Vice Page 6

  Juliana, reasoning that she had nothing to lose by showing courtesy, rose and curtsied, but her eyes were sharply assessing as they rested on her visitors. She had never met Richard Dennison but guessed his identity from Bella’s descriptions.

  “Now, what nonsense is this, child?” Elizabeth came straight to the point, sounding annoyed.

  “I might ask the same of you, madam,” Juliana said evenly. Her mind raced. Could they force her into prostitution? Could they have her raped and ruined, so she’d have nothing further to lose? Her skin was clammy, but her voice remained steady, and she kept her eyes firmly fixed on the Dennisons.

  “There’s no need for discourtesy, my dear.” Richard Dennison’s voice was deep and mild, but the tone was belied by his keenly penetrating eyes. He stepped up to the bed. “Do you find fault with the gown … or the linen?”

  “They are the garments of a harlot, sir. I am not a harlot.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, girl!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “This gown is the dernier cri at court. Everything here is of the best quality and design.”

  “I thank you for your kindness, ma’am, but I will not take your charity.”

  “This is not my gift, child, but—” She stopped abruptly as her husband coughed behind his hand, his eyes darting a warning.

  Juliana bit her lip. If the clothes were not the gift of the Dennisons, then there was only one explanation. “I beg you will inform His Grace, the Duke of Redmayne, that I have no need of his charity either.”

  “Why do you keep prating of charity, child?” demanded Richard. “You are being asked to perform a service in exchange for our hospitality and His Grace’s generosity.”

  “A service I will not perform,” she stated, astonished at how firm she sounded when her knees were quaking like a blancmange and her palms were slippery with sweat. “I am not a whore.”

  “As I understand it, His Grace is offering to make you a viscountess … a far cry from a whore,” Mr. Dennison observed aridly.

  “There is a buyer and a seller, sir. I see no difference.”

  “Obstinate ingrate,” declared Mistress Dennison. “His Grace insisted you should have time to reconsider his offer without persuasion, but—”

  “Madam!” Juliana interrupted passionately. “I ask only to be allowed to leave this house unmolested. If you will return my original garments, I will go as I came and be no trouble to anyone. Why would you keep me here against my will?”

  “Because it is our considered opinion, my girl, that you don’t know what’s good for you,” Richard said. “How long do you think you’ll last on the streets? You have no idea how to go on in London. You have no money, no friends, no protection of any sort. In this house you have been offered all that and more. In exchange we ask only that you put on those clothes and come downstairs to dinner.”

  Juliana felt the ground slipping beneath her feet as some of her assurance left her. Everything they said was true. She’d seen enough from her window to know that a sheltered life among county aristocracy had ill equipped her for the life of an indigent girl in London.

  “Bella said I was to be presented in the drawing room,” she said. “I believe I know what that means.”

  “I believe you do not,” Richard said crisply. “No demands will be made of you except for your company. You will not be required to entertain, except perhaps to play a little music and converse as in any civilized drawing room.”

  “And the Duke of Redmayne … ?” she asked, hesitantly now.

  Mr. Dennison shrugged easily. “My dear, the duke’s business is not ours. It lies with you, and he will deal directly with you. Mistress Dennison and I ask only that you dine with the other members of this household and take tea in the drawing room.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  A look of exasperation crossed Mr. Dennison’s face, but he held up a hand as his wife seemed about to remonstrate. “I think you know better than to do so,” he said. “You are in need of a safe haven, and you have one here. But it seems reasonable to ask that you obey the rules of the house.”

  Juliana turned away, defeated. The threat was clear enough. It wouldn’t take the magistrates long to discover her true identity once they were told her story. The landlord of the Bell in Wood Street would remember that the Winchester coach had arrived at the same time as the York stage. Piecing together the rest would be easy for them.

  “Come, my dear.” Mistress Dennison’s voice was soft and cajoling. She laid a gentle hand on Juliana’s arm. “I’ll ring for Bella and she’ll help you to dress. The gown will set off your eyes and hair to perfection, I promise you.”

