Polly recovered under the care of Rhys and his staff and he found he was possessed of some skill with listening also. Polly’s entry into prostitution was nothing less than a horror story. She was sold into the profession when she was eighteen, much older than most other girls when they got started, she assured him. It was only because she appeared to be so young that she had been overlooked on a number of occasions by the pimp who frequented the street where she lived. When she was drugged and taken to Mrs. Miller’s everyone assumed she was not more than fourteen.
Polly impressed upon Rhys that if she hadn’t been sold to an establishment she would have died in the back alleys as the property of some pimp who procured girls for diseased gents. Mrs. Miller specialized in clean and comely girls and her clientele was of a better quality than most houses. Polly was numb in the beginning, too drugged to make an escape from the house, and unresistant as men paraded through her room. But as the numbness passed she assessed her situation and decided she could be worse off. Rhys was not so easily convinced. When Polly was well he offered to set her up in a shop of some kind but she refused, saying she had no skill for any business save one. Rhys argued with her for weeks and it wasn’t until she threatened to leave and return to Mrs. Miller’s that he understood how serious she was about what she wanted to do with her life. He told her to unpack her things and they would work something out.
Rather than have her go back to Mrs. Miller and her butchers, Rhys agreed to help Polly invest her savings and establish her own house. It would have caused a roaring scandal if they had been less than discreet. As it was, the opening of Polly’s house was a quiet success and the Canning name was never connected to the enterprise.
Rhys’s interest in Polly extended beyond helping a friend. She could seek his advice on business ventures as long as she agreed that none of the women who worked for her were there through force. Furthermore, when the opportunity presented itself for her to purchase young girls she was to do so, then keep them safe until Rhys found more respectable and safer employment for them.
During the eighteen months that Polly’s loving arms had been open she and Rhys had pulled twenty girls from the streets who would have otherwise been working them. Fifteen of the girls were given positions in the country homes of Rhys’s friends, three returned to their own homes, and two asked to remain with Polly, one as her personal maid, the other as a cook’s helper. Polly once complained that her good works were going to cause her financial ruin but when Rhys offered to pay the amount she had spent on the last three girls, she refused, more than a little hurt that he believed her.
She laughed at herself then, saying she was a lady of the evening possessed of the proverbial heart of gold. Rhys had not laughed, finding the description more accurate than Polly was wont to believe.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” said Miss Rose. She leaned to one side and gave Rhys a kiss on his smooth cheek.
“Little enough,” Rhys said. “I can name twenty young women who think of you as their guardian angel.” And several pimps now serving in his Majesty’s service who would be less complimentary if they knew how a period was put to their operation.
Polly glanced at the dimpled little cherubs smiling sweetly from her headboard. She groaned dramatically, placing a hand over her heart. “You wound me, sirrah. The resemblance does not bear close examination.”
Rhys laughed and swung his feet off the bed. “I must be going, Polly. If you need anything you can send a message in the usual way to my townhouse. I’ve left orders that anything carrying the little rose is to be sent on to me at Dunnelly.”
“Your staff must wonder.”
“I’m certain my staff knows and they wouldn’t breathe a word. Weren’t they everything solicitous when you recuperated at my home?”
Polly lifted one eyebrow in disbelief. “They were scandalized!”
“But they wouldn’t let any of it touch me. I trust them.”
“Very well. If I have news for you I won’t hesitate to send a message.” She helped Rhys into his tight-fitting jacket. “How long do you expect to be at Dunnelly?”
“A week, maybe two.”
“You’ll talk to Kenna again?”
“She isn’t going to be there. She’s gone to visit her sister. At least Nick told me those were her plans when I saw him at the funeral.” He looked sad for a moment, but he wasn’t thinking of his father or brother. “I rather think I’ve ruined what could have passed as a future with Kenna.” A shutter came down, over his bleak features and he smiled down into Polly’s worried face. “Don’t give it a thought, love.” He kissed her upturned nose. “Take care.”
He was out the door before Polly found her voice. “God’s speed, Rhys.”
* * *
“I don’t know if I want her, Mason,” said Mrs. Miller. Elizabeth Miller had never been married but she adopted the title to discourage people from calling her Betty. She despised the nickname as common and she tenaciously resisted anything that was not of a refined nature. She had given some thought to changing her last name some years ago, but her business had been so firmly established by that time and her reputation so firmly in place that it seemed unnecessarily confusing. She raised her quizzing glass, an affectation she thought gave her great presence, especially since it was normally used by men, and examined the woman propped between Mason’s two thugs.
“She’s a veritable Amazon,” she sighed, glancing swiftly from Kenna’s feet to the top of her head. “Still, she has some good features. Her skin is not bad and her bosom and legs are adequate.”
Mason laughed. “Not bad? Adequate? My dear Mrs. Miller, by no stretch of the imagination can this girl be considered merely adequate. She’s outside the common mode and well you know it.”
Mrs. Miller refused to be swayed so easily. “She’s hardly a girl in her first bloom, Mason. The other side of eighteen I would think. You know it is more difficult to break the older ones.”
“But think of the challenge,” he needled. “And the rewards. She’ll earn a nice sum for you.”
“Perhaps.”
“If it is breaking her that is keeping you from leaping at the purchase then you should know I will be most willing to supply the drugs you need. At a very reasonable cost, I hasten to add.” He extracted the small bottle of liquid he had force-fed Kenna and showed it to Mrs. Miller. “There is more where this came from. Keep her on it for thirty days and by the end of that time she’ll do anything you want in order to have more.”
Mrs. Miller set her quizzing glass aside and looked at Mason shrewdly. “In effect you’re telling me she is no good to me without the drug, that she can’t be bent without it. I don’t know if I like that. It is my experience that the drugged ones do not last long. A few years, perhaps. Never more. Then they die or I have to dismiss them because they can’t work.”
“So?”
“So? You’re asking a great deal of the ready for a girl who can only work a few years at most. Who is she anyway? Where did you find her?”
