The Rules of Gentility Read online

  “That’s most kind, Mrs. Bright. But tell me, what was this young lady’s former profession? Was she by any chance a seamstress?”

  “I believe she may have been.” She gives him a wicked look that would have cost me at least half a crown’s worth of sixpences. “Are you having some trouble with your buttons, sir?”

  Inigo laughs and kisses her hand.

  Mrs. Bright nods to a woman at the far side of the room, who crosses to us and curtsies. I see a difference now. If a lady were to be introduced to a gentleman in polite society, he would of course stand and bow to her, but Inigo remains seated. As she curtsies, she leans forward so Inigo can look down her bosom, and I am afraid to say he does so.

  “Ah, yes. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss…?”

  “My name is Kate, sir.”

  She is about my age, with fair hair and an ivory gown which is most elegant but cut so low as to make mine look almost decent. She casts a curious glance at us three ladies, then lowers her eyes in a demure manner.

  “Raise your gown, my dear, so the gentleman can see your charms,” Mrs. Bright murmurs.

  “No, that won’t be necessary, thank you!” Julia says.

  “I assure you, miss, it’s no trouble,” Kate replies, one hand already hoisting her skirts. She looks at Inigo for direction.

  “No need, Miss Kate,” Inigo says.

  “Indeed, maybe you would all care to adjoin to a private room?” Mrs. Bright is once again the elegant hostess. “Some more wine, and other refreshments? We have excellent oysters and lobster.”

  “A capital idea,” Celia says. “I love lobster.”

  “Of course. Ladies, if you will excuse us, Mrs. Bright and I should discuss terms.” Inigo and Mrs. Bright rise and move a few steps away.

  It reminds me of Mr. Totterton’s, when he and Inigo discussed a price for the statue and china. Snippets of conversation drift over to us.

  “Why, sir, it is a fair enough price…but what you do there is no concern of mine…I cannot have any young ladies be tired by the attentions of more than one, so I must…”

  “What on earth does she think we shall do?” Celia says.

  “I assure you, Mrs. Bright, Kate will be as fresh as a daisy after an hour in our company,” Inigo says.

  She taps him on the shoulder with her fan. “Oh, so they all say, but I know what men are, sir, and women too…you forget, there is wear and tear on the bed to be considered also. Why, that bed is of the finest quality, as are all the furnishings in my house, but it is not built for five.”

  “Terrant will kill me and Inigo both if he ever hears of this,” Julia whispers.

  Inigo and Mrs. Bright’s heads are close together, and I see him give her a handful of coins—several dozen guineas, from the look of it.

  Kate, meanwhile, gives us a pleasant smile and sips from a glass of wine. She does not seem at all concerned that it is her person that is bartered.

  After a few minutes more of whispered conversation, Mrs. Bright nods at Kate and summons a footman.

  “This way, if you please, ladies, and sir,” Kate says, and leads us out of the drawing room and up the stairs. She lifts her skirt, revealing most of her calves and ankles as we ascend the stairs, and she shows us into an elegant bedchamber.

  As well as the bed, there are a sofa and several chairs, and we sit. Kate saunters to the bed and sits there, her feet swinging.

  The footman enters with a small black boy who carries a folding table, and a cold collation of lobster and oysters is set out, along with more wine. It looks quite delicious, and I wish I had not eaten so much dinner. Celia, however, starts in on the lobster.

  “Well, then, shall we commence?” Kate says. She stands and backs up to Inigo, looking over her shoulder at him.

  He raises his hands as if to unhook her gown.

  “Inigo!” Julia snaps.

  “I beg your pardon.” He looks embarrassed. “Ah, ladies, if you will excuse me…I shall be back shortly.” Muttering something about credit, he leaves the room.

  Julia, Celia and I look at each other.

  “Let us give the gentleman a lovely surprise on his return,” Kate says, and takes off her gown.

  She is stark naked except for her stockings.

  “Oh.” I gulp. “What pretty garters.”

  Mr. Inigo Linsley

  Of all the embarrassing things a gentleman has to do, establishing a line of credit at a nunnery, even one such as Mrs. Bright’s establishment, must be the worst.

