly want to hear it, I will
tell it to you.”
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When Wes gave her a nod, she returned the gesture and smoothed her hands
over her skirts.
“I was born in Chicago, but my parents had a yearning to head south, away
from the snow. And so when I was five, we packed up a wagon and set off as
adventurers. We got as far as Missouri.” She kept her eyes on the fire. “We were
overtaken by bandits. They murdered my father and raped my mother. Several
times. My sister and I were hidden beneath the wagon, where Mother had told
us to go if there was trouble. Mary had the shotgun, and after the third time they
raped our mother, her cries tore at Mary, and she came out brandishing the
weapon.”
She shut her eyes. When she spoke, her words were little above a whisper.
“Th-They r-raped her with it. They s-s-sodomized her with it until she bl-bled.
Then they s-sodomized her themselves. And then my mother.” She paused to
take several more breaths, but she kept her eyes closed. “I stopped watching
then. I c-couldn’t take any more.”
Wes wasn’t sure he could either.
I’m sorry,
he wanted to say. Before he could muster the words she was speaking again, this time with her eyes open as she
stared at the fire.
“My memory is faint past that point. I know from others’ retelling that once
the bandits were passed out from whiskey, my mother freed herself from the
rope they’d used to tie her to their tree, and she killed them. She routed the
wagon back to the road and drove us hard to St. Louis. And there we lived.
Mother sold everything in the wagon, plus the wagon, and we rented a room.
She did baking and sewing and charity work. We had money enough—we’d
lived quite well in Chicago—but outside of sending Mary to school, she spent
none of it. And we never spoke of that night on the road when Father was
murdered and they were raped. Mary sobbed often at night, but other than
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smiling less, even she pretended nothing had happened. For myself, I simply
didn’t speak. For three years, I was mute. I have dim memories of it, of doctors
examining me, of whispers that I had been damaged. That’s all, however. I don’t
remember why I didn’t speak. Just that I wouldn’t.
“And then when I was eight, a carnival came to town. Mother took me. I
remember a bright red tent and rainbow ribbons streaming from it. I wanted so
desperately to go inside, but Mother was heading the wrong way, and the next
thing she knew I was sobbing and crying, ‘Tent! R-Red tent!’ And she sobbed as
well, and hugged me, and bought me a ticket to the tent. They had a lion inside,
in a cage. It looked sad.”
She sighed and smoothed her skirts. “And so then I spoke again. Stuttering
horribly, but I could speak. Mother kept me at home for fear teasing from
schoolgirls would make me stop speaking again, but she taught me well, not just
to read and write and do sums but to cook and clean and care for things. I was
her shadow on her charity work, which often took us to alms houses. She was
particularly tender to the women there, and she would sit and listen to their
stories. And then when I was thirteen she took fever, and everything went poorly
again.
“Our aunt came to fetch us back to Chicago, but she was hard and slightly
cruel to Mary—and Mary ran away the second we arrived. Aunt Millicent only
cared for the money that came with us, and she happily spent it and left me with
her mother. Though this in the end turned out to be a blessing. Nana Fairchild
was a lovely old soul. It was she who taught me how to overcome my stutter. She
let me sleep in her room and even in her bed when I woke crying. She finished
my lessons and convinced her daughter she was responsible for my education,
and she saw that I was sent to a good finishing school. She outlived my aunt as
well, by six months. And when she died I was of age, and all our family’s money
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was mine. I used it to find my sister—and I spent nearly all of it to do so, landing
all the way over here in England.” She smoothed her hands over her skirts. “And
that, Your Lordship, is how I came to be a stutterer. Stammerer, of course, as you
say.”
Wes’s tea had grown cold, forgotten in his slack hands. “I h-h-have n-