Page 31 of A Treacherous Trade
Two women with long, silken black hair and skin the color of treated teak conversed in the corner. One was draped in the vibrant saris of India; her wrists, lobes, and even her nose glinted with bangles and jewels.
The other was blindingly, ethereally beautiful, and had donned a gown that would have been unmistakably British, if the folds of fabric over the cage of her bustle weren’t translucent enough to advertise that she wore no drawers beneath.
I looked away to avoid gawking at the cleft of her behind, and quickly realized that the attire I’d borrowed from Amelia Croft was sedate in comparison to most of the women here.
In the blazing light of several gas lamps, I noted that Isabelle’s hair might have been gold when she was a young girl, but was muddied to something a little more akin to honey now. She unpinned her trifle of a hat and checked that several hot-ironed curls hadn’t been too damaged in the wind.
Another beauty with tight ochre curls stood with her knuckles perched on her hips. “So Beatrice thinksyoucan replace Alys?” she asked, in a Continental accent I couldn’t place. Somewhere between Italian and Spanish, I thought, but was scarcely sophisticated enough to know. She had skin the color of the southern sand once the pull of a wave had abandoned it, and I wanted to test the satin texture.
“I-I’m only here to do what Mrs. Chamberlain hired me to do.” I spread my fingers in a gesture of confusion. “Is there something I’m missing?”
“Who is Jane?this one asks,” said a Rubenesque brunette from a dressing table where she arranged her hair in only her corset and drawers. “Let’s see if Miss Montague survives the Brothel of Blood.”
“Aye, though business is scarce enough as it is,” piped up a Scotswoman from over by the door, the only other redhead, as far as I could tell. “That Bea would even consider employing someone else when we’ve barely enough work to go around is a load of ripe shite, if you ask me.”
A chorus of agreement dropped my heart into my belly. The sinking realization that Isabelle was the only welcome I was likely to get had me struggling not to turn on my heel and flee.
It was the image of Jane’s blood-streaked features that kept my boots planted to the plank floors.
Brothel of Blood?Did that have to do with the recent deaths? Or was there something more sinister at The Orchard than I’d been led to believe?
“Well,” Isabelle said from beside me, “if she’s taking Alys’s place, perhaps that means she comes with her own private clients, don’t it, Viola?”
“It does,” I said with a smile I hoped appeared less brittle than it felt. “You shan’t be asked to share your wages with me. I very much wish us to be friends rather than competitors.”
The striking African woman cackled at this, and several others followed suit.
“That’s Ekyate.” Isabelle pointed as if the woman had not given me her back as a sign of disrespect, her bare shoulders still shaking with mirth. “We call herKyahere. And over there are Indira and Brinda.” She motioned to the Indian women, who continued to stare.
Gesturing to the olive-skinned Continental woman, she said, “That’s Isobel with an O, and I’m Isabelle with an A. To uncomplicate things we call me Izzy, and her Belle, because she’s such a beauty.”
That didn’t uncomplicate things at all, what with the spelling and pronunciation changes, but I wasn’t about to mention that fact.
“Then there’s Morag, Katherine, and Penelope…” She pointed at several others I hadn’t time to commit to memory, then checked the few shadows and corners of the room. “Anyone else is probably already either left for the day or working.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” I lied, receiving very few, if any, replies.
I hadn’t the slightest idea if I’d be accepted among these women, but I certainly hadn’t expected such a blatantly chilly reception.
Deflated, I considered my future had Mary lived. She’d said she’d set me up with a job in a house very much like this. Would just such a welcome have been awaiting me then? Would I have failed utterly and ended up like her, a Whitechapel street doxy, calling out on the streets for customers in order to afford her dingy rooms for the night and enough gin to keep the tremors at bay?
I’d planned to save her from all that… to figure out how to find us something respectable.
“Don’t mind them,” Isabelle hollered, not at me, but in rebuke to her silent, inhospitable colleagues. “We’ve had a hard go of things this last month, and it’s made us allbloody impolite, evidently.”
No one responded to her, but neither did they rebuke her.
“It’s been a devastation, to lose two of us in just over a month,” she explained, her empty eyes suddenly brimming with unshed tears.
“I can only imagine. I was told Alys drowned in the Thames,” I said somberly.
“She didn’t drown. Shewasdrowned. That’s the way of it,” Kya said, her voice smooth as glass and her words sharp as cut diamonds. “Alys wouldn’t have sullied her corpse in the Thames.Ifshe’d killed herself, it would have been something more dramatic than another body being dredged out of the river sludge.”
“No one knows that for sure,” argued the Scot, who I remembered was named Morag.
“No oneknewfor sure,” corrected Isobel—er, Belle. “But after what happened to Jane… It’s hardly a coincidence, that’s all I’m saying.”
“What happened to Jane?” I asked, as if I hadn’t seen the gruesome aftermath of her death.
