A Sister's Secret (36 page)

‘Business first, Betsy,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘pleasuring later.’

Betsy pouted. ‘But it’s Sunday, sir, and you never said not one word about business. You’re not set on business I won’t like, are you?’

‘Betsy, come, come,’ smiled the captain, placing her hand on his arm, ‘I ain’t ever disposed to have you do things you won’t like. Could I be so unkind to so pretty a girl?’

‘But I be mindful of all them quakings you put me in before, and more than once,’ said Betsy. ‘Oh, you’re not going to make me quake today, are you?’

‘God’s life, puss, never. You shall only quake deliciously, from pleasuring. Come, we’ll find a carriage and I’ll tell you what the Lord Chancellor requires of us today. As you say, it’s Sunday, and just as you and I know it, so does he, which is a gracious thing in any Lord Chancellor. Therefore, all will be quite easy and simple.’

‘Oh, Lor’,’ said Betsy, ‘easy and simple sounds like I won’t like it a little bit.’

But she proceeded with him along the Hay Market in tripping, bobbing pertness, her flimsy gown fluttering. Captain Burnside hailed a cabbie and his carriage, and it pleased Betsy that it was a closed vehicle, for such a conveyance permitted a girl to snuggle up to a gentleman. And if her own gentleman was going to instruct her on a matter of business, a cuddle or two would make the business more bearable. He gave the driver his destination, Aldgate South.

Betsy snuggled up as soon as her gentleman seated himself beside her.

‘By all means make yourself comfortable, Betsy,’ he said.

‘I can’t say no to you, sir,’ she murmured, and he looked down into her upturned face. Her lashes fluttered coyly. She was a sweet minx. ‘What be the business about?’

‘It’s what the Lord Chancellor requires of us, puss. By the way, he’s further impressed with you, and I fancy the gibbet is a lot farther from his stern mind than it was. Now, you and I are going to a house in which an Irish gentleman resides.’

‘Yes, sir, that be simple enough,’ said Betsy, ‘and I shan’t mind if you want kissing first.’

‘The moment you understand the business procedure, kissing shall be seriously considered.’ Captain Burnside applied a fond squeeze, and Betsy sighed. ‘I shall want you to go up to the lodging of the Irish gentleman, knock on his door and ask him if he’s acquainted with Mr Henry Bullivant.’

‘Who be Mr Henry Bullivant?’ asked Betsy.

‘Your affectionate gentleman friend.’

‘But he aren’t, sir; I never heard of him.’

‘Heavens, sweet chicken, when you skipped out in your delightful gown this morning, did you leave your clever little mind behind? Simply convey to the Irish gentleman the fact that you’ve come in search of your loving beau, extract from your enchanting bosom this piece of paper which bears his address and show it.’

‘What piece of – oh, sir.’ Betsy almost blushed as Captain Burnside tucked a scrap of paper into the warm valley of her bosom.

‘Now, as you move to show him the address, contrive to trip over his feet and to fall. Contrive further to become – ah, delicately disarranged, shall we say?’

‘Disarranged?’ Betsy’s eyes opened wide. Quaking began.

‘Quite so, Betsy. I did venture to point out it would be easy and simple. You will scream at this happening, and your affectionate gentleman, Mr Henry Bullivant, will appear.’

‘Oh, Lord help me,’ gasped Betsy, ‘I be all a-tremble already, nor don’t I still know this Mr Bullivant.’

‘Come, come, Betsy, that will be me, and everything can then be left to me. There, I’ll allow you to tremble a little now, but not when you’re at the business with the Irish gentleman. I shall expect an excellent performance.’

‘But disarranged? Oh, I can’t, I couldn’t. I’m a good girl.’ Betsy was bargaining.

‘Damn me,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘there’s no can’t or couldn’t. You’ll get me drawn and quartered. We ain’t going to be excused failure, Betsy, nor shilly-shallying. The Lord Chancellor won’t tolerate it.’

‘Oh, lawks,’ breathed Betsy, ‘he’s terrible hard on us. Did he say how much, sir?’

Pink taffeta bobbed as the carriage jolted over cobbles, but the bargaining light in her eyes remained undisturbed.

‘How much?’

‘Guineas, sir,’ murmured Betsy. She went along with the maxim that if a labourer was worthy of his hire, so was a girl.

‘Ah, so you ain’t brought an empty head with you,’ said the captain. Well aware of how the mere sight of a golden guinea could cure her every qualm and quake, he drew one from his pocket. In the shaded light of the cab, it gleamed as brightly as Betsy’s eyes. ‘That, my fluttering partridge, is a single guinea.’

‘And it be a sweet thing in its own right,’ said Betsy.

