The Sleeping Partner Page 4

  “Since I wound your chivalrous instincts by arriving at the theatre on my own, I suppose I cannot ask you to sustain another blow by leaving me here.”

  “Indeed, no. Who knows what might happen to you between the gate and your doorstep?”

  “In my aunt’s garden, with her staff ready to come the moment I call?”

  Sir Walter smiled. “I will take no chances with you.”

  Miss Tolerance unlocked the gate. The garden was silvered by the moon; on the right hand Mrs. Brereton’s house glowed with candlelight, and Miss Tolerance heard music: one of the girls playing upon the pianoforte. She paused for a moment just inside the walls; there was a dark green smell of new spring leaves and, less appealingly, the faint foul odor of Mrs. Brereton’s well-tended necessary house in the far corner of the garden. Sir Walter stopped, a shadow at her elbow. He was much of her height, and close enough that his breath stirred the hair above her ear. Miss Tolerance found herself suddenly self-conscious.

  “‘Tis very peaceful here,” Sir Walter said quietly.

  She nodded. “One would hardly know the city is just outside the gate.” The breeze was soft and cool against her warm face. “Well, Sir Walter, I suppose—”

  “I shall see you to your door.” He offered her his arm again. “My upbringing requires it, I am afraid.”

  “There is nothing to be regretted in gentlemanly behavior,” Miss Tolerance said. She took his arm, her gloved hand a white blur upon the dark fold of his sleeve. In ten steps they were at her door; the cottage was ivy-covered and dark, but here and there the whitewashed walls were stippled by moonlight. Sir Walter’s arm under her hand was solid, and she was aware of his warmth at her side. She was relieved to relinquish his support and step away.

  “There, you have done your duty. Thank you, Sir Walter. For the play and the company.” She curtsied.

  “The pleasure was all mine.” Sir Walter took her hand and bowed over it. Then, slowly, he raised it to her lips. The kiss was light, but the impression of it she felt even through the kidskin of her glove. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” Miss Tolerance echoed, and was inside her cottage with the door closed before her words died on the night air. She locked the door and prepared for bed, thinking.

  For a Fallen Woman, Miss Tolerance was peculiarly chaste. Her liaison with Charles Connell had lacked nothing but the ceremony itself to make it a marriage; they had been faithful to each other, maturing from the first surprises of passion to a companionable domesticity. Connell’s death had left her much in the same case as a young widow. She had not intended to become involved with another man—she had devised her profession to ensure that she would not need to become someone’s mistress in order to avoid starvation.

  Then, almost a twelvemonth ago she had formed an attachment to the earl of Versellion—against her better judgment but not, certainly, against her will. Their liaison had been a matter of attraction both sexual and emotional, and while Miss Tolerance had not been able to imagine how a relationship between a Fallen Woman and a politically ambitious peer could prosper, she had not had the will to quit it. Not, at least, until she had discovered that the earl had murdered a woman, and she had turned him in to Bow Street—to Sir Walter Mandif, in point of fact. In the difficult time after, when Miss Tolerance had gained brief notoriety by testifying against Versellion, Sir Walter had been a friend as well as a colleague. She relied upon that friendship, and made every effort to ignore the possibility of any shift in their association. Love, she believed, was a danger and a liability to a Fallen Woman with no interest in whoredom.

  Her dress brushed and hung away, Miss Tolerance put on her nightshft and brushed her teeth. The kissing of hands was an old-fashioned gesture, but it was not entirely out of style. And Sir Walter had likely been much swayed by the romance of the play; he was a greater fancier of Shakespeare’s work than she. The kiss had meant nothing more than friendship. A courteous gesture.

  She still felt the pressure of his lips on her hand.

  Miss Tolerance brushed her long, dark hair, braided it, and climbed into her bed to listen to the whispering of ivy at her window.

  Chapter Three

  Miss Tolerance dreamed.

