Unclaimed (26 page)

“I
knew
it.” Parret’s arms clasped his daughter, and he half turned from Jessica, as if to shield young Belinda from the horror of a woman with a vocation. “Have you come to gloat, then? You had the exclusive interview. These last days, since Sir Mark tossed me out on my ear, I’ve had precious little to write about. I suppose you’re very happy indeed.”

“No, I’m not happy,” Jessica said. “But it happens that I came to sell you a story. I’ve written it partway already.”

“Oh, and now you’ll come crawling to me.” He snorted. “And why should I do business with you?”

“Because otherwise I shall go to your competitors. They haven’t your reputation for the truth, but in a pinch—”

“Go! Why should I care?”

In response, Jessica reached up and undid the simple chain at her neck. The unwieldy pendant that hung on its end emerged from between her breasts. She set it atop the papers she’d brought.

Mr. Parret stared at the item she’d placed in front of him.

It was, of course, Mark’s ring. The onyx in its center winked up at her.

Slowly, Mr. Parret set his daughter on the floor. “Belinda,” he said quietly, “go find your governess.”

“But I want to hear about the lady.”

“Go. Now.”

He waited until she’d disappeared. Then he walked forward, slowly, and picked up the ring. He dangled it from its chain, turning it from side to side. “Well,” he said softly. “One of the complexions that could be put on the matter I observed in Shepton Mallet was…precisely this. I didn’t want to think it. After all, I don’t want to ruin Sir Mark’s reputation.”

No. Jessica had thought long and hard about her options. There were only so many ways she could find money, and she wasn’t going to—she
couldn’t
—sell herself again. But even if she wasn’t selling her body, she could still sell her integrity.

You have an odd sort of integrity to you,
he’d told her once. Maybe…maybe after this was all said and done, she could have her security and her integrity, all at the same time.

“I think,” Parret said, settling into a chair, “that you need to tell me your tale.”

Jessica took a deep breath. “It began,” she said, “when I met Sir Mark in Shepton Mallet. I had come there, you see, with the express purpose of seducing him…” The story she conveyed was
mostly
truthful. It required only a few alterations to change the entire tenor of it. She spoke, and Parret listened, nodding intently. When she was done, he picked up the pages she’d scrawled that morning and read through them.

“You write well,” he said in surprised tones, as he turned over the first page.

“For a courtesan, you mean?”

“For a woman.” He spoke absently, his fingers drumming against the table. He turned another page. “For that matter,” he said, “you write well for a man.”

Jessica searched for an appropriate response. Her mind covered everything from sarcasm to outrage. Finally, she settled on the simplest reaction. “Thank you,” she said graciously.

When Parret reached the end, he looked up. His mouth was set in a grim line beneath the ragged line of his mustache. “I don’t think this will work,” he told her.

“Then I’ll have to take it to your competitors.” She tried not to hide her disappointment. She’d hoped that Parret would be able to give her enough to survive—enough that she wouldn’t have to think of money for a good long while yet.

Parret scowled. “Oh, not the piece,” he explained. “I meant that we can’t call you a courtesan. It’s too risqué. Why don’t we call you a ‘fallen woman’ instead, and leave the precise circumstances of the fall a mystery? That way, the public will be free to imagine anything they wish.”

Jessica took a staggering breath of relief.

“Of course,” Parret continued, “I can offer you my normal rates—a shilling per column inch. It’s a fair offer—what I would give a man under the circumstances.”

Jessica almost smiled. “My dear sir,” she said, “you must be
joking.
No man could possibly have told this story. We are talking about the most in cendiary article that London has seen in years. You can’t fob me off with a few shillings. This isn’t piecework. I want fifty percent of the proceeds.”

His eyes narrowed. “All the expense of production is mine, and all the risk. Two pounds, no more.”

“Forty-five percent. I can take my account to anyone else. I’ll have a share of the proceeds, or you’ll have nothing.”

He slapped his hand on top of the papers, as if to ward off that threat. “Twenty-five.”

“Thirty, and I get five pounds upfront.” Enough to clear the debts in her name. Enough to survive for months. Enough for the future to become suddenly possible, and not some grim, looming fate. Even the city street outside the window seemed to lighten.

Mr. Parret cocked his head to the side. “Very well. I accept.” He reached out one hand.

Jessica took it carefully. “You bargain well,” she told him. “For a man.”

He pursed his lips ruefully and shook her hand. And apparently, that was all it took to turn a courtesan into a
former
courtesan. She’d just earned enough to survive for a good long while. Before this ran out, she would find a way to earn more. She wouldn’t need to sell her body ever again.

“Sir Mark will be furious.” It was the worst part of this deal, knowing how much he hated private inquiry—and knowing that she would be thrusting him into the public eye with a vengeance.

But Parret didn’t even shrug as he smoothed out the papers. “He usually is. I never let it bother me.”

Maybe one day she’d be able to view Mark’s response with such equanimity. That day was a long way off.

“I want to publish this one section each day, for five days—that will
really
get everyone interested, and we can charge double for the last printing. As for a title, I thought to call it ‘The Seduction of Sir Mark.’ That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“But what is he going to do, when he sees that?”

“Hopefully,” Parret said, “he’ll get very angry. It will confirm everyone’s suspicions, and make us a great deal of money.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

TWO DAYS AFTER
Mark arrived in Bristol, his brother suggested a walking trip.

“My duties are reduced during the summers,” Smite said. “And Ghost could use some country air.” He’d said this with a gesture at the puppy, who gamboled about their feet.

Mark had translated this as:
Stop moping about.

