Paternoster Page 5

  ‘Yes, miss.’ Kitty fled and was heard clumping about in the bedroom, flinging open closets and drawers in search of outdoor clothing.

  ‘Come on, girl!’ Rachel snapped her fingers and walked to the looking glass. Let him come. Let him come now, and find her gone. Let him worry that she had found another lover and was bestowing her affections elsewhere. Marylebone was not so fashionable that she couldn’t trade up as plenty had done before her. Yet the worry wouldn’t be banished, and for once she was glad to see Kitty’s pale sweaty face as the girl hurried back into the room.

  Moments later, mistress and maid sailed out of the house. Rachel kept her head upright, staring straight ahead of her, but out of the corners of her eyes she searched the street, desperate to hear a carriage drawing to a halt behind her. Or even the clip of gentleman’s boot on the pavement and a cry of ‘Miss Rachel! A moment!’

  Nothing. They reached the end of the street uncalled, unstopped, and as Rachel feared, unwanted.

  Time to show Darby Roach that she wasn’t a girl to be trifled with.

  Kitty trailing two paces behind her, Rachel flounced into shop after shop, each one more luxurious, more extravagant, and more obsequious than the last. And quite right, too. She had the command of Darby Roach’s patronage, and he was heir to a substantial fortune. While she entertained no hopes of marrying into that fortune, she could at least maintain a household that many an honest woman would envy.

  ‘Miss Lovett, good day.’ The haberdasher dipped a low bow to her and ushered her to a chair. ‘What might I show you today?’

  ‘Stockings,’ Rachel said.

  ‘I have some new ones in the latest colours. A delicate peach and a very striking green.’

  ‘Let’s start with those.’

  He scurried about, fetching stockings from drawers and laying them out for her inspection. If her aunt could see her now! She was a long way from the tiny Northamptonshire village where she grew up as Ann Sharp. The first nine years with her parents, then when they died, with her mother’s sister, who taught her how to keep the pigs and how to hack the head off a flapping chicken. That home lasted three years, until Ann started to bloom, and her aunt’s eyes narrowed every time her uncle’s gaze fastened upon her. There was no place for her, then, and her aunt introduced her to Mrs Dukes, explaining that she was to go to London and learn manners and go into service.

  ‘Yes, we’ll soon have you in service,’ Mrs Dukes said, licking her lips as she looked Ann up and down. Her aunt and Mrs Dukes exchanged a look and her aunt nodded. Mrs Dukes pressed five pounds into her aunt’s hand and bundled Ann into the stagecoach and took her to London, where her tutelage began.

  Pretty manners, dancing, dressing her hair in the most fetching style, learning how to make gentlemen feel special. All these arts she accomplished easily. Too easily, for just a few weeks after arriving at Mrs Dukes’s establishment near Covent Garden, that staunch businesswoman had sold Ann’s maidenhead to a corpulent judge for twenty guineas.

  She sold it again once the soreness subsided. And again. And again. Then she inspected the merchandise and decided that even her sales patter couldn’t talk up that battered plateau. Ann Sharp was dropped from the catalogue, and Rachel Lovett was launched in her place. An instant success with the customers.

  And so her new life began. Well fed, well dressed, and well loved by some of Mrs Dukes’s customers. And then Darby Roach swaggered in with a group of his friends, chose Rachel from the girls posed around the room, and promptly fell in love with her.

  He wasn’t her first favourite, but he was the most persistent. After a few months of sharing her favours, he declared he would have her as his own. He paid Mrs Dukes for the loss of custom, and installed Rachel in a house in Marylebone. She was just eighteen then.

  Now she had been Darby’s mistress for just a year, and already his visits to her were starting to wane.

  ‘Make hay while the sun shines,’ Rachel muttered to herself, as the shopkeeper spread before her a selection of new shawls that had just been imported from India.

  ‘No one has these yet, miss,’ he said, running the fabric through his fingers. ‘You would set the fashion.’

  The shawls were beautiful: large enough to drape her whole body and caress the length of her arms, and soft as rose petals. One was embroidered with peacock feathers in vibrant sapphire and emerald; another glowed in dusky amber and peach hues. Yet another, of finest wool, was a pale dove colour.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Which one, miss?’

  ‘All of them,’ she said, airily.