  It was dark, night, roiling with thunder. Each burst of blue-white lightning illumined her father’s face like a pantomime mask, a caricature of glaring eyes and hawk nose. She stood in her father’s hall, Connell’s hand clenched in her own. Sir William’s voice echoed, calling her whore and threatening to kill her and her lover. They fled the house, riding through the storm with certain knowledge that they were pursued. Rain drummed upon her back—in the dream she wore the linen shirt and breeches in which she had fenced—and could smell the wet wool of Connell’s coat under her cheek. She felt her heart pounding, knew that death was following them even to Dover and the hurriedly bought passage to the Continent. It was not until they reached foreign soil that she felt safe. She and Connell, still handfast, arrived at a tiny pension in Oostende. They were lighted along a narrow passage by a woman so elderly and wizened she might have been carved of wood, who cackled about young love and the honor they did her inn. She opened the door with a winking smile and they stepped in. Connell shut the door. When he turned back her father was there, pistol drawn, to shoot her lover through the heart.

  Miss Tolerance woke with her own heart pounding.

  She lay in the dark listening to the tap of ivy on her window, waiting until she was calm again. She had not had that dream in a very long time. With Connell dead she had thought never to have it again. It was all lies, after all.

  It had been daylight when her father learned about her and Connell, and she had been alone. Her father had not been cold and pale but so red-faced she had feared he would have an apoplectic fit. He had called her whore, and promised to send her to a convent (no small threat from a man so opposed to Popish influence as Sir William Brereton). But first, he said, he would find Charles Connell and run his sword through the bastard’s heart. He had dragged his ruined daughter to her room in a grip so tight it had left bruises upon her arm for a week, and locked her in, unaware she had long ago learned to climb down from her window. Miss Tolerance had been very young—sixteen, just as Mrs. Brown’s sister was—and had believed that her father would challenge Connell and would be killed. She was not so lost to filial affection that she wanted her father dead; much less did she want her lover hung for his murder. Rather than see that happen she had raced to find Connell and persuaded him to fly with her—not on horseback but prosaically in the stage coach. She had never seen her father again.

  Her mother, Miss Tolerance recalled now, had sat in the parlor, bent over her needlework, during the whole brutal scene. She had said nothing, either in comfort or defense. Her brother Adam had been at away at school, but Miss Tolerance had later reason to believe that his view of the matter was in accord with their father’s. Those servants who caught her eye during the tirade had shaken their heads in silent apology for their inability to do anything to help.

  Altogether an unpleasant memory.

  When her heart had resumed its normal rhythm Miss Tolerance lit a candle and took out her inevitable recourse on sleepless nights, Mainley’s Art of the Small Sword. When that soporific text lulled her back to sleep she did not dream again.

  Parliament was near to its vote upon the Regency, Miss Tolerance read in the Times the next morning. That part of the paper that was not taken up with the question of Regency was devoted to news of the war in Spain, and with the progress of the Commission of Inquiry convened to examine the failures of the War Office in the Walcheren invasion. There were few notes from Court, as neither King nor Queen was capable of presiding.

  Miss Tolerance finished her tea, washed the plate which had lately held a slice of bread and butter, and dressed herself for the day. She intended to visit more inns, this time focusing upon the women who waited in hope of luring country girls into brothels. She dressed again in her blue walking dress and
asked Keefe to find her a hackney coach to take her to Snow Hill Street. There, and in the vicinity, were coaching inns that served the southern and western routes. Miss Tolerance privily hoped the girl had not been seen there; anything but departure for the north suggested that Miss Evadne was not headed for Scotland, where she could be wed with no questions asked. Still, Miss Tolerance had visited many of the most prominent inns serving the northern routes the day before with no success. She must be thorough.

  She arrived at her destination with her bones no more than usually wracked by the carriage’s poor springs, the street’s bad paving, and the driver’s ineptitude. She began at once with her interviews, but as on the afternoon before, Miss Tolerance had little success. No barmen remembered having seen the girl, and in those taprooms where women waited for easily-cozened girls to descend from the stage and into their talons, these same women seemed to disappear upon sight of Miss Tolerance. Finally, at the Saracen’s Head in Friday Street, she approached a pair of middle-aged women sitting near the window, both pleasantly stout, neatly dressed, and of maternal demeanor, both apparently taken up with knitting and gossip but much engaged in looking out at the courtyard to watch for the next coach.

