The Sleeping Partner Page 3

  “Why, I have come to beg some information from your staff, ma’am, which they quite rightly will not give me until you have said they may.” Miss Tolerance took the glass which Mrs. Wallace passed her and sipped at the wine, a light, sour claret.

  “What sart of information?” Mrs. Wallace drank her own wine down in a gulp and put her glass down on the table with a force which seemed intended to shatter it.

  “Only if anyone in your coffee room saw a young woman waiting for a coach sometime in the last fortnight?”

  “Runaway?”

  “It is possible. She is not suspected of anything criminal.”

  “Ah, weel. I don’t suppose there’s any harm to it.”

  “Rather a considerable good.” Miss Tolerance took up her reticule. “Indeed, Mrs. Wallace, I would be grateful to the tune of—”

  Mrs. Wallace waved her hand. “Keep your sil’er for them as need it, Miss Tolerance. That lad at the bar doonstairs will be grateful, I’m sure, although I’ve little faith he’ll have noticed anything. Not the observing sart. You’re going to all the coaching inns? That’ll give ye a good several days’ work. You’ll do better asking the auld bawds that wait to collect stray girls, rather than the ostlers and tapmen. Or seek her in places like that Rillington woman’s reformatory. I’ll give ye that advice for gratis. You and me air wimmen o’ business, and must stick together when it don’t discommode us to do so.”

  Miss Tolerance understood this to mean that Mrs. Wallace hoped to beg a favor at some future time. “Indeed we must, ma’am. I shall always be honored to render assistance to you in turn,” she said dryly. It was worth some extra effort to stay upon Mrs. Wallace’s good side.

  Mrs. Wallace nodded her satisfaction. “Well, you tell Seth and the rest doon stairs that they may tell you what e’er they may. More wine? Ah, weel, then. I shall hope to see you another day, Miss Tolerance.”

  “Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Wallace.”

  They exchanged curtseys and Miss Tolerance went down the narrow stairs again to speak, first to one bar maid, then the other, and finally to the tapster. She showed each of them the portrait of Miss Evadne without much expectation of satisfaction.

  The barman said at first that he had not seen the girl or any like her. When Miss Tolerance insisted that he actually look at the picture rather than giving all his attention to polishing his tankards between customers, he took the miniature in his hand and examined it.

  “No,” he said flatly. “Ain’t seen either on ‘em. Ain’t to say she mightn’t ‘a been ‘ere when I was off me time. Talk to Jase, he’d might know. Or ask the grannies.” He gestured with his chin in the direction of three comfortable-looking women who sat near the fire, positioned to face the doorway. “They’s always on the lookout for pretty girls at loose ends, so to speak.”

  Miss Tolerance nodded. “Thank you.” She slid a sixpenny piece across the satiny surface of the bar. “If you should happen to see the young woman, you will let me know?” She gave him a card with Tarsio’s direction and asked him to pass on her question to the other tapmen.

  The tapster slid the coin into his pocket, his mind apparently on the next pint of bitter to be drawn off. Miss Tolerance turned to the table where the women sat, to find that all three had disappeared as if they had been absorbed into the wall behind them. They might like to approach unescorted females, but clearly she did not constitute the sort of woman that tempted them.

  The afternoon was now coming to a close, and Miss Tolerance had an engagement to prepare for. She requested one of the Bell Savage’s ostlers to find her a hackney carriage, and directed it to Spanish Place, where a gate in the ivied wall permitted her direct access to her cottage. She left her bonnet and gloves there, then entered her aunt’s house through the perpetually busy kitchen. Cook, up to her elbows in dough, offered the information that Mrs. Brereton was in her little salon, taking tea and writing letters.

  “Do you go up and join her, Miss Sarah. There’s cakes, fresh made. You look as if you could do with some feedin’ up.” Cook, ample herself, believed everyone to be on the verge of inanition.

  Miss Tolerance was not hungry, but thanked Cook cordially and passed through the green baize door which marked the division between the servants’ area and the public rooms. In one of the large salons an elegant tea was spread out for the delectation of the patrons and whores. Miss Tolerance turned away from the room, in which half a dozen men were drinking tea or wine, piling cakes onto their plates and ogling the girls in their neat muslin gowns. Miss Tolerance preferred not to socialize with Mrs. Brereton’s clientele; they reminded her of her own equivocal position in the house and in society. She proceeded up the stairs to the little salon, a pleasant, neatly furnished room with a couch, desk, small table, and a window that looked onto the rear garden. Mrs. Brereton sat at the desk, frowning at something before her.

