Part 10 – Lord F and Catia Flee the Brothel
Catia stirs, lazily becoming aware she is no longer alone in her new bedchamber, the one without the generous, heavy-curtained windows and the extra sitting space. Instead she has one small window and only a few coals glimmer in the tiny iron hob. She hasn't been paying her way, 'fulfilling her promise' in Madame's words, and the best chambers are for the best-paying customers, my girl, not for street toughs, racing touts, or destitute gamblers.
Catia doesn't care. She has compensations. She rolls over, disregarding the covers, and tosses back her glossy raven hair to squint up into the dim room with a sly grin of welcome. A man's dark figure stands over the bed, coated, hatted, and swinging a dark vial nonchalantly between gloved fingers. "Got a bottle, lovely?" it asks in the quiet, silky voice of her dreams.
She purrs, "Arrr-cheee, what a pleasant surprise." She positions herself on one side, leaning her head of tangled curls on one elbow and artfully placing the other arm so the most provocative bits of her bare breasts would be veiled. "You are fortunate, sir," she whispers playfully, "I have a little time to entertain before Madame closes. Tell me, m'lord, why do you want a bottle? A souvenir, perhaps, to remember me by?"
"You think I could forget you, sweet?" Featherington draws off one glove, dropping it and a larger bundle amid the tumbled sheets. "I'm only lacking something to tip this into." He swings the vial once more. "You'll be needing to get out of bed, at any rate. It's over."
Catia almost freezes, a liability in her profession – in all of her professions, actually. "What is over, meu amante?" she asks quietly.
"The operation here; we're about to be tumbled, m'dear." Featherington strides to the ugly little vanity and begins rummaging among the bottles on display. "Best get your walking togs on."
Catia huffs a ladylike protest and remains in the bed, watching him brush glassware aside. When he finds a bottle with a few drops of scent left, he casually upends it over the cushion of the sole chair, then fills it with the contents of the vial, stops it, and replaces it amid the clutter. He has changed, she muses. In the beginning he was less sure, a man awaiting orders. Now he is the independent man of sure resolve. Do I like this new Archie, this man I might not be able to master? Let me see...
By the time he returns to her side she has shifted more of the bed linen, discretely drawing his attention to her firm dancer's loins. Featherington makes himself place the empty vial on the little table with the candle, keeping his voice as steady as he can. "Still abed, lovely? Time's pressing."
Slowly, she rises to a sitting position, drawing her legs up from under the cover of the linens to pose naked against the sheets, her gaze fixed on his. He would be more than the man he has become if he is able to resist allowing his eyes to follow every dainty curve of her body, displayed for his appreciation. He doesn't try but it takes all he has to repress the urge to touch her one last time.
"A bit more light, perhaps," he mutters and sweeps off his topper to toss it lightly onto the bed before her. "Sit on that, will you, m'dear? Mustn't leave dressed as I came."
He forces a smirk at her, then casts about for a spill to light at the coals and touches it to the candle. It flares up as he pulls off his overcoat and, seeing her pout, he grins briefly and drops the garment on the exposed bed. "Turn your back like a decent gel," he teases and begins on his jacket.
The pout deepens, then she shrugs and a twinkle brushes it away, and with a prim set of her full lips, Catia slips off the mattress and rises, stretching carelessly to show off every dusky, gleaming inch of perfect flesh as she does so. She feels him watching but ignores it as she swivels elegantly, adjusts her bottom with a languorous twitch, and lets her knees unlock. The result is a satisfying crump.
Featherington lets out an answering noise of pain. My second-best topper... but needs must. He fishes a wad of bank notes from a hidden inner pocket of the tailcoat and they join the growing pile of clothing on the bed, "Your last fee, lovely, and a bit more. Madame will have to miss her cut this time. Use it all to get out, back to Portugal."
A focused, intense excitement replaces the heat of seduction in Catia's dark eyes. She springs up, flips the ruins of the topper to one side and begins gathering up the notes. "So much, Archie! The fighter, he did it then? He dived?"
"He dove high and wide. Behold the fruit of it, m'dear," Featherington drawls, dismissive. He drops the tailcoat on the bed and begins unbuttoning the waistcoat.
Unconsciously, Catia rolls the notes into a tight pack even as she watches each button come away. She is a professional, but old habits die hard because, once, concealing money or food or whatever else she could steal on the meaner streets of Lisbon had kept her alive.
