would control every detail until the crowd roared with delight, gasped with fear and wonder.
Spent coin as if there would be no tomorrow in which to regret its absence.
I remembered little enough of my time in Monsieur Marceaux’s Traveling Carnival, but the sticky sweat of fear and the heat surging from the anticipatory crowd was a thing that haunted easily.
Sometimes, if I were to let my guard down at the wrong moment, a memory would come from nowhere to trickle into my thoughts like a cold bath. The hiss of a knife’s edge as it ghosted past my ear. The terror of a tightrope pulled taut beneath my feet, and a distance so far to fall, it pulled cold, clammy sweat from my skin in shuddering recollection.
I remembered, at times, the dread stemming from a poor day rifling pockets, or the fear that came when the good monsieur decided that what a crowd demanded most was blood.
Of all the places in the Menagerie I did not go, I hated that round-top canvas the most.
The grounds, vast and miraculously clean, were another matter entirely. I could not deny how truly lovely the Menagerie by night could be. Lit by thousands of Chinese lanterns strung high on cords between lamp posts, they illuminated deliberately carved trails into the dark, pointed the way along the most common paths where guests could wander, stroll arm in arm, or deliberately leave. Many was the couple, arrived together or strangers at first meeting, to get lost in the cleverly shrouded alcoves along the walk.
Clever if only because a cunning mind with a keen eye could just as easily look upon a tryst as the lovebirds could find a dark corner to engage.
All things came at a price in this wicked garden. For some, that price was a quiet kind of exhibitionism. The worst of Vauxhall’s rumors then could not touch those dark things whispered of the Menagerie now; for all the disreputable gossip of London’s prior pleasure garden, the Midnight Menagerie had made a game of achieving so much more—and charging for the leisure.
I turned away from the heavily-trodden path that would lead to the circus and its accompanying sideshows, kept to the lit paths and turned my back on the memory of the dangerously seductive ringmaster with his exquisitely tailored evening clothes and wicked whip.
I did not like the man, but I would not deny that Hawke was very good at what he did. He tempted. All who strode his grounds, he knew their desires, knew how to garner them, how to feed them.
I was not much of an exception; I would not be the rule.
Hawke attracted me as a man does a woman of weak will, he always had, but I was no feeble miss or bored lady to fall into his gloved palm, no well-played toy. I owed him a debt, and that grated enough for one lifetime.
There were women plenty all too keen on serving him a pound of their own flesh, of that I was sure.
Weariness dogged my every step. It might have been more secretive to stay in the dark, but I kept to the light, because a woman found walking alone off the path could be construed as fair game. I was not keen on dulling the edge of my blade on some hapless fool who might think me simply playing the virginal milk-maid, eager for his conquest.
I passed couples along the way, passed single men of modest and less-than-modest persuasion. Two doffed a gentleman’s hat to me; courtesy, I think, for there was nothing feminine about my apparel.
That, or either man was looking for a youth of my apparent persuasion. Among the Menagerie’s delectable offerings, even those men who swived other men could find a bit of crumpet, as they say.
For my part, I said nothing, kept my face down and my stride hurried. Soon enough, passing the empty market stalls and the occasional littered bit of parchment, I found the turn to the gated enclave where the sweets’ quarters remained.
By the time I let myself inside, I was bone-weary, my soul weighed as if by rocks strapped to the soles of my aching feet. The communal room was quiet, a fire snapping in the grate and a bevy of feminine voices trilling from the shared boudoir beyond.
I tapped gently and pushed open the doors. The sweets inside the large sleeping quarters paused in various states of dress and undress. Four women of varying height, color, and costumed garb immediately launched into a chorus of croons and questions.
“Are you all right?”
“Oh, Lord above, you’re back already. We’re late, aren’t we?”
“Welcome back,” chirped Black Lily, a cherub-faced girl with English roses in her cheeks and hair black as mine when the lampblack had set. “Did you get the bastard?” Two of the women laughed outright, and Jane—a sweet whose skin I’d saved not so long ago from overzealous patrons—hissed a maternal warning and waved dismissively.
I was a little bit of a mascot among the sweets. Not only had I taken a job from them, but I was a female collector—it was practically unheard of. They had no name for me, had adopted Zylphia’s
“
Either my features had gone black beneath a fine coating of soot, or she referenced the bruise I was sure to be sporting after my scuffle with Coventry. I resisted the urge to touch my cheek, certain I’d only set it to throbbing again if I tried.
I summoned a smile from within a black grimace. “I’m well enough, thank you. Only a bed for the night, if it’s no trouble?”
“Talitha’s on the evening.” Jane beckoned at Lily, Delilah, and a girl whose black skin was nearly so dark as to gleam blue beneath the lamplight. FFeathers affixed to her high cheekbones by some kind of glue framed her eyes in startling hues of blue and green, making her gaze seem all the more exotic. She did not afford me much curiosity, seeing to her readiness in silence.
“Thank you,” I said to them, because I was, after all, a creature of hard-taught propriety. Below the drift I might be, I could easily imagine Fanny’s stern glare were I to neglect such small kindnesses.
She flashed me a smile, sweet as a peach in summer. “Be quick, girls,” she told them. “Time’s near.”
Each sweet was readying for a role. Lure or decoration or flesh for the taking, I did not ask.
“Her bed is free,” Jane added to me. “I’ll take her in mine tonight. Tomorrow, Lily’s offered hers as she’s on the market and won’t be abed until day.”
I nodded my thanks, and again to Lily.
We had never been friends, the sweets and I, not like Zylphia and I once, but most of the girls had accepted my presence in the women’s quarters with an air of understanding. Each of the sweets who didn’t mind took turns offering me their beds, then shared with another for the evening.
It was kinder than I had any right to expect.
“You get some rest, now,” Lily called, adjusting her curled and pinned hair with quick fingers.
The sweets did not leave; I would never expect them to abandon their own quarters for me. Instead, as their idle chatter and the rustle of clothing filled my last waking moments, I fell into one of the two dozen beds arrayed side by side, managing only to relieve myself of shoes, coat, and corset. I would be leaving black in Talitha’s sheets.
No matter, I would have them washed tomorrow. I was too tired to bother bathing tonight.
I don’t recall drifting to sleep, or even being aware that I could without a piece of opium to ease the transition. All I remember was that the voices of each girl turned to the howling shriek of marauders in the night; that I inhaled the acrid burn of fog laced with flame, singeing my throat and nose.
I ran in my dreams, ran as if the Devil himself chased me on cloven hooves, and each step took me farther and farther from the lean, patient figure of Earl Compton—my lord husband, my great burden, waiting patiently in the dark.
Skeins of red hair, glinting like the finest rubies of India, wrapped around my wrists, my ankles. A woman laughed, musical and fine.
“You will learn to love me,” the Devil crooned behind me, rich as my lord husband’s voice had ever been and so real that I woke shuddering in damp sheets, my tumbled hair plastered to my forehead and neck. The quarters remained dimly lit, with some girls already abed. Others undressed in the simple light of a single candle, carrying on in whispers and muted laughter.