  “Who has offended you, aunt?”

  “My dear Sarah!” Mrs. Brereton at once put the letter aside and rose to greet her niece. She was a tall woman with a commanding presence; she regarded her niece with a slow smile, as if each passing moment served to recall her affection for the younger woman. Mrs. Brereton, owning some fifty years, looked a good decade younger. Her figure was slender and her complexion well-tended, as befit a woman who had been, for many years, the crown jewel in her own establishment. These days Mrs. Brereton had only a few patrons of her own, but considered the maintenance of her appearance to be part of the effort she owed her business, and spared neither time nor money. Today she wore a gray silk gown with a half-jacket of cherry-striped silk; her short, silvering dark hair was pomaded into artful curls that looked less girlish than sensual.

  “Come sit with me, my dear. How is it I have not seen you in a week?” Mrs. Brereton softened the reproach by tilting her head to receive her niece’s kiss.

  “A week, aunt? Surely no more than half that.”

  “Well, it has seemed like a week.” Mrs. Brereton said. “How do you do?”

  “I do well. Cook sent me to eat some of your cakes.”

  “I wish you will. I cannot think why she gives me so many; I cannot eat them all, and it is wasteful.” Waste was Mrs. Brereton’s particular abhorrence.

  “I am sure I can help you with one or two of them, aunt.” Miss Tolerance seated herself and took up the cup Mrs. Brereton had poured for her. “Thank you. You seemed very vexed with what you were reading.”

  Mrs. Brereton maintained a flat ban upon gossip regarding her clientele among her employees. Her scruples on her own account were, however, a little more elastic.

  “It is a letter of complaint regarding the new boy. Or perhaps merely a complaint that he is too popular to be constantly available to this gentleman.” She flicked the sheet in her hand with a finger. Mrs. Brereton, unlike most London brothel keepers, was liberal enough to keep a male whore in her employ, reasoning that she was not in the business of judging her clients’ needs, but supplying to them.

  “Who is complaining?”

  “Lord Holyfield. Which surprises me. He was so passionately fond of Matt that I did not expect him to warm to young Harry, let alone demand his undivided attention.” Mrs. Brereton sighed. The late Matt Etan had been liked by everyone in her establishment, and by a number of gentlemen of particular tastes. His death—upon an errand for Miss Tolerance—had caused a rift between her and Mrs. Brereton which had only slowly healed.

  “Matt used to complain of Lord Holyfield’s particularity. Perhaps it is not Harry, but his lordship, who is the problem? Young Harry seems an agreeable enough fellow.”

  “My rules are very clear, and particularity or favoritism is a great offense. Harry is too anxious to please. He hasn’t Matt’s spine.”

  “If Harry had been pimped out at dockside as a boy, as Matt was, I don’t doubt he would have more spine, aunt. And even Matt worried from time to time that you would banish him to die as a bum-boy in the Cheapside stews.”

  Mrs. Brereton clicked her
tongue. “Don’t use slang, Sarah. ‘Tis common. Harry grew up in Lambeth; he has had no experience of the harsher side of our business. At least he is not given to temperament or complaint. That,” Mrs. Brereton said flatly, “would get him only a trip to Mother Poke’s molly house.”

  Miss Tolerance sipped her tea and considered Harry’s spine. At last she spoke on a different subject altogether. “I have a new task today.”

  “Task?” Mrs. Brereton raised an eyebrow. “An assignment? Is it something you may speak about?”

  “As always, ma’am, in the most general terms only. And yet, I would be glad to hear your opinion. I am seeking a runaway girl.”

  “Ah. Of good family?”

  “Good enough.”

  “Is she pretty? If she should require employment—”

  “Aunt!” Miss Tolerance found she was shocked. “Is that your only thought?”

