Dry clothes followed by a hot cup of tea, and Prue was ready to tackle the day’s work, even with her mind in turmoil after her conversation with Shadow. He acted as if the past had never been. Did it mean so little to him, then, their one splendid night; the heartbreak of the following morning? Her laugh was bitter. Of course it meant little. He was a man. He took what she offered and abandoned her when he was finished.
She marshalled her staff to finish cleaning and tidying the two ground-floor parlours. Those above would have to wait. They would not risk making a noise directly below Miss Diamond and her guest, who were still asleep in the courtesan’s bedchamber.
She and the maids had taken the dirty plates to the kitchen the night before, but all kinds of things had been left by the guests—gloves, several stockings, two cravats, an assortment of snuff boxes and jewellery. Prue put the more precious items into the pocket tied to her belt, and sorted the others into piles. They would all need to be returned to their owners.
They were just finishing when the knocker banged on the door for perhaps the tenth time since Prue had returned. The living room was already full of floral tributes, scented notes, and presents, waiting for Miss Diamond to awaken and survey them. As it was every day, so the maids said.
Prue answered the door, expecting another delivery boy.
Two young men, perhaps her own age, in their mid-twenties, stood on the doorstep.
“Let Gren know we’re here for him,” the one in the lead said, pushing the door further open and brushing past her, followed by the other.
The leader wore the tightest of dark blue coats over a richly embroidered ice-blue waistcoat. His high collar and froth of cravat in snowy white, and his tight, beige pantaloons and well-polished black boots proclaimed him a disciple of the renowned Brummell, leader of the dandies, though perhaps an apostate disciple, since Brummell declared that black was the only colour for a gentleman.
The other gentleman wore the uniform of a hussar, a light horse regiment: one that wore buff breeches with their red jackets.
“Well, go on,” the dandy said impatiently, tapping his walking stick against the floor to emphasise his words. “Go and tell Gren we’re here.”
“May I tell the mistress who is calling, Sir?” Prue asked, being careful to roughen her vowels and slur her consonants a little.
“May I tell the mistress who is calling?” the dandy mimicked, in a falsetto. Then returning to his own voice, “Well, Tiv? Do we announce ourselves?” He rounded on Prue. “The whore’s staff are getting a bit above themselves, if you ask me.” He pushed right up against her, so she needed to step back onto the first stair to avoid him. “We don’t want to see your mistress. We have come to fetch our friend. Get him. Now.”
“I don’t know,” said the soldier. “I wouldn’t in the least mind seeing The Diamond.” He put salacious emphasis on the word ‘seeing,’ leaving no doubt about his meaning.
Prue, deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, retreated up the stairs. As she passed the first floor and continued upwards, someone bounded from stair to stair behind her, and on the next landing, the soldier grabbed her by the waist, spun her around, and shoved her firmly against the wall, trapping her with his body.
Before she could react, he had ripped at her neckline, popping buttons, tearing the fabric, exposing her corset and the curve of her breasts.
“Well, well,” he said. “You are a delicious little thing, aren’t you?”
Prue managed to keep her voice calm and level. “If you’ll wait downstairs with your friends, Sir, I will let Lord Jonathan know you are here.”
“Oh, let Annie wait. I’ve an appetite, and you’ll do to satisfy it.” He was pulling her skirts up as he spoke, and the hard shape pressing into her belly left no doubt about his intentions. “You’ll do very nicely.”
“No, thank you, Sir,” Prue said. “That is not part of my duties.”
“Don’t think of it as duty, little darling. Think of it as pleasure.” Then, as she tried to twist sideways to escape him, “No, no, no. Naughty. Keep still, or I’ll have to hurt you.”
“Let me go, Sir, or I’ll scream.”
“You think the whore will care? I’ve had her maids before. She growls a bit, but what’s she going to do? Serves her right for teasing us all and only dancing the kipples with Selby and that bumptious squirt, Gren. Blame her, if you do not like it. Now, keep still.”