  I brought as much cash with me as I could lay my hands on, but it is not enough. I know the refreshments will be priced astronomically high, but hoped that Mrs. Bright would allow a special price for merely talking to one of her girls. She does not believe that for a moment, and neither does she believe the ladies I brought with me will be only observers.

  “Well, sir,” she says finally with a charming, yet steely smile, “you must see the captain.”

  “The captain, madam?”

  “Yes, indeed. He sees to my business arrangements. You will find him upstairs.”

  I have no choice. Hoping only that Miss Blundell will not order more food in my absence, I ask a footman to direct me to the captain who keeps the ship of pleasure afloat.

  The first thing I see upon entering the captain’s office is a coat of those very same regimentals I wore for my brief and dishonorable army career. I stare at the familiar royal blue and buff and brace myself for the usual winks and nudges. The coat hangs over a chair; of its owner there is no sign until a door, cunningly concealed by wallpaper, opens, and a complete stranger enters the room. He is only a few years older than I, a handsome, dark fellow, and possibly he served abroad for the twenty-odd hours of my military experience.

  We bow, and I introduce myself to him. He doesn’t turn a hair upon hearing my name. Possibly a whoremonger learns discretion in these matters. I agree to a ruinous interest rate, offer my diamond stickpin as surety, and pray that Terrant never hears of this particular aspect of the evening’s adventures.

  Miss Wellesley-Clegg

  “…And you see, I twisted this length of fabric together with a length of braid and a paste brooch, and then took the feathers from a bonnet I had…”

  “It’s most handsome,” Kate says.

  But before I can continue the description of my headdress, Inigo returns. He stops and stares at Kate; the extraordinary thing is that after the initial shock when she first undressed, and after a slightly awkward moment when she offered to unhook our gowns, we have got along famously. We hardly notice her nakedness, and, since the room is so warm, I am sure she is more comfortable than we are.

  “Why, sir, we have been waiting for you.” Kate’s voice is now low and throaty. She rises to her knees and reaches for Inigo’s coat buttons. His eyes become somewhat vacant.

  “Inigo!” Julia says in an awful voice, even more stern than the one she used when Inigo almost unhooked Kate’s gown.

  Inigo seems to come back to life again. He backs away from Kate and tosses her gown at her. “Never mind that, my girl. Get dressed. These ladies are from the Association for the Rescue and Succor of those in Extremis.”

  She slips the gown over her head and smirks. “Oh, you mean A.R.S.E.”

  Oh, surely not. Celia, Julia, and I glance at each other in horror.

  “Well, that’s how all the gentlemen refer to it,” Kate says, with an apologetic shrug, straightening her skirts.

  Julia is the first to gain her equilibrium. “It does not spell that—that word.”

  Inigo shrugs. He does not look nearly as ashamed as he should. “Well, ah, not exactly. The Association for the Rescue and Succor of those in Extremis, you see…Those of vulgar taste find it amusing.”

  “It is not at all funny.” I am furious. “You mean, you and Terrant and other gentlemen have known of this all along, and you have made fun of us? It is no wonder we cannot find a sponsor. Why did you not tell us of this before?”

 
Inigo shrugs. “Well, I…I thought you knew. I tried to persuade you to change the name, but…”

  Above our heads a bed creaks with great vigor and a steady sense of rhythm, an unseemly reminder of what goes on in this elegantly-furnished house.

  To distract myself I take one of the bottles of champagne and fiddle with the cork. As Inigo reaches for a glass, a flood of foam rushes over my hands.

  Inigo clears his throat.

  “We could leave you and the gentleman here, miss, if you wish,” Kate says, her bosom carelessly falling out of her gown. “The sheets are hardly used at all this early in the evening.”

  I down a glass of wine rather fast. I wish I could feel more shocked at the suggestion, but I regret to say it has a certain appeal.

  “About the Association, Kate,” I say. “We…”

  From the room next door comes the sound of slaps, female giggles, and a man’s voice. “Oh, I am a most dreadful sinner, my dear. You must punish me severely.”

