“Yes, sir. Though she must have had help tying you up.”
“Yes, of course she had help,” he snapped. “I should have known it was all too good to be true! My watch! My ring! I had a thousand pounds in my wallet—but never mind that! Are you all right, my old friend?” he asked Pickering. “You seem unharmed.”
Pickering was surprised, and touched. It was just like his master to think of others at a time when he might be excused for wallowing in their own misfortunes. He could almost forgive Sir Benedict for fouling up so spectacularly. “I was a trifle shaken up, Sir Benedict, of course, but my nerves are holding up very well. I thank you.”
Benedict looked around the bedroom. It seemed amply filled with silver candlesticks and there were no blank squares on the walls where paintings had once been. “They did not burglarize the house at all?” he asked, showing a belated concern for Lord Skeldings’s property.
“Oh, no, Sir Benedict,” Pickering assured him. “The house was quite untouched.”
“The other servants? All well? No one hurt?”
“Some shock more easily than others, but, all in all, fine.”
Benedict sighed with relief. “I am glad. If I had been the means of injuring his lordship’s property or his servants, I would have been grieved, indeed. For myself, I am resigned never to see my thousand pounds again, and, I daresay, all my clothes will find their way to a secondhand shop. However, it may be possible to recover my ring, and my watch, too,” he went on thoughtfully. “It would be more profitable for the thieves to sell them back to me, rather than take the trouble of melting down my ring for its gold content or rubbing out the inscription on my watch. I shall offer a reward. ‘Gentleman seeking lost property. No questions asked.’ One sees such items in the newspapers from time to time. See to the advertisement, Pickering. And let us never mention this regrettable matter again.”
“Oh, Sir Benedict!”
Benedict looked at him in astonishment. “Pickering! You are not crying?”
Taking out his handkerchief, the manservant blew his nose. “It is all my fault,” was his anguished cry. “I am to blame!”
“You, Pickering? How so?”
“I have neglected your loins quite shamefully,” Pickering explained, his long nose quivering with emotion. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“My dear fellow! Neglect them all you like. In fact, I prefer it.”
“No! They have been neglected too long, Sir Benedict,” said Pickering firmly. “They demand immediate attention.”
“No, they don’t.”
“You need relief, Sir Benedict!” Pickering insisted. “When a gentleman is reduced to applying to streetwalkers for the fulfillment of his carnal needs—!”
“She was not a streetwalker!” Benedict objected. For some reason it disturbed him to hear that conniving little minx maligned in any way. “She was a thief, Pickering, and a good one. She had beauty and charm, and she knew how to use them to her advantage. I thought I was past the weaknesses of my youth. She made me feel young and stupid again. You’ve no idea how much I hate feeling young,” he added bitterly. “That bitch!”
“She ought to be hanged, if you ask me,” Pickering sniffed.
Benedict scowled. “No one is asking you. Now, be good enough to ready me a hot bath. After such an adventure, one feels ever so slightly redolent.”
As far as Benedict was concerned, the subject was closed.
Pickering obediently went to draw his master’s bath. When he returned to the bedroom, Benedict was sitting on the edge of the bed with his bare feet on the floor. Pickering considered this progress. Now, if he could just get his master to see reason.
“Mortification of the flesh is all very well, Sir Benedict,” he said severely, “but the only real way to be free of temptation is to give in to it.”
Benedict groaned. “Yes, that is what the Church of England teaches us.”
Pickering was unperturbed; his master had never shown anything but the most cursory interest in what the Church of England taught. “This will come as a shock to you, Sir Benedict—it certainly shocked me! But there is a class of woman that we can employ to help us to purge ourselves of these…inconvenient humors. I have learned that a Mrs. Price in the Registry Office here in Bath has a number of Prime Articles in her keeping.”
By all outward appearances, the Registry Office in Gay Street was a respectable employment agency. Pickering had learned of Mrs. Price’s less than respectable activities only a few hours before, from the constable of the Watch, who received a small stipend from the aforementioned for sending customers her way. “Needless to say, her clients are all gentlemen of the highest character. She doesn’t waste her time on the riffraff. And the girls are very high quality. As good as anything one can get in London, I am persuaded. I beg of you, sir, for the sake of your health, let me make an appointment for you.”
Benedict answered him with a look of strong disapproval. “Pickering, you astonish me. Do you mean prostitutes?”
Pickering’s face fell. “You’ve heard about them already?”
“Pickering! You are addressing a member of British Parliament!”
“Of course, Sir Benedict,” Pickering said contritely. “Didn’t it help at all?”
Benedict was indignant. “For the love of God! After slavery, prostitution may be the greatest social evil of our time. In fact, it is a form of slavery, a particularly disgusting form of slavery, in which a woman, unable to support herself by any other means, is forced to sell her body to strangers. A gentleman, Pickering, does not use prostitutes. A gentleman,” he said piously, “keeps a mistress. You see the difference. How could you possibly think that I would be interested in such a thing? I am deeply offended!”
“Mrs. Price’s girls are not all prostitutes, if that is what troubles you,” Pickering assured him. “I have had a long conversation with the footman about it. Some of them are quite respectable married women from the counties. They just do it to make a little money from time to time. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“Oh, my God,” Benedict said violently.
Pickering tried a new tact. “If you will not do it for yourself, think of your poor wife. I believe it was Aristotle who said that a man should approach his wife discreetly, lest the pleasure of being fondled too passionately should transport the poor creature beyond the bounds of reason. You do not want to take her ladyship by storm, after all. Better to get it out of your system now.”
“Have you been drinking?” Benedict demanded.
Pickering went on doggedly. “If it is your health that concerns you, Mrs. Price’s girls will not infect you with a social disease. They won’t rob you or blackmail you. That’s the Price guarantee: honest girls at an honest price. She can get you any kind of female you would like.”
This elicited something between a snarl of pain and an explosion of derisive mirth from the baronet. “Is that so, Pickering? Can she get me…I don’t know…a tall, slender Irish girl with tangled red hair, green eyes, perfect skin, good teeth, small, high breasts, and a laughing mouth?”
“I don’t see why not, sir.”
“While you’re at it, have her sing to me in Italian! Can your Mrs. Price find me a girl like that?” Laboriously, he climbed to his feet. The room tilted and swayed around him. “No, don’t help me,” he said sharply as his valet started toward him.
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