  “The first one,” Mrs. Brereton agreed, unconcerned. “I am in the business of—well, not selling young women, but renting some part of their flesh in the short term. What else should my first thought be? You imagine I want this girl, whoever she is, to be miserable. My idea is that, as it is likely she is ruined, she might as well find herself in the employ of a liberal and thoughtful madam.” She indicated herself. “It is a kindness on my part.”

  Miss Tolerance was horrified and amused. “I can see that, ma’am. But in fact, her family wishes to find her and, if possible, regularize her situation.”

  “Well, then, she’s a lucky girl,” Mrs. Brereton drawled. “If you find her, and if her family defaults of their kindness or she decides that regularizing does not suit her, do let me know.”

  Miss Tolerance put her cup down. “If I find her. The Devil is in it that the family don’t seem to know who her seducer is. There is no evidence that they left for Gretna—other than her family’s belief that her principles were too strong to intend anything other than marriage.”

  “Show me a mother who truly understands what is in her daughter’s heart—”

  “Yes, aunt, indeed, I know: all families are humbug, all marriages are unhappy. Your views may have some foundation, but they are not helpful to me in this instance. So far I can find no trace of the girl at the coaching inns. Where would you look, ma’am?”

  “In my own parlor.”

  “It is rather too soon for that,” Miss Tolerance said. “How long did it take you to go from—” she searched for a tactful way to say the thing.

  “From schoolgirl to fille de joie? A matter of months. You know my first was an army man. And a gentleman.” The memory appeared to amuse her. “He was prodigiously elegant in his red coat, I may tell you, and we looked very fine when we danced together. He never told me that he had an affianced bride at home, or that all his expectations were tied up in marrying her.”

  “And when you discovered that he did not mean marriage, what did you do with yourself?”

  “Ah, well.” Mrs. Brereton smiled. “By the time it was clear to me that our aim was not Gretna Green and marriage over the anvil, but Brighthelmstone and the faro tables, another gentleman had indicated his interest in me—a far richer one. I decided that if I was committed to a life of sin I would just as soon sleep on silk sheets, and—”

  “You took charge of your fate.” Miss Tolerance regarded her aunt with admiration.

  “I did. As have you, my dear.”

  Miss Tolerance refused to be distracted to her own story. “But what does a gently-reared young lady do who has not your resolve?”

  “If she fancies herself in love with the fellow? Stay until he tires of her, cry when he leaves her, and then? If she doesn’t have the sense to find a protector among his friends as I did, she might decide to starve. Most do not, though. When she is hungry enough to overcome her scruples she’ll find herself in a brothel somewhere. In the city, most likely. Your country brothels are generally not refined enough for a well-bred girl.”

  Miss Tolerance had hoped that Mrs. Brereton would disclose a name or place likely to attract a Fallen Woman only starting out in her career. “It must be a rude awakening for a gently bred girl. Mrs. Wallace at the Bell Savage suggested that I try Mrs. Rillington’s reformatory in Chelsea.”

  “You might. Although I’d wager that most of the females to be found there have been at the life long enough to despair of doing better. What girl of spirit would subject herself to sackcloth-and-ashes and gruel for dinner, else?”

  One who did not care to be handed from man to man, Miss Tolerance thought. “So I should not expect to find her at a reformatory until she has had more opportunity to be miserable?”

  “Use some sense, Sarah,” Mrs. Brereton was brisk. “If the girl has not run off with some mawkish boy and been married over the anvil, and not too much time has passed since the elopement, ‘tis likely she’s still with her protector and they are lying abed, trying to avoid just such a search as you are making.”

  Miss Tolerance did not care for the image her aunt’s words evoked. Still, “‘Tis what I fear myself, aunt. But I must find her and offer her the chance to be helped.”

  “If that is what you have been hired for—” What Mrs. Brereton might have said next was lost when Cole appeared at the door.

  “Mr. Tickenor to see you, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Brereton rose with an uncharacteristic flutter. “My dear Gerard! What a pleasant surprise.”

  Miss Tolerance rose to be introduced to the man who had entered upon Cole’s heels. He was a little taller than Mrs. Brereton, and perhaps a few years older than she; his hair was silver, but his back was straight, his step was firm, and his eyes clear. In all, a very handsome gentleman of mature years. Miss Tolerance curtsied, but Tickenor was too busy kissing Mrs. Brereton’s hand to acknowledge her. Mrs. Brereton, for her part, blushed and bridled like a girl. Miss Tolerance, who rarely saw her aunt playing the part of the courtesan she still was, was discomforted.