  Kate giggles. “The Bishop is at it again.”

  “At what? What on earth are they doing?”

  “Peggy is whipping him, miss. You can look through the spyhole if you wish.”

  “Whipping him? Why should she do that? What spyhole?” I am horribly confused. I drink another glass of wine.

  Kate glances at Inigo. “The gentleman will explain it all to you, miss, I am certain.”

  “Oh.” I am alarmed that in only a few moments Kate has ascertained the attraction beween me and Inigo. I hope it is her profession that makes her so perceptive.

  “Inigo,” Julia whispers to him, “I think we should leave immediately. I fear Philomena will be corrupted.”

  A footman enters with more lobster and oysters and another couple of bottles.

  “Oh, you are a wicked boy!” cries the lightskirt from next door and His Grace howls with pain.

  Celia cracks open a lobster claw. “Well, should we not ask her?”

  “Yes, of course.” I pour everyone more champagne. “Kate, we should like to offer you the chance to leave this life of depravity.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you, miss, but you see I’m quite happy here.”

  “But you can’t possibly—why, you have to…” Celia goes quite pink. She devours a large chunk of lobster. “You know…with gentlemen.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind it that much, miss. I usually think of something pleasant while the gentleman does his business, and you learn to get them off fast. If it is someone I fancy, then I enjoy myself, too.” She gives Inigo a sidelong look.

  “And where do you think you’ll be in five years, or even two years?” Julia asks her.

  “Dead, or running my own house, my lady.” Her words are defiant, but she reminds me of a cardplayer placing a bet he cannot possibly win.

  I sit beside her on the bed and take her hand; too late it strikes me that she may see my gesture as something else entirely. “Kate, you are so brave. But I should like to offer you a job where you could make forty pounds a year.”

  Kate laughs. “I make that in a quarter year or less, miss, and that’s mostly on my back, and with that greedy Mrs. Bright taking most of the money.”

  “You would have safety, security, and a respectable profession.”

  “Miss, I had a respectable profession. I made a few shillings a week, working sixteen hours a day in a basement where the walls streamed water. That’s how you ladies get your pretty gowns. And then I was ill, and my job gone. I’m fortunate that Mrs. Bright took me in.”

  What can I say to this? That I am sorry? Even I can see that would be an insult. Or an arrogant claim that our much-mocked Association intends to change the world? Instead I say, “I should like you to train as my maid.”

  There is a silence, or at least silence of a sort as the creaking from upstairs accelerates, and next door, loud groans replace the sound of a switch upon flesh.

  “I don’t think so, miss.” She shakes her head, takes my hand, and gives it a kind squeeze. She, this woman who has nothing, is being kind to me, an heiress who has everything. Her grace and generosity astound me.

  “You would do well to consider it, Kate.” Julia sounds as though she is ordering a servant to sweep the floor.

  We ignore her.

  “Will you please give it some thought?” I pat her hand. “Here is one of my papa’s cards. My name is Philomena Wellesley-Clegg.”

  “One of those Wellesleys? No? Well, thank you kindly, miss. I shall think about it.”

  We open a couple more bottles of champagne, Celia finishes the oysters, and we are all in very good spirits, apart from Inigo, who stands apart from us, frowning.

  Kate meanwhile leaves the room and returns shortly with a bonnet and some sewing things. “I thought, miss—for they always say in the newspaper how you are in the very pink of fashion—that you might like to advise me on this bonnet. Gowns I know, but I don’t have much reason to go outside, so…”

  “Oh, what a sweet bonnet!” I pluck a couple of battered flowers from its brim and reach for my own headdress. “These feathers would look splendid on it.”

  “Maybe we should leave,” Inigo suggests.

  We all ignore him.

  Julia relents and comes to join us, pulling silk flowers from her hair. “Kate, you can add in a small bunch of flowers here, and…”

  Celia has been rather quiet—well, there was quite a lot of lobster for her to deal with—but now she stands and clutches her stomach. “Oh dear, I feel most unwell.”

