Page 87 of The Scot Who Loved Me
She pressed perfumed cotton over her nose. He’d left with nothing more than a few farthings in his pocket and the clothes on his back. The same as what he had when she found him at Marylebone Pleasure Gardens. Like others of her station, she hired a guard to walk alongside her carriage while they traveled those dark, perilous streets on the garden’s perimeter. Criminals destroyed streetlamps all the better to work in darkness. Brawny men like Will offered their services, to guide the carriages of London’s best citizens.
Will had stayed by her window, his charm rough but endearing. When her carriage reached safer streets, she opened her door to him and he obliged her. Being with Will had been a near perfect year. She wanted him back. Simple as that.
Her eyes fluttered shut, all the better to remember.
“Lady Denton!” a woman called from the street.
She roused to scan the faces outside. Grizzled men walked by, hair graying, cheeks dirty, their clothes dirtier. Whores plied their trade, handsfanning shiny faces against the heat. One of them sauntered from the pack of torn hems and bored faces, her hair an alarming shade of red.
“I remember you from Cuper’s Pleasure Garden, my lady, before it was shut down—” the whore waved a dirt-grimed hand at her own head “—it’s me, Red Bess.”
“Red Bess... I beg your pardon, but I cannot recall making your acquaintance.” She was kind to whores most times. They had their uses and most were a wealth of information.
A giggle uncoiled. “You’re a different one, milady. Fine manners and all.” Red Bess crossed her arms casually under her bosom. “My hair is my trade card. A way to remember me. If not, you might remember my friend, Peg Boyle.”
Ancilla could feel a wan smile spreading. Peg Boyle, a Cuper’s Pleasure Garden whore, had been particularly helpful in the past, and she’d been rewarded for it. By the gleam in Red Bess’s eyes, she wanted to be helpful too. A seller of information. But in this part of Southwark? The quality of it was doubtful. Ancilla dug into her velvet coin purse. A shilling would make the woman go away.
She passed the shilling out the window. “Here, a deposit.”
The coin fell into Red Bess’s open hand.
“You can do better than a shilling, milady.”
“You’re an insolent piece.” She raised her fan to summon her footman.
“I have information you’ll want, milady.” Red Bess’s tone cleaved the fat from their conversation. “But you’ll have to pay more than this.”
A frisson impelled Ancilla to sit up and take note. The whore was dead serious, tired (no doubt the hazard of her profession) but quite focused. Her thin-lipped mouth was void of false friendliness, and she had known Peg Boyle.
“Very well. I’ll pay a half crown if your information is good.”
“It’s good, milady, and I’ll take three half crowns for it.”
Her blood spiked with irritation and interest. Red Bess was astonishingly confident in what she had to offer, confident enough to wave it like a juicy steak.
Ancilla was hungry enough to bite. She produced a half crown from her velvet purse and offered it.
“I said three half crowns, milady.” Red Bess was mutinous.
“We’ll build a bridge, you and I. If your first offering is worthwhile, you’ll get more. If not, our transaction is done.”
“Start diggin’ in that velvet purse of yours because my information is about the widow of Bermondsey Wall, Mrs. Anne Neville—”
“I have paid better people than you to inquire about the woman.” Disappointed, Ancilla’s hand dropped to her lap.
“—and Will MacDonald.” Red Bess smiled slyly.
She sat taller despite the road’s atrocious smell.
So, the whore remembered seeing her with Will. She and Will had gone to Cuper’s Pleasure Garden to watch fireworks when he’d been in her household. Will’s sudden betrothal to the Southwark widow had been a surprise.
Her investigator had begun his work last spring and concluded it midsummer when she was still at her country estate. She wouldn’t offer the esteemed position of managing her warehouses without a study of the woman first. The investigator’s report painted a picture of a reliable woman of humble commerce with two older, unnamed female relatives in her household. He’d noted Mrs. Neville’s visits, few though they were, to London’s less savory taverns. The hidden message being, the woman might have a tolerance for working outside the law. Even better, there was no hint of interest in a third marriage, but Mrs. Neville was a handsome woman. A sudden, late summer betrothal wasn’t out of the question.
“Go on.”
“’Bout a week ago, I was standing outside the Iron Bell. It was midnight, the streets empty, no custom to speak of. Then who comes walkin’ right here on Mill Lane, but Mrs. Neville herself with a gorgeous man in a tattered kilt ’bout ten paces behind her.” Red Bess smirked. “A rare sight, it was.”
“Thus far, I’m not impressed with the quality of your information.”
