The Sleeping Partner (28 page)

Matt had been Miss Tolerance’s friend, and she had resisted close acquaintance with Harry for that reason. Where Matt had been frank, humorous, and bawdy, Harry appeared anxious and curiously refined for a male whore. Mrs. Brereton, one of the very few Queens of a London brothel to keep such a boy among her females, believed the boy would season and add luster to the establishment. Seeing him now, Miss Tolerance was doubtful. But lack of engagement with the boy was not the same thing as lack of sympathy.

“Come, Harry. Some tea and bread-and-butter will help put things to right. And perhaps you will tell me if I can be of any assistance?”

The boy—young man, rather—got to his feet, telescoping like a spy-glass. He was very tall and slender, towering over Miss Tolerance and swaying. She led the way to her cottage, unlocked the door, waved Harry in. Then she went about making tea: stirring the fire, filling the kettle by the cistern kept by the dresser, putting out cups, cutting bread in thick slices. She did not talk, and Harry, who had seated himself on the settle and hunched toward the fire as if to warm himself, said nothing.

At last, when the tea was steeping and the toast ready, Miss Tolerance sat and regarded her visitor. “Is it so difficult, then, working in my aunt’s house?”

Harry’s head jerked up. “No! They’re all kind as can be, Mrs. Touchwell, Emma and Chloe and the other girls, Mr. Keefe and Mr. Cole. I thought to be afraid of Mrs. Brereton—she’s imposing, but she’s kind.”

Imposing?
Miss Tolerance recalled that the boy’s first lover had been a country clergyman. He had certainly learned a formal way of speaking. She poured out tea and passed a cup to him.

“There is milk for you there. Harry, I hope you will not take it amiss if I tell you that most of the folk in my aunt’s employ do not spend their free time weeping. Particularly not weeping where I found you.” She regarded him sympathetically. His breeches were grimy. He wore no coat and his shirt was similarly smudged; he had used one sleeve as a handkerchief. His brown eyes were red-rimmed from crying. He was unlikely to be the object of any man’s desire in this state. “Is there some way in which I may assist you? Is it that you are not cut out for the work? You need not feel it is your only choice—”

“No, the work’s—” Harry blushed. “The work’s—I don’t mind the work at all. I know there’s some miss the old boy Matt, but I’m trying to win them over. And there’s some of them, my gentlemen that is, that are very kind indeed.”

Kind was to be the word, then. “Harry, if Mrs. Brereton is kind and her people are kind and your clients are kind and the work does not distress you, there yet was something had you weeping behind the outhouse. I won’t demand that you tell me, but I assure you I will not tell anyone what you say to me, and I might be able to help.”

The boy shook his head. “I can’t. He said he’d—”

“He?” Miss Tolerance poured more tea into his cup. “What did he say he would do?”

The boy’s chin trembled. “He said he’d beat me til my looks were gone, then throw me out the door, and that I’d die in a stew on the waterfront with weeping sores on my—on my mouth—and—” he broke off, horrified by the enormity of the threat. Miss Tolerance was grateful to be spared further details.

“Harry. He was looking down again, threatening tears. “Harry. Listen to me, please.” She used the tone that had proved so effective when her own nursery maid had used it. “Listen to me. No one will beat you. And for the rest, if my aunt has good reports of your—your work from your gentlemen, there is no reason you need ever leave if you don’t like to do.”

“He said.” A low, urgent whisper.

“Who said?”

Harry shook his head again.

“Harry, you know very well that my aunt has rules for her clients as well as for those who work for her. If one of them is making threats, she will put a stop to it.” Miss Tolerance suspected her aunt would not care so much for Harry’s feelings as for the lack of respect shown to her and her house, but in the end the result would be the same. “Tell me who has put you in such a state?”

Had it been possible for Harry to draw his head entirely between his shoulders, turtle-like, she suspected he would have done so. When he could retreat no further in that way, Harry whispered, “Mrs. B’s—Mrs. B’s man.”

Her man?
Keefe? Cole? They were the only men regularly upon the premises, and Miss Tolerance would have laid odds against either of them abusing their places so. Then a singularly unpleasant notion occurred to her. “Why would Mr. Tickenor make such a threat?”