  “That is hardly an incentive in these circumstances, ma’am,” Juliana said dryly, but she turned back to the room. “If you are determined to have my maidenhead, then it seems there’s little I can do to prevent it.”

  “Don’t be so untrusting,” Elizabeth scolded, patting her arm. “My husband and I will force nothing upon you. Your business lies with the Duke of Redmayne, and you may negotiate with him however you please.”

  Juliana’s eyes narrowed. “You would have me believe that you have no interest, financial or otherwise, in the duke’s plans for me? Forgive me, ma’am, if I doubt that. A procuress expects to be paid, I’m sure.”

  “What a stubborn, ill-tempered chit it is, to be sure,” Elizabeth declared to her husband. “I wish His Grace joy of her.” She tossed her elaborately coiffed head in disgust and sailed from the room, followed by Richard.

  Perhaps it was unwise to alienate those two on whom her present comfort and security depended, Juliana reflected with a rueful grimace. She went over to the bed and began to examine the garments. There was an apple-green quilted petticoat to pair with the jade-green gown, an underpetticoat and chemise of embroidered lawn, silk stockings and garters, a pair of ruffled engageantes to slip over her forearms, and those ridiculous shoes.

  She sat on the bed and slipped one cotton-stockinged foot into a shoe. It fitted perfectly. Presumably they’d used her boots as a model. Her feet were so big, they couldn’t have guessed the size with this accuracy. She extended her foot, examining the shoe with her head on one side. It did make her toot look uncharacteristically elegant. But could she walk on it? She slipped on the other shoe, then gingerly stood up. Equally gingerly, she took a step and swayed precariously. The shoes pinched now most dreadfully, squashing her toes and making her insteps ache.

  “Oh, miss, aren’t they pretty?” Bella cried from the door as she bustled in, bearing a jug of steaming hot water. “Would ye care for a bath afore dinner? I could ’ave a footman bring up a tub.”

  Juliana sat down again and kicked off the shoes. Her last bath had been on her wedding morning. Maybe it would be as well to prepare herself for whatever the evening was going to bring. Like a sacrificial virgin, she thought with an unlooked-for glimmer of amusement. Her sense of humor was frequently misplaced and had in the past involved her in as much trouble as her unruly feet. But in present circumstances, she reflected, it could hardly make things worse.

  “Yes, please, Bella.”

  “I could make up an ’enna rinse fer your hair, if’n ye’d like it,” Bella continued. “It’ll give it a powerful shine. Miss Deborah uses it when she ’as an evening with Lord Bridgeworth. Not that ’er ’air’s as pretty as your’n. Quite dull it is, next to your’n.” She beamed as if she took special pride in Juliana’s superiority in this field.

  “I use vinegar at home,” Juliana said.

  “Oh, but ’enna’s a powerful lot better fer yer color, miss.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “Very well. Whatever you think Bella.”

  Looking mightily pleased, Bella whisked herself out of the room, and Juliana returned her attention to the garments on the bed. It was true that they were in the first style of elegance. Lady Forsett had pored over the periodicals and patterns of London style and had all her clothes made up in Winchester to the latest specifications, although Juliana assumed that
since the periodicals and patterns had been at least six months old by the time they’d reached Winchester, they were probably unmodish by court standards. Not that she’d expressed this opinion to her guardian’s wife.

  Lady Forsett had insisted that Juliana herself wear only the simplest country clothes suitable to a schoolgirl who had no business in the drawing room. She had softened a little over the wedding dress and trousseau, but Juliana had been well aware that the garments had deliberately been made up to outmoded patterns. Lady Forsett had said quite bluntly that Juliana would have no need of a truly fashionable wardrobe married to Sir John Ridge. He was a wealthy man, certainly, but not sufficiently refined to be received by the leaders of county society.

  But that wardrobe had been left behind with her dead husband. Her britches and shirt had disappeared. The only clothes she had were those on her back and now these luscious, rippling, rustling silks and lawns. Juliana couldn’t help but be seduced by the delicious image of herself dressed in such finery.

  Bella returned with a footman and the boot boy, laboring with copper jugs of steaming water and a wooden hip bath. The footman and the lad bowed deferentially to Juliana as they left, and she began to feel that her position in the house had insidiously changed.