Prue had been keeping her hands flat against the wall, not wanting him to immobilise them. Now, she stilled her body as commanded, but let one hand creep carefully toward the cap that covered her hair.
She would need to be quick. He had her skirts bunched almost to the top of her thighs and was fumbling at the buttons of his fall with his other hand. If he noticed what she was doing… no, he was looking down, focused on the mounds he had exposed.
There. She found the long hat pin, a sharp, pointed skewer made to her own specifications for occasions such as this. In one movement, she swept it out of her hair and in an arc, flipping it in her hand on the way, to jab it point first into the nearest buttock.
With an eldritch shriek, he let go of her, and she twisted under his arms and retreated up the next flight of stairs, facing him from that vantage point, the skewer at the ready.
“You bitch! You stabbed me!” he shouted.
The weapon he had intended to use on her, disclosed by the unbuttoned flap of his breeches, had not yet been discouraged by the sudden attack. She gestured at it with her hat pin.
“One step closer, and this goes into that.” The full length in the right place could kill, but a threat to his family jewels was more likely to get his attention than one to his life.
The scream and the shouting brought his friend thundering up the stairs.
“The nasty little slut stabbed me,” the soldier complained, twisting to see the red stain darkening the buff cloth.
The dandy spoke without taking his eyes off her. “You take her from the left, Tiv. I’ll go for the right.”
“I’ll just deal with her pin for you,” the soldier said, drawing the dress sword he wore.
She was in trouble now. She backed up four more stairs, staying just ahead of the point he aimed at her throat.
“I could skewer her, Annie,” he said, conversationally, to his friend. “It would serve her right. My arse hurts!”
“It would make a mess on the stairs. Wouldn’t you rather use your other sword?” the man addressed as Annie said. “I will hold her for you, and then you can hold her for me. But she needs to learn her place first. Come here, girl.”
Prue shook her head. Her mind was racing, seeking a way out. The sword was the immediate threat, but she was just out of reach. She could—she thought, she hoped—predict a lunge and dodge. But getting away would be the challenge. Running wouldn’t help. They blocked the way downstairs, and upstairs, they could easily corner her.
“See?” said Annie. “Doesn’t know her place. Did you bring your whip inside, Tiv?”
“It’s on the table downstairs.” An odd light was glittering in Tiv’s eyes, and he was grinning.
“Shall we take her in the room on the first floor?” he asked. “Selby told me where The Diamond keeps the manacles.”
She’d die first. And if it was her day to die, she’d take at least one of them with her. She waved the pin to focus their eyes and fumbled with the other hand for her keys. Throwing them might give her an opening. Then she remembered the snuff in her pocket. Snuff in their eyes might give her long enough to leap the bannister and escape down the stairs. Perhaps no one needed to die today.
“Having fun, gentlemen?” The drawl came from the floor above. Lord Jonathan Grenford. Three of them, and one of those behind her.
“Gren, come and help grab her,” Annie commanded. “She assaulted Tiv.”
“We’re going to make her pay,” Tiv gloated.
“I don’t think the young woman likes your games.” Lord Jonathan’s voice remained quiet and calm. “You don’t do you, Mrs. Worth?” he asked.
“No,” Prue said, shortly, “and for the record, he assaulted me first.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Lord Jonathan said. “In fact, I heard you tell him to let you go. I do apologise for my tardiness, Mrs. Worth, but he screamed, and I thought you had it well in hand, so I stopped to find my breeches, which wasn’t as easy as I expected. Your mistress will be joining us when she… there you are, Lily.”
Lily Diamond, clad in a richly embroidered robe that enveloped her to her chin, but hid none of her curves, was leaning on the bannister, taking in the scene below with narrowed eyes. Either she had already been out of bed, or she had stopped to tidy her hair, because it was, though tousled, done so by an expert hand, with not a curl unanchored in the artistic whole.
