"Oh sir, oh Will!" she gasped, as they drew apart. "Oh Will, you're here! Oh sir."
The passage was still empty, but they got into the room. It was largish and full of light, and by whorehouse standards the top of luxury. For a moment it arrested him, he was taken by the drapes and mirrors, by the expensive smell of burning beeswax. The bed was huge, with posts and canopy, and there were two doors leading off, it was a suite. Then she moved in again, and face to face they held each other, each swamped and flooded with a similar relief.
"I'm here," he said, 'but so are you, Deb. How? Why? How has it come about? I saw Sir Arthur, and he said He said ... that you were safe."
He drew back, to hold her at arm's length and look at her. The colour in her pale brown skin began to rise.
"I am safe, Will," she said. She moved her head, as if to show the room. "As you can see. This is mine, I am the mistress here."
There was an expression in his eyes that made her stop. Oh God, thought Will, she is protected. Margery said it, and this apartment is all hers. This bed is hers for lying with her benefactor on. The man who pays, and comes to sleep with her. Despite what Sir A had said and he had said protection, too despite it all, it could only be the magistrate.
"Will," said Deb. Her voice was almost piteous. "Please, Mr. Bentley, do not take it hard. We can do it, sir! I will lock the door! Please do it with me, Will! I want to; please, I want to."
The blush had spread right down her neck to the soft across her bosom. Her fright, or anguish, shamed him, for he knew he had no right. She was off from Wimbarton's house and all his evil men, but only to be made his city whore, for visiting. And Jesu, he thought, if it came to him to be her saviour then surely she would starve or end up in the gutter. Then, enveloped in her scent, the smell of her skin that he'd retained intact within his memory through all the days and rides, he had a rising urge to lie with her again, on this protector's bed, and damn his very soul!
"In any way," he said, thickly. He gripped her by the shoulders, pulled her in to him. "In any way, why should you be faithful to that rogue, that villain? What right has he to keep you to himself!"
His desire had become violent in a second, his need was powerful, and he bore her back towards the bed without thought for the door, or undressing her or him, or anything. But Deb resisted. Her face was shocked, she pushed back at him with both hands.
"A rogue? Why do you say that, sir? He saved me, he is a friend."
Suddenly, she understood. The blush increased and darkened, spread like a crimson burn across her face. "Oh Will, not Wimbarton, it's Sir Arthur. Not him; your friend and benefactor."
The shock was like a blow. He let go his grip on her and Deborah, unbalanced, sat on the bed abruptly. Will, too close, stood back. He stared at her, and she had to turn her face away.
"He rescued me," she said, voice faint. "He bought me from the magistrate, I think. He '
"Bought you! How bought you? Before God, Deb, do you mean Sir A, Sir Arthur Fisher?"
"But not for that, though! Not as a whore, Will, he is too old. Oh listen, listen to me!"
She covered up her face as if in tears, and Will drew further back. He saw she was in tears, they were wetting through her fingers, dripping on her cheeks. Strangely, he still felt desire, his stomach was hollowed out with urgency, but he also was ashamed by it. In a movement he spun to sit beside her on the bed, and put his arm around her shoulder. Deb put her hair into his face and neck. For some moments neither spoke. He listened to her breath shuddering, held her, squeezed her with one arm. Slowly his lust subsided, and her tears.
"It was what you told him," she said, at last. "After Wimbarton came to steal me and Sir Arthur made me go. I told him they were lying and Dennett was dead and buried but he thought I was a lying sluttish whore, in league. Then you came back to his house and told them too, you said I'd said that I'd seen Dennett shot and it was true and afterwards the master did believe it, Mrs. Houghton said, he was ashamed at what he'd done to me. Oh Will, oh Will, I cannot do the words together, can you follow what I want to tell? It was you, it was your words saved me from that Wimbarton, that pig."
She cried again, more copiously but less racked with pain, and William held her, and stroked her hair and face. As far as she knew the story, it emerged, Sir A had listened to what Will had reported, and possibly had been struck by fear and guilt. When the storm of grief about his nephew had begun subsiding, he had contacted the magistrate and tried persuasion, a hint of investigation by the law, and finally good simple cash. He had bought her back, although not to live with him as Wimbarton had assumed, but because -according to the household women of his great Christian conscience. But still, Deb said sadly, he truly thought that she was fallen, worthless, bad. He saw her once, for a matter of five minutes, and asked her where she would like to go.
"I could not stay in his house," said Deborah. "He did insist on that, he said it would not be seemly and in any case he trusted neither Wimbarton nor his violent men. He said that if I stayed they'd kidnap me one day, if I even so much as walked out of the purlieus, but I think in truth his reasons were for shame, people would get to hear and think he'd bought me for his harlot. Then he said there was a friend in Hertfordshire, an old man, an even older man than he! I was to sit, and do some tatting, go to church on Sundays and grow old, I guess. And still he'd pay me, I was not to fear for starving or the streets." She smiled at William, she was composed once more. "Had I dared to, I would have asked to wait for you, then gone and been your friend, wherever. But I think he feared that, too, for your sake. I think he feared I'd be a clog on you."
She needed it, so William took her hand and squeezed. Some of her candles were guttering, giving aromatic smoke. She glanced at them proprietorially, they pleased her, he could tell. Sir A was paying well for her, however little she gave him in return. He was a strange philanthropist.
"How came you here, then? Surely he does not know the house, or what sort of place it is? Sam and I took care to keep it privy when we used it; it's not much like his holy man's in Hertfordshire!"
Deb bounced up off the bed and nipped some of the candles out between her thumb and fingers.
"I said 'twas safer here. No, don't make that face, 'tis true in some ways, the old Herts party I'd have murdered out of boredom or just run mad and jumped into a river, would I not? I said I knew a house in London, quite respectable, where I could lodge with women to look after me. That's true as well there's Mistress Putnam, Margery, there's even Mrs. Pam to kick my arse if I get saucy. And Dr. Marigold, I could tell him with great truth, had plans to bring me on, give me an education, which is also so, and all the time he got the cash none could molest me. The clincher was, no one would ever find me in this teeming rabbit hole of London, no Wimbarton or his yokel ruffians, and the mountebank, sweet providence, is dead. That left only one I knew would come here, although the dear old man, of course, did not. I say I knew, but in truth I only hoped. "Twas you."
She was standing facing him, toying with the ribbons at her breast that laced her gown across. She did not seem lascivious, but his mouth went dry, the way she smiled at him so very sad, and sweet.
"But," he said. "But maid, how got you here, who brought you? You did not make Sir A?"