When she arrived at the small but elegant house in a discreet side street off one of London’s most elegant squares, Prue expected to be interviewed by Miss Diamond. To her surprise, the woman who welcomed her in the small housekeeper’s office at the back of the house introduced herself as Miss Diamond’s dresser, Madame Dupont.
“Such a nuisance,” Madame complained in a thick French accent. “For Mrs. Newton to break her leg. It is not convenient to my mistress. Not convenient at all.”
“An accident in the street, they told me at the agency.” Prue hoped Tolliver’s men had paid Mrs. Newton to take leave, and not really broken the poor woman’s leg.
“Yes, this is so. What was she thinking? To cross the road at such a cost to my mistress. We are not happy, not happy at all. We have the headache, and must lie down in the dark with a damp cloth on our head. We are very sensitive, you understand. Such things, they upset us. Just lie down, ma cherie, I said. Madame will speak to the woman from the agency. We will have our new housekeeper, and all will be well. We can trust Madame.”
‘We,’ Prue realised, working her way through this speech, meant Miss Diamond.
“These references. You have moved a lot, non?” The dresser frowned at the fan of glowing references, some even real, though doctored to reflect the name Prue was using in this house, Mrs. Worth.
“I only take short-term positions,” Prue explained. “I replace housekeepers who are unable to carry out their duties for a short period, or I keep house for those who are only in London for a matter of weeks and have not brought their own servants. The work is varied.” She shrugged, leaving unsaid the premium salary such positions attracted.
The dresser changed the topic with an expansive wave of her hand. “Bien. And you understand what happens in this house? The agency explained the mistress requires the utmost discretion?”
Prue nodded. “I understand that the mistress is very beautiful and has many admirers.”
Again, the dresser tossed her hands. “So beautiful, oui, and so many admirers. It is her curse and her blessing. They come, you understand, and if they are pleased, they give gifts. It is our job to please them. Yours, and mine, and Madame Mitchell, the cook.”
Prue hoped Madame didn’t intend the obvious meaning.
“To please them?” she prompted.
“Oui.” The dresser touched both hands to her chest. “I present the mistress at her best. The face, the hair, the clothes… The men who visit, they do not know it is my work they admire, but the mistress, she knows. The cook, she pleases them with the food she sets before them, and the drink also. Men are creatures of appetite. And you, you make sure that all runs smoothly: that the maids do their work, that the cook has what she needs to make her dishes, that the door is answered and coats collected and fetched.”
“The butler…?” Prue ventured.
Another expansive wave. “We have no menservants here. The cook looks after the cellar and the kitchen, I look after my mistress, and the housekeeper manages all else.”
Prue nodded. A more comprehensive role than others she’d handled, but also a greater opportunity to observe the guests and their various relationships with the mistress.
Her opportunity to meet Miss Diamond’s admirers would come that very evening, she discovered. The mistress was holding a soirée.
Madame named several courtesans whose names frequently appeared in the news-sheets. “Their admirers will come, and the mistress’s admirers will come. The mistress will be,” another expansive gesture, “magnifique.”
The rest of the day was busy. The cook, reassured she would not be called upon to manage the rest of the house, settled with her three kitchen maids to prepare sufficient food for the largest possible number of attendees, since no invitations had been sent, and no one knew how many would come. The whole of the basement was taken up with kitchen and domestic offices, and the cook had both dinner and supper well under control.
Prue marshalled the four housemaids to clean and set up the rooms where the soirée would be held. The town house had two large rooms on each of its three main levels. Both the ground and first floor would be set up for the soirée, with the two main parlours opened into one, card tables set up in one room upstairs, and the second furnished with comfortable chairs and couches in small groupings, “for friends to converse and get to know one another,” Madame explained.
Prue, taking note of the instructions to keep lighting to a minimum, drew her own conclusions about the level and type of conversation.
The evening would begin with a small private dinner, so the doors between the parlours needed to be closed to start, and a dining table set in the rear room. Then, when dinner was over, the table would be cleared and moved to the wall, the chairs dispersed, and the doors flung open, all without disturbing the guests.
Prue and the maids practised the change three times, until Prue was sure it would run smoothly.
