“Not at all,” Grey murmured, gesturing the madam out with a courteous bow. “I am sure we shall suit splendidly.”
He closed the door and turned to the girl. Despite his outward self-possession, he felt an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach.
“Stumm?” he asked.
“ ’Tis the German word for dumb,” the girl said, eyeing him narrowly. She jerked her head toward the door, where the madam had vanished. “She’s German, though ye wouldna think it, to hear her. Magda, she’s called. But she calls the doorkeep Stummle—and he’s a mute, to be sure. So, d’ye want me to clapper it, then?” She put a hand across her mouth, slitted eyes above it reminding him of the cat just before it bit him.
“No,” he said. “Not at all.”
In fact, the sound of her speech had unleashed an extraordinary—and quite unexpected—tumult of sensation in his bosom. A mad mix of memory, arousal, and alarm, it was not an entirely pleasant feeling—but he wanted her to go on talking, at all costs.
“Nessie,” he said, pouring out a glass of wine for her. “I’ve heard that name before—though it was not applied to a person.”
Her eyes stayed narrow, but she took the drink.
“I’m a person, no? It’s short for Agnes.”
“Agnes?” He laughed, from the sheer exhilaration of her presence. Not just her speech—that slit-eyed look of dour suspicion was so ineffably Scots that he felt transported. “I thought it was the name the local inhabitants gave to a legendary monster, believed to live in Loch Ness.”
The slitted eyes popped open in surprise.
“Ye’ve heard of it? Ye’ve been in Scotland?”
“Yes.” He took a large swallow of his own wine, warm and rough on his palate. “In the north. A place called Ardsmuir. You know it?”
Evidently she did; she scrambled off the bed and backed away from him, wineglass clenched so hard in one hand, he thought she might break it.
“Get out,” she said.
“What?” He stared at her blankly.
“Out!” A skinny arm shot out of the folds of her shawl, finger jabbing toward the door.
“But—”
“Soldiers are the one thing, and bad enough, forbye—but I’m no takin’ on one of Butcher Billy’s men, and that’s flat!”
Her hand dipped back under the shawl, and reemerged with something small and shiny. Lord John froze.
“My dear young woman,” he began, slowly reaching out to set down his wineglass, all the time keeping an eye on the knife. “I am afraid you mistake me. I—”
“Oh, no, I dinna mistake ye a bit.” She shook her head, making frizzy dark curls fluff round her head like a halo. Her eyes had gone back to slits, and her face was white, with two hectic spots burning over her cheekbones.
“My da and two brothers died at Culloden, duine na galladh! Take that English prick out your breeks, and I’ll slice it off at the root, I swear I will!”
“I have not the slightest intention of doing so,” he assured her, lifting both hands to indicate his lack of offensive intent. “How old are you?” Short and skinny, she looked about eleven, but must be somewhat older, if her father had perished at Culloden.
The question seemed to give her pause. Her lips pursed uncertainly, though her knife hand held steady.
“Fourteen. But ye needna think I dinna ken what to do with this!”
“I should never suspect you of inability in any sphere, I assure you, madam.”
There was a moment of silence that lengthened into awkwardness as they faced each other warily, both unsure how to proceed from this point. He wanted to laugh; she was at once so doubtful and yet so in earnest. At the same time, her passion forbade any sort of disrespect.
Nessie licked her lips and made an uncertain jabbing motion toward him with the knife.
“I said ye should get out!”
Keeping a wary eye on the blade, he slowly lowered his hands and reached for his wineglass.
“Believe me, madam, if you are disinclined, I should be the last to force you. It would be a shame to waste such excellent wine, though. Will you not finish your glass, at least?”
She had forgotten the glass she was holding in her other hand. She glanced down at it, surprised, then up at him.
“Ye dinna want to swive me?”
“No, indeed,” he assured her, with complete sincerity. “I should be obliged, though, if you would honor me with a few moments’ conversation. That is—I suppose that you do not wish me to summon Mrs. Magda at once?”