She steps to the rickety wardrobe as Featherington strips off his waistcoat, keeping his eyes on the antique molding of the ceiling corner. "That fight loss was an inspired performance, obvious to the veriest dolt that he was feigning it. I was lucky to get out of it in one piece. Not that."
Catia is pulling her sturdiest shift out of the wardrobe but pauses in the act, poised against a treasury of demure but expensive frocks and even more demure small clothing. Archie is studying her, sidelong, as he unravels his stock. "None of any of that. The drawers, m'dear; much safer for you to travel as a man if you're alone in these perilous times."
Her eyes flash. "Does that mean you think I am suited to wear men's garb, m'lord?" she grumbles, flicking the shift away. "Tell me what has happened. You have done what Senhor Holmes asked you to do, hmm?" She leers at him then, her tiger's smile softening her, but only from a deadly animal into a sensuous one, Featherington knows. Deliberately, she scatters the notes back onto the bed clothes as if they are rose petals. "Then why do I dress at all? We must celebrate!"
"Not with all the Fancy at my heels, lovely." Featherington tugs at the last perfectly tied knot of the stock and lets it slide to the floor, scuffling it with his boots. His eyes are on her. "They know I've been coming here every week, if not for the reason they think. You have a wondrous ability to make men talk, sweet Cat."
"Obrigada, meu senhor," she purrs, miming the bob of a curtsey. "All men talk, except the one I want most to hear. For all the times we met, we spoke of so little besides false money, my Archie."
Featherington drags his eyes from her, indicating the empty bottle on the little table with a jerk of his head. "The touts were waiting in our usual room with that," he tells her. "The 'gentlemen' who take the bets on the gladiators of the twenty-four-foot ring gave me a choice; drink it or be sent to the morgue with all my bones broken. I pleaded for one hour of grace and here we are, at this moment, saying our fond farewells. Then they'll be up here, looking for their money."
"Eca! My patriotic countrymen, my customers," Catia fumes. She unburies her knife from its place under the mattress before turning to the wardrobe, throwing back a lid in the bottom and digging into a chest there, tossing out silken drawers, pantaloons, a fine shirt and ruffled stock, while sending keen glances back over her shoulder at Archie as she does so.
Featherington is now wiping his dusty stock into the front of the fine shirt he wears. She slides her legs slowly into the drawers then reaches for the pantaloons, unable to stop checking slyly under her lashes to see if Archie is watching, "They do not yet know you have found them then, the forgers?"
Featherington pulls his eyes away. "They will, quite soon. I sent the glad tidings to Bow Street before I came over, though no doubt someone in the upper ranks will take the credit. A word of caution, lovely; don't use the notes your Portuguese touts have given you when they visit." He begins to undo the fall of his breeches but at her snicker he pauses and turns his back with wry dignity. "As they are the ones who've been shipping them back to the Peninsula and into your soldiers' pockets, no doubt they will have begun with you."
Catia curses vehemently, pulling the fine linen shirt over her bare torso, then spits at the crumple of notes half-hidden on the bed. "You have looked at these? They are not counterfeit also?"
Featherington sighs and sits on the bed to pull off his boots. "From this so-called 'bower of Venus'," he says, rolling his eyes at the dark, dirty room, "you've collected notes and names enough to expose the rat's nest the counterfeits breed in. Would I give you bad money? I'm a man of my word." He peels his fine breeches off and heels them under the bed as he pulls on the very poor buckskin substitutes he'd brought in with him, "Or I was, once, before I left the Navy and the blasted title ruined me."
Catia pauses to watch him pull up the buckskins. "Where did you get those?"
He grins, "Stole them from out in the hall. You are a very bad influence, sweet." He then pulls on his newly scuffed boots, hiding the calf cuff underneath the trouser legs. Standing and knotting the dirtied stock into an absurd parody of the accepted fashion of the day, he has transformed himself from an elegant gentleman on the town to a common street crawler with pretentions: buckskins baggy over scuffed boots, a waistcoat turned inside out to show the dull lining and pinned closed over a grimy shirt, with a battered and broken topper to complete his disguise.
"I shall miss our 'visits', my most lovely Catia," he says, and for the first time that night, the sound of his heart is in it.