Miss Diamond’s chamber could not be touched until she rose, but in the late afternoon she had a visit from one of her admirers: a stripling with carefully tousled dark-blonde hair, an engaging smile, and hazel eyes under level brows. When she let him in to wait for her temporary employer, Prue recognised him as Lord Jonathan Grenford, the Duke of Haverford’s younger son, Shadow’s half-brother, and one of the targets of the investigation. Hints of both of his brothers appeared in his eyes and his chin.
He waited in the hall, watching a maid carry up his invitation to take Miss Diamond driving. The courtesan sent down her consent. Prue offered him a chair in the front parlour and some refreshment, but was relieved when he rejected both, since the maids were currently cleaning there.
He stayed where he was, leaning against the wall and watching the stairs. His wait was rewarded when Miss Diamond descended, dressed in an elegant ensemble of pink and plum. She proved to be a woman about Prue’s age, artfully made up but not, in Prue’s opinion, particularly beautiful. Still, Lord Jonathan seemed impressed enough.
“Gren, darling, how kind you are to take me driving. I have had such a day: you have no idea.” Still talking, she led him out of the house, and waited while he handed her up into the phaeton his tiger had been holding in the road.
Prue supervised the maids as they remade Miss Diamond’s bed with clean sheets and dusted. The bed was huge, dominating the bedchamber, which was the largest on the second floor. Prue shook off any thoughts of what the bed was used for. She would keep her mind on efficient housekeeping.
The silver-blue bed hangings complemented the slightly darker curtains on the windows, and the walls were tastefully papered in a pattern that picked up the colours from the bed. Prue had expected something gaudier. The room also boasted comfortable chairs in a Ming-blue floral, and an expansive day bed upholstered in a dark cobalt plush with a grey fur thrown artistically over the foot.
Prue ran a hand over the fur, startled by wanton thoughts at the softness against her skin. No. Not the fur. It was the purpose of this room, and the fact that Shadow was never far from her mind that had her imagining the feel of fur against her naked skin as she gave herself to Shadow once again.
Cleaning. She would think about cleaning.
The adjoining chamber was wholly given over to Miss Diamond’s toilette, but Madame Dupont waved away Prue’s suggestion that the maids clean there next.
“Non, non. It is for me to look after this room,” Madame insisted, though she let Prue look in at the door, at the rows of dresses on racks, all sorted by purpose and colour, and the dressing table with its army of bottles and jars in neat ranks.
“Are the maids to clean elsewhere on this floor?” Prue asked. Apparently not. Madame explained that she slept in the small chamber off Miss Diamond’s dressing room, and the remaining space on the floor was Miss Diamond’s book room.
“You do not go in there,” Madame instructed. “The mistress is the only person allowed in the book room.”
Prue, unobserved a few minutes later, took the opportunity to try the door, but it was locked. No matter: Tolliver had made sure she was trained in the art of lock-picking.
There was no time for that today though, as Prue and her team hurried to be ready for the dinner.
They arrived in small groups, courtesans and escorts. The women were fashionably and richly dressed, in clothes that called attention to their charms, but no more than those of any society lady who had come through at least one Season.
Prue noted the names of the men as she took their coats and hats, and announced them in the dining room. Only one, Baron Jeremiah Hurley, was on Tolliver’s list, Lord Jonathan not being among those favoured with a dinner invitation.
About the baron, Tolliver had said: “In London for Parliament, though this is the first year in twenty he has shown an interest. He has a small estate in the north and what should be a comfortable income, but we cannot find sources for all he spends on his passion for book collecting.”
Baron Hurley was a thin, ascetic man dressed in clothes that must have been fashionable when he was first on the town, thirty or more years ago. He fawned on Miss Diamond, flattering her with fulsome compliments to her dress, her face, and the food on the table.
“No fool like an old fool,” Tolliver had said. The man was clearly besotted with the courtesan. She treated him as she had young Lord Jonathan—bestowing meaningless smiles and artful touches of the hand as she leant towards him to emphasise a point, drawing his eyes to her generously displayed cleavage.
The conversation was wide-ranging and intelligent. Prue had listened at many a dinner table in the past four years, sometimes as a guest, more often hiding behind the guise of a servant. She was used to the gossip and trivia that passed as conversation when men and women of the ton gathered together. Courtesans, it seemed, were allowed to be better read than women who were in Society, and better informed about politics, art, the implications of gas lighting, and the state of the war on the Continent.
