of her head, she’d just picked up her book again for perhaps the tenth time when the butler, Grisham, appeared to scratch at her door. “There is a personage here to see you, miss.”
Hero looked around. “A
“Yes, miss. I hope I haven’t done wrong to admit her, but I know your . . . er . . . activities do sometimes bring you into contact with a certain class of female which you would otherwise be—”
Hero cut him off. “Where is she?”
“I left her in the entrance hall with one of the footmen watching her.”
“Watching her? What do you think she’s going to do? Make off with the silver?”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
Hero closed her book and hurried downstairs.
James the footman stood at the base of the steps, his back pressed against the paneled wall, his arms crossed at his chest, his gaze never wavering from the auburn-haired woman who sat perched on the edge of one of the Queen Anne chairs lined up along the hall. She wore a spangled pink dress striped a la Polonaise, with a blatantly low decolletage decorated with burgundy-colored ribbons. A saucy hat sporting three burgundy plumes completed the stunning ensemble. Once, the effect might have been jaunty. But the plumes drooped, the Cyprian’s shoulders slumped, and she had one hand up to her mouth so that she could gnaw nervously on her thumbnail. Hero had never seen her before in her life.
“I understand you wished to see me?” said Hero.
The woman leapt up, her eyes wide. Now that Hero was closer, she realized that beneath the plumes and rouge, the Cyprian was no more than a girl. Sixteen, perhaps, seventeen at the most. She was so small she barely came up to Hero’s shoulder. She was visibly shaking with fear, but she notched her chin up, determined to brazen it out. “You’re Miss Jarvis?”
“That’s right,” said Hero.
The girl cast a scornful glance at the footman. “I ain’t here to prig yer bloody silver.”
“Then why precisely are you here, Miss—?”
“I’m Hannah,” said the girl. “Hannah Green.”
Chapter 46
“Indeed?” said Hero, lifting one eyebrow. She’d wondered how long it would be before hordes of tawdry “Hannahs” started showing up at her door.
The girl frowned in confusion. “Aye,” she said slowly.
Hero crossed her arms. “Prove it.”
The girl’s mouth sagged. “What? Ye don’t believe me? Ye can ask anybody. They’ll tell ye.”
“Anybody such as . . . whom?”
The girl put her hand to her forehead. “Aw,” she wailed, half turning away. “Now what the bloody ’ell am I supposed to do?”
“You could go back where you came from,” suggested Hero, torn between annoyance and amusement.
“What? An’ get me neck snapped like poor Tasmin?”
Amusement and annoyance both fled, chased by a cold chill. “Come in here.” Hero put her hand on the girl’s arm, plucked her into the morning room, and closed the door on the interested footman.
“Where precisely have you been?” Hero demanded.
The girl’s eyes slid away, going round as they assessed the room with its yellow silk hangings and damask chairs, its gilt framed paintings and tall mirrors. “Gor,” she breathed. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this. It makes the Academy’s parlor look downright shabby, it does.”
Hero spared a thought for her grandmother’s reaction, were she to be told that her morning room compared favorably to a brothel. “After you left the Academy,” said Hero, still unconvinced this ingenue really was Hannah Green, “what did you do?”
Hannah wandered the room. Hero kept an eye on Hannah’s hands. Hannah said, “Rose drug me to that bloody Magdalene ’Ouse. She said we’d be safe there, that no one would think t’look for us there.” Hannah’s lips thinned with remembered outrage. “Six o’clock in the bloody morning!”
Understanding dawned. “They made you get up at six?”
“Not just get up. Get up and
“Every day?” said Hero.
“Aye! The first time, I thought it was just some mean trick they was playin’ on us, but when they done it again the next day, I knew we were in for it.”
“Rose didn’t mind?”
“No,” said Hannah in a voice tinged with mingled awe and exasperation. “I think she actually liked it. It was scary.”
“So what did you do?”
“I left. I was afraid they might try to stop me, but if truth were told, I think them Quakers was glad to see the back of me.”