Hearing the name of his tormentor made Harry tremble further, and the whole story came haltingly forth. That afternoon Mr. Tickenor had happened to see Harry in the parlor and, perhaps displeased that the boy had no engagement in that minute, asked him to follow, “and help me for a moment.” Harry followed Tickenor to one of the smaller withdrawing rooms long the hall where, instead of required him to assist in unsticking a drawer or moving a table, Mrs. Brereton’s fiancé had pushed the boy to his knees.

“He wanted me to—he said I had to—” Harry could not bring himself to say the words, but Miss Tolerance was quite able to imagine what Mr. Tickenor had wanted.

“What did you do?”

“I did what he said. I told him Mrs. B has rules against, but he said he was checking the quality of my w-w-work. And then when I was done he gave me a smack—” he gestured to the fading mark of a hand near his left ear. “Then he said if I said a word he’d—what I told you before.”

“He threatened to beat you and expel you from the house.”

Harry nodded.

“Harry, he has no power to do so.” Even as she said it Miss Tolerance wondered if that was so.

“But Mrs. B means to marry him.”

“Then he had best learn beforehand that there are limits to his authority here. Come with me and we’ll sort this out with my aunt.”

Harry’s slender body reared back. “No! No, Miss Sarah. I don’t want to leave, even if he don’t beat me he’ll still—”

She took Harry’s hand and drew him to his feet. His tea cup, sitting at the edge of the table, rocked and Miss Tolerance put her hand out to push it to safety. “Harry, if Mr. Tickenor has done this once, do you think he will not do it again? And if he has done it to you, do you not think he might try it with someone else in my aunt’s house? If you are afraid to tell my aunt, let us at least talk with Mrs. Touchwell.”

Faced with that alternative Harry became more cooperative. Marianne, he seemed to think, would not throw him at once to Mr. Tickenor’s mercies. Silently he followed Miss Tolerance across the garden to Mrs. Brereton’s house. In the kitchen Cook looked at the boy and observed that he looked as if he’d combed his hair with a holly bush. Miss Tolerance suggested Harry take a few minutes to render himself presentable. “Come back here when you are done,” she suggested. She did not want to have this conversation upstairs where anyone might enter the room. “I’ll ask Mrs. Touchwell to join us.”

A quarter hour later Marianne Touchwell had been summoned and Cook had given over her own bedroom for their discussion. Marianne listened as Harry repeated his story, nodding now and again.

“Well, Harry, you’re a good, brave fellow to have come to me,” she said comfortably. “Now, unless I am much mistaken, you have a gentleman due to arrive in just a short while. So you go and entertain him. Don’t worry, dearie. Miss Sarah and I will make all right.”

Harry left Cook’s room. With the burden of his secret lifted and his worst fears assuaged, his step was lighter and his shoulders unstooped.

“Poor idiot boy,” Mrs. Touchwell said sadly. “Do you think I ought to look him out a place in another house?”

“Would that solve the problem?” Miss Tolerance asked. “I think rather you should ask, if Mr. Tickenor has tested the waters with Harry, has he done similarly with any of the others?”

“Oh, God, that’d put the fox in the chicken house for sure. But even if he has, what am I to do then?”

“Tell my aunt.”

“And find myself working somewhere else? Sarah, this is my home as much as it is yours. The boy’s got a point: it’s a fearful thing, even for a successful whore, to suddenly find herself with no followers, no home—”

“Do you think I don’t know that? It’s a fearful thing for any woman to find herself homeless, without family to support her. Marianne, I cannot imagine that, once he has found power over Harry or—anyone else in the house—Mr. Tickenor will abandon it. Do you think my aunt is so lost to good business sense that she would wish all of her workers reduced to fearful shadows?”

From the kitchen there was a homely rattle of spoon against copper bowl, and Cook’s voice instructing the kitchen maid to bring the salt box from the dresser in the pantry. Marianne Touchwell thought and Miss Tolerance watched her. At last, “Let me find out first if yon Tickenor’s been troubling the rest of the staff. Then—you must help, Sarah. No matter how much she trusts me, I’m still a servant to your aunt. You’re family.”

“I will help if I am able,” Miss Tolerance agreed. Privately she wondered if, in such a negotiation, her relation would be as useful as Marianne believed.

Chapter Fifteen

The next day dawned gray and cold; even the half-bloomed flowers in the garden appeared to have thought better of emergence and furled into green shoots again. Miss Tolerance rose with the resolve to find Mr. John Thorpe and determine for once and all whether the matter of the late Mr. Proctor had any connection at all to Evadne Thorpe’s disappearance. It was early when she left the house; perhaps he was still at his father’s house in Duke of York Street.