One of the other courtesans had a particularly incisive mind, and did not hesitate to skewer her escort when they disagreed on the Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill currently before Parliament. She had been announced as Miss Fraser, but the company called her ‘Little Joy’ with no sense of the irony in the name, though her face fell into lines of fatigue and strain when she thought she was unobserved.
Prue found herself nodding as Miss Fraser systematically demolished her escort’s economic argument in favour of slavery. When he claimed that slaves collected from Africa in the dreadful Triangle Trade were somehow less than human, she countered with a ribald story about the man’s own passionate pursuit of an African inhabitant of a pleasure house, suggesting that he found the woman human enough. The man retired from the debate in confusion, and Prue cheered silently.
With the skill of an accomplished hostess, Miss Diamond covered the man’s embarrassment by rising from the table, and Prue, recalled to her duties, hurried to set the maids to clearing and rearranging the furniture to accommodate the larger crowd that would appear for the party.
All went smoothly, and the rest of the guests began to trickle in.
Prue stationed one maid in the hall to open the door, one in the enlarged ground-floor room, and another on the first floor. The fourth trailed behind her as she circulated, available for Prue to send on any errand required for a guest’s comfort.
Over the years, she had become an expert at carrying out her duties with half her attention, while watching suspects and mentally recording conversations with the rest.
Three of the potentials were here tonight. The baron, still hovering over Miss Diamond, proud of the status conferred by being a dinner guest; Lord Jonathan, called ‘Gren’ by everyone, a favourite with all the courtesans; and, arriving well after the party had started, the Duke of Winshire’s daughter, Lady Georgiana Winderfield.
Prue held her breath when she took the lady’s coat and bonnet, expecting questions about how the debutante’s rescuer became the courtesan’s housekeeper, but Lady Georgiana’s eyes passed over her without recognition.
Miss Diamond’s mask of polite interest dissolved briefly into genuine enthusiasm as she greeted the aristocrat with a kiss to each cheek.
Prue was close enough for their low-voiced exchange to be clear. “I did not think you would be here, Georgie.”
“I did not think I could get away. Papa is in town, and you know how he is, Lily. But Sutton took him to his club, so I said I was going to bed, and came here instead.”
“Georgie, the risk!”
“Never fear, my love,” the duke’s daughter said, her eyes caressing the courtesan, though only those watching carefully would see more than two friends exchanging greetings. “My groom held me on my first horse. He will not betray me.”
“Can you stay?”
Lady Georgiana gestured to the crowd in the next room. “I expect you have one of them lined up for your bed tonight.”
“Only Gren. He doesn’t matter. None of them matter.”
“You do not need them, Lily. I do not understand why you let them use you so. I can afford…”
“Shush. I will end this. I promise. But you must be patient.”
“You keep saying that, but I ask myself if you really mean it.”
“Georgie, you must trust me. You know what I need to do. You know I do it for us.”
One of the maids needed Prue’s attention, and by the time she went back through the hall, Lady Georgiana was in earnest conversation with Miss Fraser, and Miss Diamond, at the centre of a laughing crowd of admirers, was singing a risqué version of a popular ballad, accompanied on the pianoforte by another courtesan known as The Pearl.
The pathos of the conversation she’d overheard stayed with Prue until the small hours of the morning when Miss Diamond led Lord Jonathan to bed, leaving Baron Hurley, the last guest to remain, staring mournfully after them up the stairs.
“She’s cruel,” he told Prue, as she helped him into his coat. “She has us all dancing to her tune. She gets our hopes up and dashes them down. I expect she only invited me to bring young Grenford up to the mark. But she’s far and away if she expects much from him, duke’s son or not.” He nodded in sad satisfaction. “He doesn’t have a feather to fly with, and there’s worse to follow. He’ll see a prison hulk or the inside of a hangman’s noose before he is much older.”
Prue handed the baron his hat and scarf. “She’ll be mine in the end,” he said. “You tell her. You tell her I won’t let anyone else have her.” His last words had an intensity that made Prue shiver. She shook off the foreboding as she closed, locked, and bolted the door behind him. She and the maids had to clean up the worst of the clutter before they could go to their own beds, and Prue must be up early to go to the market.