Chapter 8 – The Turning Point
She said nothing as the carriage rolled on into the night. I studied this woman who had come from nowhere and suddenly disarranging my life. A young woman, not more than five and twenty, I estimated, even taking into account the flattering tendencies of dim lamplight. She had a fine and supple form, barely concealed by the minute corset and threadbare skirt enrobing it. Worn but dainty boots peeped from beneath tattered petticoats, which spilled across the plush seat as she settled herself, pulling her skirts higher and crossing her legs to expose a garter of claret velvet holding up one of her dark stockings. Slim fingers pulled off the netted gloves, laying them across her lap. A quiet cough ended my meditation and my eyes quickly took in an elegant throat accentuated by a dark ribbon choker, soft russet curls tumbling from a precarious upsweep and that face that had become all too familiar. None of the depictions had managed capture the expression she wore, a most peculiar blend of annoyance and amusement.
"So - you are an acquaintance of Edmund's, Mr. - " She let the question hang between us.
"Mr. Gray. Dorian Gray." I supplied with a polite nod. "And you are - "
"Interested to know why I was accosted and now find myself being spirited into the night by a strange gentlemen."
I was not expecting such deft conversational maneuvering or such an intelligent retort– she was most definitely not a true streetwalker. I tried another tack.
"You keep an interesting social circle, or should I say circles, for a - friend - of a Lord as affluent as Lord Godalming."
Her lips twisted into a flicker of a smile. "I suppose I do."
"I would think a man such as him would be interested to know your whereabouts – not to mention your choice of escorts."
"Perhaps. Is that your intention, to accuse me to him?" she asked, her voice a calm purr.
"It could be – amusing," For me - and dangerous, perhaps even deadly, for you, I thought, watching for any trace of fear. My hopes were dashed by her soft chuckle.
"Unquestionably it would be amusing – highly amusing." Her eyes narrowed and she studied me, as if taking my measure. "But not, I suspect, for you."
Here she paused and continued with a benign smile "For you would find the accuser turned, in short order, to the accused. Do not, however, let me squelch your enthusiasm. I ask only to be informed of the hour at which the entertainment will commence."
"You mean for me to believe that he knows of your nocturnal engagements? Are you telling me he is indifferent as to your conduct?" I mockingly asked. Effected bravado had failed to save women more wily than her but she answered this challenge.
"I am telling you - simply stated - that you have misjudged the situation. I am not a rich man's fancy. As for him - " she continued in the indulgent tone one uses with children or simpletons, "He knows – a great deal more and about a great many more things, than you seem to. Was that your aim? Blackmail?"
She spat out her final question with a venom worthy of my own views on the practice. Even more grating, her poise never wavered, her greenish eyes scrutinizing my reaction with the same intensity I had employed not a moment before. Clearly this tack was not working either. Deliberately mirroring her composed façade, I started again.
"My aim, as you put it, is to understand why someone so dear to both a affluent Lord and an impoverished painter deserted them both to wander the streets."
She bristled at this. "I did not desert Edmund. Who are you, that you censure me – accuse me – of desertion, of being a lamia?"
"Let's just say I am – that I was - a friend and business associate of Edmund's. A sort of sponsor."
"Was?" she pounced on the word. "What have you done to him? He hasn't been back to his studio in months."
"Funny – I intended to ask you the same thing. He was in a private sanitarium. He, he went mad – ranting until the very end about his beloved muse. Why did you not return to him? After you were his, after you had him and gained his love?" I asked pointedly, once again turning the focus to her. "He never recovered from the delusion or his feeble health. Quite simply, he went mad, lost in your enchantment, longing for your return and killing himself with intoxicants and self-mutilation. He is dead - Dead. So I ask you, what have you done to him?"
Shaken by my vehemence, she fell silent, wilting before me and staring blankly down at her hands. Her words, when they came, were bare whispers, directed more to herself than me.
"Dead? Driven mad?" she shook her head. "No – No, he was not so weak, so fragile. To shatter his mind, drain his soul, I didn't – No - " the sighed denials holding no conviction. To me she said sorrowfully, "I am sorry. Edmund – he was a man of rare talent. His death is a great loss."
