“A Fallen Woman with a chore to do,” Miss Tolerance said mildly. Her point remained where it was. “These clothes are far more convenient for my purpose than a muslin gown and kid slippers would be.”
The fat man shook his head. “Abomination, that’s what it is. Whore! No, lower than a whore! Wearing men’s clothes, fighting
like a man, standing the nat’ral order of things on its ear! And for the likes of
him
!”
“Do
his
likes make
my
dress worse, sir? I merely came to fetch him home from a several-days’ absence and found you in the midst of what looked like a robbery. Or a kidnapping,” Miss Tolerance suggested. “But—could it be that you are Mr. Haskett?” Her tone of polite surprise was not meant to convince.
The fat man’s eyes shifted from side to side, then down to the blade of the small sword in Miss Tolerance’s hand. “I’m Haskett,” the man said reluctantly. “What of it?”
“Then you are the gentleman who has been attempting to extort money from Lord Pethridge on his son’s account.”
“Extort!” Haskett’s eyes shifted back and forth agitatedly. “Not I! I’m the wronged one here,” he protested. His tone became theatrically grieved and his speech finically genteel. “My family honor at stake! The virtue of a lady! You can’t know the sort of man you are protecting!” Still lying on his back, Mr. Haskett twitched a tear into his eye.
“What melodrama, Mr. Haskett! As good as Drury Lane! I have, I think, a very good understanding of what sort of man poor Poggy is”—Miss Tolerance pushed gently at Waldegreen’s foot with the toe of her boot. There was no response—“and I have as good a notion of what sort of man you are. I have been instructed to tell you that my client will not prefer charges or exact reprisal, providing you cease your blackmail scheme and go away. It’s a good offer; I should take it, were I you.”
Mr. Haskett eyed Miss Tolerance and made one last attempt. “You’re a woman, surely you have some loyalty to your sex. You should understand!”
“Understand blackmail?”
“Understand the plight of a woman ruined! This scourer trifled with my sister, a sweet, good girl.” Mr. Haskett warmed to his story. “Seduced her! Took her virtue and left her with naught to show for it but a broken heart. By rights the bastard should marry her. All I wanted was that he make provision for a woman he’d wronged.” Haskett fixed Miss Tolerance with an oracular eye. “He’ll wrong you in the end, missy.”
Miss Tolerance laughed. “Will he? I should like to see him try
it. Do you imagine I’ve lost my heart to Mr. Waldegreen? I thank you for your concern, but I’m not in the business of losing my heart.”
Haskett muttered a speculation upon the business that Miss Tolerance
was
in.
“Nor that business either,” she said crisply. “I am hired to ask questions, find things, and occasionally protect someone with more money than sense”—again Miss Tolerance tapped Mr. Waldegreen’s foot with her own—“from being victimized.” Miss Tolerance gathered up the skirts of her greatcoat in her free hand and crouched down at Mr. Haskett’s side, the blade of her sword now lying across his stomach.
“As for the lady—by my count, my friend is the seventh young man of good family from whom you have attempted to extort money on her. And as she is neither a virgin nor your sister, your grounds for complaint are few. A magistrate friend of mine tells me that, were the matter brought to a court of law, you and the young woman would be the queen’s guests on a ship to the Antipodes.”
Haskett’s jowly face seemed to swell in the moonlight. More than ever he appeared on the verge of explosion. “The scandal!” he sputtered.
Miss Tolerance shook her head. “Scandal? A young man sows his oats with a woman several years older who has been the mistress of a gambler and whoremaster since she was fifteen. She approaches him in the lowest sort of gaming hell and convinces him it is an exchange of mutual pleasures with no cost to either. I have witnesses to their meeting, Mr. Haskett. I suggest the next time your mistress tries this trick, she do it somewhere less public. Now,” she slid her blade up to rest at Haskett’s throat, then leaned across him to take Bob’s pistols. “If you are clear on this, may I suggest we both get our companions home?”
