‘That is the entrance to the bawdy-house,’ Carlston said near her ear, drawing her attention back inside the coffee room to a low-set doorway at the far end with a heavy red curtain drawn across it. He placed his hand upon her shoulder; to other eyes a friendly gesture, but to Helen it meant the hunt had begun. Corner Lowry in the molly rooms and get the journal.
Her heart quickened, her Reclaimer senses sharpening the rank smells, overheated air and chatter within the room into a roar of sensation. She drew a resolute breath, steadying her way through the sensory onslaught, and followed Carlston between the tables and conversing men towards the curtain. She flexed her wrists back, surreptitiously checking the leather guards beneath her jacket sleeves. Her glass knife was hidden down the side of her boot. Carlston had shown her how to wax the inside of the leather scabbard to ensure a smooth draw. Good Lord, what if she did need to draw it?
They had reached the curtain. Carlston pulled back the patchy velvet. The rattle of the curtain rings seemed unnaturally loud, but none of the men nearby took any notice as she and Carlston stepped across the threshold into the bawdy-house.
It was somewhat of an anti-climax. They were in a corridor, its short length lit by candles set into plain iron sconces along a dingy wall. The air stank of old perfume and another more animal smell that made Helen wrinkle her nose. The pianoforte music had increased in volume, originating, it seemed, from a brightly lit room at the end of the hall.
A doorway to their right suddenly filled with a large body. Helen flinched. Carlston’s hand closed upon her shoulder again, this time heavy with caution. A bruiser of a man in a patched shirt and gaudy blue waistcoat stood in their way, regarding them through narrowed bloodshot eyes.
‘Go on then,’ he said, stepping aside and jerking his heavy chin towards the far room.
Carlston steered her forward, hand still on her shoulder. ‘Follow my lead,’ he whispered.
Helen was not sure what she expected a bawdy-house to look like. She had thought red and pink would feature in the colour scheme, but the room they entered was decidedly blue and brown, and rather like a shabby drawing room. Of course, she had never been in a drawing room with so many half-clad women lounging around it.
A girl wearing yellow feathers in her brown curls sat at the pianoforte playing the shanty, her small breasts exposed above a loosely laced red stomacher. She looked up from the keys at their arrival and smiled, one black tooth marring the pretty effect. At a round table nearby, three more girls sat playing cards. All Helen registered were more breasts, smooth shoulders and pale thighs before she hurriedly looked away. Her gaze landed upon a familiar plump body and pink banyan curled on a chaise longue. Binny! The girl sat up and gave a tight smile of acknowledgment.
‘Evening, gentlemen.’ An older woman bustled towards them, set apart from the others by the fact that she was fully dressed and had a decided air of command. If that were not enough to place her as Kate Holt, procuress, her face clearly announced her kinship to Lowry: the same florid complexion, small piggy eyes and cleft chin. Unlike her brother, however, Kate Holt had a head of clean luxuriant black hair and a rather pleasant smile.
‘Jessie, their hats and gloves,’ she said.
The music stopped and the girl at the pianoforte rose from her stool. Helen quickly removed her hat and passed it across, keeping her eyes away from the girl’s freckled chest, then handed over her gloves. They were placed alongside Carlston’s on a nearby bureau, with only one other hat, set of gloves and a silver-topped cane in residence. A slow night indeed.
‘Can I offer you wine or some ale? Some meat?’ Kate Holt asked.
‘Claret,’ Carlston said.
With a jerk of her head, Kate Holt sent Jessie to a cabinet to draw out a bottle. ‘And what else can we offer you?’
‘I hear you have rooms out back,’ Carlston said.
‘Mollies,’ one of the girls at the table whispered to her neighbour and picked up her cards again.
Kate Holt regarded Carlston’s hand once again upon Helen’s shoulder. ‘Who told you that?’
‘I heard it about.’
Kate Holt crossed her arms beneath her broad bosom, suspicion dawning in her small eyes. ‘Nothing like that here,’ she said briskly. ‘And you can bloody well tell your friends in the new Watch the same. It’s all girls here.’
Carlston smiled. ‘We are not Watchmen.’
‘Well, you ain’t mollies neither, are you? I’ll thank you to get out of my house,’ the woman said flatly.
‘They don’t look like the Watch, Mrs Holt,’ Binny said, rising from the chaise longue.
‘You be quiet,’ Kate Holt ordered.
Helen glanced at Carlston. What should they do?
He took out a sovereign and held it up. ‘My good woman, all we want is a private room. We are not here to raid you.’
Kate Holt regarded the coin for a long moment. She sniffed. ‘If you are mollies, show me.’ She nodded at Helen. ‘Go on, buss him.’
Buss?
Shrugging, Carlston put the sovereign back into his pocket and turned Helen to face him. She looked up into his eyes and saw their message: Stay calm. Calm? Her heart was already thundering. Surely the whole room could hear it. At the corner of her eye, she saw Kate Holt watching, mouth pursed in disbelief.
She forced herself to smile and saw the answering warmth in his eyes. He cupped the back of her head in the long span of his hand and drew her closer, leaning down to brush his lips against her temple. She felt a word breathed soft against her ear — baciami — Italian for kiss me. Ah, that was what buss meant.
The moment of relief disappeared. She had never kissed a man before. Not intimately. She did not know what to do, how to act. She felt his lips slide featherlike across her cheek towards her mouth. The memory of lying atop him in her bedchamber, their bodies pressed against one another, flashed hot through her blood. Yes, they had kissed then, but it had been life and death, and a product of the Deceiver energy. Hadn’t it?
She smelled the clean, male scent of him, felt the rougher texture of his skin against her cheek, and drew a shaking breath. That pulse she had so brutally suppressed hammered into every part of her body, her fingers bunching with the sensation. She found herself turning her face to meet his careful progress, her lips finding the soft curve of his mouth. They both paused, breath mingling, and then she felt the warm pressure of his tongue against her own, the taste of him, salt and wine, merging with the clean smell of his skin. It was startling and soft and tender … and then it changed. Something wild crashed through her, a wave of throbbing energy that drove her up against his body, her fingers winding hard into the short crop of his hair. She felt him sway back, his breath catching into a gasp. She opened her eyes and saw the shock in his face flare into something more primal. She wrested him back to her mouth, any tenderness subsumed by animal need. He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her hard onto his chest, both of them locked into the dizzying sensation of their mouths and tongues and bodies pressed against each other. She felt as if she wanted to crawl into his skin, taste him, touch him, fill herself with him.