Banquet of Lies Page 20

  “Good girl.” Peterson didn’t look at her, and his voice was still pitched for her ears only. “I know a spiteful git when I see one. You’ll be having the last laugh, come the end of this.”

  He was trying to calm her, but she wanted to give a harsh, bitter laugh, because he couldn’t guarantee how this would end. But if she did anything, said anything, it would end in her crying—and she would not allow that.

  They stopped by the door, and Gigi saw there were three women inside. One had on a deep purple dress with a low neckline, made even more revealing because the shoulder had been ripped from its seams and the slick fabric gaped open, revealing most of the woman’s voluptuous breast.

  Her light brown hair had fallen from its dressing and there was a smudge on her cheek.

  The two other women were in far drabber clothing, muted browns and grays, but worn with an eye to revealing as much flesh as possible. One had taken a pair of scissors to bodice and hem, without bothering to neaten the raw edge, and long threads floated like a haphazard fringe.

  “Well, hello there, love.” The one in purple lifted an eyebrow and jutted out a hip as Peterson unlocked the door. “Come to see us again? And you brought us a friend.”

  The other two laughed, a little too long and loud.

  “Come now, let us out, there’s a love. We could make it worth your while.” Purple Dress clicked her tongue at him in a way so unconscious, Gigi was sure it was the way she hailed her customers on the street.

  She hadn’t wanted the bars around her, but now she was also nervous about whom she would be locked up with.

  She hesitated before she stepped inside.

  “We don’t bite. Well, we do, but only people we don’t like, ain’t that right, girls?” Purple Dress chuckled, and Gigi gripped a bar on the door, resisting the pressure of Peterson’s hand between her shoulder blades, propelling her in.

  Eventually, she let go and stumbled forward a step.

  The shove Peterson had given her felt like a betrayal, and she kept her face averted from him, taking in the reality of her cell.

  She heard the solid thunk of the lock engaging, and then Peterson walked away. When he passed the men’s cell the shouts and hoots rose like a wave on the beach, and she could see a few arms shoved through the bars as if to grab him. He ignored them and they subsided as he stepped back into the station’s front section, closing the door behind him.

  “Soooo.” One of the women in brown began to circle her. “What we got here? A lady? What did ya do, then? Show some ankle or summat?” She sniggered.

  Gigi ignored her, walked to the long bench bolted to the back wall, and sat down. She wondered how they’d been able to peg her as a lady just by looking at her. She was still in her cook’s apron and hat.

  “I know all the shakes round these parts, and she ain’t one. ’Less you’re horning in on our patch while we’re in ’ere?” The second woman in brown stepped closer, and there was a feral, aggressive quality to her.

  “Mebbe she’s what the fancy call a soiled dove,” the first woman in brown said. “You fall a little, hmm? Get caught with the backside of your skirts a bit green?”

  It was so like the accusation Edgars had made, Gigi raised her head and stared the woman down. “How do you know I’m a lady?”

  “Spend me time looking for a likely mark, don’t I? Bit o’ pocket picking saves me ’aving to troll the streets looking for a gentleman friend.” The woman snorted. “You got lady written all over you.”

  “Now then. Be friendly.” Purple Dress sat down next to her, and Gigi could smell pungent, cheap lavender water mixed with the musky scent of sweat. She saw with a jolt that the smudge on the woman’s cheek wasn’t dirt, but a bruise. “We might as well get on. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the near future.” She gave a cheeky wink.

  Gigi looked at her, unsure whether she was being serious or not. But the bruise changed things, somehow. Made her far less frightening. And despite the fact that someone had obviously attacked her, ripped her clothes and hit her across the face, she wasn’t in the least cowed or broken.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. My name is Gigi.” She somehow found a genuine smile, and after a beat, Purple Dress smiled back.

  “Gigi.” Both Purple Dress’s eyebrows rose this time as she repeated the name, mimicking her French accent.

  An accent Gigi realized had become an unconscious habit. One she’d have to force herself to break later.

