Chapter One

Edinburgh, 1872

In Edinburgh, a city of layers, Robbie Fleming knew she was currently living somewhere near the bottom. How did she end up here, in a rat-infested rooming house with walls so thin she could hear her elderly neighbor break wind in his sleep? This was not how she had envisioned her life.

Even though she was more level-headed than her sister, Birdie, she still dreamed of a life where she could write the stories that crammed her brain, stories of children and fantasies and animals. Those dreams began early on and they never faded from her mind. Instead, she wrote swill for an underground collection of pornographic stories at night and worked with prostitutes and runaways during the daytime, and only the writing, such as it was, paid anything.

She listened to the wagons lumbering through the street. Pity the days when it was dry and windy, for manure dust blew up from the pavement as a sharp, piercing powder to cover clothing and ruin furniture and race up one’s nostrils. Her walk home would be another stressful adventure in trying to avoid heaps of garbage. Ah, what a life.

She studied the girl on the table before her, certainly not immune to her misery, but able to distance herself in order to help her. She had come to the clinic the day before, suffering from the effects of opium and alcohol. She had emptied what little was in her stomach and was now dry heaving, spittle rolling from the sides of her mouth. She was ejecting from both ends; Robbie had difficulty keeping up. Some might have let her lay there in her filth; Robbie couldn’t do that. The girl was only thirteen years old, a child, really. In spite of her efforts to distance herself, it broke Robbie’s heart. And on top of everything else, the poor thing was pregnant.

As Robbie tried to soothe her, wiping her forehead with a damp cloth, she studied the girl. Thin—painfully so. Her hair was now lank and greasy, but had probably once been a shiny gold. Her clothing was mere rags, hanging on her skinny frame, hugging her pregnant belly.

The girl had told Robbie she was from quite a prominent family, but when the kinsfolk discovered she was pregnant, they made other plans for her.

The name on her registration slip was listed merely as “Bonnie.” She had confided in Robbie the night before that it was her stepfather who had gotten her pregnant; he planned to ship her off to the poorhouse, claiming she suffered from hysteria that made her unstable. He could do this with impunity. The depravity of some souls made Robbie’s blood boil.

Instead of accepting a punishment she didn’t deserve, Bonnie chose her own path, fleeing into the night. Now, six months later, she was here, suffering a new horror inflicted upon her by the man who had claimed to want to rescue her. A pimp, no doubt. But Robbie didn’t judge; she had seen many young women in the same position as Bonnie. She wanted to help—the problem was that it wasn’t a job that paid. She did it out of compassion for the women who suffered just as Bonnie did, grateful her own father had been a loving and generous parent.

Suddenly Bonnie clutched her stomach and released a shriek that echoed off the thin walls of the shabby clinic room. “Oh God. Oh God,” she moaned. “Something’s happening!”

Robbie quickly checked the girl and noted the circle of wetness on the flimsy sheet beneath her. “Lydia!” She shouted once again for the midwife on staff. “Lydia, she’s ready!”

Lydia, the midwife, a short, stout woman with a no-nonsense manner, scurried into the room.

“Give me something,” the girl demanded. “The pain, give me something for the pain!”

Without hesitation, Lydia gave the girl a draught of laudanum, tossing Robbie a worried glance as she did so.

Two hours later they had delivered a dead baby girl, strangled by the umbilical cord. And Bonnie was hemorrhaging. She died shortly after.

Later, after Robbie and Lydia had made arrangements for the bodies, they sat in a quiet corner of the office, each nursing a cup of tea. Lydia had been working since before sunrise.

Robbie gazed solemnly at the pockmarked table, feeling a migraine tap insistently at her left temple. “Things like this happen so much. It makes me absolutely sick inside.”

“She had a family. I suppose they should be notified.” Lydia studied the tea in her cup. “It breaks my heart when we see girls like her.”

“Mine as well. As for Bonnie, her family should at least be responsible for the burial,” Robbie added. “It’s not as if she has no one, even if they did cast her aside. The poor thing and her bairn should not be buried among paupers. Even though her stepfather was a brute, I can’t imagine her mother not wanting to know what has happened.” She finished her tea, rinsed out her cup, and went to retrieve her cloak and bonnet.

