Chapter Eight #2
A few minutes passed, then a door opened and into the room came the Madame, gliding in on a cloud of feathers.
She was of an indeterminate age, with a face so covered in paint and powder that it resembled a masquerade ball mask.
She had faded blonde curls tucked into a turban.
Her plum-colored dress was trimmed with undulating marabou feathers; so too were her bodice and sleeves, and a gauzy robe covered the whole eye-opening ensemble.
She stopped in front of him, feathers still gently waving to and fro, and cocked her head to the side.
“Bonsoir, monsieur. Welcome to my humble house of business. How may I be of service?” Her voice was husky and low, her words almost indecipherable beneath a thick French accent.
“Maggie Flanagan?” he said pointedly, rising to his feet. He watched a muscle twitch in her right cheek, just over an artificial beauty mark.
“Ah, that name. From a lifetime ago, n’est-ce pas!” She laughed delicately, musically. The accent remained. “I am she. But you may call me Madame Marguerite. And you are—?”
“I am Deckard, Duke of Warburton.” He said it loudly and forcefully, waiting for the usual fawning recognition, the thinly veiled fear that followed his famous name and infamous scarred visage.
He wagered that not many men gave their real names in her establishment.
But she seemed neither surprised nor excited.
“Well, Your Grace,” she said, smiling slightly and raising her inscrutable face toward him.
“What flavor of entertainment may Marguerite and her lovely birds provide for you this evening?” She raised her right hand, snapped her tinted nails twice, and a panel at the far end of the salon slid open.
Female bodies began to pour through, lining up to the left and right of the Madame, who controlled their placement via subtle eyebrow lifts and quick nods of her chin.
As the room began to fill, he contemplated his options both internal and external.
He had intended to confront Maggie Flanagan, easily extract a promise from her to forget she’d ever heard the name Analise Crewe.
He’d expected (as indicated by her sister’s sordid dwelling and Ana’s rather scant exposition) a hard-bitten harridan riding roughshod over a house of tired women, someone who would cower and beg for his mercy.
He had been misled. The composed woman in front of him, with her implacable mask and steady dark eyes, was something else entirely.
She was brazen and unafraid, but the girls in the room were obviously the opposite.
They ranged in size and shape, but all had a unifying factor: a nervous eye trained on the Madame.
The ones standing closest to her shuddered from her touch as she guided them closer to Dex.
He felt the slow river of fury that always flowed within him start to roil.
But for a quirk of fate, this was where Ana would have landed—paraded in front of strangers, shrinking from the beringed ivory hand of this cold woman, this carefully constructed poseur.
He noted bruises on some of the women, partially concealed by gloves, hems, or garters. One of the youngest-looking lasses had the faint shadow of a black eye and was visibly shaking in her chemise.
Madame Marguerite wasn’t the only one who knew how to wear a mask.
“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 indeed been 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, the Duchess 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.”
He saw hope beginning to replace the abject fearfulness that had been her distinguishing feature before.
“I suppose . . . I suppose if I trusted you and left with you it couldn’t be much worse than what I’m meant to endure here.”
Dex nodded. “I know it’s a lot to ask. I give you my word as a gentleman that no harm will come to you. And my friends and I will come back for Susan, and any of your friends who are being mistreated here, if they wish to leave.”
“W-why are you helping us?” she asked, looking up with bewildered but brightening eyes.
Flashing green eyes and small fists battering his chest. I’ll be no man’s doxy. Miss Crewe’s brave words echoed through his mind. If he’d been even one day later . . . if the avaricious Madame had trapped her here . . .
He swallowed, choking back the wave of revulsion and anger that swamped him. “Because I know an innocent young lady who was once headed toward the very same sad fate.”