  “Now, that’s a name I wouldn’t mind using from time to time. Me real name’s Gertrude, although me clients mostly know me as Delilah.” She gave a throaty chuckle. “But Gigi, now there’s a name that has a little something extra.”

  Gigi stared at her and then laughed. “You are most welcome to use it whenever you like.”

  “Ooh la la.” Gertrude grinned. “You can teach me, Violet and Bess here a few Frenchie sayings, mebbe. Some o’ the soldiers wot are looking for companionship, well, a bit of Fran-says might just bring back good memories of those foreign ports while they were off fighting Old Boney.”

  “All well and good, Gertie, but what’s she in for?” Violet spoke up, a little petulantly. “I still say she don’t look like a shake.”

  “Wot you up to then? Bit of a con?” Bess rubbed her shoulder as she spoke, and Gigi noticed a bruise where her neck met her collarbone. Dark, ugly purple marks in the shape of a man’s fingers.

  Gigi wondered why these women were in jail, when they were the ones who had clearly been abused.

  Bess noticed her looking and dropped her hand as if the bruise had burned her. “Never seen the mark o’ a man’s hands on a woman before?”

  She shook her head.

  Bess sneered. “Lucky you, then.”

  She couldn’t reply to that. Her father was dead and she didn’t feel lucky at all, yet in her life as Giselle Barrington, she was far, far luckier than Babs, Mavis and Iris. And a hundred times luckier than these three women in the cell.

  “Who did that to you?”

  “Mr. Gilbert.” Bess stared back when she lifted her gaze in disbelief. “Just because he treated you better, what with your fancy clothes, don’t mean he can’t get nasty. I’d like to know why he did nick ya. What’d you do?”

  She didn’t want to talk about it. It was too complicated. Too risky.

  “Come on, won’t you trust us wit’ the truth, darlin’?” Gertrude fiddled with her ripped sleeve. “We can’t work out where you fit.”

  Gigi rested her elbows on her knees and lowered her head into her hands. “You aren’t the first person to say that to me today.” She rubbed her face. “It’s what got me into trouble in the first place.”

  “They locked you up for not fitting in?” Violet scoffed.

  Gigi shrugged. “I pretended to be a cook for a while.”

  “Slumming it, eh? Fine lady like you, must ’ave been right hard.” Gertrude cocked her head to one side.

  Gigi shook her head. It hadn’t felt hard at all. Perhaps if she hadn’t needed to search for Dervish and hide from the shadow man, behavior that had brought her to Edgars’ attention, she’d have gotten away with it.

  “Wot? Why you shaking your ’ead?”

  Gigi leaned back against the cold exposed brick of the wall and crossed her arms over her stomach. “I didn’t find it hard. I enjoyed it. Except for the bit where it put me at the mercy of a man who . . . didn’t like me.”

  “Found that out the hard way, did ya?” Violet slid next to Gertrude on the bench. “Got no rights in service. They c’n starve ya, beat ya, tup ya, then throw you out.”

  Gigi didn’t ask her if that was what had happened to her; she could hear it in the bitter edge of the words.

  “I didn’t even think about it. I’ve never been under anyone’s control like that before, and I couldn’t conceive of it.”

  “Must be nice in fancyland.” Violet tugged at the neckline of her bodice.

  “Why’d you do it, then? Put yourself under someone
’s thumb?” Bess sat as well, and Gigi shifted down a bit so they could all fit on the bench.

  “I needed to hide from someone.” She shivered as the cold of the wall seeped into her back, and leaned away from it.

  Bess gave her a nod. “You do become invisible in service.”

  “Not invisible enough.” She snorted. “Or too invisible. I’m not sure which. That a man can point a finger, with absolutely no proof, and be taken seriously . . .” She gripped her hands together. “I’m going to do something about it when I’m out of here.”

  “If you want the blighter dead, I’ve got connections.” Violet was looking at her with flat eyes. Slowly, she drew a finger across her throat.

  Gigi gaped at her. “Er. Thank you. I was thinking more of hiring a lawyer for women in service who are arrested.”

  Gertrude grimaced.

  “You don’t think that will help?” Gigi asked.