Haskett, outgunned, nodded. Miss Tolerance rose, slipped the pistols into the pocket of her greatcoat, and watched as the fat man got clumsily to his feet, wheezing louder than before. Haskett looked down at Bob without favor, shrugged, and walked away.
Miss Tolerance leaned down to deliver a sharp slap to Mr. Waldegreen. He stirred slightly. One eye opened and shut.
“Frenchy? Where the Devil are we?” His voice was sticky.
“Outside Remsen’s and about to take a hackney back to Bourdon Street, Poggy,” Miss Tolerance said encouragingly. “Do you think you might stand up now?”
Mr. Waldegreen was optimistic about his ability to do so; it took Miss Tolerance several minutes to get the young man to his feet and thence to the hired carriage, whose driver Miss Tolerance suspected had watched the altercation in the alley without inclination to help either side. At this hour and in this neighborhood, it was enough that the carriage had waited.
I
n Bourdon Street Lord Pethridge was waiting. He did not ask to speak to his son, who was in any case now insensible, but sent two footmen out to retrieve him from the carriage. Miss Tolerance he led into a small office. The chamber was rather more meagerly furnished than others she had seen: a desk, a chair, a second chair for the accommodation of visitors, a shelf of ledgers, a Bible, and one painting executed by an amateur hand upon a Biblical subject—not, Miss Tolerance noted to herself, the parable of the prodigal son. It was a room designed to inspire little hope in a visitor expecting benevolence.
In her dealings with him, Miss Tolerance had identified Lord Pethridge as a closefisted man with a superior sense of his own consequence, embarrassed by the need to seek her help, and therefore unfailingly impolite. He did not sit now, nor did he invite Miss Tolerance to do so.
“Well? Aside from the bringing the boy home, have you accomplished
anything
?”
Miss Tolerance responded to his words and not his tone. “Indeed, sir, the matter is concluded. Mr. Haskett, as we had anticipated, did attempt to contact your son this evening. I told him all I had discovered about his scheme. This, I believe, brought him to a full sense of its futility. I doubt you shall hear from Mr. Haskett again.”
Pethridge nodded and cleared his throat, which miserly comment Miss Tolerance translated as
“Very good, well done
!” He took
a key from his waistcoat pocket, unlocked a drawer in the desk, and drew from it a small coffer.
“Four days at three guineas a day?” Pethridge asked.
“And my expenses, my lord,” Miss Tolerance said. “Totaling eight shillings fourpence. I can write you out an account of the monies spent if you like.”
Lord Pethridge paused for a moment, caught, Miss Tolerance surmised, between the miser’s wish for an exact accounting and the prude’s wish to have the whole business done, and herself off his premises, with as much dispatch as possible.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said at last. Where Lord Pethridge’s son was genially ill kempt, Lord Pethridge himself was a man so tightly controlled that his clothes appeared to be lacquered in place. Of the two, father and son, Miss Tolerance preferred the son. It was the father, however, who was her client, and she was polite.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, as he pushed a pile of coins across the table. Pethridge, occupied in relocking the box and restoring it to its drawer, did not acknowledge her. When he looked up he appeared surprised to find her still there.
“If I might make a suggestion, sir? I think you ought to find some occupation for your son which is more useful than gambling and wenching.”
“Occupation? He’ll have occupation enough when he rises to the title and starts his way through my fortune! He clearly has no gift for responsibility.”
Miss Tolerance put the coins in her pocketbook. “He’s not likely to develop such a gift without practice, sir.”
Pethridge did not deign to answer. Miss Tolerance took this as her dismissal, bowed, and started for the door. He stopped her.
“You’ll speak of this to no one,” he said, half command and half question.
Miss Tolerance smiled politely. “I should have very little custom if I could not promise discretion. I do not talk about my cases.”
“Not ever? The whole world knows that you brought the Earl of Versellion to justice—”
“That the whole world knows it, my lord, is not my doing. When a murderer comes before the court he cannot expect to do so privately.”
“You believe him guilty, then?” For a moment Pethridge’s icy demeanor slipped, revealing vulgar curiosity.