  “I beg your pardon?” she began.

  “Yes, my dear?” The woman who answered was the plumper of the two, with a comfortable bosom and a merry eye. She had the countenance of a beloved nursery maid or doting grandmother. “Are you lost?”

  “No, ma’am. I was wondering if I might—” Miss Tolerance considered. “If I might buy you a glass of wine.”

  The second woman, taller of the two and not quite so delightful in demeanor, smiled broadly enough to show that her lower front teeth were missing. “That’s very sweet of you, my dear, but you must let us—”

  “I am not looking for employment, ma’am. Nor am I newly arrived in the city. I merely have a question or two to ask you ladies, and thought I might purchase answers with a glass of wine.”

  The two women, markedly cooler, looked at each other. The plump one’s eyebrows went up; the tall one’s eyebrows went down. They appeared to achieve consensus of sorts.

  “I’d be delighted to take some wine with you, dearie,” the plump one said. “If indeed you’re buying.”

  “I am,” Miss Tolerance said. “And you, ma’am?”

  All pretense gone, the taller bawd shook her head. “I’ll go wait for the Lincoln Flyer to arrive,” she said. “Do you go ahead, Rosie.” She stood, gathered her skirts, and left the coffee-room.

  Madame Rose waved Miss Tolerance to the vacated seat and called for gin-and-water. Miss Tolerance ordered coffee. They waited until refreshments arrived.

  “Now, dear,” Madame Rose leaned forward confidingly. “What is it you was wantin’ to ask?”

  “I’m seeking a girl,” Miss Tolerance. “I am under no illusion as to your purpose at the Saracen’s Head, ma’am; it is obviously your job to note what females come and go here. This young lady might have been waiting to board the stagecoach. She might have been accompanied by a gentleman. I am sure you and your friend would have remarked her had she been here.”

  “And when would this ha’ been?”

  “Any time in the last fortnight,” Miss Tolerance tasted her coffee; it was drinkable. “Her family would very much like to find the girl.”

  Madame Rose puffed out her cheeks and pursed her lips. “Fortnight? That’s a long time in a business like mine, dearie. People come and go, you know, and an old woman like me’s got not such a good memory at the best of times.”

  Miss Tolerance sighed inwardly and took out a half-crown piece from her reticule. “Perhaps this will be an aid to memory.”

  The bawd pocketed the coin, her motherly smile breaking out again. “What would the girl ‘ave looked like?”

  Miss Tolerance produced the portrait. Madame Rose examined it closely, tssking and running her fingers over the painted surface as if to memorize the image that way.

  “That’s a pretty one,” she said at last, with some regret. “Both on ‘em. She didn’t come to me.” Then, as if she sensed that Miss Tolerance would depart at once she added, “That ain’t to say I han’t seen ‘er.” She looked at the table as if she expected to see something materialize there.

  “Have I not already encouraged your memory, Mrs.—”

  “Mrs. Codfinger, dearie. Rosie Codfinger.” The bawd grinned, delighted by her own nom d’amour. “I thought the encouragement was just for the setting down together,” she added.

  “The gin-and-water was for our conference. The half-crown was for information. Ma’am.”

  The bawd sighed. “As it ‘appens, I think I did see the girl.”

  “Did you?” Miss Tolerance’s tone did not betray her excitement, but the bawd paused to examine the table again. This time Miss Tolerance pushed another shilling across the table.

  “P’raps a week ago, talking with a female as sometimes comes to cut into my business ‘ere. A Mrs. ‘arris, a very respectable woman she is.”

  Respectable enough not to have taken a false name, Miss Tolerance thought. “Where was this?” she asked.

  Mrs. Codfinger shrugged. “Don’t recall. Well, you know—” she added in the face of Miss Tolerance’s evident disbelief. “You remember a face, but don’t know when or where you seen it, like. Not here, that I know.”

  This was irritatingly plausible. “Do you know where I might find this Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Codfinger?”

