Curving her full, rouged lips up in a sultry smile, Clara turned her considerable charms on the crotchety solicitor. “Forgive my friend,” she purred in a husky contralto.
High color flooded the solicitor’s cheeks, and he dropped beady eyes down to Clara’s generous bosom.
Reggie watched the interplay unfold, as Clara used her body to silence the pompous bastard before them.
The former madam drifted over. Her generous hips swaying and her satin skirts molding against her voluptuous frame, Clara presented herself as a carnal display before Mr. Elliot.
Reggie hadn’t been an innocent miss for some years now. Yet even having lived and worked inside a gaming hell where girls had plied their trade, Reggie felt a blush climbing her neck and cheeks.
“It is a lovely establishment,” Clara whispered, dusting a speck—real or imagined—from the solicitor’s shoulder. “As for your reservations,” she went on. She paused to straighten his lapels the way a devoted wife might a loving husband’s. “I assure you, we are both capable.” She dropped her voice. “Very capable.”
Mr. Elliot finally lifted his gaze, shifting that stare reluctantly over to Reggie. “What is it going to be?”
Chapter 9
I’m going to take away everything that matters to you . . .
The next morning, with a nervous pit in her belly, Reggie sailed through the double turquoise doors of her future establishment.
The miserable solicitor followed her approach with a condescending gaze. “I see you are capable of being on time.”
Biting back the caustic response on her lips, Reggie forced them up into a semblance of a smile for the miserable solicitor she had the misfortune of having to deal with—again. “Mr. Elliot, a pleasure to see you,” she lied. Reggie loosened the strings of her bonnet and shoved the article back so she had an unobstructed view of this place that would belong to her and Clara.
Where a handful of candles had been lit at her last visit, now the room was pitch-black; the bright morning light at her back served as an ominous juxtaposition to the place she now entered.
Despite the oppressive darkness of it, and for every last reservation that had gripped her, now there was a euphoria. It froze her in her tracks as she stopped abruptly and simply took in her surroundings.
Where yesterday she’d seen all that was wrong, today, in the light of a new day, Reggie looked upon it as something altogether different—hers.
Hers, when nothing, not even the work she’d done at the Devil’s Den, had truly been for her.
There was a euphoria that came from that empowerment. In a world ruled by men with women fighting for any shred of control, Reggie had accumulated funds through her hard work and was charting a new course on her own.
With a renewed sense of invigoration, Reggie tugged free her gloves and stuffed them inside her pocket. “I would like to sign the documents as quickly as possible,” she clipped out in the precise tonality used by Broderick that had so easily brought about compliance.
Mr. Elliot pursed his mouth. “If you have a problem waiting for my employer, then you are free to leave.”
You’d love that, wouldn’t you, you nasty bugger . . .
“I will wait,” she forced out through a tight smile. Refusing to give him the pleasure of her frustration, Reggie presented the rotter her back and took a slow turn about this place that would soon belong to her.
Regardless of what her future would now be, her time, as long as she was still employed by the Devil’s Den, still belonged to Broderick. If he summoned her, he’d find her missing, and then he’d wonder where she’d gone off to—
You’ll eventually have to tell him . . .
She thrust back the reminder. For she would. When the papers were signed and it became impossible for him to talk her out of her plans with Clara.
Reggie stopped at the center of the stage. Hitching herself onto the edge, she drew herself up.
Another chandelier stripped of its crystals hung overhead.
She closed her eyes, and this time she saw in her mind everything this place would one day be.
A gleaming stage awash in candlelight while singers danced and sang before a crowd of appreciative patrons. The lively strains of an orchestra’s music would fill the auditorium.
Nay, it wouldn’t be a saloon, little better than a gaming hell, where men came to drink and smoke. There wouldn’t be courtesans on the laps of drunkards, but rather women employing real talents in a venture that was something new.
New, like her life was becoming.
Mr. Elliot called out, breaking her reverie. “I’ve been asked to leave so you might conduct the formal arrangement in private.”
Warning bells went off. Reggie spun back to face the squat man now laying out a series of papers upon one of the tables. “Beg pardon?” The nervous timbre of her query bounced off the rafters.
The solicitor didn’t bother to glance up from his task. Removing a quill and inkwell from the travel desk, he set them out in a meticulous row. “It is not my place to question,” he said with a pointed edge that she’d have to be deaf to miss. At last finished setting up a makeshift desk for the formal meeting, he finally spared her his focus. “If you have reservations about conducting business as any other male client would, then perhaps you’d be wise to consider a different plan, Miss Spark.”
Reggie curled her fingers tightly. So that was what this was, then? A bid to send her running in fear? “I’ll wait until your esteemed employer arrives,” she said coolly. She scraped a frigid stare over the solicitor and, drawing on the memory of a ducal command issued by her previous employer, added, “You are dismissed.”
Muttering loudly under his breath, Mr. Elliot gathered up his belongings. On a huff, he took his leave.
The doors landed shut behind him with such force they brought the moth-eaten, faded velvet curtains down in a noisy heap.
Curtains falling is an ominous sign peril is to come to thine . . .
Unease grew in her breast. “Enough,” she whispered, that familiar lore filtering through her memory. As a girl she’d listened, enthralled by every folk story and legend and superstition shared by her eccentric father. Now she wished she’d done as her mother had instructed and attended to him a good deal less. Dragging a chair over to the heap of velvet, she hefted it up. Dust specks danced in the air, stinging her nose.
“Achoo.”
Grunting at the surprising weight of the dusty fabric, she climbed onto the seat. The wobbly oak chair rocked under her, and she steadied herself before tossing the curtains over the metal rod. “There,” she said, pleased with herself.
She’d not let this day be ruined. Not by miserable Mr. Elliot. Not for her irrational fear of shutting doors and falling curtains. And not for any regret at all she was leaving behind.
Reggie crossed to the documents awaiting her signature. The crack in those heavy curtains now let in a stream of sunlight that erased some of the trepidation she’d long carried of dark, empty rooms.
Nor had hers been an irrational trepidation. Rather it had been a fear she’d long carried with her since that dark night when . . .
Reggie gave her head a hard shake, refusing to let thoughts of him in. Refusing to think of every last mistake she’d made that had brought her to this point—a woman alone, on her own.
There had been a time she’d been fresh to London, a girl who’d never left the placidity of Kent. The kaleidoscope of noises, sounds, and people in the Dials had sent terror clamoring in her breast.
That fearful girl of long ago was gone . . .
Ten years ago, nearly to the date, Broderick had saved her.
On this day, Reggie would save herself.
She scanned the official document, the complex legal language that women were so often refused any kind of say in. Reggie flipped to the next page.
She lingered on the page in her hands, staring absently down at her name etched on the legal document. So why did sadness creep back in and dull the joy of this moment?