“’Tis not a matter of what I
believe.
I gave what I knew of the facts last month in court, under oath. Anything I merely
believe
is between me and my conscience. If you will pardon me, sir?”
Miss Tolerance bowed and left.
T
he hour was now very late. Miss Tolerance found that exertion and her meeting with Lord Pethridge had left her wide awake. She was reluctant to return to the silence of her home. She thought briefly of going to her club, Tarsio’s, which at this hour was likely to be doing a brisk business. But she was still in her unconventional dress, and disliked to go to the club thus attired unless business was pressing. The management of Tarsio’s was liberal in its views (as the only establishment of its sort to admit women as members, it had a need to be) and would not bar her from entry, but Miss Tolerance preferred not to advertise her affinity for men’s garb. One never knew when the advantage of appearing to be something one was not would come in handy.
Not to Tarsio’s, then. Miss Tolerance turned her steps toward Manchester Square and the brothel kept there by Mrs. Dorothea Brereton. It was a fogless night—rare for November—but dark. The law required that a light be hung at every door, but the lanterns and torches provided only a yellow smear of light at the doorsteps and did nothing to penetrate to the street or illuminate the passersby. And despite the hour there were people on the streets; mindful of the sorts of people they would tend to be, Miss Tolerance kept her hand lightly on the hilt of her sword. No one troubled her, however. Streetwalkers eyed her hopefully, then shrugged when she passed them by; twice she was aware of rhythmic shadows coupling in doorways. She walked up Davies Street, turned onto Oxford, and was near to Duke Street when she heard a woman cry out.
Miss Tolerance paused. She heard the cry again, clearly one of pain or anger—in any case, not something she was capable of ignoring. She turned to look down Oxford Street for the source of the voice.
A woman in an unseasonable muslin dress staggered out of an alley, pursued by a man. His clothes marked him as a gentleman; hers—the thin dress, cheap hat, and a limp, insufficient spencer jacket—marked her as a hedge-whore. Even in the dark, and at some yards’ distance, Miss Tolerance could see that the woman’s face was twisted in fear, and she moved forward to help. The woman—girl, rather, Miss Tolerance thought—bolted toward her.
“Please, sir! He’ll kill me, sure!”
The whore reached Miss Tolerance and took cover behind her, cowering. One hand was cupped over her eye, and a smudged trickle of blood at her mouth explained her fear.
Her pursuer approached them at an easy pace; clearly he expected no trouble in reclaiming his prize. “Does the little bitch tell tales?” he called. His words were strongly accented but clear. French, Miss Tolerance thought. Not so often heard in London as the endless war with Bonaparte wore on. “I paid for what I have not yet received,” the man said easily. “Come here,
belle.
We have business.” He smiled broadly; his black brows knit downward, giving the smile a demonic character. Miss Tolerance’s inclination to help the whore increased.
The girl was shaking her head. “I’ve changed me mind,” she said. “You can have the coin back.” She fumbled at a little purse hanging at her waist.
“But I have not changed mine,” the man said, and made to reach around Miss Tolerance to take the girl’s arm. Miss Tolerance shifted her stance and kept the girl away. The Frenchman did not like this: “Sir, this is nothing to do with you. If you do not wish to quarrel, I beg you will go your way.”
“When I am certain the lady does not require my assistance, sir,” Miss Tolerance said.
“The
lady
?” The man laughed. “The thing’s a convenience, like a chamber pot.”
Miss Tolerance set her teeth. “Find another pot to piss in, then.”
Behind her the girl had managed to open her reticule and find the coin she sought. “Here! Take your money! There’s some as like your kind of custom, but not me.” She reached out her hand to return the money and the man’s hand fastened upon her wrist.
“’Twill be a matter of a few minutes,
belle,”
the man said, and pulled the girl toward him.
Miss Tolerance had her sword out of its sheath and laid flat upon the gentleman’s wrist. “As the girl has returned your money I believe your business is concluded. You should let her go.”