  “I do.” The bawd looked at the table one more time, coyly drawing a circle with one finger on the greasy surface. Miss Tolerance, all out of patience, brought her own finger down on Mrs. Codfinger’s.

  “I think I’ve paid for the answer, ma’am. If you don’t have it, I’m sure someone else will.” She looked in the direction of the courtyard and Mrs. Codfinger’s confederate.

  The bawd frowned at Miss Tolerance, then, seeing there would be no change in her attitude, mimed deep thought. “Ah, well, let me see. Yes, yes. She lodges in Marigold Street, Bermondsey.”

  Miss Tolerance rose. “Thank you, ma’am. You have been most helpful.”

  Mrs. Codfinger nodded. “So I ‘ave.” She smiled again.

  “If you hear more of the girl, Mrs. Codfinger, send word to me at Tarsio’s Club in Henry Street at once, please. You will be rewarded if your information allows me to return the child to her family.” She added that last lest Mrs. Codfinger be tempted to invent further information.

  Mrs. Codfinger tssked. “Henry Street? Ain’t we fine!” She gulped down the remains of her gin-and-water. “Tarsio’s Club? Well I ‘ope this reward of yours is substantial, for it’s money out me own pocket if I see that one and ‘and her back to you, and that’s the truth. A very pretty girl.”

  Miss Tolerance thanked the bawd for her restraint, reiterated that the reward would indeed be substantial and, after a mutual exchange of courtesies, the two parted company. As she went through the stableyard Miss Tolerance saw Mrs. Codfinger’s companion watching the passengers descend from the Lincoln Flyer.

  The trip to Bermondsey took some time, as the carriage had to thread its way through streets clogged with vehicles, animals, and pedestrians of all description, and to cross the Thames at the London Bridge. The jarvey, perhaps concerned for the sensibilities of his passenger, tried when the carriage reached the south side of the Thames, to avoid the sordid streets around the docks by driving a considerable distance south—until Miss Tolerance rapped sharply on the roof and announced that she would not pay the fare for a trip to Lisbon, and expected to be taken to her destination the most direct way possible. The jarvey protested a little, then turned his horses east, through neighborhoods both ramshackle and depressing. Miss Tolerance, who had seen these streets before and on foot, felt no obligation to gaze out at the misery on view there. She closed her eyes.

  After a quarter hour the smells and sounds suggested that the carriage was moving into a better quarter of the city. Miss Tolerance looked out to find that they were in
a neat neighborhood, well built-up, with a handsome church and a crowded churchyard to her right, and a street full of shops to her left. The jarvey pulled up before a well-kept building with a prosperous-looking bootmaker’s shop on the ground floor. Miss Tolerance alit and looked about her. Three little boys of no more than six years sat at the foot of the door into the building, poking at the remains of a sparrow with a pocketknife.

  “Do any of you gentlemen know Mrs. Harris?”

  The boys guiltily pulled away from the corpse. Two of them stared at the third; he looked at Miss Tolerance, frowning.

  “She’s my granny,” he said. “What you want with ‘er?” He had a sharp, pointed nose, dark eyes, and a fall of dark, dirty hair, and stared at Miss Tolerance impertinently.

  “Just a few minutes of talk. Will you take me to her, please?” Normally Miss Tolerance would have purchased the boy’s assistance with a penny, but she did not like to encourage his sly manner.

  “I s’pose. Come along.” With the aplomb of a boy twice his age the child led her across the street, into a wooden-framed house, and down the dark hall to the stairway. “You alone?”

  “And if I am?” Miss Tolerance followed him up the stairs, aware that the other two boys had vanished as completely as a sugarloaf dropped in boiling water.

  “Usually they comes with friends,” the boy said. “Makes me no mind.”

  Who were they? “I’m delighted to hear it.” Miss Tolerance could not remember when she had last taken such a dislike to a child. “I’m sure Mrs. Harris is here somewhere.”

  “Yehr. Righ’ ‘ere.” The boy shoved hard on a door at the end of the corridor—like most such the hallway was unlit and visitors were expected to find their ways by guess and luck—and the door yielded. “Gran! ‘Ere’s a lady for you.”