He gestured toward the door, raising one eyebrow, and she bit her lower lip. Inexperienced as he might be in brothels, he was reasonably sure that a madam would look askance at a whore who not only refused custom, but who took a knife to the patrons without evident provocation.
“Mmphm,” she said, reluctantly lowering the blade.
Without warning, he felt an unexpected rush of arousal, and turned from her to hide it. Christ, he hadn’t heard that uncouth Scottish noise in months—not since his last visit to Helwater—and had certainly not expected it to have such a powerful effect, rendered as it was in a sniffy girlish register, rather than with the tone of gruff menace to which he was accustomed.
He gulped his wine, and busied himself in pouring out another glass, asking casually over his shoulder, “Tell me—given the undoubted strength and justice of your feelings regarding English soldiers, how is it that you find yourself in London?”
Her lips pressed into a seam, and her dark brows lowered, but after a moment she relaxed enough to raise her glass and take a sip.
“Ye dinna want to ken how I came to be a whore—only why I’m here?”“I should say that the former question, while of undoubted interest, is your own affair,” he said politely. “But since the latter question affects my own interests—yes, that is what I am asking.”
“Ye’re an odd cove, and no mistake.” She tilted back her head and drank off the wine quickly, keeping a suspicious eye trained on him all the while. She lowered it with a deep exhalation of satisfaction, licking red-stained lips.
“That’s no bad stuff,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “It’s the madam’s private stock—German, aye? Gie us another, then, and I’ll tell ye, if ye want to know so bad.”
He obliged, refilling his own glass at the same time. It was good wine; good enough to warm stomach and limbs, while not unduly clouding the mind. Under its beneficent influence, he felt the tension he had carried in neck and shoulders since entering the brothel gradually fade away.
For her part, the Scottish whore seemed similarly affected. She sipped with a delicate greed that drained her cup twice while she told her tale—a tale he gathered she had told before, recounted as it was with circumstantial embellishments and dramatic anecdotes. In sum, it was simple enough, though; finding life insupportable in the Highlands after Culloden and Cumberland’s devastations, her surviving brother had gone away to sea, and she and her mother had come south, begging for their bread, her mother occasionally reduced to the expedient of selling her body when begging was not fruitful.
“Then we fell in with him,” she said, making a sour grimace of the word, “in Berwick.” He had been an English soldier named Harte, newly released from service, who took them “under his protection”—a concept that Harte implemented by setting up Nessie’s mother in a small cottage where she could entertain his army acquaintances in comfort and privacy.
“He saw what a profit could be made, and so he’d go out now and again, huntin’, and come back wi’ some poor lass he’d found starvin’ on the roads. He’d speak soft to them, buy them shoes and feed them up, and next thing they kent, they were spreading their legs three times a night for the soldiers who’d put a bullet through their husbands’ heids—and within two years, Bob Harte was drivin’ a coach-and-four.”
It might be an approximation of the truth—or it might not.
Having no grounds for personal delusion, it was clear to Grey that a whore’s profession was one founded on mendacity. And if one could not believe in a whore’s central premise, unspoken though it was, one could scarcely place great credence in anything she said.
Still, it was an absorbing story—as it was meant to be, he thought cynically. He did not stop her, though; beyond the necessity of putting her at ease if he was to get any information from her, the simple fact was that he enjoyed hearing her talk.
“We met Bob Harte when I was nay more than five,” she said, putting a fist to her mouth to stifle a belch. “He waited until I was eleven—when I began to bleed—and then …” She paused, blinking, as though searching for inspiration.
“And then your mother, bent upon protecting your virtue, slew him in order to preserve you,” Grey suggested. “She was taken up and hanged, of course, whereupon you found yourself obliged by necessity to embrace the fate which she had sacrificed herself to prevent?” He lifted his glass to her in ironic toast, leaning back in his seat.
Rather to his surprise, she burst out laughing.