The deliciously slender courtesan is now a somewhat portly youth. She wears pantaloons and an embroidered waistcoat padded significantly with handfuls of notes from a stash hidden among her small clothes, to reduce the prominence of her breasts. Now and then she has stuffed in a judicious jewel or two, gifts from better-to-do admirers and easily convertible into cash. She pauses in twisting up her luxurious hair to cram under a hat and smiles at Archie's reflection in her cracked mirror – so, he says the important thing at last!
She reaches for a pair of slippers which she flings to bounce off his chest into his ready hands. "Pack those with the others, m'lord," she commands, in the same tone of voice she uses to tell him to put the teacup down and come to bed, "I will need them when I come before the Council with our evidence."
Featherington quirks eyebrows at her and shoves the slippers into an already packed bundle which will hide easily under her voluminous greatcoat. In it are all the female necessities she will need in her flight, except the dusky feminine skin powders which Featherington now uses to stain his overcoat.
Catia selects a respectable tailcoat and a smart, low-crowned topper from the wardrobe, shuts the chest, and shoulders into the coat before perching on the edge of the rumpled bed. She slides coy glances at Archie and, ignoring the unaccustomed bulk of the padding, begins worrying her boots on.
"Where will you go?" she asks casually.
"Crown Street first, with the evidence, although a sterling citizen would take it straight to the Runners, wouldn't he?" Featherington tells her, his sarcasm firmly back in place. He packs the last of the false notes he has gathered into the bag under his overcoat, now suitably patchy. "If I'm brisk, I'll arrive just as the Runners present our arrested printers at the bar."
Catia abandons the boot she is tugging at to gaze up at him, her face solemn. "I will come with you."
Featherington very nearly lets out a harsh laugh, stifling it at the first bark, "No, you won't, m'dear!" Then he sees the look on her face. To avoid it he kneels on the dusty rug, motioning for her to lift her foot and allow him to shoe her. He makes his voice level, practical, unemotive, "If I am caught carrying counterfeit notes I shall be arrested, and if I am NOT distributing them, then how is my Lord Magistrate to know that, hmm? I shall be detained at His Majesty's pleasure until I am cleared or fetched out with the rest of Holmes' spies. If he can be troubled to come get us, that is," he adds in lower tones.
"But you have found what they wanted," Catia says, sounding sullen, almost petulant, as she squirms her foot into the unyielding leather. She is a professional and knows that intelligence is an unfeeling game but she hopes against the odds for her Archie. She dips her dainty stockinged toes into the second boot, wriggling them down. "Senhor Holmes, he will vouch for you. You will be free soon!" She sounds defiant.
"If I'm very lucky, yes, for I have turned spy, lovely, a traitor, some will say." Featherington clenches up his jaw, concentrating on maneuvering the boot over his confederate's shapely calf. "Everything that I've done here, all of it, must remain a secret. There can be no panic, no riots in the armies, no hysteria at the gambling tables. Remember, the Restriction Act is still in place. With no possibility of getting gold from the banks, the economy will collapse. We must preserve the oily little bubble world of balls and lords for the taking and spicy gossip – mustn't frighten the horses – or perturb the debutants."
He grimaces, allowing her boot sole to hit the floor. "I'll have a harder mission once I'm home, to regain my good name and reputation. There are those who will resist my efforts. I can only go back and pretend that nothing has happened, other than I stopped gambling... ah. Our friends below."
The touts can hardly allow him to live unmolested once this affair is finished, and he can't have them coming after his family… He'd have to brave the consequences and hire a bodyguard until he could have them arrested… "Well, more young men about the house; Portia should appreciate that, should she not? Even if they are Runners and not quite gentlemen…" he goes on, nerving himself to it. "No help for it, lovely. It will take some time but I'm sure I can achieve it." He is talking now as if to assure himself that this is what he has to do, "I must return to a life I can barely tolerate."
He droops suddenly, not sure if this scenario is anything more than a fantasy or even if he wants it. He sighs, "I dream of going back to the sea. Things are simpler out there. I would call myself… Nelson, I think." He lapses into silence and stares at the floor.
"You abandon me, Archie?" she murmurs, staying very still.
He continues staring at nothing, his fingertips trailing mindlessly down the length of Catia's leg to the floor, a host of memories flashing behind his blank eyes. Evenings when, information shared and nothing to do for the rest of the time he had paid for, the most sought-after incognita of the Season had danced for him before throwing herself onto the bed and into his arms. Sorrowfully he thinks… I shall never see her after tonight…
In a moment he is business again and scrambles up to look down at her. "Listen to me. Four days ago there was a battle fought at a place called Vitoria, in Spain. Boney's power in the Peninsula is broken, the bulk of the French army is in full retreat. You have important patrons and friends on your Regency Council. It'll be safe at home for you now."
