Page 13 of Never a Duke
“Precisely,” Lady Rosalind said, untying her bonnet ribbons and setting her hat on the seat beside her. “Campbell had found a position she delighted in and would not have left me of her own accord. I came acrossa better likeness of her.”
Her ladyship rummaged in her reticule and produced another sketch of a girl with a vivacious smile and big eyes. All the high spirits in the world beamed from those eyes, as did a certain arch, knowing quality.
Brothels would pay excellent money for Campbell’s combination of innocence and sophistication. If she’d been in a Magdalen house at fifteen, she was no Puritan, though she had clearly sought to put that aspect of her past behind her.
“She’s quite attractive,” Ned said. Gorgeous, in precisely the wicked, beautiful, blameless manner of the best courtesans. At fifteen, Harriette Wilson had taken her first titled lover and done quite well for herself.
“Papa insisted I was daft to hire Campbell,” Lady Rosalind said. “He claimed she’d nick the silver and be gone before Sunday services. Mr. Wentworth, she was a paragon. She tried so hard to be conscientious in her duties, and then she didn’t come back from her half day. Papa still lectures me about my foolish attempts at charity.”
Ned commenced lecturing himself:Should have started with the brothels and cribs, should have begun with the opera dancers. Should have interrogated the streetwalkers right off, and to hell with wasting time at the sponging houses.
“Were Campbell and Arbuckle able to read and write?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because if the problem was indebtedness, the first stop is a sponging house. The people who run those establishments don’t make money by delivering their prey to the debtor’s prisons. They make money off debts paid, and services rendered while the debtor languishes at the sponging house. The first service offered is to send word to friends and family that the debtor has been arrested. The debtor is given paper and pen, and away the messages go.”
“And sending those messages adds to the tally owed, is that it?”
“The debtor, impecunious to begin with, is forced to incur more debt for everything from daily bread, to water to wash with, or a blanket for a cot to sleep on. A small arrearage becomes ruinous in no time. Would the ladies have sent word to you if they’d been taken up for debt?”
“Yes, I’m sure they would have.”
Ned drew the horses to a halt and asked the next logical question. “Would you be permitted toreceivesuch a message?”
Rosalind gazed at the sketch of the merry, pretty girl. “I hope so.”
“But you don’t know so.”
“No, I don’t. I can ask the first footman. Hicks will be honest with me.”
“Ask,” Ned said, “though I doubt the solution to the mystery is debt. A lady’s maid doesn’t have much opportunity to amass debt.”
The shopkeepers never extended credit to mere domestics.Should have started with the brothels.
Ned was distracted from that dreary thought by the realization that Lady Rosalind had a lovely profile, also a few subtle freckles across her cheeks. The arch of her dark brows gave her face piquant charm. Foxes had the same alert, inquisitive air, as if creation owed them answers. Lady Rosalind’s defined chin and jaw suggested her inquiries would be thorough, while that lush mouth…
I have no business admiring a woman’s mouth, even if she does have a very pretty pair of lips.
“If my maids were not sent to the sponging house, what is the next reasonable line of inquiry?”
“Would you care to drive for a bit?”
That mouth that Ned had no business admiring turned up into a soft smile. “I would adore a turn at the ribbons.”
“This is as steady a pair of lads as you’ll find in the whole of London,” Ned said, passing over the reins. “They have perfected the art of looking hot-tempered and half-wild, but they’re actually quite lovely.”
As Lady Rosalind’s smile was lovely, beguiling even, which was of no relevance whatsoever.
She signaled the horses to walk on, and Ned was left with nothing to occupy his hands. Artie’s words, about Lady Rosalind being all sweet and sunny, and bearing the fragrance of springtime, came to mind.
Canny little fellow, Artie.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Lady Rosalind said, feathering the curricle through a turn. “What next in terms of searching for my maids?”
Ned dreaded what came next. “For Campbell, it’s probably too late, if she’s been missing for weeks. For Arbuckle, it’s time to inquire of the abbesses and streetwalkers. I’ve already asked a few questions, and I’ll follow up over the next several days.” And nights.
The prospect was vile, but then, how much more vile was tenure in a brothel to a decently raised lady’s maid who sought only to send some wages home to her aging parents?
