Chapter 17
“What in God’s name are you doing here?”
Evander caught Mary’s arm two steps inside the entrance hall.
The red-tinted lamplight fell across her face, and she looked up at him with eyes blazing, her riding habit dusty from the road, her hair half-loose from the knot she had twisted it into.
The fury on her face so absolute that for a moment he forgot to be furious himself.
Then he remembered.
“You followed me.” He kept his voice low. Music drifted from somewhere deeper in the house, strings and a woman’s laughter, and the air smelled of perfume and warm wax. “You saddled a horse in the middle of the night and followed my carriage across London to a place you have no business being.”
“And what business do you have here, Your Grace?” Mary wrenched her arm free. Her voice was controlled, but her color was high, and the accusation landed before the words did. “Is this where you go? Every night, while I am upstairs with Tommy and the nursemaid, you come here? To this?”
She gestured down the hallway behind them.
Through an arched doorway, Evander could see the edge of the main salon, warm light spilling across polished floors, the shapes of women in gauze and silk moving through the room. A man’s laugh echoed from somewhere above.
“You think I come here frequently?” He said it flatly.
“What else am I supposed to conclude? You will not touch your wife. You will not come to my bed. You leave every night and return at hours I can only guess at, and now I find you walking into a pleasure house past Hampstead as though it were your second home.” Mary’s chin lifted. “Tell me I am wrong.”
“You are wrong.”
“Then explain yourself.”
Evander looked at the woman standing before him in the lamplight of a brothel’s entrance hall, demanding answers with the same ferocity she had brought to his parlor in a wedding dress five weeks ago, and something in him buckled.
“I came here to look for Richard.” He kept his voice low enough that only she could hear.
“Whenever I can, I leave the house at night to chase leads. His debts, his contacts, the places he went before he disappeared. My brother lived a life I knew nothing about, Duchess. Boxing rings, gambling dens, establishments like this one. I have been pulling at every thread trying to find him.”
Mary stared at him. The fury did not vanish, but it shifted, making room for doubt.
“The cut on your arm,” she said, studying him closely.
“A bookkeeper at an underground boxing ring in Southwark. I went to ask about Richard’s gambling debts, and the man sent three of his associates after me in the alley outside.” Evander rolled his shoulder, where the stitches still pulled. “One of them had a knife.”
Mary’s face changed. The doubt deepened into something harder to read. “You have been doing this all alone?”
“I didn’t want you involved. This is not your burden.”
“Charlotte is my sister. Finding her is very much my burden.” Mary looked past him at the house, the red-tinged windows, the figures moving behind them. “What is this place to the investigation?”
“The bookkeeper gave me this address. Richard was a regular here. I came tonight to speak to the woman who runs it.” Evander took her elbow, gently this time. “Now that you know, I’m taking you home.”
“No.”
“Mary.”
“We have ridden all the way to Hampstead. I am not going to sit in a carriage while you gather information about my sister’s disappearance.”
“I am not bringing the Duchess of Blackholm into a pleasure house,” he hissed.
“The Duchess of Blackholm is already inside one.” Mary squared her shoulders. “And she intends to stay.”
He stared at her in the entrance hall while the music played, and the laughter drifted, and the red lamplight made everything look like a painting from a world Mary had never set foot in. Evander searched her face for any sign of retreat.
And found none.
The same stubbornness that had driven her into his parlor in a wedding dress, the same refusal to be managed or dismissed or sent away.
“Stay close to me,” he said. “Do not speak to anyone. Do not wander off. And if I tell you to leave, you leave. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Evander exhaled. “Then come.”
The house unfolded around them like a fever dream dressed in velvet.
Evander guided Mary through the main corridor, his hand at the small of her back.
The walls were papered in deep crimson, the gas lamps turned low, casting everything in shades of amber and shadow.
Doors stood open on either side, and through them, the private world of Madame Fontaine’s revealed itself in glimpses.
In the first room, three women danced to the slow pull of a violin, their gowns sheer enough that the candlelight rendered them translucent.
They moved with practiced grace, their bodies arching and swaying in rhythms that had nothing to do with the music and everything to do with the men watching from the settees.
Mary’s step faltered. Evander’s hand pressed firmer against her back, steadying her. “I’m here,” was all he said.