Yes. There was the expert herself, Madame Dupont, hovering at her mistress’s elbow.
And Lord Jonathan continued to dominate the scene with effortless ease, naked chest and all. He may have stopped to put on his trousers, now hidden by the balustrade, but he hadn’t bothered with anything else.
He was near the age Aldridge had been when she’d met him, and had the same stripling’s body, lean and fit but not yet fulfilling the promised breadth of shoulder and depth of chest.
Prue took all of this in with a quick glance upwards, not daring to take her eyes from her tormentors for more than an instant.
“This takes me back,” Lord Jonathan said. His voice was moving along the upper hall to the top of the stair. “Do you remember, Annesley? Yes, of course you do. That time at school when you and your friends set three dogs onto a kitten? Aldridge beat the living daylights out of you all while I rescued the kitten.”
“Come on,” Tiv said, his laugh a little forced. “Gren. We’re friends. You’re not going to take this little whore’s part over your friends.”
“Am I not? I rather think I am.”
Prue moved to one side to make room for Lord Jonathan beside her. She half expected him to turn on her but, no, it seemed he was sincere about being her defender.
“Go up to Miss Diamond, Mrs. Worth,” he told her, not taking his eyes off the two men below him.
“I wouldn’t get in our way, if I were you, Gren,” Annesley sneered. “Not with what we can tell about what happened at the King and Pelican.”
“Really? You’re threatening me?” Lord Jonathan sounded more thoughtful than worried.
“A word to your father, or to the authorities…” Annesley said.
“If you look at it one way, it is our duty,” the soldier said. “The duty of every right-thinking citizen to report such perversions.”
“Aldridge was right,” Lord Jonathan said, shaking his head. “I really hate it when that happens.”
Prue was retreating up the stair, keeping a watchful eye on her would-be attackers.
“Just move to one side, Gren, and we won’t say a word,” Annesley ordered. “And Lily, don’t let the bitch past you.”
The courtesan looked at Prue, her face impassive. She said nothing.
The soldier waved his sword when Lord Jonathan didn’t move.
“Oh, do put that away, Tiverton.” Lord Jonathan sat down on a stair, his hands on the knees he spread to block the way. “You’re not going to attack me. If you touch a hair of my head, you’ll have my whole family down on you.”
“Your father will disown you when he finds out what you do with little boys,” Annesley said.
“Very likely.” The prospect did not appear to bother Lord Jonathan. “But Aldridge knows what really happened. He told me you set me up. Smug bastard. He’ll never let me hear the last of it.”
By now, Prue had reached the second-floor landing. Would Miss Diamond try to stop her? The dresser had retreated into the bedroom, but Miss Diamond was still standing motionless, looking down over the balustrade, her hands at her sides. She met Prue’s eyes, and smiled a little, then suddenly moved, striding to the head of the stairs, her heels flicking the hem of her robe into a swirl behind her.
“Worth, my room. Now. Captain Tiverton, Mr. Annesley,” she fixed each man with her eyes as she named him, “you are no longer welcome in my house. Leave. Now.” To Prue’s surprise, the hands that had been hidden in the skirts of her robe lifted, each with a small pistol that she levelled at the men. Madame Dupont reappeared and took station at her side, aiming a musket.
“You won’t shoot us,” Annesley blustered. “You’ll hang.”
“Oh, but I am just a helpless woman protecting myself from assailants,” Miss Diamond explained, all sweet reason. “And I have a duke’s son as witness to support me.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Tiverton said, but he and his friend were backing away as he spoke.
“I would not, of course, be aiming to kill you; just to halt you, and so Lord Jonathan will attest,” the courtesan purred as she passed Lord Jonathan on the stair. “I’m a good shot, and so is Elise. But the musket is a messy beast. Who can predict what might happen? Worth, my room. Now.”
Prue obeyed. Behind her, the two men argued as they retreated down the stairs, followed by the two armed women and the duke’s son, who was chuckling to himself.