“Well, well!” He made a show of surveying the assembled faces, letting his eyes travel the length of their bodies, every inch the lustful gent looking for his evening’s pleasure. “A delightful mélange. You obviously have an eye for talent, Madame!”
She dropped her head in exaggeratedly humble acknowledgment, her obsidian eyes remaining fixed on his. “I have indeedbeen blessed. My little birds are honored that Your Grace admires their plumage. They come from the finest of nests, you know.”
“How wonderful to hear you say so, Madame,” he said, matching her tone, and began to walk slowly back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. “It is the fresh ones I am after, you know. Do you have any... newly out of the nest, you might say? I have a penchant for... fledglings.”
The Madame clapped her hands and smiled a knowing smile. “Quelle chance! We have such a bird indeed, Your Grace.” She turned her head abruptly to the side and whispered into the ear of the nearest girl, who quickly left the room with a palpable air of relief.
“I am indebted to you.” He settled back down onto the divan. “And how long have you been in this line of work, Madame?”
“It is hardly work, Your Grace!” And her accent suddenly dropped away, stripping her voice bare. “I quite enjoy it.” He looked quickly in her direction and saw a snarl of sheer depravity stretching her lip, violently wrinkling her skin, so that for a second the mask was gone and he knew he was seeing Maggie Flanagan in her true form, sans artifice. This was the monster who might have ruined his ward.
The door opened again, and a young girl was led reluctantly in. So young. So skinny. And so scared. She could barely keep her head up, it kept drooping toward her chest as if she wanted to curl into herself and away from reality. He schooled his face to display a correct amount of interest.
“Does she please you, Your Grace?” Again, Maggie’s voice was minus accent, and again it filled him with rage. He could barely speak his part, so great was his disgust for the entire proceedings. But he was here to help. To right a wrong.
“Yes. Yes, she most definitely does.”
Once in the room they’d been allotted for their supposed assignation (garish orange and purple flowers on the bedspread, plush velvet pillows masking the hard skeleton of the well-worn bed frame), he sat the poor thing down and stood in front of her. The young girl’s head stayed down, even as she began automatically to unfasten her corset with shaking fingers.
“Don’t,” he said, and she raised her head disbelievingly, huge eyes taking in his scars and falling again immediately.Damn it.His face, agitating when he meant to calm. Once again.
“Please keep your clothing on. I don’t wish to dally with you,” he said as gently as possible. She started to shake in earnest.
“But Madame will—” and she broke off, a sob choking her throat.
“What will the Madame do?” he said, trying to keep the iron edge out of his voice.
“She said she’d—I have to—ah, it don’t matter! I’m lost, lost!” Tears wet the wretched girl’s face, her hands twisted over and over in her lap.
“What’s your name?”
“Daisy, Your Grace.” She choked out the words.
“Daisy,” he repeated soothingly. “I promise you, the Madame will never hurt you again. I am here. Where are you from, Daisy? How did you get—here?” He gestured around the room, taking in the magenta fleur-de-lis–patterned flocking, the stained floor, the tarnished cage of the brass bed.
“My parents died of a fever, Your Lordship. I didn’t have nowhere to go. I heard as there was work in London and I spent every last farthing to get here. I stayed at Miss Flanagan’s boarding house, saw an advertisement for it posted at Hyde Park. She said I didn’t have to pay her upfront-like, but could pay as soon as I found work. Only I couldn’t find no honest work, could I?”
He saw it all so clearly, the same plan that had almost snared Ana, stretching out in all directions like the web of a malicious spider. The poor girls arriving from the countryside and immediately beat down by the hard truth of the city. Then a glimmer of hope, the promise of lodging and safety—and the sticky strands of the web catching them, surrounding them, bringing them here to this horrid place, to be used until they’d lost their usefulness.
“That’s how I ended up here,” she continued. “Oh but please don’t tell Madame I told you! She beats them that don’t please her. I can’t— I can’t bear it! I held out long as I could. You were to be my first. I don’t know what to do!”
“Daisy, I’m here to help you. I know you have no reason to trust me, but you must believe that this city holds people who care, who want to help you. I am one, and there are others.”
“You want to help me? But how?”
The idea, borne of the revulsion and rage he had experienced downstairs in Maggie Flanagan’s tarted-up salon was now a full-fledged plan. “Daisy, are there other young girls here with the same story as yours?”
“Several, Your Lordship, but some ’as gotten more used to it, I suppose.”
“What about the girl with the black eye?”
“That’s Susan, m’lord. She’s a particular friend of mine, we arrived almost the same time. She has no family, same as me.”
“Would you trust me enough to come with me this very evening? I would convey you to the residence of a friend of mine, theDuchess of Harland. She runs a home where girls like you can get back on their feet. She will train you for a new job, give you lessons in defending yourself.”
Daisy’s lower lip quivered. “Madame won’t let me walk out of here.”
“She will if I offer her a princely sum of money for your exclusive use.”