“I’ll have Karl look into it,” Lydia promised.

Robbie bade goodbye to Lydia and began the long walk through Old Town to her meager room at the rooming house. A waft of something putrid assaulted her nostrils. She should be used to it by now. If she stayed so long in the slums that she became accustomed to the smells and the filth she encountered daily would be a crime. She lifted her skirt to avoid the offensive piles of nondescript compost in her path, although she knew it wasn’t possible. What was another hem stiff with garbage?

After their father died, she and her sister, Birdie, had each inherited a small sum of money. Birdie, always vivacious and flighty, bought a beautiful trousseau, flirted shamelessly with Robbie’s beau, Joseph Bean, stole him, and ran off to marry him. It wasn’t that Robbie had not cared for Joe, she had. But she was in no way ready to settle down and marry him. It was just another insult from Birdie. Anything Robbie had, Birdie wanted. And she always got what she wanted. Robbie kicked a stone in the street, sending it skidding into a pile of horse manure that the horseflies had begun to feast upon. She chastised herself for her peevish thoughts, for she was certain her sister would not survive the life Robbie now led.

Robbie, always the sensible one, used her inheritance to attend college and become a writer. Actually, that part wasn’t sensible at all. Had she imagined she would become the next Mary Shelley? She twisted her mouth into a grim smile. No, more like “author anonymous,” considering what she was currently writing to pay the rent.

No one would ever know what she wrote. The underground serials were not the sort of thing “fine” ladies ever read. But were it not for her professor and mentor, Jeremy Greene, she would not be paid for her writing at all. Jeremy had been one of their most prolific writers, and now that Jeremy was dead, Robbie took up the task. They didn’t have to know about the change. After all, it was money, and she needed it to survive. And the stories?

She shook her head, wondering what her dear father would say if he knew what she was doing to make a living. But no, it was honest work, just not terribly noble.

However, her two lives often collided. Her real life was so vastly different from the stories she penned. She was really quite innocent in the ways of sex and knew little of the world about which she wrote. The erotic stories of men and women who romped naked and unafraid through the pages were quite foreign to her. Her life, such as it currently was, was day after day in a hell she found herself, unable to claw a way out. She couldn’t go on this way, but she could see no opportunity to change things. The indigent, the down and out, and the prostitutes who were taken advantage of needed a champion, and Robbie desperately wanted to be that person but without funds it was not possible.

She blinked, wiping away the tears caused by the coal smoke that hung over the town like a shroud. Some days she couldn’t even see the sky.

She trudged through the streets, sidestepping garbage and mounds of compost only to step in more horse droppings as she made her way to her room. Oddly, she never thought of it as “home”—it was merely a place to sleep. She stopped and tried to scrape the muck from her boot by rubbing it on a dry tuft of grass, only to realize it had spread out over the sole.

Cursing mildly, for which she silently asked her father for forgiveness, she hurried along to the rooming house. It loomed up before her like a caricature, really, the upper windows like big, dark rectangular beady eyes, the gable in the front the nose, and the wide, sagging porch the mouth of a creature waiting to take you in and digest you. She shivered and quickly ran down the stairs to her basement room, stepped inside, and kicked off her dirty boots. Cooking smells permeated the thin walls, making her stomach growl. Had she made it home in time for supper? Tossing her cape and her bonnet on the bed, she rushed from the room, up the stairs and into the communal dining room. And her stomach dropped. The table had been cleared.

“Too late for supper.” Her landlady, Mrs. Mott, strolled into the room and removed a dish of potatoes swimming in greasy gravy from the sideboard.

Robbie swallowed. Her hunger was palpable. “Are there potatoes left in that dish?”

Mrs. Mott, who looked like she never missed a meal, and whose frizzy gray hair poked out from under her scarf, sighed. “I can’t always be doing ye favors, missy. Ye know what the meal hours are, and ye know the rules of the house. If ye can’t be here on time, it’s your problem, not mine.”

Robbie’s expression must have been extra pathetic, because her landlady heaved a dramatic sigh, plunked the dish down on the table and turned toward the kitchen. “Clean up after yourself.”