  “What’ll a lawyer do? Help the nobs and the law, more like. Not any woman who gets fingered.”

  Gigi frowned. “I’ll pay them to help the women.”

  Gertrude patted her knee. “You really are away with the fairies, ain’t ya? No lawyer’s ever going to help a poor woman against a nob or a magistrate, no matter what they done to her, no matter what you pay ’em.”

  Gigi forced her rising frustration down. “I’ll make sure they do.”

  Violet sent her a pitying look. “Good luck with that, love.”

  She chose to take it seriously. “Thank you.”

  “So, what’s your fancy moniker, when you ain’t pretending to be a cook?” Bess was back to rubbing her shoulder again.

  Gigi knew she shouldn’t say, but somehow this felt like the end. The end of her hiding. The end of the line.

  “Miss Giselle Barrington of Goldfern House on Chapel Street. Well,” she hunched her shoulders. “I’ll live there again after I’ve managed to dodge the assassin who’s after me and get out of jail.”

  “You lead an interesting life, for a lady of quality,” Gertrude said. Then she started laughing. A delighted, full-throated shout of a laugh, and after a beat, Bess and Violet joined in.

  A moment later, Gigi did, too.

  30

  Gigi lifted her head when the shouting started up.

  They’d been given a spare meal at midday of bread and cheese, and a jug of water, and as the day drew on, even the men calmed down.

  She was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall.

  Bess was lying on the bench with Gertrude at her feet, and Violet was propped against the wall opposite Gigi.

  There’d been the occasional sound of voices from the front since she’d been locked in, but this was a sustained argument, and something in the cadence made her think of Georges.

  The voices got louder still, and, feeling eyes on her, she shifted her gaze from the door at the end of the passage to find Violet watching her.

  “Friend of yours?”

  “It might be.”

  There was a thump on the door, and Gigi wondered with a sinking sense of doom if a butcher’s knife was now embedded in the thick wood.

  Georges would not have come unarmed. And he was very good at throwing knives.

  He’d once pinned his sous-chef’s hat to the door—after the man had burned his roux for the third day in a row—while the sous-chef was wearing it. She still remembered the silence that had descended on the kitchen at the sight of Georges’s thick chopping knife holding up Rene’s white hat dead center as Rene crumpled, shaking, to his knees.

  The door rattled as if someone was trying to pull it from its hinges. Bess slowly sat up, Gertrude straightened, and all four of them stared down the narrow passageway to watch the entrance.

  The door slammed open so suddenly, Gigi flinched.

  Georges was struggling against Peterson and Smith, with Gilbert behind him, pushing them all forward.

  There was indeed a knife buried in the door.

  Gigi rested her forehead against her knees for a moment in exasperation before she pulled herself to her feet.

  “Gigi!” Georges’s roar cut through even the shouting that had started up in the men’s cell.

  “Georges, du calme!” Her shout snapped the air like a whipcrack and the men stopped fighting and turned her way. Even the male prisoners went quiet.

  In the silence Georges coughed, and Gigi was alarmed at the color of his face, the way he was struggling for breath. He had worked himself up into an apoplexy. For the moment, he could do nothing but suck air into his lungs.

  “This . . . person feels rather strongly you should not be here, Madame Levéel.” Gilbert’s hair was standing wild around his face, and he had a dark bruise on his jaw. Gigi looked from it to the bruise on Bess’s shoulder and felt the first glimmer of satisfaction.

  “Monsieur Bisset is very fond of me. He is an old family friend and can easily confirm the jewelry in my trunk belonged to my mother. No doubt he was a little forceful in conveying this information, but he is like a second father to me and is clearly distressed that I have been imprisoned on nothing more than the word of a disaffected employee.”

  There was another silence, and Gigi realized she had spoken the King’s English in that little speech. There had been no trace of a French accent at all.

  For the first time, Gilbert looked uncertain of himself. “Who are you?”

  Gigi crossed her arms under her breasts and leaned against the bars. “Will telling you get me out any quicker? Or will you still insist on seeing Lord Aldridge first?”