"Sorry?" I sneered. "Well, that changes everything." She was mistaken if she thought a few tears and moment of contrition was going to end this.
The change was immediate. Meeting my hostile glare, she smoothed her features back into that blank mask and returned the glare with one of her own. She straightened, her posture hardening from the broken, repentant form she had presented not a moment before. Every trace of remorse vanished and the slight clench of her jaw gave her a diffident, almost frosty, bearing.
"Enough of this," she gave a dismissive wave. "All that still does not explain why we are sitting here. Or why you, and I must assume it was you, have had men following me about. They are not nearly as stealthy as they believe themselves to be. So - " she unflinchingly held my gaze, "What, exactly, is it that you want?"
"Yes, enough of this meandering talk. Let's get right to it. What do I want? Exactly?" I paused, clenching my cane, resisting the urge to kill her right then and there. She had to be the most infuriating woman I had ever encountered. "I want your head, neatly on a platter, by my hand. Edmund deserved better than you. You aren't, as you said, a rich man's fancy. You, my dear, are a whore – a well-connected, not easily threatened or discarded whore – but a whore nonetheless. I want to ruin you, plague you, dog your every moment – until you regret it all – Edmund, your impudence, and the very day you were born."
She gave a tiny smile as I called her a whore and it only grew broader and more malicious. I knew as I spoke that I was showing too much, giving full vent to my anger. That smile and the sudden glitter in her eyes gave the distinct impression that I had just made a very serious mistake.
"Ah, at last we get to the heart of the matter. A whore, Mr. Gray?" she paused for a moment before closing in for the kill. "Or an unwelcome, vexingly favored rival?" She ignored my sharp intake of breath and continued.
"I spoke nothing but the truth to you, though I may have tinkered a bit with the emotion. I am sorry about Edmund. I am not a whore or some pampered mistress. And you," her chuckle sent a chill through me, "have badly misjudged the situation. I suspected who you were, who was shadowing my every step, long before tonight. I wondered when you would confront me. I knew, from comments Edmund made, that you were not a man to take rejection well or be denied your petty little vengeance. So I knew you well enough, and anticipated your coming, even if I did not know your name. But you generously provided that, didn't you? Such a gentleman," she crooned, flashing a truly wicked smirk before continuing.
"It comes down to this; an artistic genius Edmund was, discreet he was not. There are journals, Mr. Gray. Exhaustively detailed journals you would not wish to be made public."
That was absurd! Edmund knew better than that - didn't he? Regardless, there was only one way to play this. "That was a pathetic ploy," I scoffed. "You're lying. There are no journals, nor any scandal to spread."
"I am sure you wish that were true." The smirk became a truly predatory grin and she proceded with a flood of details – of evenings long past, of trips to the country and – without so much as a blush –details of a personal nature she really had no business knowing, let alone saying out loud. It took all my will not to gape at her. Or rip her throat out – both in anger and to end her shameless, and emotionless, recitation before I disgraced myself by blushing.
Mercifully she ceased, smiling sweetly. "Edmund really should have been a writer – it provided evenings of fascinating and quite educational reading." She cleared her throat and continued in a less teasing tone.
"As I said, there ARE journals. I have them, safely in the hands of solicitors. And - before you even think it – the journals are not all being kept at their office nor does any one of them know the locations of all the journals. So midnight burgling, kidnapping or even torture would be of no avail."
"What – exactly – do you want?" I asked through clenched teeth. "Is blackmail your aim?"
"No, no." she laughed. "I really have no patience for illicit acts as mundane as blackmail. What I want – and it is so simple, Mr. Gray – what I want, is for you to call off your hounds. Forget you saw me and leave me in peace. When our paths cross again, and I think they will, forget you ever met me before that day. That is it, that is all I want."
"And if I don't, you ruin me?"
"Yes, I could ruin you - if you are lucky. If you are not so lucky, you and all your little hounds might find you have cornered a tiger in fox's guise."
The menace in her voice was ridiculous coming from such a tiny woman. The conversation had ceased to be at all amusing. I was supposed to be threatening her. With a low snarl, I released the clasp keeping the sword concealed within my cane, unsheathing the blade in mere seconds.
