The studies and workrooms upstairs had been converted to more private and intimate use.
At present, Sinclair counted perhaps half a dozen of th e femmes galantes circulating around the parlor, in clinging or revealing costume, and an equal number of customers, lounging about on the sofas and chairs. A servant asked him if he would care to have a drink, and Sinclair said, “Gin, yes. And one for each of my friends.”
Rutherford said, “Make mine a whiskey,” and threw him a cautionary look that said: If I'm to pay for all this, I'll bloody well have what I want.
Sinclair knew he was only going deeper into trouble, and debt, but sometimes, he reflected, the only way out was down. And there was still a ways to go.
Frenchie, he noted, was already entangled with a raven-haired harlot in jeweled slippers.
“That you, Sinclair?” someone asked, and Sinclair could guess whose voice it was. Dalton-James Fitzroy a fool of the first water, whose family's lands adjoined his own. “My lord, Sinclair, what are you doing here?”
Sinclair turned on the ottoman, and saw Dalton-James Fitzroy his bulky rump parked on the piano bench, beside the singing girl. Now that the girl turned, Sinclair saw that, despite her gangly frame, she couldn't be more than twelve or thirteen years old, with a simple country face.
“I thought you'd been hounded out of town by your creditors,” Fitzroy said. His pudgy cheeks were gleaming with sweat, and Sinclair steeled himself not to rise to the bait.
“Evening,” he simply replied.
But Fitzroy was determined. “How will you pay the apothecary if you catch a dose here tonight?”
This time, he was saved the trouble of answering at all by Mme. Eugenie's intervention, who rushed to the defense of her establishment. She fluttered between them, saying “Messieurs, my companion ladies are clean as whistles! Dr. Evans, he inspects them regulierement. Every month! And our visitors,” she declared, sweeping one hand around the room, “are la creme de la societe. Only the finest gentlemen, as you may see for yourself.” Wagging one bejeweled finger at Fitzroy, playfully but with meaning, she said, “Shame on you, sir, in front of these agreeable ladies, to be so rude.”
Fitzroy took his chastisement in the spirit of irony, bowed low over the piano keyboard, and begged forgiveness. “Perhaps it is best that I sheathe my sword and depart the field,” he said, which was rich, Sinclair thought, coming from a coward like Fitzroy-always full of bluster until the army came calling for recruits.
He stood up, his silk waistcoat straining at its seams, and clutching the girl's hand walked unsteadily toward the main stairs.
“John-O,” Mme. Eugenie called out, “please show our guest to the Suite des Dieux.”
The girl cast a frightened eye back toward Sinclair, of all people. But he could see-under her rouge and makeup-just how young and inexperienced she was. And he could not resist one sally.
“Why not have a woman?” he taunted Fitzroy.
Two of the other gentlemen in the room laughed.
Fitzroy stopped, teetering, but did not turn. “Chacun a son gout, Sinclair. You, above all people, should know that.”
As Fitzroy left the room with his reluctant prize, Mme. Eugenie came to Sinclair, clucking her tongue. “Why are you so quarrelsome tonight? It is not like you, my lord.” Sinclair was not a lord, not yet, but he knew that Mme. Eugenie liked to flatter her customers that way. “That is bad form, and Mr. Fitzroy has paid well for this privilege.”
“What privilege?”
Mme. Eugenie reared back as if astonished at his stupidity. “This young girl is a flower that has never been plucked.”
A virgin? Even in his inebriated state, Sinclair knew that that was the oldest con in the trade. Virgins commanded a premium price not only because they were, by definition, safe as houses, but because they were also reputed to be able to cure-through vigorous use-several of the amatory infections. It was all balderdash, of course, and Sinclair would normally have put the whole business out of mind already-what concern was it of his, after all? — were it not for that stricken look in the young girl's eye. She was either such an accomplished actress that she belonged on center stage at Covent Garden… or else it was genuine. There was no law against prostitution, and the age of consent was twelve; girls of her tender years were, quite legally, corrupted every day. Fitzroy had no doubt spent twenty-five or thirty pounds for the privilege.
“Come now,” Rutherford cajoled him. “That fat bastard's going to be your neighbor for years to come. Don't begin a fracas now.”
Mme. Eugenie winked at one of the other women, with bright red hair spread across a pair of creamy, well- exposed shoulders, who artfully drew Sinclair off the ottoman and onto a loveseat beneath a picture of a nymph fleeing a satyr. The servant appeared with the gin.
Frenchie had taken the country girl's place at the pianoforte, and was playing, as well as his own compromised condition would allow, a lugubrious version of something by Herr Mozart.
The redhead introduced herself as Marybeth, and tried to engage Sinclair in conversation, asking first about his regiment, then where they might be posted, before expressing deep concern- somewhat premature, in his view- for his continued safety. But all the while, Sinclair could only think of that girl, with the coltish frame and the frightened eyes, being dragged up the stairs behind John-O and his golden teeth.
Sinclair had had a sister once. She'd died about that age, of consumption.
“That's quite enough of that,” one of the other men called out to Le Maitre. “Give us something with a bit of a song to it. If I wanted to attend the Lyceum, I'd be off with my wife.”
A round of laughter and applause followed, and Frenchie, bowing to public opinion, launched into a sloppy rendition of “My Heart's in the Highlands.” He had finished with it, and played another number just then sweeping the Strand, when Sinclair heard a cry from upstairs.
Everyone else scrupulously ignored it-though Frenchie did pause for a second, and Marybeth took sudden pains to adjust the buttons and collar of Sinclair's shirt. An elderly gent with a matronly brunette on his arm continued his slow ascent of the stairs. When the song ended, Sinclair listened more closely, and even though the Suite des Dieux was a full floor above, he could hear a muffled cry, and the sound of something falling to the floor.
“The table d'hote has just been replenished,” Mme. Eugenie said, clapping her hands together. “Please, gentlemen, enjoy le canard aux cerises and oysters on the half shell.”
Several of the guests roused themselves-Rutherford among them-and made their way toward the buffet in the next room. But Sinclair neatly disengaged himself and went toward the stairs. As luck would have it, John-O was just then welcoming a trio of inebriated men about town, taking their cloaks and hats, and Sinclair was able to mount the stairs unobserved.
The suite was on the second floor, just above the porte-cochere; Sinclair had occupied it himself once or twice. And he knew that its door-like all the doors in the Salon d'Aphrodite-was not locked while occupied. Mme. Eugenie had long since discovered that exigencies of the trade required her, or John-O, to have immediate- if judiciously employed-access to any chamber.
He kept his feet to the carpet runner as he went to the door, and quietly put his ear against the wood. There were two small rooms, he knew-an antechamber with a few sticks of maple furniture, and a bedroom with a massive, canopied four-poster. He could hear the rumble of Fitzroy's voice, in the bedroom, and then a low sob from the girl.
“You will,” Fitzroy said, his voice raised.
The girl cried again, repeatedly calling him sir, and it sounded as if she were moving slowly, warily, about the room. A vase, or bottle, smashed on the floor.
“I'll not pay for that!” Fitzroy said, and Sinclair heard the whistle of a whip cutting the air, and a scream.
He threw open the door and ran through the antechamber to the bedroom. A bare-chested Fitzroy was standing, his white trousers still on, with one suspender hanging down; the other suspender he held in his hand.
“Sinclair, I'll be damned!”
The girl was naked, holding a bloodied sheet around her. All of her powder and rouge had run down her face in a flood of tears.
“You've got a bloody nerve to break in here!” Fitzroy said, moving toward his clothing thrown on the settee. “Where's John-O?”
