The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

1

Saturday, June 6, 1812

We were to meet him at midnight in the Dark Walk. It was not an ideal arrangement: two unaccompanied women confronting a blackmailer in the most ill-lit, deserted part of Vauxhall Gardens. Still, I had come prepared-more or less. Now all we had to do was wait until the hour was upon us.

I angled my pendant watch at the oil lamps hanging high in the branch above my head but could not make out the dainty face. The famous light show was near its end; the thousand or so colored lamps, strung in festoons around the trees and pavilions, had all begun to gutter. Well, for once my unladylike height would be an advantage. Raising myself onto tiptoes, I lifted the timepiece to the dying glow of the nearest lamp. Finally, a glint of gold hands: a quarter to midnight.

I touched my sister's arm. She turned from watching the dancers silhouetted before the orchestra tower.

"Already?" she asked over Mr. Handel's soaring music.

"It is at least ten minutes to the Dark Walk."

She drew her lilac shawl tightly around her shoulders. "Are you sure we should do this, Gussie? We cannot trust this man to keep his word, especially in such a lonely place. He could attack us."

She was right. Mr. Harley had already proved himself dishonorable, and while the Dark Walk had a reputation as an illicit meeting place for lovers, it also had a grim history of assaults upon women, and sometimes even men. Nevertheless, I had promised Charlotte, Lady Davenport, that we would retrieve her letters as discreetly as possible. She had stood by us after the scandalous death of our father, so there had been no question that we would help her in return. Honor was not only the province of men, despite popular belief.

I hefted my reticule up between us, the rock within stretching the knitted purse out of its pineapple shape. All in all one of my less successful knitting efforts, but at least it made a substantial weapon.

My sister eyed it with misgiving. "We will end up transported to the colonies."

"Nonsense. I doubt I will have to use it. He wants his payment; we want the letters. It will be a straightforward exchange." More to the point, I hoped I would not have to use it. The idea for the makeshift weapon had come to me very late-less than an hour before we left for the gardens-so I had only managed twenty minutes of swinging practice in the stables. I hit my target two out of ten times: not an inspiring score.

Julia blew a resigned breath, the force of it fluttering the curl of purple feathers in her hair. Lilac shawl, purple feathers, gray gown; the shades of mourning. June and its sad anniversary of her betrothed's death was always a difficult month for my dear girl.

"Do you have the necklace?" I asked.

She held up her own reticule by its drawstring, the black beaded purse swinging between us like a pendulum. "I have checked it twenty times since we arrived. Will Lord Davenport not notice such beautiful diamonds gone?"

"Charlotte says he notices nothing but claret, cards, and horses." Which was to say, he was like every other married man in London.

"Lady Augusta! Is that Lady Julia with you?" a shrill voice called out. "But of course it is. How pleasant to see you both."

Julia squeezed her eyes shut and resolutely stayed facing the orchestra. "Oh Lud. We do not have time for her."

Indeed, we did not. But unlike Julia, I already faced the owner of the voice, and so had to smile our welcome as she advanced upon us.

"Lady Kellmore, how do you do?" I called back. I glanced at my sister. We should run.

Julia's mouth quirked. I wish we could. Sometimes we did not need to speak our thoughts to each other; we could read them within the other's face. Our father had called it our langue de twin.

Reluctantly, my sister turned to add her greeting and gave a soft groan, her pain no doubt due to the approaching burgundy-, orange-, and apple-green-striped gown.

"I am frozen to the marrow!" Lady Kellmore declared. "This summer may as well call itself winter and be done with it." She dipped a curtsy in answer to our own, her thin-lipped mouth pulled down into a grimace of sadness. "I am here with my brother's party but thought to offer my condolences to you, Lady Julia, since it is the second anniversary of Lord Robert's accident. I always said yours would have been the wedding of the year. We had all waited so long for one of you Colebrook twins to marry." She glanced my way, gathering me into the horror of our long spinsterhood. "Alas, it was not to be, was it? My own dear Kellmore is, of course, third cousin once removed to the Hays and it was such a blow to the family." She peered more closely at Julia's rictus smile. "And to you, of course. I see that you grieve still."

