Chapter Fifteen
Camille didn’t deviatefrom the path to the club and back for several days at Syd’s behest. There’d been grumblings over Hawkins’s dismissal and lack of suitable replacements from the patrons at the club, leaving the streets tense and rife with boredom, a combination even the least talented nose could sniff out.
Flank’s lifeless body didn’t help matters. Boredom gave way to conjecture and rumors of a new wave of garroting infesting the rookeries. The Merry Men soothed the growing discord with a firm presence on the streets, but Syd’s hope for new, able recruits was proving too optimistic, and a six-crew gang was no enforcement for dozens of alleyways across the city.
At Syd’s fourth plea for her to ‘bar the windows,’ Camille locked herself inside Madam’s secret office at the club after an easy promise from the landlord he’d check on her mother every so often should she need anythingnon-alcoholic.
It was in that very space, amidst stacks of ink-scrawled parchment and an incessant hum from the electric lights Madam had installed, that the woman herself found Camille.
“A letter arrived,” Madam said.
Camille waved towards the bin with the rest of the merchant bills for the club. “I’ll get to it later.”
“It’s from your duke.”
Camille shot out of her chair and took the letter from the other woman’s hands. She’d waited, most impatiently, for word from Renard. A week without any correspondence could only mean he was taking her request seriously and considering their future.
Heart pounding, she broke the seal to find another duke’s hand, a most legible and unwanted one.
Dear Miss Forthright,
I admire your affront to any attempt at outreach, but your efforts are in vain. Should you wish to go through another party as to avoid interaction with me, I will of course make the arrangements. Since all previous grocers, servants, and errand boys have been turned away with a most unbefitting character, I shall endeavor to break down your resistance with more flattering persons. A renowned modiste shop assistant will arrive at your location in two hours’ time...one, by the time this letter receives you. I ask you to put aside your normal stubborn behavior and be reasonably tempered, as it is not the woman’s normal house call, and it is essentially not her doing.
As always,
Hamish Hurstfield, Duke of Camine
Unbelievable!Camille tore the paper in two and regretted not having a fire burning so she could singe the domineering popinjay’s words to ash.
The man didn’t know when to quit!
“Good news, it seems,” Madam said.
Camille went around the desk and threw the torn letter into the cold hearth. “Be prepared to turn away a seamstress in the coming hour,” she spat.
“A seamstress?” Madam glanced at the parchment at Camille’s feet. “Ah. The other duke. My mistake.”
There was no way the Madam hadn’t been explicitly aware of the sender of the letter.
The other woman tapped a perfectly crested nail on the desk’s edge while she surveyed the neat stacks of files. “You haven’t left this room in three days.”
Camille placed the current file she’d been working on in its designated pile. “The Pony has never run so smoothly.”
“You’ve barely touched your plates.”
The trays of food offered by the club’s cook lay by the door, untouched.
“I’m not hungry,” Camille said. More like everything she put in her mouth brought on a wave of nausea that eventually led to undignified gagging. Images of a dead body tended to ruin one’s appetite.
“That is concerning,” Madam said. “And telling.”
“What do you want, Clarice?” Camille leashed her temper with effort. She hadn’t left this sweltering hole infourdays, eating, sleeping, and more, all in an eight-by-eight-foot box, not that she’d offer up the information as more fuel for Madam’s nagging. She’d worked that entire time, switching off parts of her mind when exhaustion took her, allowing herself to continue processing the words and files. Eating, sleeping, Camille only knew the passing hours from the clock on the mantel and the ache of muscles from her backside.
Madam didn’t flinch at her outburst, ever in control. “Did you tell him how you felt? Is that why he left?”
Temper flaring again, Camille knew exactly which ‘him’ she meant. “The dukeleftbecause he has a duty to perform, and so do I, which you are now interrupting.”
“Careful, Angel. Wouldn’t want to expose the truth and ruin all that self-denial.”
