"Oh Deb," he said. "I have come to visit you. To see if you are all right. Deborah?"
She turned then, and faced him rather gravely, but with a small smile that had a query in it. She had a black eye, and a cut upon her cheek with an unsightly scab or crust. But when she spoke he saw her teeth, and her lips were full and sweet, not bruised or broken in the least degree. Deb had her teeth, her mouth remained unrobbed her cheeks unsunk.
"Well met," she said. "But I am not for sale, sir, nor can you take me out of here. I have protection, sir. Pray do not forget it."
William, for the moment, was bereft of speech. Behind him, very quietly, he heard the door pushed to. Margery, almost inaudible, was chuckling.
Thirteen
There were a dozen questions that he had to ask, there were a hundred. But Deborah, in a dark, stuff smock from neck to ankles was an answer, and he drank her in. His relief at her lack of injury was palpable, but he was aware also of great disquiet, a fluttering in his belly that was akin to terror. He had seen her once one might say in extremis, one night unclothed, now face to face across a truckle bed. I do not know her, he told himself, I do not know her, she is nothing to me. But she was, apparently she was. Or why this volcano churning up inside him?
"Mistress ... Mistress Margery said ..." he faltered. Deb cocked her head, and it was wholly charming to him. "I understood that you had lost your teeth. Like Cecily."
"She said," Deborah replied. "She likes a jest, does Margery. She said you might not know me with my clothes on, neither. It is not, perhaps, a jest I would enjoy, but no matter, it is necessity. Better I should lie about like that than truly have done what Cecily was forced to do, poor Cec."
"I saw her. In the kitchen. After I had ... looked at you, and some fool there had said you'd lost yours, too. I needed to get out and take some air, and I got lost. I was unsure if she knew me, when I barged in the kitchen."
"She did. It gave us much fear, to begin with. We thought ... well, there seemed no other explanation for your presence. Perhaps there is not. Sir if you have been sent to take us back, you cannot have us. You helped us once, which is why we were unsure. But we cannot go back to your uncle's and we will not. We have not told Margery or Mistress Pam we know you Cec kept it like the grave last night but Marge said you said you'd met us other where and she asked me, and I told her we were staying here, and we would not be moved, or forced, or cajoled into anything at all, by you or anyone. Now please, sir, what is it you want?"
And William was stumped. He saw himself from outside himself, for one moment. A young Navy officer, absent from his ship without a leave, on a wild fool's errand. Standing gawping in the bedroom of a maiden whom he hardly knew, but whom he had stared at the privy parts of with an intensity that might have melted lead. Whom he had felt enormous sorrow for, and whose ruined beauty he had had to come and see, despite he knew it would destroy his heart. To find her whole, and strong, and beautiful, and suspicious of his motive for being there. What was his motive? To himself, William could just admit it, barely. He felt he loved her, he felt he knew what love meant, he who had never used the word in all his life, at least of womankind. What did he want, though? He was stumped.
"We were ... I was; anxious," he faltered. "A fellow said ... that you had sold your teeth, and then I saw Cecily, and knew it must be you ... lying there."
"Naked as a new-born babe." Her voice was harsh, eyes bright with anger. "I should feel shame, you think? But men will pay and maids must live. You paid, did you not?"
He moved backwards, towards the wall and door, as if an unseen hand were pushing him. But Deborah was not. Although angry, her body was relaxed, her fists unclenched. All the spirit was in her eyes and face, a strong face, dark and lovely. He made a gesture with his hand, and felt ashamed.
Deb said: "Why did you pay to shame me, though, if your task was to take me for your uncle? When you aided us upon the road you were so kind. You and your friend were."
She fell to silence. Her eyes were brighter yet, as if bathed in tears, which she was not prepared to shed. He would have blessed the succour, but Deborah was hard on that score.
"He is not my uncle." Irrelevance, another kind of succour, although it did not ease him much. "Sir A is Samuel's, well, he has aided him. Samuel, my companion."
"Who has gone to fuck Annette, says Margery. At least he does not gaze at her through a filthy little peephole, like some loathsome thing!"
It was running from his grasp. He had come in fear, to offer aid, to see if help were needed, and now he was a loathsome thing! William, who had never seen a maiden angry, was almost afraid. The eyes were frankly flashing, the breasts heaving beneath the smock.
"I did not know!" he said. "What one is meant to do! I have never ... Indeed, I knew not it was you. How should I, when your face was covered up?"
"But still you paid to look. Oh sir, that is a loathsome thing."
Her eyes had clouded, and her shoulders slumped. She turned, and sat upon a chair.
"By God," she muttered. "What things to say. Margery will hie me out into the gutter. Sir," she said, loud and clearly to him, 'forgive me for a saucy whore. Pray you, do not tell the mistress what I've done."
In truth, he almost wept for her, she looked so young and hurt. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen at the most, and suddenly she was her age, a girl with bruises round her eyes. His voice was thick.
"You are not a whore," he said. "And I am sorry I offended you. We have not come to fetch you neither, for we did not know you lodged here. How come you to? Why have you left Sir A's? He did not surely force you into flight?"
She did not answer. She bit the inside of her lower lip, her hands still clenched. But, gradually, they eased. William mastered his emotions likewise.
"The mountebank damaged your face," he said. "That is why you had it covered. But Mrs. Putnam says you ain't a whore, Dr. Marigold has better things for you. Dennett, was that his name? That quack that marked you?"
"That's why we run off maybe, me and Cec," she said, quietly. She glanced at him, then away. "He would have come for us. He would have tracked us down."
"But surely not! There are men at Sir Arthur's, even if he had found you out. But how should he do that, in any way? We found you in a wood, and carried you away in darkness. How would he discover you?"
She shrugged. There was a look of doubt, momentarily, almost a sulky look. She was a wayward, stubborn thing, it came to Will. She and her friend had run away before, from home, had tracked two hundred miles or so.
"But you had friends, in any case," he said, remembering. "So why run here? You had relatives, was it? You told Mrs. Houghton."
"We thought we did," said Deb. "Nay, we looked for them, but we could not find, Cec maybe made them up. London is not Stockport, though, if you take my meaning. It is all a maze." She met his eye. "He would have tracked us, Dennett would. He has captured us before, he is a devil, not a man. He is a tight, cruel bastard. London is a maze, and for the moment I go covered, do not I? In the parts that matter, anyway." A pause. "We stole an ass. We gave it to some men. Will you tell him?"