  The shopkeeper hid his reaction with a bow. Not so Kitty, who gasped, ‘But miss, all of them!’

  ‘Mr Roach is a devoted man,’ Rachel said.

  ‘I’ll charge it to his account,’ the shopkeeper said, and ordered the shop boy to wrap the scarves and stockings Rachel had selected. The boy handed the parcels to Kitty, who was already burdened.

  ‘I could deliver those for you, miss.’

  ‘No, I’ll take them,’ she said. Once she had the goods in her hands, they were hers. No shop boy was going to show them off to his sweetheart, and exchange a feel of the new shawls for a tussle with a whey-faced scrag.

  ‘Good day, Miss Lovett.’ The shopkeeper held the door wide for her and bowed as she strutted past.

  Rachel favoured him with a nod of her head, and snapped, ‘Come along, Kitty. Do try to keep up!’

  When she and Kitty arrived home, laden down with shawls, a new bonnet, and stockings in all the latest colours, Darby was waiting for them. He sprang to his feet as she marched into the drawing room.

  ‘Rachel!’ he cried. ‘Thank goodness you’re back!’

  ‘Good day, Darby,’ she said, coolly, pulling off her gloves finger by finger. She glanced at him again. His face was pale as pudding and dark crescents underscored his eyes. He paced the room, clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘Darby? What is it?’

  She drew in a deep breath, preparing to hear him say he’d found another mistress, that he was tired of her and casting her off. Well, she’d see about that.

  ‘You’ve got to leave. Today.’

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘You don’t understand; you’ve got no choice.’

  Rachel planted herself on a sofa and crossed her arms, her lips set.

  ‘Rachel, I’ve made the most terrible mess of everything.’

  ‘Really?’ When she found out who this girl was, she’d claw her eyes.

  ‘I’ve been gaming, that’s why I haven’t visited you. The card game lasted days. I was winning, then my luck changed.’ He swallowed. ‘I borrowed to stay in the game. I knew my luck would change again, but it didn’t. I lost and kept on losing.’

  ‘And you kept on borrowing?’

  He nodded. ‘It finished this morning, very early.’ He raised a haggard face to her. ‘It finished, and I’m finished.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘Darby!’

  ‘I’m ruined. I can’t pay. I was forced to see my father and confess. He’s agreed to cover the gambling debts as a matter of honour, but I have to give up my London house, this house, everything.’

  ‘Even me?’

  ‘Especially you. You’re an expense I can no longer afford.’ His gaze raked the room and he let out a short, mirthless laugh. ‘The word’s round London already. None of this is paid for, the furniture, your dresses, the paintings, nothing. They’ll be here to strip the house and take it all back soon.’

  A stone fell in Rachel’s chest. ‘All of it?’

  ‘Every stick and handkerchief.’

  ‘But you must have paid for something!’

  ‘No. My name is my bond. The shopkeepers all knew they’d get paid eventually. Now they know they won’t.’ He ran a shaking hand over his face. ‘Everything I owned is being sold anyway, to try to clear my debt.’

  ‘But you said your father was paying that?’
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  ‘He’ll pay what remains after I’ve sold everything I have. Even my horse, Rachel. I love my horse.’

  That cracked her. She rose and slapped him hard across the face. Darby reeled and crashed on to the sofa.

  ‘Rachel, I wish …’

  She never heard what he wished, for at that moment, hammering shook the front door, the force vibrating through the house.

  ‘They’ve come,’ Darby said, his face white.

  ‘Don’t let them in,’ Rachel cried, as the front door opened and boots were heard on the stairs. A thickset man in a long brown coat shoved a bill at Darby.

  ‘You’re expecting us, Mr Roach?’ he said. ‘Here to reclaim goods unpaid for. Off you go, lads.’

  The lads – two swarthy brutes – grabbed the sofa and tipped Darby on to the floor, then hefted it out of the room.

  ‘You can’t just take my furniture,’ Rachel cried, squaring up to him.

  ‘Yes, I can miss. None of this is paid for. Now out of the way, I need to roll up that carpet.’

