Page 4 of Eliza and the Duke
He smiled up at her. The joy and admiration in his face at such an inopportune time and situation brought her up short. There was a charisma about him that made her breath catch.
“There ye go.” Mr. Dunn interjected himself between them and wrenched Simon’s coat off his shoulder. Simon helped him as he was able and together they got it off him. “If yer going to stay, ye might as well help.” Mr. Dunn nodded toward a bolt of cotton on the floor next to the sofa that she had missed seeing.
She walked over to pick it up, and Mr. Dunn directed her in how to get it started. Together they wrapped it around him with Mr. Dunn pulling it tight and Eliza skirting it around Simon’s ribs with him balanced between them. Simon wobbled as they worked and continued to sing under his breath, “If ever I cease to love,” over and over again with an endless list of ridiculous consequences.“If ever I cease to love may cows lay eggs, may I be frozen to death with heat,ormay we all turn into cats and dogs.”
When they were done, Mr. Dunn said, “Have to get the coat back on him so no one’s the wiser when we walk to his room.”
She didn’t see how it was possible that no one would noticehis swollen face but didn’t mention it. “In there?” She pointed toward the double doors. “He lives in the club?”
Mr. Dunn didn’t answer her as he struggled to pull the coat back on him and button it. Eliza let her gaze roam the room again, looking for some clue to who Simon was. He must be employed by the club. She searched the blackboard filled with writing that she had noticed earlier, but she didn’t see the name Simon written there. She did, however, see the name Mainwaring, her fiancé. She looked closer and realized his name was part of a large chart.
A vertical list of names was written, including Mainwaring and the men he traveled with to the Continent. Horizontally, there was a list of women’s names: Maria Antoinetta, Lucia, Paolina, Giulia; the list went on with multiple tick marks beneath them, which corresponded to the men. Mainwaring had tick marks next to his name beneath three women.
“What is this list?” She turned back to the men. They were now standing by the sofa and Mr. Dunn was supporting Simon as they headed toward the door. At her question, they paused.
“The blokes in It’ly,” Simon said.
“A tour o’ coffeehouses,” Mr. Dunn elaborated.
“Coffeehouses? Why would that be noteworthy?” It didn’t make sense. Why were the coffeehouses in Italy given women’s names?
Unease swirled through her stomach. Wouldn’t there be only one reason those men’s names would be associated with women? A white-hot heat made her face flame. She and Mainwaring were meant to marry when he returned at the end of the summer.
Simon sighed. “Wagers on how many courtesans the younglads will conquer on their trip. I’m winnin’…so far.” He smiled broadly.
Winning? Betrayal and anger and humiliation warred for dominance. She and Mainwaring were by no means a love match, but she found it difficult to swallow that he would philander his way through Europe before their wedding. It was unseemly. Is this what marriage to him meant? She had assumed they would live a quiet life of comfort together. There would be no great passion, but she had deemed that an acceptable trade for stability. She had assumed she would be due a modicum of respect as his fiancée.
Perhaps this was all wrong. How did they even know the men were visiting these women? “How do you know? They haven’t returned yet.” And weren’t due back for a couple months.
“They wire their progress. The numbers are accurate because we always check with the houses. Why? Do you want to place a bet?” Mr. Dunn inquired, eyes alight at the prospect of adding to the pot.
They wired their progress!“No, and I can’t believe you would, either.” Her voice sounded sharper than she intended. The tone of a scorned woman.
He shrugged, completely uncaring or unaware that she was going through a crisis.
“I should go,” she said. She couldn’t risk someone seeing her when they opened the door to the club, though the prospect of being caught made a glimmer of hope perk up inside her. If she was caught, then she wouldn’t have to go forward with this marriage. It would serve him right. It would serve everyone right for arranging the marriage to begin with. That thought was accompanied by a wave of guilt. Her sisters didn’tdeserve the scandal that would fall on the heels of her being caught in a gaming hell.
Mr. Dunn nodded and waited for her to reach the door to the corridor. “Goodbye, Mr. Dunn. Simon.”
Mr. Dunn ignored her, but Simon looked back. “Goodbye, Angel.”
With that word echoing in her head, she left the rabbit hole behind and hurried back to her life. Her perfectly boring life.
Three
Simon’s former life wasn’t readyto let him go. He knew that because it came after him frequently. In that life, he had been a punisher. James Brody, the man who ran Whitechapel, had paid him to bend people to his will. Often those people were far from innocent, but their guilt wasn’t something Simon had been allowed to question. For a long time it hadn’t even occurred to him to question it. Brody had been like a father to him, the only one he’d ever had. Questioning him had been akin to questioning God. Except, in many ways, Brody was higher than God. God had left him and Mary to die on the street. Brody had fed and sheltered them.
His body still aching from last week’s fight, he gingerly made his way through Whitechapel’s warren of alleyways. Memories of the phantom woman he’d encountered in the club’s corridor pushed at the edges of his mind. That’s how he thought of her…a ghost or an angel, because he remembered so little about her. She might not have been real, except he’dasked Dunn about her and the man had indeed confirmed her existence. Simon had no idea who she was, and Dunn couldn’t remember if she’d given her name. She had dark hair and pale skin and she fit nicely under his arm. Trying to pin her down more made her dissipate like vapor, which was as it should be. His life was too complicated for a woman who smelled like roses and felt like heaven in his arms.
The pub with a wooden sign of a faded red rooster and a lamp hanging from a hook at the bottom loomed ahead. A hollow opened up inside him, pushing all thoughts of the elusive woman aside. That bloody rooster used to signal home for him. It meant security and acceptance. Now it meant the opposite. Every time he went in, a small part of him wondered if he’d ever come out again.
The lantern gave off an oily light that only barely managed to penetrate the thick and humid night. The air here was cloying in a way it wasn’t in Bloomsbury where Montague Club was located. Simon hadn’t noticed the difference until he’d been away from this part of the city for a few weeks. The moment he’d returned, he’d felt the air heavy around his legs and wrists, seeping into his pores as if identifying him as one of its own and attempting to reclaim him.
Inside, the pub was dimly lit by lanterns and a low fire in the stone hearth. A long rectangular bar joined the two rooms that made up the main area of the pub. Simon recognized the man working behind it and nodded a greeting. Smith raised his chin and indicated the door at the far end of the room. Brody was waiting for him.
A bruiser he recognized as one of Brody’s personal men sat near the door. No one was getting through there without his say-so. He nodded, and Simon took a deep breath and stepped through the passageway. The door opened to a narrow anduneven hallway. It had a distinct downward grade that led under the street and to the cellar of the building there.
Brody liked to brag that the room had served as a dungeon a few hundred years ago, but it was now an office of sorts where the man conducted his business out of sight. The ceiling was low and the walls felt like they closed in around him, though it did feel strangely like coming home. If home was a dungeon where vipers waited to tear their fangs into your flesh.
