“Very well, then, Victoria.”
She snickered, not unkindly, and I realized that probably no one in her short, chaotic life had ever addressed her by her proper Christian name.
“Victoria, my brother, Mr. March, tells me that you have some information for me.”
She nodded, her expression dark. “I do. I’ve no call to keep my word to that Sally Simms. She’s kept back my wages twice this month for nothing. I do my job, my gentlemen are all quite happy.”
“Hmm. Yes. Suppose we walk for a bit and I will ask you a few questions.”
She nodded, moving down the path that I indicated. The Park was quiet. It was too early and too chill for most visitors, but I did not like being so near Rotten Row. The path wound us in the opposite direction, away from the faint noise of the streets and farther into the dark gloom of the sheltering plane trees.
She shivered a little in her thin coat.
“Are you warm enough, Victoria?”
She nodded. “I don’t much like trees. I always fancy they look like giants, with great big arms waving about.”
“I presume you are not country-bred then?”
She puffed with pride. “I am a proper Cockney. Of course I don’t get home to my mam very much on account of Miss High-and-Mighty Simms working me all the time. I had to feed her a tale this morning about my mam being sick to get out of the Box. But she was good enough about it. Sent for a hackney to bring me. The driver seems a good sort. I’ll give him a copper and he will never tell he didn’t take me to mam’s.”
I was shocked. I knew that the prostitutes lived in the brothel, but they could not be prisoners, could they?
“Surely she does not hold you there against your will?”
The girl laughed, a dry, grating sound so unlike Fleur’s gentle bells. “Bless you, no, my lady. It’s just that Simms makes us sign a little book telling where we’re going and when we’ll be back. She had a few girls disappear on her, pinched away to other houses, and she doesn’t mean to lose any others. And some girls will fix a plan to meet with one of the gentlemen outside the Box, to keep the money for themselves. But I’ve never thought that was worth my trouble.”
“Indeed?”
“Not at all. What’s a girl supposed to do if a gentleman won’t pay after he’s had his fun, or turns nasty-like, if there’s no Tommy about?” she asked reasonably. I nodded, remembering what Brisbane had told me about the men who committed cheerful violence to keep customers and prostitutes in line at the Box. Doubtless these were the Tommies.
“Besides,” she went on blithely, “I like clean sheets for my business and a bit of a wash in between. Some gentlemen are none too fresh, if you take my meaning.”
“Oh, dear,” I murmured. In spite of my pretenses to independence and bold thinking, I was beginning to understand how very conventional I really was.
“I suppose we had better come to business. My brother tells me that you knew my husband, Sir Edward Grey.”
“Oh, yes, my lady. That is why I wanted to speak to you, personal-like. Some ladies get all in a twist when they find out their gentleman was a customer. I wanted you to know that Sir Edward, well, it was different with him. He paid me for talk and he talked about you quite a fair bit of the time.”
I stopped and stared at her. We were of a height, Victoria and I, both of us fairly diminutive, but appearing taller. My carriage was nearly perfect thanks to Aunt Hermia’s rigorous schooling. I wondered where Victoria had learned hers.
“Sir Edward paid you for conversation?”
“Oh, yes. He had awful nice things to say about you, my lady, and I do say they were the truth. He was always talking about how nice you were, how ladylike. He did say he regretted marrying you something terrible, but that it was not your fault, you’d been a proper good wife.”
“How flattering,” I said faintly.
She nodded. “He said you were so pretty, he just liked to look at you, that he didn’t need to be a proper husband to you.”
I said nothing to this, but Victoria did not require a reply. She went on, chattering as if she did not know each word was a lance to me.
“He didn’t mind about the children, you know. He never blamed you for not having them. He blamed himself. Said if he had lived a better life, he could have made you a better husband and not taken such a risk with your health as he had his own. Of course, he always said—”
I put a hand to her sleeve. “What? What risk to my health?”
Her eyes widened. They were beginning to wrinkle at the corners. She could not have been more than twenty, and already the signs of her hard life were etched in her face.
“The pox, my lady. He felt right terrible about it.”