She rises to face him, standing very close. "I will send a report to the Council in Lisbon but I will remain here, in England. I will stand with you before the courts."
"You are not English," Featherington reminds her shortly. "It's not safe. You'll be taking enough risk dressed as a man with the Alien Office shadowing your every step. If they find that –" he nods at the bundle, "they'll assume you've stolen it. And if they find those bad notes –" he lays his cupped palm on her figured waistcoat, near her heart, "– it'll be Newgate Prison for certain. So for you, it's back to Portugal... fortunate land," he goes on more softly, "It will know Catia the Magnificent once more, and you'll be SAFE, my lovely, safe." Again his mind whispers… And I shall see you no more…
He hardly seems to know he is touching her as he speaks, reluctant to let her go even as their eyes embrace. Then a burst of coarse laughter from somewhere nearby makes him look away from her dark eyes to her hastily knotted stock. He brushes at it, fluffing it up. "They'll be coming for me soon. Madame is not one to miss the opportunity to make a bit but her kind entertainments will not last forever. Quickly!"
Together they catch up the tumbled contents of Catia's wardrobe and shape them into a huddled human form on the mattress, concealing it with the covers as Featherington's discarded oddments join his breeches under the bed. "The fighter you bribed," Catia begins, unable to keep it back any more, "you gave him good money so they will not harm him?"
Featherington shrugs, not meeting her eyes, "No. Counterfeit money for a counterfeit fight – can't be helped. With the whole money pool contaminated, Mondrich should be only one of many who were passed bad notes. He'd be better advised to 'ware his own backers." He slides a glance at her solemn face. "He's taken a bribe. From now on he'll find he's not his own man, that he has to do whatever the touts want. Let that strutting hypocrite Hastings deal with it, if there's trouble."
"And your wife? Your daughters?"
"My wife!" In a show of long-suppressed anger, Featherington slaps the last pillow half under the covers. "Portia's forgotten me. She only lives to see her daughters well married and my girls are just as silly and as vain as –" He breaks off to cuff the dummy into shape and casts around the chamber once more, making sure nothing points to an obvious flight, mumbling bitterly all the while, "I would have thought at least Penny would have remembered who her father was... and the days before I stumbled into this abominable mess, but all they think about now is how to claw their way into The Bloody Ton!"
Featherington stalks over to the window, peeling back the curtain from a corner to survey the darkening street below as he vents his disappointment in low, vicious tones, "Portia was so bloody ready to believe I'd destroyed her life even after twenty years of so-called marital bliss!" He laughs bitterly. "But our job is finished and I must go back to my former life… if I can… even if I don't…"
Catia slips around him to the window, checking the street the other way. "Portia will mourn if you do not return to her," she soothes.
Featherington scoffs, "Only after she's seen the money's gone. Not that it would do her any good if it WAS there. Counterfeit, all of it, bound now for Crown Street." He peeks over at Catia's exotic profile, illuminated in the dull glow of the evening sky. "Couldn't leave it there, could I, to implicate them?" he snipes, then drops the curtain and begins to move from the window to the chamber door.
"Archie," Catia whispers after him.
Featherington glances at her, graceful and enchanting even in men's attire, gilded in the sinking candlelight, and his anger vanishes. He bows his head, listening intently for a few moments at the door, then moves back to her. "Forgive me, m'dear. Not your place to take my burdens. I brought this on myself, after all. It's up to me to remedy it."
"We have been partners, m'lord," she murmurs, "and more, but we must be real in this: your wife WILL mourn if you leave her. She will forgive when she is taught what it is you have truly done. She ruins her own life if she throws away the only thing that matters for her pride." Archie quirks an eyebrow at her so she explains softly, "You, meu amor, it is you that matters. She is a fool if she cannot see it."
He shakes his head as they stand close and the candle begins to gutter. "And who is it will teach her? I can never tell her the truth. This involves national security. Neither you nor I can ever speak of our part in this. In some ways it would be so much better if I disappeared."