My sister managed to nod.

Holy star, if the woman kept this up she would drive Julia straight into an ocean of despair. This Vauxhall venture was meant to distract my sister from her sorrow, not exacerbate it. I took Julia's arm in preparation to leave, but Lady Kellmore was already wading into deeper waters.

"Such bad luck." Her green-gloved fingers momentarily circled the crepey folds of her throat. "To break one's neck during the hunt, and on such a low fence. Kellmore told me Lord Robert was always coming off-not the best of seats-but this time . . ." She brought her hands together in a muffled clap that made my sister flinch. "Snapped clean through. I blame that nasty Lord Brandale and his stupid course. It was all so sad."

"It was indeed a sad time," I said before Julia could engage. "Alas, we are on our way home, but it has been such a pleasure to see you again."

I gave a nod of farewell and tugged on my sister's arm, steering her down the small slope toward the orchestra tower. Her body was as tense as a harp string, the soft curve of her jaw clenched so hard that for once it matched my own angular lines.

"Put her out of your mind, dearest," I said over the opening bars of a finishing dance. "She means well but has all the delicacy of a draft horse."

"She is quite wrong about Robert's seat-it was admirable," Julia hissed as we skirted the dancers and stepped off the flattened grass onto the raked gravel of the Grand Walk.

I refrained from commenting-I had seen Lord Robert ride-but Julia's anger was heartening. Anything was better than the deep melancholy of the last two weeks.

Before us, festoons of blue and red lamps hung between the sycamore and elm trees that lined the wide path, their illumination still reassuringly steady. The Grand Walk was the heart of the pleasure gardens, but the company was scant here too. Most of the supper boxes that fronted the walkway had been vacated, only a few parties still drinking sack and picking at the dishes before them. We passed the box we had hired, decorated with Mr. Hayman's Maypole dancers painted upon the back wall, its beauty obscured by two waiters deftly stacking our abandoned dishes. The smell of roasted chicken and ham lingered in the air, reminding me I had been too distracted to eat the supper we had ordered. It was clear the evening's entertainment was almost at its end: the gardens would be closing soon. The Dark Walk would most likely be deserted by now. An ominous prospect. Then again, we did not want any witnesses to our sordid exchange.

I linked my arm through Julia's, for warmth as much as solidarity, and we crunched along the wide boulevard.

"We should have worn half boots," I said. "I can feel every pebble through my slippers."

"One cannot wear half boots with full dress," Julia said firmly. "Even in circumstances of duress."

I stifled a smile. My sister's sense of style and occasion was always impeccable, and rather too easy to poke.

Julia glanced sideways at me. "Oh, very funny. Next you'll be suggesting we wear unmentionables."

"If only we could," I said. "Breeches would be far more convenient than silk gowns."

"How would you know?" Julia demanded. "Heavens, Gus, you haven't actually donned Father's clothing, have you?"

She knew I had kept some of our father's clothes after his death; he and I had been much the same height and wiry build. By all rights, the clothes belonged to our brother on his succession to the title-as all our father's property did-but I had taken them, anyway. A connection to him and a memento mori of sorts.

"Of course not. I am only surmising."

Julia settled back against my arm. "To even try them would be ghoulish." She nudged me gently and angled her sweet smile up at me. "Even so, you would look rather dashing in, say, a hussars uniform. You have the commanding height for it, and the gold trim would match your hair."

I snorted. Julia was, as ever, being too loyal. My brown hair did not even approach gold-in fact, it now had streaks of silver-and my five foot nine inches had so far in my life proved to be more awkward than commanding. She, on the other hand, had been blessed with the Colebrook chestnut hair, as yet untouched by age, and stood at a more dainty five foot two inches.

When we were children I had once cried because we were not identical. Our father had taken me aside and told me that he found such duplications unsettling and he was well satisfied with his two mismatched girls. He had been a good father and a better man. Yet in the eyes of society, his sordid death atop a rookery whore five years ago had become the sum of him.