Robbie grabbed up the dish and a fork, and hurried back to her room in the basement. The fact that the gravy had congealed and the potatoes were cold mattered not to Robbie; she ate them quickly, happy to have had something to eat at all.

After she returned the dish to the kitchen, where she carefully scrubbed it clean with leftover dishwater, she returned to her room to write. The installment for the magazine was due tomorrow; she would get little sleep tonight. “All right, Miss Wiggins, let’s get to it.”

With her lamp lit low, she sat at her small table and began.

Miss Sallie Wiggins was no stranger to sex. She had been peeping through keyholes and windows since she was ten, and although she had seen people naked together in many positions and places, she had never had sex. Well, unless one counted having sex with oneself. And that was pleasant enough; it had been for years. But now she wanted more.

This night, wearing no underthings under her skirt and petticoat, she sauntered out to the stables where the new stable boy, Elijah, was grooming a mare. Truth be told, Elijah was more than a mere boy, he was over twenty, or so she had heard. And he was the color of a caramel candy, all shiny and delicious. Her skin tingled as she watched him work, his brown arms, thickly muscled, moving carefully over the mare’s rump. Her mouth watered when she thought about him working those arms and hands over her own rear.

He must have seen her out of the corner of his eye, because he stopped quickly, turned, and gave her a nervous bow. “Evenin’ Miss Sallie.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You know my name?”

He nodded, innocently rubbing his bare chest. “Yes, ma’am. You be the master’s daughter.”

Feeling brave, and a tad horny, she announced, “Did you know I’m not wearing any underwear?”

Flustered, Elijah fumbled with the grooming comb and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “N…n…no, Miss Sallie, I didn’t know that.”

Confident that she had his attention, Sallie drew up her clothing and showed him her virginal fare. She quickly dropped her skirt and said, “Now you must show me yours.” She stared at his trousers and noted with satisfaction that they were beautifully tented.

Elijah stepped away. “Oh, no, Miss Sallie. I don’t want to lose my job.”

“Oh, pooh,” she said with a pout. “No one will see, not if we step back further into the stable.”

Elijah threw a look of longing at the back of the stable. “I…I guess we could—”

“Yes, we could,” Sallie interrupted. “But it’s dark back there. You have to show me yours before we go back there or it won’t be fair. After all, you saw mine.” She noticed that his penis twitched against the fabric of his trousers, and she felt the luscious swelling and wetness between her legs.

With fumbling fingers, Elijah unfastened his trousers and lowered them past his erection.

Miss Sallie was in awe. He was long and brown and standing as stiff as a flag pole. “Oh my, Elijah, that’s a beautiful thing you have there. Might I touch it?”

Gathering courage, Elijah answered, “Only if you let me touch yours first.”

Miss Sallie squirmed. “Oh, yes. Please do.” She stepped away from the door and backed against the wall of one of the stables and lifted her skirts once again.

Elijah got down on his knees in front of her and pressed his fingers against her mound of glossy fur. Miss Sallie shuddered with anticipation. When one finger slipped inside, her knees nearly buckled. Such pleasure! Such joy!

• • •

Robbie opened her eyes. She knew the sun was up somewhere, but it rarely entered her cellar-like room. In fact, there was always dampness in the air, and her bedding never got aired out unless she did it herself. Unfortunately, she’d gotten used to a number of disagreeable living conditions since she left home. The lack of fresh water for bathing and washing her hair was something she had a hard time adjusting to. She had always been proud of her hair; it was thick and wavy and, as Jeremy called it, the color of Swiss chocolate. Now she kept it in a tight bun, for she had little time to spend on it anyway.

Then there was the room itself: small, dark, dank, and not nearly big enough to swing a dead cat. She did have a nice blanket, thanks to Jeremy, who had seen what the landlady furnished and was so disgusted he went out and bought her one himself. However, there was evidence that the moths or mice (or maybe even rats) had discovered it soon after she got it, for there were holes here and there, not too big yet, but once her toe got stuck in a hole at the bottom, and now it looked as shabby as everything else Robbie owned.

She sat up, slid to the side of the bed, and reached for her father’s timepiece, which she valued more than any other object she possessed. Noting the hour, she made a face; if she didn’t hurry there wouldn’t be any breakfast for “missy” Robbie Fleming.

