Chapter 1
Mary-le-Bone, London
January 1758
The London morning smelled of smoke and had the look of a sketch crudely rendered in blunt charcoal. Icy sludge dripped from sodden eaves into the rivulets of muck that passed for streets, sloshing Henry Evesham’s newly polished boots.
It was an ominous morning to begin a journey. Which was appropriate, given Henry’s destination.
“I’ll just be a moment,” he told Elena Brearley’s groom, handing off the reins of his too-fine, borrowed curricle. He walked briskly from the mews to Charlotte Street, stopping at the solemn door of the house marked twenty-three.
It still struck him how little Mistress Brearley’s townhouse resembled its forbidding reputation. When he’d first come here, he’d imagined a spired fortress acrid with the stink of brimstone and noisy with wails of pain. Not this quiet, stately residence, more like an exclusive members club than the lurid whipping house of his imagination.
Henry flicked his knuckle against the door, tense at who might open it. He exhaled when, small mercy, the tall, black footman in the powdered wig appeared, rather than the petite, white woman with the intense brown eyes.
Dove’s eyes, he’d thought when he’d first seen her. Dove’s eyes, he’d thought again when she’d glared at him as he left this place last week.
But no, alas, that was not accurate. If he was being honest with himself—and he’d vowed to be rigorously honest with himself—Alice, for it was untruthful to pretend he did not recall her name—had glared not because he’d left but because he’d fled, bolting up the stairs and out the door as if his life depended on it.
(No. Not his life. His soul.)
“Good morning, Stoker,” he said brightly to the footman. By now, they knew each other, the denizens of Charlotte Street and Lord Lieutenant Henry Evesham.
Still, the servant went through the customary stiff-lipped ceremony that bartered entrance to the door.
“Your key?” Stoker asked, holding out his hand.
Henry rummaged in his overcoat for the elaborately worked iron, its end marking his identity with a sigil of a cross affixed in thorns. The fearsome whipping governess Elena Brearley, he had discovered, was not above a joke.
“Keep it,” Henry said. “I shan’t be back after today.”
If this announcement meant anything to Stoker, the man did not betray it, only stepped aside, allowing Henry entry. “You’re not expected,” Stoker said in his usual hushed tone. “The establishment is closed today.”
Henry smiled cheerfully, for this was precisely the reason he’d chosen today to come. “I hoped that since you’re closed Mistress Brearley might be free for a brief word. In private.”
He followed Stoker at a distance down the corridor into the bowels of the house, inhaling its scent of vinegar and polished wood. It was nothing like the way most brothels smelled, an odor of stale gin and pomander masking the livelier, human scents of lust. He’d visited enough bagnios in the past two years—fine ones with half-dressed painted ladies offering entertainment and strong spirts, low ones offering little more than dirty cots for rutting—to know that this place was as unusual as its mistress claimed.
He was aware of her particularities by now—the codes of discipline and discretion Mistress Brearley believed made this place safer than others of its kind. It was her mission to persuade him that wider adoption of her ways would reduce the dangers of the flesh trade for whores and culls alike.
He was not sure he was convinced. But he recognized in her a seriousness of purpose that beat in his own breast.
They were both evangelists.
Stoker led him up a flight of stairs to a large parlor. Velvet curtains blocked the daylight and a fire roaring in a man-sized hearth gave the double-vaulted room its only light. It was, as always, midnight in this room, though outside the morning bells had just struck eight.
Elena Brearley sat still and regal, writing at her desk. She paused and lifted her eyes in greeting. “Henry.”
“Lord Lieutenant,” he corrected, with a wink. It was a little joke between them, his insistence on a title that he knew Elena Brearley would never utter. Her establishment observed a different hierarchy than the one outside its walls. The only title honored here was Mistress Brearley.
A touch of wry amusement curled around the edges of her mouth. “I did not expect to see you here again.” She looked at him directly, her gaze expansive and forgiving, like she knew the precise makings of his soul—every virtue, sin, and limitation.
He did the only thing he could before such a gaze, which was to pretend he did not notice it, that it did not make him want to flinch.
“Ah, yes, my apologies for my haste in taking leave last week,” he said. “I belatedly remembered I was overdue for an appointment at the Lords. I hope your girl was not alarmed at my abruptness. Thank you for seeing me, nevertheless.”
She smiled at his lie, saving him the trouble of mentally reproving himself for it. “Of course. You know it delights me to find myself of service to an emissary of His Majesty’s government.”
She always spoke to him in this mordant tone, as though they were on opposite sides of an irony so vast that it could only be amusing, and they both knew it. It made him want to tell her all his secrets, though that would be perverse—the man of God confessing to a whore.
“I am grateful for all of your assistance,” he said. “It has been immensely helpful in preparing my report to the Lords.”
“I wait in suspense to learn your recommendations.”
“I’m delivering the report in a few weeks. I’ll see to it you receive a printing.”
His remit as Lord Lieutenant was to investigate the toll of vice upon the innocents of London and propose ways to fight the scourge. He’d done careful research for two years, haunting houses of ill repute and interviewing everyone from palace courtesans to alley trollops to those who bought their wares. All that was left was to weigh the evidence and decide whether stricter punishment or progressive reform would best serve London’s streets. Whatever he decided would make enemies of half the city—either the brothel-keeps and harlots who wished to ply their trade in safety or the moralists who hoped to drive them out of sight.
Mistress Brearley continued to look closely at him, as if she might make out from his posture whether his report would prove him to be an ally or an adversary. “I do hope you will consider all that we discussed as you form your conclusions,” she said, searching his eyes.
He dodged her gaze. Despite his prayers for moral guidance, he did not yet know what he would do.
He was conscious of the city’s factions watching him for clues. But he had swum in ambiguity so long that his own beliefs—once so unshakable he had made his name espousing them in fiery print—had become murky and disordered. He was a man divided.
“Your proposed reforms will certainly be among my considerations,” he said blandly.
“That is heartening. But do also remember what we spoke about last week.”
He stiffened. He had inquired as to her prices—a standard question he’d forgotten to ask on earlier visits, given her insistence on speaking of condoms and physicians and license fees and guilds—and she’d replied that the price would depend on the nature of his desires.