The Virgin Cure (24 page)

I nodded, thinking I’d heard sadder tales, but wanting her to go on telling me what she knew of the boy.

“His poor father was left to raise him with the help of the barmaids at Sportsmen’s Hall.” Best known for its eight-foot-square rat pit and its bare-knuckle boxing matches, the Water Street establishment was run by a man named Kit Burns. “Cadet’s father was the official bloodsucker there,” Alice said, her eyes wide.

“A bloodsucker?”

“His job was to suck blood from the fighters’ wounds so bouts could go on as long as possible.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling queasy at the thought.

Alice turned her talk back to Cadet. “You really should let him kiss you sometime. He’s gentle and sweet, and, I suppose, its good practice for what lies ahead.”

Alice’s words lulling me, I thought of Cadet as I drifted off, and the way he stuck the tip of his tongue between his teeth whenever he worked to tie the laces on his boots.

The next time I opened my eyes, Mae was on top of me, her boozy breath in my face. “You should’ve seen the gents,” she chirped. “Every last one of them was handsome, and so attentive.”

“Go to sleep, Mae,” I mumbled, wanting to go back to my dreams of kissing a bloodsucker’s son.

Although the Bowery Concert Hall prides itself on being a respectable business, it is common knowledge that members of the criminal underworld frequent this establishment. Planning their crimes and foul deeds between dances, they laugh in the faces of the doctors, judges and lawmakers who sit at the next table. Many a girl of promise and education has been started on the road to ruin at that place. Missing maidens take in astonishing amounts of drink, until their judgement gets cast aside in favour of a single night’s worth of carnal pleasure. Their fate should be noted as a terrible warning.

O
ne, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine
. I marked my days in the margins of the magazine alongside a growing list of items that now included a new garment Miss Everett had insisted I accept.
One silk walking suit, with matching hat, gloves and boots
. The dresses she’d given me my first few days in the house had been lovely in their own right, but the suit, made from fabric the same shade as the lilacs that bloomed along Miss Keteltas’ fence in the spring, was finer still.

This pretty suit consists of a walking skirt, tunic, and basque waist, with revers collar. The walking skirt is of lilac silk, trimmed on the bottom with two ruches of the same material. The tunic is of violet silk, pointed on the sides and open in the back, with an apron in the front, and is edged with a ruche of lilac silk. The Pompadour basque waist of violet silk is worn over a plain waist of lilac silk. The flowing sleeves of the underwaist and the basque waist are lined with silk ruche. Lace under-sleeves. Violet silk hat, with lilac feathers. Lilac gloves. Lilac boots.

—Harper’s Bazar, 1870

It was presented to me along with an afternoon of lessons on how to move about in it. Missouri Mills acted as my tutor, leading me to the parlour in a suit even more elaborate than mine, lace parasol resting on her shoulder. “Lift your chin, mind the hem,” she instructed, her words and figure moving along in a graceful Southern lilt.

With shining red curls and bright green eyes, she was in perfect company with Rose Duval and Emily Sutherland. Rose was dark, Emily, fair, and Missouri was the ample-breasted belle who sat between them. Miss Everett had liked everything about her except her given name of “Martha,” so she chose to rename the girl after the place where she was born. “Missouri suits me fine,” she said after I’d asked her if she minded what Miss Everett had done. “Martha’s a name for housekeepers and dusty old presidents’ wives.”

When we got to the parlour, we found Cadet moving furniture to the centre of the room, making an open path around the outside of it for us to travel. He was leaving as I was coming through the door and my shoulder brushed his arm as he passed.