“No,” she said, wiping a hand beneath her nose, which had gone quite pink, “but that’s no bad. Better than the truth, aye? I’ll remember that one.” She lifted her glass in acknowledgment, then tilted back her head and drained it.
He reached for the bottle, only to find it empty. Rather to his surprise, the other was empty, too.
“I’ll get more,” Nessie said promptly. She bounced off the bed and was out of the room before he could protest. She had left the knife, he saw; it lay on the table, next to a covered basket. Leaning over and lifting the napkin from this, he discovered that it contained a pot of some slippery unguent, and various interesting appliances, a few of obvious intent, others quite mysterious in function.
He was holding one of the more obvious of these engines, admiring the artistry of it—which was remarkably detailed, even to the turgid veins visible upon the surface of the bronze—when she came back, a large jug clasped to her bosom.
“Oh, is that what ye like?” she asked, nodding at the object in his hand.
His mouth opened, but fortunately no words emerged. He dropped the heavy object, which struck him painfully in the thigh before hitting the carpeted floor with a thump.
Nessie finished pouring two fresh glasses of wine and took a gulp from hers before bending to pick the thing up.
“Oh, good, ye’ve warmed it a bit,” she said with approval. “That bronze is mortal cold.” Holding her full glass carefully in one hand and the phallic engine in the other, she knee-walked over the bed and settled herself among the pillows. Sipping her wine, she took hold of the engine with her other hand and used the tip to inch her shift languidly up the reaches of her skinny thighs.
“Shall I say things?” she inquired, in a businesslike tone. “Or d’ye want just to watch and I’ll pretend ye’re no there?”
“No!” Emerging suddenly from his tongue-tied state, Grey spoke more loudly than he had intended to. “I mean—no. Please. Don’t … do that.”
She looked surprised, then mildly irritated, but relinquished her hold on the object and sat up.
“Well, what then?” She pushed back the brambles of her hair, eyeing him in speculation. “I suppose I could suckle ye a bit,” she said reluctantly. “But only if ye wash it well first. With soap, mind.”
Feeling suddenly that he had drunk a great deal, and much more quickly than he had intended, Grey shook his head, fumbling in his coat.
“No, not that. What I want—” He withdrew the miniature of Joseph Trevelyan, which he had abstracted from his cousin’s bedroom, and laid it on the bed before her. “I want to know if this man has the pox. Not clap—syphilis.”
Nessie’s eyes, hitherto narrowed, went round with surprise. She glanced at the picture, then at Grey.
“Ye think I can tell from lookin’ at his face?” she inquired incredulously.
A more comprehensive explanation given, Nessie sat back on her heels, blinking meditatively at the miniature of Trevelyan.
“So ye dinna want him to marry your cousin, and he’s poxed, eh?”
“That is the situation, yes.”
She nodded gravely at Grey.
“That’s verra sweet of you. And you an Englishman, too!”
“Englishmen are capable of loyalty,” he assured her dryly. “At least to their families. Do you know the man?”
“I’ve no had him, myself, but aye, I think I’ve maybe seen him once or twice.” She closed one eye, considering the portrait again. She was swaying slightly, and Grey began to fear that his wine strategy had miscarried of its own success.
“Hmm!” she said, and nodded to herself. Tucking the miniature into the neck of her shift—given the meagerness of her aspect, he couldn’t imagine what held it there—she slid off the bed and took a soft blue wrapper from its peg.
“Some of the lasses will be busy the noo, but I’ll go and have a word wi’ those still in the sallong, shall I?”
“The … oh, the salon. Yes, that would be very helpful. Can you be discreet about your inquiries, though?”
She drew herself up with tipsy dignity.
“O’ course I can. Leave me a bit o’ the wine, aye?” Waving at the jug, she pulled the wrapper around her and swayed from the room in an exaggerated manner better suited to someone with hips.
Sighing, Grey sat back in his chair and poured another glass of wine. He had no idea what the vintage was costing him, but it was worth it.