Chapter Two
Constance, meanwhile, was discovering Mrs. Waltham to be amiable, artless to the point of naivety, but very far from stupid. Married only a few months, she was openly devoted to her husband and still at the stage where she resembled a child playing at houses.
Shamelessly, Constance emphasized the similarity of their situations in order to win her trust. “We were only married in February,” she confided. “So strange to be living so closely with a man…”
“Very strange,” Mrs. Waltham agreed, sharing a secretive yet knowing smile, “but rather wonderful, don’t you think?”
“I have never been so happy in my life,” Constance said honestly.
“Oh, neither have I! Bobby is so wonderful and gentle, and yet he makes me laugh all the time. We have such fun together. That is what my mother does not understand. As if there is some vice in laughter and amusement!”
“Parents cannot help worrying about their children, necessarily or otherwise,” Constance said, although in her case, it was frequently the other way about. “I can tell at once that Mr. Waltham is a good man. He will be serious when he needs to be. There is no vice in him.”
“Absolutely none,” his wife said happily.
“Is Percy Harvey like that, too?”
“I imagine so,” Mrs. Waltham said, but she dropped her eyes as she spoke, either from doubt or lack of interest.
Constance said, “I often find that women—especially married women—understand character better than men. Through intuition, perhaps. Or maybe we just look at different things in a person. Do you like Percy?”
Mrs. Waltham began to make tiny pleats in the fabric of her elegant gown. “Not particularly,” she admitted. “I don’t really know why, but he is not my favorite among Bobby’s friends. He is never rude, but…”
“But what?” Constance pressed, with great interest.
The younger woman gave a self-deprecating little shrug. “Oh, I don’t quite know. It just seems…he tends either to ignore me totally, as if I were of no account in the conversation between him and Bobby and their other friends, or to give me fulsome, extravagant compliments.”
Constance leaned a little closer. “Did these compliments make you uncomfortable?”
Mrs. Waltham gave an apologetic smile. “A little. Foolish, is it not?”
“And was it just words? Or did he look where he ought not to? Stand too close so that he touched where he ought not to?”
The girl’s lips parted. She stared at Constance in wonder, as though she were some kind of mind reader. “Actually, yes, he did, and I felt such a little idiot for making so much of it. Bobby did not seem to notice, so…”
“Stand on his toe by accident,” Constance advised.
“Ask loudly if your dress is torn that he stares so. Never offer him your hand just because you welcome other friends in that way. You have the right to your own space. You do not need to laugh at his inappropriate jokes, either. Either look straight through him, like this…or curl your lip with the contempt he deserves, thus.”
Mrs. Waltham giggled nervously. “Oh my! How did you know about the supposed jests?”
“I have encountered men like him before. There are not so many of them, but they do exist and we are not obliged to put up with them.”
“I never wanted to tell Bobby in case it comes between them, ruins his friendship…”
Or between her and her husband, Constance imagined, though she thought it prudent not to say so. Instead, she asked, “Tell me, then, about the real Percy Harvey. How devoted is he, do you think, to his betrothed?”
Mrs. Waltham’s eyebrows flew up. “Is he betrothed?”
“Unofficially, his father led us to believe. To Lady Phoebe Styles.”
“Really? He dances with her at parties, and he does seem to admire her, but she has said nothing about an engagement between them.”
“You know her, then?”
“Oh yes.”
“Does she like him?”
“She’s never mentioned him to me, and of course I don’t talk about him either because I don’t like to think about him. Is Mr. Harvey truly worried about him?”
“Yes, he is.”
*
“Well?” Constance murmured as they left the Walthams’ pleasant house. “What do you think?”
“That he’s a wild young man with too much money and too little self-control. He could be anywhere, but most probably with a woman of the least respectable variety, or a gaming hell. What do you think?”
“That someone could easily have taken exception to him and thumped him.”
“Not everyone’s favorite, then?”
“No. I think he’s entitled and possibly dangerous to women. Mrs. Waltham, who’s a friend of Lady Phoebe’s, knows nothing about their engagement, and she is not acquainted with this Adelaide Jenkins.”
“Neither is Waltham, though he at least knows the name. He seems to think Percy might have some ambitions where Lady Phoebe is concerned but has never heard of an engagement either. I don’t think Percy is discreet by nature.