  “Everyone’s very excited, miss, that ye’ll be joining the ladies tonight,” Bella confided, pouring water into the tub. “Mr. Garston says as ’ow y’are already promised to a great patron. Everyone’s very curious to meet ye.”

  It occurred to Juliana as she stripped off her clothes that while she had been kept in isolation above stairs, the entire household had been free to speculate on her position. Somehow she’d assumed that her lack of interest in them would be reciprocated. Not so, apparently.

  She said nothing, however, stepping into the tub and lowering herself into the steaming water with a sigh of pleasure. She was unaccustomed to the services of a maid, Lady Forsett considering them unnecessary, but she soon discovered that Bella was as experienced as she was enthusiastic. In fifteen minutes Juliana was sitting on the ottoman while Bella vigorously dried her henna-rinsed hair.

  “There y’are, miss, what did I tell you?” Bella held up a hand mirror as she took the towel from Juliana’s head. “Glowin’ like the sunrise.”

  Juliana ran her hands through the damp, springy curls until they stood out around her head like a sunburst. “But what are we to do with it now, Bella?” she inquired with a grin. “It’s always been completely unmanageable after it’s been washed.”

  “Mr. Dennison said as ’ow I was to leave it loose, miss. I’m to thread a velvet ribbon through it.”

  Juliana frowned. Mr. Dennison’s voice, it seemed, penetrated into the intimate corners of his whores’ bedchambers. She wouldn’t have found Mistress Dennison’s sartorial instructions offensive, she decided, but her husband’s were quite a different matter. She would be obeying the orders of a pimp. But perhaps they were orders from the Duke of Redmayne, relayed through Mr. Dennison. If so, she had even less inclination to obey them.

  “I shall pin it up myself,” she declared, twitching the towel from Bella’s slackened grip. She ignored the maid’s protestations and roughly finished toweling the damp curls.

  “Mr. Dennison was most particular, miss,” Bella said, twisting her work-roughened hands in her apron.

  “How I wear my hair is no business of his … or, indeed, anyone’s.” She tossed the towel to the floor and shook her head vigorously like a dog coming in from the rain. “There, now if I brush it carefully and use plenty of pins, I might be able to subdue it.”

  Bella, still looking very unhappy, handed her the new chemise and carefully unrolled the stockings. Juliana put them on and stepped into the underpetticoat. She glanced at herself in the cheval glass and decided that her wildly tangled ringlets resembled Medusa’s snakes. Maybe she should leave them just as they were—unbrushed and unpinned. It ought to be enough to cause even the Duke of Redmayne to have second thoughts.

  She glanced with distaste at the brocade stays Bella was holding but turned her back so the maid could lace her. She associated the restrictive garment with long, miserable days when Lady Forsett had decreed she should be laced as tightly as she could bear. It was supposed to have improved both her bearing and her conduct, but it had only made her more defiant.

  She stood with her hands at her nipped-in waist, watching in the glass as Bella tied the tapes of the wide whalebone hoop. Juliana had never before worn anything but the most modest frame. Now she took a step, watching the hoop sway around her hips. It felt very cumbersome, and the prospect of maneuvering herself on those impossibly high heels struck her as laughable.

  She stepped into the quilted overpetticoat, and Bella dropped the jade-green gown over her head, hooking it at the back. Juliana slipped the ruffled engageantes over her hands, pushing them up to her elbows, where they met the flounces sewn to the fitted sleeves of the gown. She slipped her feet into the shoes and took a hesitant step.

  Then she took another look at herself in the mirror. Her eyes widened in astonishment. Apart from her disordered hair, she didn’t look in the least like herself. The stays pushed up her breasts so that they swelled invitingly over the décolletage of her gown, and the wide, swaying hoop emphasized the smallness of her waist. The costume gave her figure an air of enticing maturity that she found thoroughly disconcerting, although she was aware of a pleasurable prickle of excitement beneath the disquiet.

