“I don’t know.” Her frown returned. “What is a pleasure garden?”
For some reason, the detective’s countenance reddened. “If you’re unaware of what the purpose of a pleasure garden is, Miss Thorncroft, I’m hardly the one to educate you.”
“I see. Then I suppose I’ll just have to ask a stranger. Excuse me!” she called out to the couple standing in front of them. “Yes, hello. Do you know what a—”
“All right,” Kincaid growled. “I’ll tell you.”
“Thank you,” she told the couple sweetly, “but it seems my companion has suddenly recalled the answer to my question.”
Kincaid looked at her with suspicion. “You did that on purpose.”
“Yes,” she said unabashedly. “But it worked, didn’t it? Now, what is a pleasure garden? It sounds very…wicked.”
“It’s certainly not a suitable place for a young, unmarried woman, if that’s what you’re asking. To be perfectly blunt, a pleasure garden is a place where lasciviousness and carnality are openly encouraged.”
“But my sister is going there to meet a duke!” Joanna exclaimed.
“A scoundrel, more like. Any peer wary of ruining their reputation does well to avoid Cremorne Gardens, dukes included.”
“If Evie ruins her reputation, then she ruins any chances of marrying a British nobleman. We have to warn her!”
“What are you doing?” Kincaid said warily when she grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the queue. “You cannot be serious. The theater is one thing, but I’ll be damned if I take you to a pleasure garden. There are lines, Miss Thorncroft, that exist between an employer and employee, and I won’t cross them.” His mouth tightened. “I refuse.”
“Should I go there by myself, then?” she challenged with a toss of her head.
He muttered a curse. “I’ll get us a hackney.”
*
They went tothe boarding house first. Joanna hoped she might be able to head off Evie before her sister and Mrs. Benedict left, but she was too late. The house was quiet, and Evie was gone.
“How far is it to Cremorne Gardens?” she anxiously asked Kincaid as she climbed back up into the hackney and squeezed in beside him.
The detective had tried to hail a larger carriage, but they’d all been taken. The creaky little hansom cab with its patched roof and dusty velvet seat that smelled vaguely of cigar smoke was the only one that had stopped when Kincaid stepped out in the busy street with his arm raised and with no other options, they’d been forced to take it.
Joanna didn’t mind, but it was clear by Kincaid’s stony expression and the stiffness of his body that he would have vastly preferred roomier accommodations.
“A half-hour, give or take,” he replied without looking at her.
“That long?” she said in dismay.
“The gardens are all the way in Chelsea by the end of the King’s Road. If the traffic doesn’t thin out soon, it may take even longer. Rest assured, however, we’ll get there.”
Yes, they’d get there.
But would it be in time to prevent Evie from being ruined?
Joanna knew her sister could take care of herself. But she also knew this wasn’t Somerville. The Thorncroft women had gone from the pond to the ocean, and they weren’t accustomed to how deep the water was…or the size of the sharks circling beneath their feet.
Evie may have had her heart set on a duke, but what did she know of thetonor the litany of unspoken rules that governed their actions? As an American with no dowry (at least, not before they recovered the ring), she was already at a severe disadvantage. If she found her reputation in tatters, there was no nobleman in all of England who would have her.
At least, not for marriage.
Pulling her handbag off her wrist, Joanna set it on her knees, fingers digging into the worn leather as their carriage bounced over a large rut. “Have you ever been there? To the pleasure gardens, I mean.” If she was going to be trapped beside Kincaid for the next thirty minutes (give or take), she couldn’t sit in deafening quiet, her mind constantly veering towards the worst possible outcome.
“On occasion, I was required to patrol the grounds,” he said evasively. The wind ruffled his hair, whisking it away from his temple and giving her a clear, unfettered view of his profile.
All sharp angles and lines, she noted, with only the rounded edge of his spectacles to soften a countenance that otherwise could have been carved from granite.
