*
Mel followed thebrothers to the guarded back gate of a building. What were they there for? She had tried to engage the guard in conversation, but he just grumbled, “Clear out, or I’ll biff you one.”
Foiled, she retraced her steps along the mews lane and found her way to the front of the building. There, she soon found people who knew that the building was some sort of gathering place for women. “Ladies,” said the crossing sweeper. “Masked, most of them,” complained an indolent fellow who was propped against a wall, keeping company with a bottle. “Indecent, I call it. Hiding who they are and getting up to who knows what.”
“All night long, they come and go,” an eager flower seller added. “I sell out every night.”
Up and down the street, the stories were the same. A mysterious club patronized by masked ladies. And, Mel guessed, by masked men like the Sheppard brothers who went in through the servants’ entrance.
Two men came out of the front door, dressed in a livery of red and gold. They took station on each side of the door. Mel approached, but they ignored her except to wave her away with a frown when she came too close.
Could this be The Golden Adonis? Women spoke in whispers about a ladies’ club, but its whereabouts was a closely guarded secret. Only members knew, and their identity was concealed even more carefully.
It was, so rumor said, a place where ladies could do whatever they pleased without social consequences. Take tea and converse. Listen to music. Dance with handsome young men. Read in a well-appointed library. Play table games such as cards, dice, chess, and backgammon. Conduct discreet liaisons. Yes, and indiscreet liaisons in the case of some of the racierwidows who were rich enough and independent enough not to care about social censure.
As if to confirm Mel’s conclusions, a carriage pulled up at the foot of the steps, and one such widow descended and marched up to the front door, holding out something for the doormen to see. One of them opened the door for her.
Some sort of token. Gold in color, but Mel was not able to see the shape.
After that, carriages continued to arrive, and ladies with tokens continued to be admitted. Without a token, Mel could do no more tonight. She was about to give up and go back to the tower prison of the young lords, when something about a new arrival caught her eye.
The cloak was a short one, displaying the wearer’s skirts from the knee. Furthermore, the lady held the skirts up out of the mud, so her embroidered stockings and her footwear were also on display.
Mel knew those skirts and the stockings. She had, during one long month last year, worked as a seamstress in one of Mayfair’s lesser houses, first embroidering the deep band of flowers around the hem of those skirts, and then creating matching flowers down the outer side of each stocking.
As for the platformed shoes that strapped on over the lady’s slippers and kept her above the grime of the street, Mel had suggested them when the lady had come home with mud to her ankles and her slippers ruined after a thunderstorm turned the streets into a quagmire and a broken-down coach on the doorstep of a ball had forced all the guests to walk to their carriages.
During that month, Winifred had recognized Mel as an old acquaintance—they had once been neighbors. When she discovered that Mel was there to investigate her father for fraud, she had helped Mel to discover the true villain, her uncle, whohad also defrauded his brother. In that short time, Mel had come to look on Winifred as a younger sister, and their relationship had only strengthened in the eighteen months since.
What on earth was Winifred Querrendale doing at the Golden Adonis? She was unmarried and a wallflower—and as innocent as a newborn lamb, if Mel was any judge. Even as Mel pondered the question, Winifred disappeared through the door into the club.
Winifred could help Mel get into the club, or at least tell her more about what went on in there. Would she be willing? There was only one way to find out. As a first step, she followed the lady’s carriage, which was moving away.
It didn’t go far, turning at the next corner and then again, through the arch of an inn. The coachman climbed down, left the horses to doze in the corner of the stable yard under the supervision of a sleepy stable boy, and went into the tavern next door.
Mel bought him three pints of ale and a half pint of gin before he became loquacious, and confirmed the identity of his passenger, who was the daughter of his employer, the classical scholar Dr. Querrendale. He then lowered his head onto his hands and went to sleep, so that when the errand boy from the club ran in to say Miss wanted her carriage, he was in no fit state to drive.
With the help of a couple of the other patrons in the tavern, Mel arranged to tuck him into the luggage net at the rear of the carriage. Thank goodness she had some experience driving a carriage, and that the horses were placid and well trained.
Trust Winifred to look up at the driver’s perch and comment. “You are not my driver. Where is Tom Margate?”
“In the luggage net, Miss. Blind drunk,” Mel explained, hoping that would be enough to convince the lady.
However, Winifred was not such a fool. “I am not getting into a carriage controlled by someone I do not know,” she insisted, and turned back toward the club.
“Wait a minute, Miss,” Mel said. “I can explain.” She had already set the brake. Now she tied off the reins and clambered down.
Winifred put her hand into her reticule. “I have a pistol inside here,” she warned.
“Good for you,” said Mel, softly. “I remember when I first advised you on which one to purchase. And taught you how to load and fire it.”
Winifred leaned forward to peer into her face. “Mel—” she began.
“Yes, it is I,” Mel agreed. She glanced up at the doormen, who were craning to see what was going on. “Allow me to drive you home, Winifred, and I shall explain everything.”
She would surely have enough time to take Winifred back to the Querrendale house in Mayfair, explain she was on an investigation and needed a guest invitation to the Golden Adonis, and get back to the riverbank to find the entrance to the tower and make her way back to her bed before the marquess’s sons returned home.
Once the coachman had been delivered to the stables, along with the carriage and horses, Winifred led Mel into her house through a side door that led to Winifred’s private parlor.