  At last Mrs. Brereton looked up. “Gerard, this is my niece, Miss Tolerance. Mr. Gerard Tickenor, Sarah. You may have heard me speak of him.”

  Miss Tolerance curtsied again. “Indeed, ma’am.” After a moment she recalled that Mr. Tickenor had been one of Mrs. Brereton’s early lovers, and had advanced her a deal of money, since repaid, when she was establishing her business. “How do you do, sir?”

  “Oh, the better for seeing your aunt, young lady.” The man returned her bow, then returned his attention to Mrs. Brereton. Miss Tolerance had the sense that she was very much de trop. She looked at the clock with some relief.

  “I am delighted to have met you, sir. Will you pardon me, aunt? I have an engagement of my own.” Miss Tolerance kissed her aunt’s scented cheek and fled. She still had to dress for the theatre.

  Sir Walter Mandif, a magistrate from the Bow Street Offices and, more significantly, her friend, had lately made it his business to educate Miss Tolerance in the dramatic arts, particularly in the works of Shakespeare. Tonight she was bespoke for a performance of Twelfth Night at the New Covent Garden Theatre. A little before eight Miss Tolerance left her house and took a chair southeast to the theatre.

  The streets around Covent Garden were thick with carriages and wagons, tradesmen and farmers departing the market, society in evening dress arriving for the theatre, and the usual crowd of flower-sellers, streetwalkers and petty criminals come to work among the swells. Might her missing girl already be known to someone in the crowd?

  Miss Tolerance met Sir Walter just outside the theatre.

  “I wish you would let me call for you,” he chided, after they had exchanged greetings. Sir Walter, slight and sandy-haired, and dressed in neat evening clothes, gave no impression of the formidable pillar of the law.

  “What, you would call at my aunt’s brothel and advertise your presence to the clientele and whores? Or perhaps rap upon the gate to my garden and hope that I should hear you?” Miss Tolerance shook her head. “My life is not set up to accommodate callers on anything other than business. This truly
is the simplest way.”

  Sir Walter inclined his head. “Perhaps so. But it leaves me feeling distinctly un-gallant.”

  Miss Tolerance laughed and tucked her hand into his arm. “Alas, Sir Walter, if you insist upon consorting with Fallen Women your sensibilities will be constantly put to the test.”

  Sir Walter put his own hand on top of hers on his arm, as if to hold her there. “As there is only one Fallen Woman with whom I regularly consort, I think my sensibilities are elastic enough to see me through. And if it is a choice between my sensibilities and your company, the pleasure of the latter must always delight the former.”

  Miss Tolerance, always rendered uncomfortable by compliments, made light.

  “La, Sir Walter. You will have me blush.”

  His eyebrow rose, and Sir Walter’s foxy, intelligent face was lit by a smile. “I should like to see that,” he said, and led Miss Tolerance up the stairs to their seats. The actress Mrs. Jordan was in form that night: despite her years and girth her Viola was very fine, even if no one in the audience was deceived for a moment by her appearance in boy’s clothes. When the play was over there was the usual press to find a hackney carriage—like Miss Tolerance Sir Walter kept no carriage—and they hung back for a time, waiting until the crowd should lessen before they started back to Manchester Square. They spoke of the play and then, comfortably, of crime and criminals, and of politics. With the King long mad and the Queen Regent incapacitated by apoplectic stroke, there had been a long process of declaring her regency at an end and selecting a new regent. The Prince of Wales, widowed and the father of two in whose upbringing he was much involved, now seemed on the verge of attaining the Regency himself. However, each of the other Royal Dukes (and there were a good number, even despite the usual depletions of infant death, disease and warfare) had his adherents; the political jockeying was still fierce, and nearly as good as a play itself. They acquired a carriage, still talking. Sir Walter was in the process of delivering a blunt appraisal of his Highness the Duke of Cambridge’s chances, to Miss Tolerance’s appreciative laughter, when the carriage drew up in Spanish Place. Still laughing, they alit at the gate to her garden, and Sir Walter insisted that he would see her in.