But not quickly enough, for an instant later I found myself pinned to my seat, my sword on the floor near her seat and my hand throbbing from the swift kick that had disarmed me. I wriggled my fingers experimentally, testing that nothing was damaged, and brushed a stockinged knee. It was then I fully realized my position - the woman was actually astride me, layers of petticoats bunched in my lap, with a blade pressed to my throat. Somehow, as I drew my sword, she had leapt across the interior of the carriage, disarmed me, and produced a dagger from depths of her cleavage – her quite distracting cleavage which, incidentally, was now entirely filling my field of vision. A deep growl from somewhere above me refocused my attention on the face of my attacker – her teeth bared and eyes almost red with rage. I was disturbed to find myself thinking that she was really quite stunning.
"Again, you misjudged – quite badly." She hissed. Looking at the thin trickle of blood from beneath her blade, she wet her lips and murmured seductively, "Your heart is racing, Mr. Gray. Are you afraid to die?"
The twists and turns of this whole encounter were impossible to follow but trying to keep up was proving stimulating. How had she moved that fast? Who was this woman who had me – ME – at knifepoint? And how on earth was I supposed to come up with an urbane response while being nearly smothered?
Luckily, I had not squandered my immortality and had, in all honesty, been in far more unexpected - and indecent - circumstances than this. With a little squirming, I was able to free my still smarting hand from the bit of petticoat trim my cuff had become entangled in, while I boldly looked this radiant valkyrie right in the eye.
"Now I think it is you who have misjudged," my voice a bewitching, low velvety tone. "My heart is racing," her eyes widened in a most satisfying look of discomfiture as she felt a caress along the bare flesh above her garter, "but it has nothing to do with fear."
She squirmed away from my touch but succeed only in wiggling about delightfully as she refused to lessen the pressure of the blade on my throat. Clenching her teeth, she ignored the unintended consequences of her actions and forced her features back into a harsh glare, though not without a visible effort.
"Really, Mr. Gray."
Her indignant tone had no effect on my grin and, with a somewhat exasperated sigh, she lifted most of her weight out of my lap. "Signal your driver to stop."
I did as she watched with a most enchanting expression – as if she too was rather confused as to how we had ended up in this position. As soon as the carriage slowed, she had kicked open the door, never slackening the press of blade to flesh, and paused to scowl at me one last time.
"This ends now. Leave me be and I will leave you be. If not -"she paused meaningfully and then leapt out into the night. She was, of course, long gone by the time I looked out. We had stopped at a nondescript shadowy crossroad somewhere in London. The dwellings were not unusually shabby, nor the stench of rot and sewage overwhelming, so I surmised we had crossed the Thames at some point during our little tête-à-tête.
I might have stood there for hours, staring into the night, letting my mind tumble over the events. It was as if I was hoping that, through repeated mediation, a death threat, mingled with a little coquetry, would suddenly become the logical conclusion to the preceding events. Luckily, my man spoke up, voice heavy with concern. "Sir? Are we headed back to Melmoth then?"
"Yes. Home," I answered, alighting and slamming the door closed behind me. Her gloves had fallen to the floor in the attack. I retrieved them, along with my sword. Staring at those tiny netted gloves, something in me was stirred. She was amazing, all vitriol and sass, with a spine of unshakable determination lurking beneath those curves. What a devious little mind – and the gall to actually try to murder a gentleman in his own coach, with his man just inches away guiding the horses. She was utterly unlike anyone, man or woman, I had ever encountered. It had been ages since anyone effectively threatened me; no dared or had the necessary cunning. She was vicious when cornered, but in an icy, calculated way that reminded me, quite frankly, of me. As we neared home, I made a disturbing discovery. As annoyed and infuriated as I was her, the anger was not strong enough to obscure the truth. She had bested me, even threatened to kill me, and, yet, there I was, rather taken with her.
A.N.: I must admit I have committed a very large writer's sin here…I have fallen in love with my own story. I can't help it. This scene popped into my mind, almost exactly as it appears here, not more than 20 seconds after I got the idea that it might be fun to write a Mina/Dorian story. This is why a beta is an essential step in writing – to keep the author honest about the quality of their work. Still, it was fun, wasn't it? amused smirk