She splashed cold water on her face, dressed quickly, and ran a comb through her hair before twisting the length into a bun at the back of her neck. Peering at herself in the cracked mirror, she wrinkled her nose, wishing the freckles that stood out like beacons would simply disappear. They seemed to shout, “I say, look at us! We’re big, brown spots on Robbie Fleming’s nose!” She let out a whoosh of air and hurried up the stairs to the dining room.

As she entered the room, all eyes turned toward her. She slowed her steps and walked to her seat between two young women who worked in one of the local factories. She took a biscuit from the basket in front of her, then reached for the preserves, wondering why everyone continued to stare.

Mrs. Mott entered the room. “I’ll be needin’ your room, missy.”

Ah, so that was it. Robbie slowly lowered the biscuit to her plate. “Why?”

“When I rented ye the room I told ye that I might need it one day for me own nephew, and just happens that he be needin’ the room by week’s end.”

Robbie vaguely remembered such a conversation, but she had pushed it into the attic of her mind, hoping it would never come to that. But it had. Suddenly, she wasn’t hungry anymore. She blinked away a sting of unshed tears, angry with herself for the weakness. “You have no other vacancies?”

“Full up.” Mrs. Mott, perhaps feeling a bit shabby about what she had to do, put a bowl of fresh porridge in front of Robbie. “Here, now, this is still hot. Better eat up.”

Of course, Robbie’s first instinct was to say, “Feed it to the dogs!” but she didn’t. What she really wondered was, where would she go?

Attempting to eat, she took a spoonful of porridge and forced herself to swallow it. She would need her strength for the days to come.

Later, as she sat at her small table attempting to write, she gave up and simply stared into space. What were her options? Contact Birdie and ask if she could stay with her and Joe for a while? No. Absolutely not. If nothing else it would give Birdie another chance to pity her, clucking her tongue, pursing her pretty lips, and pretending she gave a bloody damn. (Sorry, Papa.)

Robbie would just have to get out and walk the streets, hoping for a sign for a vacant room somewhere. Hopefully not in the slums of Cowgate, but if that was her only chance, she would have to take it. The thought made her shudder. She had been in those rooms before; some so crowded with people she wondered how they laid down, much less slept. And even though her current room had only one small window, at least she had one. Some of the rooms in Cowgate were windowless. All those different odors: body, food, filth, all milling about with no place to go. She couldn’t imagine the smell.

She threw on her cape, slipped into her galoshes, and left her room, her fingers crossed that she would find lodging.

Three hours later, tired, hungry, and foot sore, she kicked off her galoshes and collapsed on her bed. She had had no luck at all. She rubbed one foot and then the other, noting that there was a new hole in the toe of her multi-darned stocking. Fortunately, she had learned to darn a sock before she had left home; Papa’s housekeeper, Mrs. Mann, had insisted on it.

The woman must have had a special insight into Robbie and her sister, because while she insisted on checking Robbie’s stitch work for errors, she merely shrugged when Birdie sent hers flying across the room. It was likely that Birdie would never have to sew up a hem or darn a sock. Robbie supposed that was life when you were pretty.

Robbie had dozed off when she was awakened by a knock on her door. She got up and, with a weary sigh, went to answer it. Mrs. Mott stood there.

Robbie swallowed a groan. A visit from the landlady in the middle of the day was never a good thing, but how could things get any worse? “Yes?”

Mrs. Mott took a letter from her apron pocket and handed it to Robbie. “This come for ye by post while ye was gone.”

Robbie took the missive and thanked her, then closed the door. She realized her landlady was anxious to know the contents, but Robbie didn’t care and she wasn’t about to share any more bad news with the woman who was booting her out on her behind.

She went to her desk and studied the envelope, frowning all the while. It was addressed to Miss Robena Fleming. Well, that certainly was her name. She didn’t recognize the penmanship, but it was very stately and correct looking. Certainly not from Birdie, whose scrawl was barely legible.

She opened the envelope and pulled out a letter written in the same stately script. She read the contents…and had she not been sitting, she might have fainted dead away.