  She looks quite dreadful, pale and sweaty.

  “Inigo, leave the room,” Julia says.

  Our millinery project is abandoned as we comfort Celia, who is indeed dreadfully unwell—it must have been the lobster—and, heavens, we discover in the worst possible way how much she has consumed.

  “I am afraid she is too ill to travel,” Julia says to me in a whisper. “But she cannot stay here. Oh, Philomena, what shall we do?”

  I glance at Celia, who lies pale and flat on the bed while Kate wipes her face with a damp towel. “Maybe we should try to get her downstairs.”

  After a while we manage to do so, poor Celia limp and moaning as we support her.

  Inigo waits for us there, and looks horrified. “Julia, she must stay at our house. It’s closer. We’ll send word to her family.”

  “Very well, and then you may escort Philomena home.”

  “It’s not proper.” This strikes me as a rather odd thing to say considering our activities tonight and Julia tells him, to my great delight, not to be a ninny.

  We help poor Celia into the carriage, where the motion makes her exceedingly unwell again, and we have to stop three times in the course of the ten-minute drive so she may disgorge more bad lobster. Each time Inigo and the driver keep watch to make sure ruffians do not attack us. And I am dreadfully aware of how much I have drunk in the course of the evening—I am quite silly and find that even though I am sorry for Celia, part of me wants to giggle long and loud at our predicament.

  It is indeed a relief to arrive at the Terrants’ house, where Julia sends for her maid and housekeeper as well as several more footmen.

  And then I am alone in the carriage with a man who has taken me to a house of ill repute, has poured me many glasses of champagne, and is moreover wearing very tight satin breeches.

  “Oops, another sixpence.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s a joke. A very private joke. I shan’t tell you.”

  He nods. This is most unlike Inigo, who usually has something to say, so I decide I must initiate polite conversation.

  “Inigo, why did that woman beat the Bishop?”

  Oh dear, not particularly polite.

  He looks very uncomfortable and clears his throat, something he has done a lot tonight. I do hope he is not catching a cold. “Ah. Some men find it arousing.”

  “Really? Why? Do you?”

  “No.”

  The carriage lurches forward, depositing me
quite neatly onto his lap.

  But of course he is a gentleman; there is nothing to fear.

  Chapter 17

  Mr. Inigo Linsley

  Tonight I am not a gentleman.

  I know there is no excuse for what happens next. We are both foxed, I have spent the day in some discomfort as Philomena caresses nude male statues in front of me, and then I have been treated to an abundance of female flesh as Kate displayed her not unattractive wares.

  In a word, I am primed, and Philomena, although she does not realize it, is too.

  So when she lands on my lap, soft and fragrant and giggling—her person, that is, not my lap which is anything but soft—in the dark intimacy of the hackney, I react as any man would.

  I shall not go into any vulgar details. Suffice it to say that when I taste the fascinating hollow at her collarbone, she hums and purrs like a cat, arching against me. Furthermore, the gown with which Philomena flaunts her charms fastens by only four hooks, and in the five minutes it takes to get to her house her hair is disarranged, and she generally looks as though she has been dragged through a hedge and half-ravished.

  Good God, what am I doing?

  She has not been idle, and my neckcloth is in ruins and my shirt half out of my breeches.

  “Oh! We’re home!” She giggles as I attempt to make her look decent.

  Somehow she has lost a slipper and I fumble, swearing mightily, on the floor of the carriage in the dark.

  “Thank you for a most interesting evening, Mr. Linsley,” she says for the footman’s benefit as I hand her into the house. “I do like your breeches. Oops. Another sixpence.”

  Miss Philomena Wellesley-Clegg

  Oh, I shall die. I feel so dreadfully unwell.

  “Why, miss, Mr. Linsley is a passionate man indeed,” Hen says as she brushes my hair, which is a tangled bush. I am not yet dressed, and I see in the mirror, at the neckline of my shift, a red mark. It is in fact not at my neck, nor even my shoulder, although there is a similar mark there, too, but much lower down, lower even than the pink dress.