With that, she kept walking.
The second room was a salon. Couples occupied chaises and divans, some talking, some sharing glasses of wine.
A woman sat in a man’s lap with her fingers threaded through his hair, her lips at his ear.
In the corner, a couple kissed against the wall, the woman’s bodice loosened, the man’s hands moving with slow deliberation down her waist. The woman’s soft moan carried into the corridor like a whisper meant for no one and everyone.
Heat crept up the back of Evander’s neck. Mary walked beside him, close enough that her arm pressed against his, and he felt the warmth of her through the fabric of his coat.
Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes moved from doorway to doorway, taking it in, refusing to look away.
The corridor turned. The music faded. The doors here were half-closed, the light dimmer, and the sounds that drifted from behind them were softer, more private. The rustle of fabric. Low voices speaking words that were not meant to carry.
Mary’s fingers found his sleeve. She did not grip it, exactly. She rested her hand there, light as paper, and the contact traveled through the wool and into his skin and settled somewhere behind his sternum.
Evander covered her hand with his own without thinking. Her fingers were cold. His were not. The warmth passed between them, and neither pulled away.
They reached the end of the corridor. A door stood closed, heavier than the others, with a brass plate that read Madame in engraved script.
Evander knocked. A voice within called for them to enter.
He released Mary’s hand. She released his sleeve. They looked at each other in the dim hallway, flushed and aware and carrying the accumulated heat of every room they had walked through, and then Evander opened the door.
“I am the Duke of Blackholm,” Evander said. “I require a moment of your time.”
“A duke. In my parlor. On a Tuesday.”
Madame Fontaine studied them from behind her desk with the unhurried appraisal of a jeweler examining two stones she had not yet decided to buy.
She was perhaps fifty, handsome rather than beautiful, with silver-streaked dark hair swept into an arrangement that belonged in a Mayfair drawing room rather than a Hampstead pleasure house.
Her gown was emerald velvet. Her rings were real.
“May I offer you a room?” She gestured languidly toward the corridor. “Or perhaps something more specific? I have an excellent selection this evening.”
“We are here for information,” Evander said. “Nothing more.”
“They always say that.” Madame Fontaine smiled. “Sit, please. Both of you.”
Evander sat. Mary sat beside him, her back straight, her composure reassembled. Whatever the walk-through of the house had done to her, she had packed it away behind the same polished armor she wore to every battle.
“I am looking for my brother,” Evander said. “Lord Richard Brightshaw.”
Madame Fontaine’s expression did not change. She poured three glasses of sherry without asking whether they wanted one. “I know who Lord Richard is. He was a regular guest. Charming boy. Very generous with the staff.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Five months ago. Perhaps six.” She sipped her sherry. “He stopped coming. I assumed he’d found a new distraction.”
“And before he stopped?”
“Your brother’s habits changed, Your Grace. He had been a regular for over a year. Came once or twice a week, sampled the company, spent freely.” She paused. “Then, about six months before he vanished, he began coming every night. But he stopped sampling.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he booked a private room every evening, and the same woman met him there. Not one of my girls. Someone from outside. He paid for the room, she arrived separately, and they stayed until the small hours.” Madame Fontaine folded her hands.
“I do not ask questions about what happens behind closed doors, as long as the doors are paid for.”
“Who was the woman?”
“I never learned her name. My staff described her as young. Dark-haired. Well-dressed but not English.” She tilted her head. “One of my girls heard her speaking to Lord Richard through the door and said the accent was Italian.”
Evander felt Mary stiffen beside him.
Italian. Not Mary’s sister.
“And the last time Richard was here?”
“He came alone. Stayed for perhaps an hour. Left a note with my front desk and asked it to be given to the woman when she next arrived.” Madame Fontaine folded her hands.
“The woman came two days later. My girl gave her the note as instructed. She read it, put it in her pocket, and left without a word. She never returned.”
“You don’t know what the note contained.”
“I am discreet, Your Grace. My girls do not read the correspondence that passes through this house. It is the foundation of my business.”
Mary spoke. “Have you ever seen a young Englishwoman here? Fair-haired. Blue eyes. Twenty-five years old. She would have been with Lord Richard.”
Madame Fontaine turned her gaze on Mary. “You are looking for someone specific.”
“My sister.”