Catia's eyes are deep brown pools of sympathy, and Featherington's voice grows softer, more caressing, in response, "They could declare me dead and the new baron, my younger brother, will arrive with all speed, eager to claim the title which he has always begrudged me. Portia will bury my memory without a backward glance and marry him if she can, mark my words." He snorts, "Good luck to him, I'd say, with the title and with my ungrateful family."
Catia shakes her head, gazing into his eyes. "She will mourn, also your girls. And so we must go our separate ways, sim? It is the truth of it, we must part. Then we must kiss, meu querido, for the sake of the old alliance of our nations."
A smile quirks his mouth and he doffs the battered topper. "Why not? For the old alliance."
She catches his head, conveniently mussing his hair as she pulls him to her, and not even the sound of a squeal and a harsh groan from somewhere deeper in the house parts them, until at last he pulls back, conscious of time, forestalling another kiss by passing his fingertips over her lips, easing her protests. His voice is gentle, even tender. "You have your knife, I think? I'll take the cosh then, shall I?"
The Exit
Moments later, the most discrete of Madame's secret doors, the one that opens onto a filthy alley, silently disgorges a tattered wastrel, a nobody that is beneath an ordinary gentleman's notice or even that of a tout. He glances around once and shuffles into the darkness toward Westminster.
Several minutes after that, Catia appears at the head of the grand stair, casually puffing at a cigarillo, the bundle safely anonymous under her greatcoat. She has been to the kitchens and had a word with Madame's cellarer, and now she leans on the newel post and watches as the long-suffering maid approaches the parlor door with two of Madame's best silver tankards on a tray. These are with the compliments of Madame's house, brimming with heavily spiced wine and a special something extra slipped in by Catia herself, unnoticed by the harried kitchen staff.
The doorman, who has been listening avidly to the revelry from the parlor for nearly an hour now, lurches over and opens the doors for the maid, leering jovially at the scene within. He is thus engaged when Catia clumps down the stairs, swaggering, and strides past to the front door.
One of the touts, red-faced with his exertions, collects the tankards with a roar of approval and heaves one to his mate, as the women collectively shriek with merriment and Catia swings out the Georgian portal and down the street, bound for the Portsmouth coach, the wide-open sea, and home.
END – part 10
*S/P notes: Eca! = noise of disgust, our English 'yuck', meu querido = my dear, Will Mondrich = boxer and good friend of Simon Basset, Simon Basset = the Duke of Hastings, a minor annoying character best left in the background where he belongs. Ooo, pardon me, is my bias showing?*
**ffh notes: The Fancy were the favored professional boxers of the day, fraternized and patronized by the rich and idle (and often empty-headed) young sporting/gaming bucks of Regency England, such as the Bridgerton boys or his Grace of Hastings. Although it was not illegal to hold boxing matches, it WAS illegal to bet on the outcome.
The Alien Office was the first version of what would become MI6, formed in 1793 and residing at 20 Crown Street, Westminster, to keep surveillance on refugees from Revolutionary France. Over the years it expanded to take on all kinds of useful clandestine jobs. This is where Barclay Holmes would most likely hang out.
An ordinary citizen finding counterfeit money would take it to Bow Street, claimed to be the first police station in history. It was established in 1740 when Westminster Justice Colonel Sir Thomas de Veil (1684-1746) sat as a magistrate in his home at number 4. In 1749, De Veil was succeeded by Henry Fielding who commissioned six constables, due to increasing crime and disorder within his jurisdiction. These Bow Street Runners gained a reputation for honest efficiency in their pursuit of criminals.
Sir George Crane may have died at the battle of San Millán de San Zadornil or the battle of Osma, both fought 18 June 1813, quite near Bilbao. The battle of Vitoria was just three days later, 21 June, in the same area. Wellington's Vitoria dispatch was written on the 22nd and would have reached Whitehall in a few days. Very soon thereafter Sir George's brother, Sir Philip Crane, would come to Marina with the news of George's death, which would put the Bridgerton series at the end of the London summer Season, 22 July 1813.
The alliance between England and Portugal began in 1147 and was formalized in 1386 with the Treaty of Windsor which is still in place today.
A cosh is a short, heavy bludgeon.
Cellarer is the traditional title for the official who looks after the food stores, usually in a monastery or convent. It was considered clever and 'hip' among Regency sophisticates to refer to brothels as convents and the prostitutes as nuns, with Madame being the Mother Abbess.**
