She clutched her hands to her face as the sense of despair rolled right through her, for she knew the answer to each of those questions and she knew, too, the ugly truth of the alternative.
Arabella relived the moment that the group of gentlemen had entered Mrs Silver’s drawing room, and it did not matter how hard she had tried to deaden her feelings, no matter how much she could rationalise the whole plan in her head, when it had come to the point of facing what must happen she had felt an overwhelming panic that she would not be able go through with it. She closed her eyes against the nightmare, knowing that there was only one decision she could make. Even if there were certain aspects of the negotiations that she would have to handle very carefully.
And as she lay there she could not help but think how differently things might have turned out if Dominic Furneux had been a different sort of man. If he had loved her, as he had sworn that he did, and married her, as he had promised that he would, how different all their lives would have been.
Dominic arrived at Mrs Silver’s early and alone. The drawing room was filled with a woman of every colour of Mrs Silver’s rainbow, every colour save for black. He knew with one sweep of the room that Arabella was not there and he felt a whisper of foreboding that perhaps everything was not going to go quite how he had planned.
‘Variety is the spice of life, your Grace. Perhaps I could tempt you with another colour from my assortment?’ Mrs Silver smiled at him and gestured towards the girls who had arrived looking a little breathless and rushed following his early arrival.
‘I find I prefer black,’ he said. ‘Miss Noir …’ He stopped as the thought struck him that perhaps following his discovery of her Arabella had gone, fled elsewhere, to another part of London, another bordello … somewhere he could not find her.
‘Will be here presently, your Grace, I am sure,’ the woman said with supreme confidence but her eyes told a different story.
He had not contemplated that Arabella would choose this wretched life over the wealth and comfort he had offered. That she would actually run away had not even occurred to him. His mouth hardened at his own naïvety. A man was supposed to learn from his mistakes.
‘If you are content to wait for a little.’ Mrs Silver smiled again and gestured to one of the sofas.
Dominic gave a curt nod of his head, but he did not sit down. He stood where he was and he waited, ignoring the plate of delicacies and the glass of champagne by his side.
Five minutes passed.
And another ten. The women ceased their attempts to engage him in seductive conversation.
What would he do if she did not come?
By twenty minutes he was close to pacing.
By forty minutes there was only Miss Rouge and himself left in the room and a very awkward silence.
At fifty minutes, Miss Rouge was gone and he felt like he had done that day almost six years ago—angry and disbelieving, a fool and his wounded pride.
He had requested his hat, cane and gloves and was about to leave when Arabella finally arrived.
‘Miss Noir, your Grace,’ announced Mrs Silver, all smiles and solicitude as she brought Arabella into the room and left.
The door closed behind Mrs Silver.
The clock on the mantel punctuated the silence.
Dominic’s glass sat beside it, the champagne flat and untouched.
She was wearing the same scandalous dress, the same black feathered mask and beneath it her face was powder white. She came to stand before him and he found he was holding his breath and his body was strung tight with tension.
He swallowed and the sound of it seemed too loud in the silence between them.
He waited, not daring to frame the question, any certainty of what her answer would be long forgotten.
‘I accept your offer, your Grace,’ she said and her voice was low and dead of any emotion. She seemed so pale, so stiff and cold, that he had the absurd urge to pull her into his arms and warm her and tell her everything would be well. But then she moved away to stand behind the cream-coloured armchair and the moment was gone. ‘Let us discuss the details.’
He nodded and, like two strangers arranging a business deal, they began to talk.
When Arabella returned to the little room in Flower and Dean Street later that same night it was to find Mrs Tatton and Archie curled again upon the mattress.
‘It is only me,’ Arabella whispered in the darkness, but Mrs Tatton was already struggling to her feet, armed with the chamber pot as a makeshift weapon.
‘Oh, Arabella, you startled me.’
‘Forgive me, Mama.’ Arabella made her way across the room by the light of a nearby street lamp that glowed through the little window.
‘What are you doing home so early? I had not thought to see you until the morning.’ Her mother’s hair hung in a heavy long grey braid over one shoulder and she was wearing the same crumpled dress she had worn for the last five days. Then her eyes widened with fear. ‘The workshop have turned you off!’
‘There has been a change of plan, it is true,’ Arabella said and quickly added, ‘But you need have no worry. It is for the better.’
‘What do you mean, Arabella? What change?’
‘It is an arrangement that will ensure we do not end up in the workhouse.’ She glanced towards the sleeping form of her son. ‘We will live in a warm furnished house in a good respectable area, wear clean clothes and have three square meals a day. I will have enough money that Archie need not go without. And you, Mama, can have the best of medicines in London. We will not be cold. We will not be hungry. And …’ She glanced towards the footsteps that passed on the landing outside. She lowered her voice, ‘We will be safe from robberies and fear of assault.’
Her mother set the chamber pot down on the floor and came to stand before Arabella, staring into her face.
‘What manner of arrangement?’
Arabella felt herself blush and had to force herself to meet her mother’s gaze. She had known this moment would come and could not shrink from it. Better they spoke of it while Archie was not awake to hear. They would be moving out of here in a few days and there was no way that Arabella could continue her pretence. She had to tell her mother the truth … just not all of it.
‘With a gentleman.’
‘Oh, Arabella!’ Her mother clasped a hand to her mouth. ‘You cannot!’
‘I know it is a very great shock to you,’ she said in a calm reassuring voice that belied everything she was feeling. ‘And I am not proud of it.’ She was ashamed to the very core of her being, but she knew in order to make this bearable she must hide her true emotions from her mother. She must stand firm. Be strong. ‘But believe me when I tell you it is the best of the choices available. Do not seek to dissuade me from this, Mama, for my mind is quite made up.’
‘There was no workshop, was there?’ her mother asked in a deadened voice.
‘No.’ She saw the tremble in the old swollen hand that Mrs Tatton still clutched to her mouth and felt as bad as if she had just reached across and dealt her mother a physical blow.
‘And the gentleman?’
Arabella swallowed and averted her gaze. ‘It is best that he remains nameless for now.’ If her mother knew it was Dominic to whom she was selling herself there would be no force in heaven or on earth that could stop the awful cascade that would ensue.
‘Really?’ Mrs Tatton said in a hard voice that revealed to Arabella everything of her mother’s disillusionment