She was pleased to spy one of Bart’s squad of sweeping boys already at his post on the corner at Jermyn Street. They exchanged no sign; the only others abroad at this hour appeared to be milkmen and grocer-boys. Miss Tolerance approached Lord Lyne’s house with a little trepidation: the baron had made it clear that he disliked her involvement, and any encounter with him was like to be unpleasant. Still, she could not lurk in the street waiting for Mr. John Thorpe to emerge. She had steeled herself to knock on the door when another figure appeared at the corner, walking unsteadily toward her.

Mr. Henry Thorpe had clearly drunk deep the night before and had not yet returned home. His gaze was bent on the paving stones beneath his feet, all his attention upon maintaining his balance. He did not look up to notice Miss Tolerance until he was five feet from her.

He squinted. “Miss—whatsit. Miss Chastity?” He giggled weakly and winced.

Miss Tolerance forbore to mention that he was not the first to make a game of her name. “Good morning, Mr. Thorpe. I was hoping to speak with your brother.”

“What’s the hour?” Thorpe patted at his coat, clearly hoping to find his watch. “Damn. Pawned it. What’s the hour?” he asked again.

“A little before nine, I believe.”

Thorpe made an exaggerated gesture of dismissal. “You’ll have missed him, then. John is up and saving the unfortunate before dawn.”

“Ah.” Miss Tolerance sighed: back to Pitfield Street, then. “Good morning, then, sir.” She turned toward Jermyn Street.

“Wait.” From the expression in his face Mr. Thorpe could not believe himself that he had called her back. “Evie—my sister.”

“Have you recalled something that might help me find her, sir?”

His shoulders slumped. “No word of her, then.”

“Had I word, do you think I would withhold it?”

“No, I—” Thorpe raised both hands to his face and scrubbed mightily. “God, I can barely think.”

Miss Tolerance made a rapid calculation of time and benefit. “Mr. Thorpe, will you permit me to offer you a pot of coffee? I have often found that helpful in…cases such as yours.”

She was surprised to see the man grin lopsidedly. “With the jug-bit? I’m not drunk anymore, Miss Whatever, just have Hell’s own head.”

“Coffee may help there, too, sir,” Miss Tolerance said sympathetically. “Surely it will not hurt. And we may talk about your sister.”

They found a coffee house a few streets distant; the proprietor looked at Miss Tolerance a little askance, as such establishments were still largely the province of men, and today Miss Tolerance wore the garments of her sex, including a becoming straw bonnet. She ordered a pot of coffee and some rolls, then joined Mr. Thorpe, who looked relieved to find himself indoors, out of the glare of gray morning light and away from the worst noise of the street.

“No word of my sister,” he said grimly. “I thought of what you said the other day. That Evie might wish to be rescued from what she—from her situation.”

“I confess that I was surprised you so easily believed otherwise, Mr. Thorpe. Did your sister ever give you reason for it?”

“Not—No. But I’ve never been much in the way of seeing the best in people.”

“Perhaps it is just that you too easily believe the worst.”

“Aren’t they the same thing?” Thorpe ran his thumbs along the crease between his brows. “I never thought to see the old man in such a rage at Evie. John displeased him with his charities, and he thinks Clary’s husband’s a wealthy fool, but I thought all his fury was reserved for me.” Thorpe smiled crookedly. “If he could be as angry at Evie as ever he has been at me—I suppose I thought she must have committed
some
sin.”

“So you judged her by your father’s reaction.”

“The old man’s stiff as a poker, but I’ve never seen him truly angry except for cause. When
I
was—” the coffee and rolls arrived, and Thorpe was distracted.

The coffee dispensed, “You did something that angered your father?” Miss Tolerance prompted.

“Angering—that seems to be my genius. But enraged! An entirely different category. A few years ago I got myself mightily embarrassed: gambling debts, a woman—” he shrugged. “The old man had found me work in the War Office through one of his cronies—my father’s a great one for the military—and thought it would steady me. Give me a sense of responsibility.” From his sour tone Miss Tolerance understood that the last words were not Thorpe’s own. “I outran my income and my salary and had to go to the old man for help. He was—” Thorpe took a deep draught of his coffee as if it could blunt the memory. “He was mad with anger. Hadn’t told me about the property in Venezuela, y’see.”