"You angered yer uncle again?"
"He's not my uncle," Polly spat, taking a tankard from a hook in the wall.
"You watch yourself, my girl. If it wasn't for 'im, ye'd 'ave no bed and no food in your belly," Prue declared. "Looked after you, 'e 'as, just as if you was one of his own kin. Instead of a Newgate brat," she added in an undertone.
Polly heard it nevertheless, but she had heard it so many times in her seventeen years that it had lost the power to hurt, if, indeed, it had ever had any. "Josh wants a special,"
she said listlessly. "In mulled white wine." She handed Prue the tankard.
Her aunt nodded. "The gentleman in the corner, I suppose. Thought 'e was waitin' for someone at first, but if he's on 'is own, 'tis safe enough." She dipped a ladle into one of the aromatic cauldrons and filled the tankard, then began to add spices from an array of little ceramic pots. Polly watched. One of those jars held a powder that was far from innocuous, and as her aunt, in stained apron and grimy cap, mixed and stirred the malevolent draft, to Polly's suddenly fanciful eyes, the bubbling, steamy room came to resemble a witch's kitchen.
Moisture beaded her forehead, and she bent her head to wipe her face with her own far-from-clean apron. There had to be a world beyond these walls; there had to be a way to achieve the ambition that danced, glittering with promise, before her mind's eye during the long reaches of the night. One day she would act upon a very different stage, play a very different role from the one assigned to her in this sordid, circumscribed existence, where the exigencies of poverty were the only determinants, and the hangman's noose the only feared outcome. All she needed was a patron, some rich gentleman who could be persuaded of her talent and would introduce her to the people who managed the theatres. The trouble was that gentlemen with fat purses and possible influence in high places did not often frequent the Dog tavern, and when they did, as with the present prospective victim, Josh had another fate in store for them, one that effectively precluded their offering any assistance to Polly.
She took the tankard from her aunt and returned to the taproom. She was now required to persuade the gentleman into the bedchamber abovestairs, where, thanks to Prue's potion, he would be rendered unconscious to await the thieving ministrations of Josh and his cronies. What happened to him after that was no concern of hers. Her task completed, she would be packed off to seek her pallet beneath the stairs, closing her ears to the thumps and creaks,
the muttered imprecations, the scuffings and shufflings in the passage.
Polly looked across the crowded taproom, trying to decide what approach would be best with this particular gentleman. Mostly the gulls were so boorish, so repulsive with their lewd suggestions, insulting in the way they handled her as if she were meat on the butcher's stall, that a delicate approach would be wasted. This gentleman seemed of a different order. He was a large man, certainly, with broad, powerful shoulders and thighs barely contained by his velvet coat and breeches. But the impression was of muscle rather than fat, and the sword at his hip was of plain design, instrument rather than ornament. In a fair fight, Polly decided, he would be a better than even match for Josh and his bully boys.
He wore his own hair, curling richly to his shoulders, the candlelight catching auburn glints, and his eyes were a clear emerald green. She remembered the way they had been fixed upon her earlier, how he had witnessed the way she had been pawed by the revelers at the center table, and a ripple of self-directed disgust ran through her at the impression she would have given him. He was not to know it had all been pretense, necessary if she was to keep on the right side of Josh. Why should she imagine that he, so demonstra-bly a gentleman, would find anything appealing in the advances of a tavern whore? But then, she didn't have to play the part of a tavern slut, did she? She could be anything she chose as long as she achieved the desired end.
Her chin went up. She would surprise the gull with this performance-intriguing him with the speech and manners of a gentlewoman, even while she made the whore's offer.
Nicholas watched her come toward him. He had kept his seat with the greatest of difficulty earlier when that bullet-headed brute had struck her. Such a spectacle would not normally have interested him in the slightest-a man was entitled to keep order in his own establishment, and if the girl was not his daughter, she was certainly in his employ, as much subject to his authority. But there was something ut-
terly repellent about the idea of such a man holding mastery over that beauteous creature-as repellent as had been the groping hands of the tavern's customers.
"Will you take another tankard of mulled wine, sir?"
Her voice was amazingly sweet, carrying none of the harshness he had expected. The vowels were softly rounded, each word carefully articulated, her speech wildly at odds with the tawdry vulgarity of her dress; but not with the perfection of face and form. She placed the fresh tankard at his elbow. "May I bear you company, sir?" That come-hither smile drew him like a lodestone, and he half rose from his seat as he gestured in invitation to the bench beside him.
"I should be honored." Both the words and the gesture were out of keeping when a man was simply accepting the company of a tavern wench who, it was to be presumed, was as much harlot as serving maid. Nicholas was aware of the absurdity of his courtesy, just as he was aware of the dirt beneath her fingernails, the grubbiness of her dress and apron, her uncombed hair, and the chapped skin of her hands. Yet none of these things seemed to matter, transcended as they were by her amazing beauty, and by her own manner, which seemed to deny such disadvantages utterly. Nicholas Kincaid felt himself bewitched.
"Will you not drink with me?" he asked, smiling. "I hate to drink alone." He put sixpence on the table.
Polly picked up the coin. "My thanks, sir." She went to the counter and drew herself a mug of ale. Josh's sharp eyes had not missed the flash of the coin, and he snapped his fingers imperatively. She handed over the sixpence without protest, although her spirit rebelled. Sometimes she was able to secrete a few coins if they were slipped to her in the throng, but it was a rare occurrence, and her chances of amassing sufficient funds to enable her to make an escape from this hellhole without assistance were minuscule. But such gloomy thoughts were not appropriate to the part she was playing at present.
Polly returned to the gentleman, sitting down close beside him, her eyes glowing with invitation over the rim of her
tankard while she waited for him to fondle the breasts pressed so temptingly against his velvet-suited arm, to put a hand on her knee, pushing up her skirt to reach the softness of bared flesh. These preliminaries were not usually long acoming; then the suggestion that they should continue matters abovestairs would follow naturally.
What a crying waste of such perfection, thought Nicholas, drinking deeply of his mulled wine, wondering through his enchantment if he dared risk accepting the invitation. Young though she was, disease was the inevitable concomitant of this life that she led, and he had no wish for a case of the pox. She moved sinuously against him, her fingers whispering across his thigh as her wonderful, sensuous mouth hovered too close to his own for refusal. He yielded with a tiny sigh, his arm encircling her, enclosing the peerless body that melted instantly into his embrace, her lips parting sweetly for his kiss. There was no further question of resisting temptation.
"If you've a mind for a little privacy, sir, we could repair to a chamber abovestairs," the temptress whispered, a delicate blush mantling the ivory complexion as if she were overcome with embarrassment at her temerity in making such an improper suggestion.