Chapter 1 #3
It was a fair exchange, was it not? For it was not just the choice between survival and death that she must make, but the choice between survival and a slow and painful death through starvation.
Never, even during this day of blackest despair, had she considered suicide as an escape from her predicament.
It was no choice, then, that she had to make.
She had to feed herself in the only way that was left to her.
There was no other employment to be had.
She had no experience and no references.
Miss Fleming at the employment agency had told her that on numerous occasions.
One did not need either in order to become a whore, only a reasonably young and well-formed woman’s body. And a strong stomach.
She was a whore. She had sold her body once and would continue to do so over and over again until there were no more buyers. She must accustom herself to both the thought and the deed.
And indeed she must count herself happy if she was allowed to live out her life as a whore.
There was always the chance of something even worse and more terrifying if she were found.
She had changed her name, and her earlier and constant terror had paled in comparison with the very real fear of a life lived in totally unfamiliar surroundings and on the brink of starvation.
But she must not become complacent. There was always the chance of being found, especially if she must stand outside the Drury Lane Theater every night and be seen by all the fashionable people of London.
What if Matthew had come to London? And Cousin Caroline and Amelia had come there even before she came.
When Sally knocked on her door later in the evening and called her name through the lock, Fleur stared at the ceiling and made no reply.
ADAM KENT, DUKE OF RIDGEWAY, leaned one elbow on the marble mantel in the study of his town house on Hanover Square and tapped his teeth with one knuckle.
“Well?” His dark eyes narrowed on his secretary, who had just entered both the house and the room.
The man shook his head. “No luck, I’m afraid, your grace,” he said. “It is too little to go on, to know just a girl’s first name.”
“But it is an unusual name, Houghton,” the duke said. “You knocked on every door?”
“Along three streets and around three courts,” Peter Houghton said, making an effort to hide his exasperation. “Perhaps she gave you a false name, anyway, your grace.”
“Perhaps,” the duke agreed. He frowned in thought.
Would she be outside the theater again that night?
That employment agency—did she ever go there looking for work?
And would she look for other work now that she had chosen and entered a new profession?
Perhaps she did not live in that part of London at all.
And perhaps she had given a false name. She had not answered his question immediately.
“Life will be less arduous for you during the next few days,” he said with sudden decision.
“You are going to hire a new servant for me. In any capacity you think suitable, Houghton. Perhaps as a governess. Yes, I think as a governess if you find her capable of filling the post. I have the feeling she might be suitable. There is an agency close to the streets you were combing today.”
“As a governess?” The secretary frowned at him.
“For my daughter,” the duke said. “She is five years old. It is time she had more than a nurse despite her grace’s reluctance to have her begin her schooling.”
Peter Houghton coughed. “Pardon me, your grace,” he said, “but I understood that the girl is a whore. Should she be allowed within ten miles of Lady Pamela?”
The duke did not reply, and the secretary, who understood the look on his employer’s face very well, was reminded that he was merely a lowly employee in the service of one of the richest noblemen of the realm.
“You will sit at the agency for the next few days,” the duke said, “until I tell you you need no longer do so. In the meanwhile, I shall become a regular theatergoer.”
Houghton bowed and the duke pushed himself abruptly away from the mantel and left the room without another word. He took the stairs to his private apartments two at a time.
“Every whore was a virgin once.” The poet William Blake had written that somewhere, or words to that effect.
There was no reason to feel any special guilt over being the deflowerer.
Someone had to do it once the girl had chosen her course.
If he had been her second customer instead of the first, he would not have known the difference and would have forgotten about her by that morning.
She had had no skill, no allure, nothing that would make him wish to find her again.
He had not realized that a woman would bleed so much. And he had seen and felt her pain as he tore through her virginity.
If he had known, he could have done it differently.
He could have readied her, gentled her, entered her slowly and carefully, nudging through the painful barrier.
As it was, he had been angry with both her and himself.
He had wanted to degrade them both, he supposed, standing over her, imposing his mastery on her.
But then, he owed her no consideration. She had been quite freely selling, he buying. She had been paid three times what she had asked. He had been left quite dissatisfied beyond the momentary relief that had come with the release of his seed. He had no reason to feel guilt.
Yet all night and all day he had been unable to shake his mind free of the girl—her thin body, her pale complexion, her dark-circled eyes and cracked lips, her calm courage.
He had been unable to rid himself of the knowledge that poverty and desperation had driven her to the life of the commonest of street prostitutes.
He could not help feeling responsible. He could not forget the calm acceptance, the blood.
He wondered if he would ever find her again. And he wondered for how long he would keep trying, the Duke of Ridgeway in search of a street whore with large calm eyes and refined manners and voice.
Fleur. Just Fleur, she had said.