‘Four more would be even sweeter, I warrant,’ said the captain.

‘Five in all, sir, five?’ Betsy glowed. ‘For asking and showing, tripping and disarranging?’

‘And screaming.’

‘Oh, you be very fair, sir.’ Betsy snuggled closer. ‘But I won’t think about it until I’m doing it, that I won’t, or I’ll give myself terrible frightening turns. I never did know any gentleman more of a pleasure to me, nor more set on making me shiver all over. And when you’ve done with the Irish gentleman, sir?’

‘Then, Betsy, to Vauxhall Gardens, to the love nest of a bowery alcove and refreshments of your choice.’

‘Vauxhall Gardens?’ Betsy sat up and sparkled. ‘With all the lords and ladies?’

‘And with the Lord Chancellor’s permission,’ said Captain Burnside, and the carriage swayed, creaked and jolted over the cobbled streets.

They reached Aldgate and passed through it to a quarter by no means salubrious. Betsy, a country girl, had an inherent distaste for the grime of cities and for people who let poverty render them sluttish. The rundown look of this district came very unappealingly to her discerning eye, making her turn her nose up. The children seen from the carriage appeared to be urchins and ragamuffins. Shabby men sat on doorsteps, doing nothing about littered gutters, and shawled women, neglecting their homes, stood gossiping. Betsy was sure, even with the carriage windows closed, that the streets exuded a smell like boiled cabbage. But there was one street at the end of a cobbled lane that was an improvement on the rest. The doorsteps looked swept, there was only a little refuse in the gutters, and the windows of the houses seemed actually clean. As the cab passed the street, Captain Burnside rapped on the roof and the driver brought his horse to a stop.

‘Oh, Lor’, it’s here we be getting out?’ enquired Betsy nervously.

‘Yes, here, clever puss,’ said the captain. He alighted and gave her a hand down. The dainty delicacy of her new Sunday gown accentuated for Betsy the grimy condition of the surroundings. The captain asked the cabbie to wait, perhaps for twenty or thirty minutes. He would be paid for the waiting time. The cabbie, recognizing a gentleman of potential generosity, declared himself willing and trusting.

‘Come, Betsy,’ said the captain, and walked back with her to the corner of the street. ‘Now, my fine accomplice, it’s the third house on the right. The Irish gentleman is lodged on the first floor. Go up the stairs, turn left on the landing, and his door is immediately opposite you.’ The captain had received this basic information from Jonathan, though the latter’s gift for making people talk had availed him nothing in the face of the tight-mouthed Irishman. ‘Knock with anxious gentility, Betsy, and then proceed as arranged. But don’t come to your scream as if you needed to bring down the Tower of London, for we don’t want the whole city to be roused. I shall be near enough to hear a little ladylike scream.’

‘Lord help us, already I hardly knows if I’m coming or going, sir,’ breathed Betsy, ‘but seeing you said five minutes ago that it’s all for the sake of His Royal Highness, I aren’t going to lay down and die of fright, not considering you’re going to give me ten guineas.’

‘Four, puss.’

‘Oh, you promised five,’ protested Betsy, neatly tricked.

‘Five it is, then. Now, when I arrive to enquire into the reason for your agitation—’

‘My which, sir?’

‘Your ladylike squeak of distress equals agitation, puss.
I shall need to address you in front of the Irish blackguard. It won’t do to call you Betsy. Who knows how quickly your name might reach ears it shouldn’t reach? Like Mr Erzburger’s ears.’

‘Oh, save us, not his, sir,’ begged Betsy. ‘Or Mr Pringle’s.’

‘I shall address you as Polly.’

‘You be a thinking gentleman, sir, and understanding. I’ll do the scream very ladylike.’

‘Good puss. Off you go, then.’

The terraced house had a fairly neat look, its curtains threadbare, perhaps, but clean. The front door was not locked, for it yielded as Betsy turned the handle. On the ground floor lived a solicitor’s poorly paid clerk and his family. They were at Aldgate church for the Sunday morning service. Betsy, hitching her gown, climbed the stairs.

The Irish gentleman, answering a light knock on his door, found himself looking into the hopeful eyes of a young lady in summer pink. ‘Oh, begging your pardon, sir,’ she said a little breathlessly, ‘be you sharing this lodging with Mr Henry Bullivant?’

‘The divil I’m not,’ said Mr Joseph Maguire, ‘nor did I ever hear of him.’ He made to close the door, for he was not encouraged to talk to strangers, male or female. Betsy, however, simulating appealing anxiety, pushed forward, and the door was forced to stay open.