  More men came, with bits of paper they thrust at Darby. One went through her closet, snatching her gowns, underclothes, shoes. Another unhitched the looking glass from the wall and carted it away. The ornaments were wrapped in paper and stacked on a cart. Her jewellery box was plundered and the contents stuffed into pockets. A receipt for the goods taken was made out and handed to Darby.

  He slumped on the bare floorboards, his head in his hands, as more and more tradespeople arrived to claim what was rightfully theirs, terrified they’d miss out on the loot. Rachel wept as the house was dismantled around her. Her delicate chairs were lumped outside and swung on to a cart, and carried off to grace someone else’s house. Some other Marylebone whore, her star rising, decorating her love nest with the best of everything. To think she’d dreamed of trading up to Westminster. Now she’d sell her soul to keep her smart little house and Darby.

  ‘Do something, Darby,’ she cried, as they dismantled her bed. Their bed, where they’d lain entwined and he’d sworn he’d never let her go, ever.

  ‘Do what?’ he said.

  ‘Stop them!’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘But where am I to go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You said you’d protect me. I have no lodgings, no money, only the clothes I stand up in.’

  He fixed her with a look she didn’t like. ‘You’ll find a new favourite soon enough,’ he said. ‘Go back to Mrs Dukes.’

  ‘Go back to …’ She couldn’t. How the other girls would crow. High and mighty Rachel Lovett, who’d snagged herself a wealthy lover and now was above common whoring, back to the seraglio and submitting to anyone who paid a few guineas for her favours.

  Kitty inched into the room. ‘Miss, they’re saying they’re taking everything, miss, and I haven’t been paid this quarter’s wages.’

  Rachel turned to Darby. He shrugged and looked away.

  Hand on her hips, she addressed Kitty loud enough that everyone in the house could hear clearly. ‘Well, Kitty, it seems our master, Mr Darby Roach, cares nothing. He’s advised me to be a common whore. No doubt he’d counsel you to do the same.’

  At that Kitty burst into tears and fled the house.

  ‘Off you go, miss,’ a large self-important-looking man announced. ‘The lease has been sold.’

  ‘But where …’ She pleaded with her eyes to Darby. He ignored her, just dragged himself up from the floor and dusted off his breeches. He bowed to her. ‘Good day, Miss Lovett,’ he said, and strode from the room.

  ‘Darby!’ she called after him, but the self-important man had her arm in his grip, and was hustling her downstairs and out on to the street with a well-practised shove in the back. She sprawled on the pavement. Two women stopped to watch, and a boy laughed.

  ‘Damn you, Darby Roach,’ she cursed under her breath.

  They hadn’t stripped her body, these men who stripped her house and closets. Maybe they forgot, or maybe it was the dangerous glint in her eye that urged caution. Whatever the reason, it meant she had bangles on each wrist, her brooches, her clothes and her rings. Luckily she wore a ring on each finger, so with one pawned she could afford cheap lodgings in Covent Garden and work out what to do next.

  Going back to Mrs Dukes was impossible. She’d rather starve. She’d rather rent her petticoats and hump in alleys than turn up there.

  Fortunately she had her education to fall back on, and before the day was out she’d thieved and fenced two pocket watches and a walking cane. Sidling along the street on the lookout for another mark, she heard her name called.

  ‘Rachel! It is you!’

  She turned. A girl swayed towards her, dressed in the voluptuous costume of a Haymarket courtesan: bosom pushed so high it was abed with her nostrils; rouge, paint and patches all over her face; and vibrant silk skirts.

  ‘Jenny,’ Rachel said. She had known her at Mrs Dukes’s. Jenny must be what, at least twenty-six now. Old. Raddled. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘This is my patch,’ Jenny leered. She looked Rachel up and down. ‘More to the point, what are you doing here? I heard you’d got a rich cully and was above it all.’

  She pressed so close that Rachel could smell spirits on Jenny’s breath and the sweet rot of the pox.

  ‘You heard right,’ Rachel said, smoothing the line of her dress so that Jenny could see her calfskin gloves.

  ‘And there was I thinking you was in a rented dress and stealing my trade.’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t work round here,’ Rachel said, glancing about at the riff-raff. ‘I’m used to the quality. And you?’

  Jenny stamped her foot in vexation. Giving it away for a guinea a time. And getting more than she bargained for from the look of that sore on her cheek.