  But did she look like a harlot? She put her head on one side and considered the question. The answer was definitely no. She looked like a woman of fashion. There was something indefinable about the gown that set it apart from Lady Forsett’s London imitations—a touch of elegance in the fit or the style that could not be imitated.

  “Oh, miss, ye look lovely,” Bella said, darting around her, twitching at ruffles, adjusting the opening of the gown over the petticoat. “Now, if ’n ye’d jest let me do yer ’air,” she added wistfully, picking up a green velvet ribbon that exactly matched the gown.

  “No, thank you, Bella. I’ll do it myself.” Juliana picked up the hairbrush from the dresser. She tugged it through the tangled curls until they fell in some semblance of order onto her shoulders, then twisted them into a knot on top of her head, thrusting pins into the flaming mass with reckless abandon. She felt like a hedgehog at the end, and wisps still escaped from the knot. She knew that within five minutes the whole thing would begin to tumble of its own volition and she’d be spending the evening adjusting pins in a desperate and finally futile attempt to keep it in place; but she stubbornly decided that she’d rather do that than obey the instructions of Richard Dennison or the duke.

  “Will ye wear the ribbon as a collarette, miss?” Bella was still holding the velvet ribbon. “It would set off the neck of the gown.”

  Juliana acquiesced, and the maid looked somewhat happier as she pinned the ribbon around Juliana’s throat. The deep green accentuated the whiteness of her skin, the slenderness of her neck, and drew the eye down to the swell of her breasts.

  “’Ere’s yer fan, miss.” Bella proffered a chicken-skin fan.

  Juliana opened it and examined the delicate pattern of painted apple-green leaves. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to assemble this outfit.

  “I’ll show ye to the dining room, miss.” Bella ran to the door, opening it wide. “Dinner’s at four and it’s almost five past.”

  Juliana snapped the fan closed and essayed a step. She realized immediately that her usual swinging stride from the hip was impossible with the hoop and the shoes. She was required to take mincing little steps, the hoop swinging gracefully around her. She could handle the little steps, she decided, so long as she didn’t lose her balance and fall in a disorderly heap with her skirts thrown up around her head. Not that it would be the first time.

  “I’m ready,” she said grimly. “Lead on, Bella.”

  Chapter 5

  Bella pranced ahead of Juliana, down the curving
staircase to the front hall. Juliana proceeded much more slowly, one hand resting with apparent negligence on the banister, although in fact her fingers were curled over it as if it were a lifeline.

  Mr. Garston came forward with a stately tread as she reached the bottom of the stairs. To her astonishment he bowed. “’Ow nice to see you downstairs, miss. If ye’d care to follow me.”

  Her circumstances had definitely altered in the last hours. Juliana merely inclined her head and followed him to a pair of double doors at the rear of the hall. He flung them open and announced in ringing accents, “Miss Juliana.”

  “Ah, my dear, welcome.” Elizabeth Dennison was all affability, as if the altercation in Juliana’s bedchamber had never occurred. “Oh, yes, how very fetching that gown is. The color is perfect, isn’t it, ladies?” She came toward her, extending her hands in welcome. “Let me present you to our little family.”

  Taking Juliana’s hand warmly, she drew her forward to the oval table where ten young women stood at their chairs. She recognized Lilly and Emma from the encounter in the hall on her first day, Names and faces of the others blended with the speed of the introduction, but she managed to mark Deborah and take note of her hair. Bella was right that it didn’t have the sparking vitality of her own. For some reason the recognition was satisfying. Juliana began to wonder what was happening to her. She rarely gave a passing thought to her appearance, and yet here she was, examining the other girls as if they were some sort of rivals. Rivals for what?

  Lord of hell! She was beginning to think like a whore. It must be something to do with the atmosphere in the house.

  She curtsied politely to each woman, receiving a similar salute in return, and she was aware that she was being assessed as shrewdly as she was assessing them.

  “Sit down, my dears.” Elizabeth waved a hand around the table. “Now we’re all assembled, there’s no need to stand on ceremony. Juliana, take your place beside Mr. Dennison.”

  The seat of honor? Juliana took the chair to Richard’s right. He drew it out for her and bowed her into it as if she were indeed the guest of honor.