‘But I were to meet him here,’ she said worriedly, ‘and I daresn’t like to think I be at the wrong address, for close by it aren’t a respectable neighbourhood to look at. Mr Bullivant’s my gentleman friend, and tall and handsome, with—’

‘So he might be, that he might,’ said Joseph Maguire, who was small and wiry himself, with curly black hair,
‘but it’s sure I am I don’t know him, nor where he lodges.’

‘But, sir,’ said Betsy, expression worried and gown whispering anxiously, ‘it be this address I were given by him, I’m sure. I’ll show you, and beg you’ll help a girl.’ She dipped her fingers into her cleavage, drawing Mr Maguire’s eyes to her bosom, and extracted the piece of paper. She unfolded it under his reluctant but mesmerized gaze, and in what seemed like an eager wishfulness to secure his help, she moved forward. Her foot struck his, and she tripped and tumbled, executing the manoeuvre with all the credibility Captain Burnside had anticipated she would. As a preliminary to a scream, she uttered a little cry as she fell, though her tumble was a gentle one, for she feared for her new gown. The tumble took her to her knees. She then collapsed, and when she turned over and sat up, her bodice was so disarranged that the startled Mr Maguire was confronted by the alarming sight of a bare breast. The scream came then, and she followed this by gasping, ‘Oh, I be in for ravishment!’ The scream was just loud enough to be heard in the passage below. At once, someone came bounding up the stairs, and the astonished and bewildered Joseph Maguire was further confronted, this time by a tall and slender gentleman carrying a cane and wearing an expression of anger and disgust.

‘By God,’ breathed Captain Burnside, ‘you damned scoundrel!’

‘Henry, oh, it’s you,’ cried Betsy. ‘Look what he’s done to me!’

‘Twice-damned satyr,’ said the captain in fury, ‘you shall be brought to capital account for laying your perverted hands on a young lady dear to me.’ He closed the door smartly to guard against possible interruption, and put his back against it. Betsy came to her feet, turning aside
to adjust her bodice with the trembling agitation of a young lady whose modesty had been grievously wounded. Nor did she forget to breathe noisily.

The room, the captain noted, was furnished only with essentials, a little table, a chair, a crude chest of drawers and a truckle bed. But it was neat and tidy, and so was the Irish gentleman himself. He was also pale and aghast. ‘Yer Honour, ye’re mistaken—’

‘Mistaken?’ Captain Burnside looked dangerously outraged. ‘My young lady floored, her gown savaged, her bosom uncovered? Offspring of Satan, if you’ve escaped the hangman before on like counts, you’ll not escape him this time.’ He gripped his cane as if determined to use it. ‘Polly, as soon as you feel less distressed, go and find a boy who will bring a Bow Street Runner here, while I keep this fiend detained.’

‘Yer Honour, for the love of God, don’t do that,’ gasped the fearful Ulsterman, ‘for I swear I niver laid a single finger on the young lady, nor would I, not if the divil himself was at my back and in my ear. Ask her, sir …’

‘Oh, you terrible man,’ breathed Betsy, ‘tripping me up, putting me on the floor and spoiling my gown to make me show – oh, Henry, I be so thankful you were close by.’

‘Hush, don’t cry,’ said the devious captain tenderly, ‘I’ll wager you’ll never be at such risk again with this libertine. Nor will other young ladies, for I’ll see the law has him dangling at Tyburn within a week.’

‘Yer Honour, I beg your belief in me own true self,’ gasped Mr Maguire, appalled at what was overtaking him. ‘’Tis the way it looked, not the way it was. ’Tis circumstantial, so it is, and may I niver receive the blessing of my Protestant faith if I had any wish to harm the young lady.’

‘Damn my eyes and ears,’ said Captain Burnside ferociously,
‘I heard and I saw. You are damned and doomed: there, you villain, see what you have run yourself up against in your unbridled depravity.’ He whisked a card from his coat pocket and thrust it under Mr Maguire’s nose. Mr Maguire, further appalled, read the printed words.

HENRY J. BULLIVANT     Attorney-at-Law

No. 25 Cheapside, London

‘Yer Honour, ye’ll not see a God-fearing man hanged by reason of the way it looked …’

‘I’ll see you hanged, be sure I will,’ said the captain. ‘In my profession as a servant of the law, I find no villains worthier of Tyburn’s gibbet than those who subject innocent young ladies to carnal abuse.’

Joseph Maguire’s thin, dark face paled with fear, though not with guilt. ‘Sir – Yer Lordship – ’tis meself that’s as innocent as a babe new-born,’ he breathed.

Betsy, shrewdly guessing that her gentleman wished to have the Irishman eating out of his hand, said with credible protestation, ‘Oh, if you be innocent, then I be guilty of bawdiness, which I never could be. Henry, I be ready now to find a boy and send him for the Runners.’