They’d sent a letter to Ash, informing him that they’d be gone a few days—eldest brothers
did
tend to worry, even over grown men—and Mark spent the remainder of that day losing himself in procuring supplies and planning the trip. He’d pored over maps and railway timetables, finally deciding to take the train to Reading, and from there, a meandering journey through country roads until they reached Basingstoke. It would be four or five days through tracks and lanes. Mark made note of a few smaller hostelries along the road where they might stay.

“None of the big ones now,” Smite had said lazily. “I don’t know how they’ll take to a dog.”

They’d have taken an entire menagerie from a duke’s brothers. But then, Mark didn’t need Smite to explain his peculiarities.

It was good to have something else to think of. It was better still when they disembarked from the passenger car in Reading to a bright, sunny day. It was a day so glorious that Mark could almost forget that everything else in his life was far from perfect.

The locomotive pulled away from the station in a cloud of smoke, leaving Mark and his brother pushed about on all sides by the crowd leaving the platform.

Smite met Mark’s eyes and jerked his head toward the road. In this dry weather, the track was dusty with all the passing traffic. His brother would naturally prefer to choke on road-dust than spend time in a crowd. Mark shouldered his burden, happy to bear a little discomfort. It would get his mind off the interminable spiraling back, the uncomfortable thoughts of her…

No need to speak, thankfully. They made their way out and started through the clouds of hanging dust, holding their breaths. The fields weren’t far beyond; once there, they might not need to speak to anyone until they reached their destination for the evening.

The whole notion sounded lovely.

“Oy!” A voice sounded behind them, recognizable and yet impossible at the same time.

Smite paused, turning on the shoulder of the road. A man—tall, burly—was striding toward them. He moved quickly, without once seeming to hurry. He had a satchel thrown over his shoulder; he barely glanced down the road for traffic before darting across.

“I had thought,” the man said without any additional greeting, “the two of you would be civilized enough to stop in the public house before sallying forth.”

“That’s where you went wrong,” Smite said. “We didn’t intend to do anything so dramatic as
sally.
We had just planned to start.”

Mark stared at the newcomer in dumb confusion. “Ash,” he finally said stupidly. “What are you doing here?”

“Got Smite’s message about the trip late last night,” his eldest brother replied. “I can’t have the two of you haring off on your own, can I?”

“We don’t hare, either. We walk. With dignity.”

Beside them, Ghost gave the lie to that by jumping up on Ash, his paws leaving two dusty footprints on his trousers.

Ash was protective, sometimes to an overbearing degree. Mark should have realized how suspicious it was that he’d not responded to their letter with a lecture on walking safely. In his normal course of events, he would have offered them an armed guard…or…or whatever other ridiculous thing he might have dreamed up.

He must have spent the entirety of the morning riding here. All that, just to meet them for an hour?

His eldest brother showed no sign of fatigue, however. Instead, he simply shifted the satchel he carried.

“Well.” Smite spoke first. “I suppose we could set aside our
haring
and
sallying
long enough for a brief repast.”

“Not at all. There’s no need to make the slightest alteration in your plans on my account.” Ash grinned. “I can keep up with the lot of you.”

Smite glanced at Mark, his eyes widening. That slight entreaty was as good as a plea on bended knee for him.

“Keep up?”

“I’m coming with you,” Ash said. His jaw set as he spoke, and he looked away from them. “Unless—”

“Can you neglect your business affairs so long?” Mark asked.

“Can you neglect your wife so long?” Smite asked, perhaps a little more slyly.

Ash let out a sigh. “Margaret suggested, in very strong terms, that I should come along.”

Mark exchanged another glance with Smite. Ash and Margaret had been happily married for five years; Mark couldn’t imagine Margaret sending him away.

He was trying to work out a way to politely ask what might have happened, when Smite broke in, no politeness at all. “Good Lord, Ash, what did you do?”

“Nothing!” Ash said. “Or—at least—nothing I shouldn’t be doing.”

The track across the field, this close to town, was wide enough that they could all three walk abreast, and so they started down the path.

“Nothing?”

“If you must know,” Ash said in patronizing tones, “she is increasing.”

“Oh, congratulations!” Mark clapped his brother on the back.

Smite shook his hand, and Ash’s smile broadened, as if he’d done something very clever.

“But now I’m doubly astonished,” Mark continued. “I wouldn’t have thought you could be pried from her side under those circumstances, not with a full harness of oxen.”

His eldest brother stiffened. “She says,” Ash muttered, “that I
hover.
”

Mark stifled a laugh, just as Smite hid his face.

“I don’t hover,” Ash said. “Do I hover?”

“Surely not!” Mark said, overly polite.

Smite grinned. “Never.”

“I couldn’t imagine such a thing.”

“Never in a million years.”

“Hovering,” Mark said, “puts me in mind of a butterfly—a light creature, flitting about from flower to flower, delicate as you please, vanishing at the first sudden movement.”

“And that,” Smite said, completing Mark’s thought, “seems rather too circumspect for you. My guess is that you were circling overhead, like some kind of obscene vulture.”

“Waiting to pounce on any weakness.”

Ash put on hands on a hip. “You unholy pack of ruffians,” he said in amusement. “I do not—”

“Only to give aid, of course,” Mark said. “You are perhaps the most benevolent vulture I have ever met.”

Smite sniggered. “Albeit not the most polite.”

“You two are the most captious lot of ingrates ever to walk the face of Britain.” Even though Ash’s words were harsh, his tone was playful. And for the first time since Jessica had rejected his proposal, Mark realized that
he
was smiling. The future no longer seemed quite so bleak and barren. His brothers were together; and whatever waited could not be so impossible. “In all seriousness.” Ash took a deep breath. “Will I be in the way?”