  Georges jerked his arm from Smith’s meaty paw. “Bah. They are truly gendarmes! They are not interested in truth, in justice. They know Aldridge hasn’t known you more than a week, yet he must release you. Not the man who has known you since you were a child.”

  Gilbert went quite white. It was the remark about the gendarmes, Gigi was sure. There could surely be no greater insult than to be compared with the police of France.

  “Throw him out of the station.” He turned to his men and Georges. “You are lucky I don’t charge you with assault and disturbance of the peace.”

  “I do not go. If you hold Gigi here, I will stay with her. Georges Bisset does not abandon his friends.” Georges planted his feet in a way that made it clear it would take considerable force to shift him.

  “Unless you arrest him, we can’t throw him in the men’s cells.” Peterson took a firmer hold on Georges’s arm. He leaned closer to Gilbert, and Gigi was sure she caught the Duke of Wittaker’s name in the hurried whisper.

  “He wants to be with his friend, put him with his friend, then. No one can fault us for that. We’re just following the man’s request.” Gilbert smiled a small, tight smile.

  Peterson looked uncertain, but Georges gave a curt nod and moved forward toward her. “Merci. This is exactly what I wish.”

  “Georges. What good will both of us being here do?” Gigi stuck a hand out between the bars and touched the side of his face. “Then we both have to wait for Aldridge.”

  Georges gave a little shake of his head. “Trust me, ma petite. Georges has his ways.” There was a diabolical gleam in his eye.

  She moved back as Peterson opened the door, and Georges stepped inside. He rubbed his hands together gleefully, dominating the cell with his size and personality. “Why don’t we ’ave a story while we wait, eh?” He looked at Gertrude, Violet and Bess and gave a low bow. “Enchanté, mesdames. Did you know our Gigi has stories from all around the world? I have missed your stories, ma petite.”

  She saw Gilbert’s face as he turned away, and hoped Georges did have a plan. Because Gilbert’s dislike of Georges seemed to have climbed into the rarefied air of hate.

  She lowered herself onto the floor again and leaned her head back. “I can tell you the story of the stallu. The shadow man.”

  * * *

  Jonathan had given Durnham’s address to the cab driver, but as the hansom shuddered and swayed through the streets of Mayfair, he regrett
ed the impulse to report in straightaway.

  He wanted to get home.

  He was exhausted, hungry and in need of a bath. Like the old days in the army, when he’d have given anything for a quiet, warm bedroom, hot water and a decent meal.

  He closed his eyes, unable to summon the energy to call to the driver and change the destination to Aldridge House.

  When the coach rocked to a stop, he dragged himself out onto the street and, from the look on the driver’s face, paid him far too much.

  He didn’t ask for change. He couldn’t remember how much he’d handed over.

  He knocked and then leaned against the wall until the door was opened.

  Durnham’s butler took a moment to recognize him. Given how sharp-eyed he seemed to be, and how recently Jonathan had been there, Jonathan decided he must truly look as bad as he felt.

  He was escorted in and shown to the library, and stood, swaying a little, while he worked out who was in the room.

  It was Lady Durnham and Lady Holliday again, sitting in the same place as before, sipping tea.

  Next to Lady Durnham on the sofa was a pile of what looked like ledgers and books of account, and when she saw him, she closed those that were open and set them all on the floor beside her chair.

  “Lord Aldridge. You look done in. Come and have some tea and cake.” Lady Durnham’s face lifted to his in concern.

  Jonathan was afraid if he sat down, he wouldn’t be able to get up again, but he risked it anyway. The tray had cake, sandwiches and tiny petits fours that looked like they would be worth disgracing himself for.

  “You haven’t slept.” Lady Holliday leaned forward and poured him some tea.

  “No, I haven’t. Is Durnham around?” He relished the sweet, strong tea and realized he’d finished his cup in three gulps. Lady Holliday poured him some more.

  “My husband’s out.” Lady Durnham handed him a plate piled with food. “But there is something my watchers came to tell me this morning that may be of interest to you.”

  “The ones keeping an eye on Dervish’s place?”