Page 44 of A Royal Kiss & Tell
“For God’s sake, I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help you,” he’d insisted.
“Why?”
“Because I do, Isidora. You deserve better than this life. Help me find the others, help me bring the men who did this to you to justice.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You do,” he said gently but firmly. “Allow me to help you and the others.”
She immediately dissolved into tears. “I can’t,” she said tearfully. “They will force my father to give back the money. My family won’t take me back, not after this. I’ll have no place to go but the street—”
“You do have a place,” he said, although he had no idea where she might go—he would have to think of it. But he would think of something.
He gestured for her to sit on the foul settee and tell him how she’d gotten here. Her family was from the mountains of Wesloria, on the border with Alucia, she said. He knew the mountains were an impoverished part of both countries. Most of the men there worked in the coal mines. She said a gentleman had come and offered quite a lot of money to her father for her. She said her father took it to save the rest of the family from starvation.
Leo vaguely recalled his brother talking about the lack of economic opportunity, particularly in some parts of the country. Leo had barely registered the conversation, as he did any topic that seemed too weighty, because he had long been a man who didn’t want to bother himself with anything of importance. Isidora had been sold so a man could feed the rest of his children. Leo could not imagine what it must be like to live with nothing, or the sort of desperation the man must have felt that would allow him to sell one daughter to save his family.
So Isidora had come to England to work for nothing. That wasn’t enough for Lord Hill, she said—he’d wanted more than her services as a chambermaid, and when she’d rebuffed him, he threatened to send her back to the man who’d arranged it. Ann Marble had tried to intercede and he’d fired her, too, then took his family to the country.
Leo withdrew the five names from his pocket and showed her the list. Isidora shook her head and confessed she couldn’t read. So Leo read the other names to her.Nina, Eowyn, Jacleen, Rasa.
Isidora knew them all, but knew only where Jacleen and Rasa had ended up. Rasa, she said, was a maid in the home of Lord Pennybacker, a name that was mildly familiar to Leo.
Jacleen, however, had been sent to a grand country estate belonging to the Duke of Norfolk. That news caught Leo by surprise—the Duke of Norfolk had attended Cambridge with him. He’d known Henry many years and considered him a friend. For God’s sake, he was married to a lovely woman with three children and a fourth on the way. Surely he had no part in this. “In Arundel?” he asked.
“Je,”Isidora said weakly.
His head spun. Who were these men that would use women so ill? How could he be nearly thirty years old and not know men like that existed in his sphere? The knowledge soured his stomach and made him more determined than ever to end this abominable practice.
But first, he had to agree to a price for Isidora. Unfortunately, Leo was not adept at the art of negotiation—when he agreed to the outrageous sum of one hundred pounds, Mrs. Mansfield’s little eyes had gone wide with surprise, and he knew then that he’d been outdone.
He brought Isidora to the Clarendon Hotel, ignoring the looks directed at him, and paid for a room for her. The desk clerk could hardly contain his disgust at what he perceived was happening, and at first he refused to grant her a room. But Leo reminded him how much the Kingdom of Alucia was paying for the rooms he let. The clerk reluctantly agreed to allow one night. Only one night. “Won’t have her type here, Your Highness,” he’d said tightly.
“Hertype,” Leo had said, “is that of a woman who has been treated very ill by your country.”
But the Clarendon Hotel was not a solution, and Leo fretted to Josef. “The lass wants to go home to her family,” he lied. “I need a place she might stay until I can arrange it.”
As Josef had not seen Isidora, he had no reason to suspect what Leo was about. He thought about it a moment and said, “May I suggest Mr. Hubert Cressidian.”
Leo knew of the gentleman, an Alucian merchant living in London, who was, by all indications, richer than Croesus. “Do you know him?” Leo asked. “Can I trust him?”
Josef’s expression had remained entirely neutral. “It is my experience, Highness, that Mr. Cressidian may be trusted for a price.”
It turned out that Josef’s instincts were right. Mr. Cressidian was thin and wiry, with black hair and eyes so brown they appeared almost black. Leo told him he needed a place to keep a young woman safe from harm. Mr. Cressidian didn’t ask any questions about Isidora. He didn’t seem to care. He didn’t seem particularly curious about anything, really. He merely stated his terms: a stipend for her keep, and an introduction to a French shipping magnate Leo knew.
Neither did Isidora ask questions—she seemed resigned to whatever fate had in store for her. But when they arrived at the very large house in Mayfair, she looked at Leo. “Whoareyou?”
She truly had no idea who he was. “I’m no one,” he said, and he meant it. He smiled and said, “My friends call me Leo.”
Three days later, Josef informed Leo that his invitation to the Montgomery ball had been rescinded.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A soiree to be held at the London townhome of the Duke of Norfolk was postponed indefinitely. A friend of the duke has said that the reason might have had to do with one of the guests being unsuitable to dine with someone as dignified as the duke and duchess. Could it be the same gentleman who was disinvited from the Montgomery ball?
Ladies, doctors advise a period of nine hours of complete rest with no distractions or diversions after a period of maternal confinement and birth, with no more than five minutes allotted to one’s husband to assure him all is well.
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