He seems to bandy ladies’ names about in a way that might be considered ungentlemanly. ”
Constance frowned. “Do you think Harvey senior lied to us?”
“No, but I suspect he doesn’t know all the facts.”
“I would like to speak to Lady Phoebe,” Constance said. “But I think we might run out of luck calling upon her.”
“Is her father a visitor at the establishment?”
The “establishment” he referred to was, of course, the brothel located only a few streets away from where they stood, a business owned by Constance and dear to her heart for many reasons.
It had not been easy for Solomon to come to terms with her involvement there, and who could blame him?
But by emphasizing the charitable aspects of the business, he had to some degree rehabilitated it, and Constance, too.
However, she was not so foolish as to imagine she would be a welcome caller on any respectable lady, let alone an unmarried one.
She said wryly, “I got away with calling at the Walthams’ through her naivety. I doubt Lady Dashworth will be so ignorant. But no, the earl has never frequented my establishment.”
“Then we could risk it. At worst, she will not be at home, and her husband may give me a wide berth in the future.”
Constance blinked. “You know the earl?”
“There was a housing construction project in Whitechapel. I think Lord Trench roped him in.”
“Then perhaps you should go alone.”
“If you are with me,” Solomon said, “there is more chance of speaking to Phoebe.”
“Or no chance whatsoever,” Constance pointed out. “However, let us be bold, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.”
Solomon smiled in the way that melted her bones, then opened the carriage door. She almost hesitated, for the movement of the carriage seemed to upset her stomach these days. However, she stepped up without a murmur.
During the short journey to the earl’s town house in Berkeley Square, Constance reflected on the difference a mere few weeks had made to her confidence.
Not so long ago, she would never have considered inflicting herself upon a noble lady’s household, certainly not openly, under her own name.
Too many people knew that Solomon Grey had married courtesan Constance Silver.
They had never hidden it, after all. Now, here she was accompanying Solomon to call upon a countess and her unmarried daughter, aware that she might be rejected at the front door but willing to take the risk.
This new confidence had been growing, she knew, since the successful party she had been so reluctant to hold at their home a little less than three months ago.
Everyone they had invited had come, including wives and husbands from the highest echelons of Society, as well as from the more bohemian set.
From this revelation, she had reached a sort of comfortable acceptance.
There were some places she would never be welcome, some people who would always cut her.
But Solomon had taken all of her and cast his own fine mesh shield over her notorious past. She’d stopped worrying that she pulled him down, because he did not.
He pulled her up where he could and wasted no time on where he could not.
And so she stood at his side as he raised the earl’s knocker in Berkeley Square and presented their card, asking for Lord Dashworth.
“I’m afraid his lordship is not at home,” the butler said. “And her ladyship is about to go—”
“Who is it, Grassley?” a female voice demanded from some distance behind the door.
“One moment,” the butler murmured, inclining his head. He turned, leaving the door open, and walked up the entrance hall to present the card to a formidable-looking lady with a coat over her arm.
Apparently she was not one to stand upon her own dignity, for she sailed forward to the door herself. “Do come in, Mrs. Grey, Mr. Grey. I’m afraid I can only spare you ten minutes, for I am expected elsewhere, but we can always make alternative arrangements. The blue room is always comfortable…”
She led them into a tastefully decorated room with blue silk wallpaper and a bright Turkish carpet of matching shades. A fire beneath an ornate mantlepiece warmed the room against the autumn chill of the day.
“Forgive the intrusion, my lady,” Solomon said. “I had hoped to speak to his lordship, whom I met through the board of the Whitechapel Housing Fund.”
Lady Dashworth threw her coat over the back of a sofa and waved them to chairs near the fire. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”
“It was another matter on which I wanted his perspective, and perhaps you can indeed help with it. I gather you are acquainted with Mr. Percival Harvey?”
“Oh, yes, and with Mr. and Mrs. Richard Harvey, too. Why?”
She was blunt without aggression. Constance rather liked that.
“Mr. Richard Harvey cannot find his son and has asked us to help locate him,” Solomon said.
“How very odd of him. Percy must be five and twenty by now.”
“Nevertheless, he has not been back to his rooms in several days. Might I ask when you last saw him?”
“Tuesday, I think. At Mrs. Vennor’s party. Ah, here is my daughter. She might remember more.”