  ‘Can’t stand here talking all day,’ Jenny said. She snatched her skirts about her and swayed down the street. A barrow boy pitched an orange at her, and she bit into it, skin and all.

  Pissed old whore. That’s what happens when you get old and your looks have faded, thought Rachel. Not that Jenny had much in the way of manners and arts, despite Mrs Dukes’s best efforts to teach her. No wonder she was tossed out. But the same wasn’t going to happen to her. She had youth and good looks, and she valued herself too highly to stalk the inns at the Haymarket prowling for a gin-pickled prick. No, Westminster was where she belonged, and to Westminster she would go.

  The money lasted until the end of the week, then Rachel took herself to Westminster, hawking for a likely keeper. An MP or a lawyer would be a fat catch. They had money even if they didn’t have lineage. As she’d found, lineage came at a cost. No one who was behoven to papa, that’s what she wanted.

  The shops in Westminster were smart; the haberdashers’ windows hung with the most tantalising bonnets and shawls. She stood before a fanned display of gloves in a shop window for a long moment, her breath fogging the pane, before she ventured inside. The shopkeeper sized her up immediately.

  ‘I’ve been asked to choose a present,’ she said. ‘My brother will come and pay for it, if it can be set aside.’

  ‘Of course, miss. Your brother is?’

  ‘Mr Harvey Humbold.’ She’d almost said ‘the Honourable’ and pulled herself back in time. Evidently she guessed right, that the shopkeeper knew every honourable and peer in town, and assumed Mr Harvey Humbold was new money, for he simply turned the name round on his tongue a few times and asked what she would like.

  She asked to see the gloves, and he set about arranging them on the counter. She slipped her fingers into a pair of very tight, elbow-length saffron kid gloves. Divinely soft, and how delicate her hands appeared. The colour was exquisite: the latest thing.

  ‘Hm,’ she said, turning her hand to and fro and squinting at it. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe something not quite so bright.’

  More gloves were fetched. She fingered them, bit her lip as she considered the colour, and asked if there was anything
with more buttons, fewer buttons, a brighter blue, a softer pink, sending the shopkeeper scurrying to every box and drawer he had in the shop. When she’d almost exhausted his stock, she said, ‘And maybe some in plain white cotton,’ and he headed into the room at the back of the shop.

  As soon as his back was turned, she scooped up three pairs of gloves that were lying on the counter and shoved them in her pocket. Still wearing the divine saffron gloves, she hurried from the shop. She was part-way down the street when she began to run, then heard a cry of ‘Stop, thief!’ behind her.

  She grabbed the hem of her gown and held it high, pelting down the street, round corners and up alleyways as she hadn’t done since she was a girl, chasing the chickens to come and be executed. Her chest heaving, she dashed into an open doorway and hid behind the door. The thief-taker galloped past. She peeped out through the crack in the door, making sure no one else was in pursuit.

  Her breath came hard and fast and her heart hammered against her ribs. She flopped back against the wall, her fist pressed into her side, and fought to breathe.

  ‘Hello, my dear.’ A voice spoke out of the shadows.

  Rachel whipped round. ‘Who is it?’ she whispered.

  ‘Only me, dear.’ The woman stepped into the light. A brightly painted bawd with a brown hairpiece pinned to grey tresses, her mouth a scarlet slash, her front teeth brown stumps. ‘What have you been up to, then?’

  ‘A misunderstanding, that’s all.’ Rachel made to leave, and the woman’s hand shot out and gripped her wrist.

  ‘I know your type,’ she said. ‘Want me to hand you over to the thief-taker?’

  Rachel’s heart dropped. The gloves were still on her: if she was handed to the courts they’d surely find her guilty, and that meant transportation, or death. ‘No.’

  ‘You got a place?’

  ‘Yes, I have a keeper,’ she said, affecting superiority.

  ‘Nah you don’t. That’s the only gown you’ve got, my girl.’ The woman sucked her stumps. ‘Come with me.’

  Rachel struggled, but the woman had hold of her wrist, and looked like she wouldn’t think twice about screaming for help. She allowed herself to be hustled upstairs, where she was shown into a large room lined with sofas, draped with silk and reeking of perfume. Each sofa held at least two girls in a state of undress – reclining in erotic poses for the entertainment of two university fellows sniggering beside them.