It had nearly tainted my sister and me, too, for I had recklessly gone to the hovel to retrieve my father-I could not bear to think of his body gawped at by the masses, or as a source of their sport. As fate would have it, I was seen at the brothel. An unmarried woman of breeding should not even know about such places, let alone debase herself by entering one and speaking to the inhabitants. I became the latest on-dit and it was only the staunch support of our most influential friends that silenced the scandalmongers and returned us to the invitation lists.

A small group of middlings-the women with shawls clasped over dimity gowns and the men in belcher neckerchiefs and sober wools-clustered around a singer at the side of the path. The woman's plaintive ballad turned Julia's head as we passed.

"'The Fairy Song,'" she said. "One of Robert's favorites."

I quickened our pace past the memory; fate seemed to be conspiring against me.

We attracted a few glances as we walked toward the gloomy entrance to the Dark Walk, mainly from women on the arms of their spouses, their thoughts in the tight pinch of their mouths.

"Maybe we should have brought Samuel and Albert," Julia whispered. She had seen the matronly judgment too.

"Charlotte does not want our footmen knowing her business," I said. "Besides, we are not quivering girls in our first season. We do not need to be chaperoned all the time."

"Do you remember the code we girls made up to warn each other about the men in our circle?" Julia asked. "The code based on these gardens."

"Vaguely." I searched my memory. "Let me see: a Grand Walk was a pompous bore, a Supper Box was a fortune hunter . . ."

"And a Dark Walk was the reddest of red flags," Julia said. "Totally untrustworthy, never be alone with him. It was based on all those awful attacks that happened in the Dark Walk at the time. Do you recall?"

I did-respectable young girls pulled off the path and assaulted in the worst way.

"That was more than twenty years ago, my dear. We are women of forty-two now, well able to look after ourselves."

"That is not what Duffy would say."

Indeed, our brother, the Earl of Duffield, would be horrified to know we had gone to Vauxhall Gardens on our own, let alone braved the lewd reputation of the Dark Walk.

"Duffy would have us forever hunched over embroidery or taking tea with every mama who saw her daughter as the new Lady Duffield."

"True," Julia said, "but you are so vehement only because you know this is beyond the pale. Not to mention dangerous."

I did not meet her eye. My sister knew me too well.

"Well, we are here, anyway," I said, indicating the Dark Walk to our right.

Huge gnarly oaks lined either side of the path, their overhanging branches almost meeting in the middle to make a shadowy tunnel of foliage. One lamp lit the entrance but I could see no other light farther along the path. Nor any other person.

"It lives up to its name," Julia said.

We both considered its impenetrable depths.

"Should we do as Duffy would want and turn back?" I asked.

"I'd rather wear dimity to the opera," Julia said and pulled me onward.

I knew my sister just as well as she knew me.

Above us, the leafy canopy made the air seem even colder, and only the glimpses of the half-moon between the branches provided light. The bright sounds of the pleasure gardens-music and voices and the distant clash of crockery-grew more and more muffled as we trod the path.

"Charlotte said we were to head in the direction of the mural of the artist, and Mr. Harley will hail us at some point," I whispered. The mural was, apparently, a painted joke: the canvas depicting an artist with ladder and pots and brushes who was painting the very mural upon which he stood. I peered into the gloom, finding the faint outline of a very large rectangle at the far end of the long path, the moonlight falling upon it in a strange, flat manner. "I think that may be it up ahead."

"Why is Charlotte not doing this herself?" Julia asked. "Why did you say we would do it?"

"Because she invited us to all her routs and dinners after Father died and did not allow anyone to turn their back on us."

Charlotte had been one of those friends who had used all her position and influence on my behalf without any expectation of return. In fact, she had not even asked for this favor to reclaim her letters from her blackmailing lover. Rather, I had offered our services when she told me the sorry tale. It had seemed the perfect way to repay her generosity and at the same time distract my sister.